Well, as promised, we have Michael joining us. Michael, it is so good to have you on the show. We are really excited to talk today about Future Marriage University, and the work that you and your wife and your ministry is out there doing on the front line. So welcome to the Covenant Eyes podcast. It's great to be here. For our listeners. Can you share a little bit about what is Future Marriage University? It sounds amazing. Well, I don't know how it sounds, but we love it. We think it's amazing. The idea actually came from my mom, who has been with us for, like, 25 years. But back from Christmas, my junior year in college, she gave me a marriage book. I didn't even have a girlfriend at the time, so I wasn't exactly jazzed about receiving a marriage book for Christmas. But I read it anyway. And in retrospect, my mom gave me this amazing gift. She gave me the ability to learn what marriage was really about at a time when I didn't have love chemicals flooding the brain, inhibiting clear thinking, and I didn't have a relationship to defend, causing me to only receive from the book what I wanted to receive. Instead, I just read this book about marriage and like, oh, and I'm like. And in retrospect, it changed the way I approach dating from looking less for a playmate and more for a teammate. And as it turned out, I had already been really great friends with this one girl, Julie. Julie Loughlin at the time, and, we'd been friends for two and a half years. So I come back from that Christmas break and God just move things in such a way that I'm like, you know what? You're actually more than cute. Would you would you want to date? Seriously? And, yeah. After ten years of being married to that woman, I felt like God wanted me to go back and reread that marriage book and figure out how to trick other people into doing what my mom tricked me into doing. And that was that was 2003. So 21 years of, that's not exactly our mission. Our mission to is to empower students and young adults to grow spiritually and date wisely so they can marry well. I hope people can understand where getting free from pornography would fit into all of that. Absolutely. Well, that's an incredible story and a great mission. I love the fact that, you know, your mom gave you this book that that is powerful. I think our parents play such a pivotal role in how we really look at dating and how we look at marriage. And if we don't have parents that are providing good models or good education or information, often that can skew how we get started in life. So talk to me a little bit about how you guys are out there equipping the young people and teaching this, this model that I'm fascinated to learn more about. Yeah. Well, it actually started with just, inviting all the single people we knew to a class in our home on marriage. We actually went through that original marriage book. After doing that class a few times, we identified something we call the single Life crisis, which happened somewhere about ten years after graduating from college, where you either wake up and you find yourself on this side of the continuum and you think, my life stinks. I cannot believe I invested all that time and all that energy and getting a degree, and then getting a job, and then climbing the corporate ladder by kissing the corporate tush. And this is all I got. Yeah, I got to get married or you wind up on this side of the continuum and you think my life rocks? I've accomplished a lot of my career goals. Even got to travel some. I think I'm ready to settle down and get married. But all the while, both those people and everybody on the continuum in between have spent the last ten plus years post-college almost entirely focused on their career, which in most instances, and is another way of saying almost entirely focused on themselves. So then they would come to our home at age 30 something, and they would want to know how they could be matched up in 29 different areas of compatibility with the perfect person. There was just so. There was so much baggage. There was so much, false understanding about what made relationships work, that we started to move upstream. And I started booking dates and Christian colleges and universities like 2007, 2014 ish. And then after, about 20 1413, essence God asking me to stop booking dates in focus and line and focus on home. And we use that opportunity to move further upstream to the high school market. And as we kept moving upstream, we kept dialing back, our teaching less about marriage specifically and more about just healthy relationships specifically. So today we offer relational AG every fall out of our home to both, high school students and one night of the week, young adults and another night of the week. And then we do a dating class. Same thing in the spring. Have a ton of blog post, though, for those that can't be in Franklin, Tennessee for a class, you know, somewhere about 430 blog posts online. My wife and I have done about 260 videos, all in the topics of sex, dating, and relationships. So that's another way we we deliver what we call love Ed, love education, love ed for short. And, so yeah, those are the those are our main delivery. And of course, I love to speak to come, go to come to your church school. That's incredible I love that. And you know, in the time that you've been doing your ministry, a lot has changed. I mean, the internet has changed how people are connecting with one another. I think even, you know, I'm not you know, I'm, I'm a Gen Xer. And so back in our day, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have computers, we didn't have it. You like, if you wanted to meet somebody, it was like, okay, you meet them like somewhere in church, at work, at, you know, wherever you're at. And people were getting married a little bit younger. And I think now we've seen, like you said, people are in those careers getting, you know, out of college and waiting a little longer to get married, which presents a different set of, you know, challenges that maybe the previous generations number had. How have you adjusted your ministry to kind of compensate for technology and the changes that we've seen in culture? That's a great question. And again, that's that's where a lot of, you know, we we didn't start off to be a porn ministry. And we're still not. But even still, it's become such a huge problem. There are so it just as an example, this is about ten years ago even now, talking about young adults, just not in in an event where I was speaking, just hanging out with them, and this one guy and I were kind of off to the side and he he was asking me how, how do you really know if you're called to marriage? And, I looked at him and I said, well, do you struggle with porn? And he I don't think that was the question. Are you expecting me to ask next? I was like, yeah. And I said, well, there's this guy named the Apostle Paul. And, the apostle Paul first said, you might know this already, that he wished that everyone could be single and celibate, but like him, he thought that would be awesome. But that same apostle Paul also said, not realistic, but what porn does is it takes that sex drive that God meant to drive us to oneness first to be like, wow, I want to share this in this experience with this one special person like in my life too. And so I want to prepare to be one with them. At the same time. I'm growing in oneness with my Lord and Savior who I need every single day to resist these temptations until I get to that relationship. I'll just say that one random guy is just indicative of of of hundreds of thousands, millions of conservative Christian young adults that are out there wondering if they're really called to marriage, when really what's happened is porn is hijacked. Their sex drive so that instead of driving in the oneness, it's deadened. That drive to that drive to find a marriage partner is dead. And because they can keep sort of satisfying their sexual needs with porn all the while, they never quite wound up feel I didn't feel I never felt satisfied. So, yeah, one of the main things we've tried to do is help, young people get free from porn so they can actually, really be able to relate to their spouse when the time comes. That's so good. Yeah. And then it's such important work, too. I mean, unfortunately, the pornography industry, you know, they go after our children when they're young and so early exposure can get these kids hooked and it hijacks their brain. And then as they're in those really formative development years, you know, when they should be creating relationships and learning how to, like, interact with other people. You know, they're being drawn into this pornography industry that you guys are intervening in with these younger people and helping them and supporting them in this way. You have some courses on your website. I was taking a look at some of these, and I love the title of this particular one, and I want to explore it a little bit with you, but it's called date. Like you know what you're doing and that intrigues me. I'd like to first hear about the course and then kind of dialog a little bit about what what is in that course specifically. Yeah, absolutely. The whole idea of date, like, you know, what you're doing is to be able to under first the first half of the book really kind of addresses really the way the world's been doing it and explaining why that doesn't work. I hate going through things that tell me, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, and do do this and don't really help me understand. Like, why would people even do it that other way I walk through, okay, this is why. But this is why people do it this way. This why it looks like a good idea, but this is why does it work? And here's the evidence for that. And then the second half we introduce something that we call friends first dating where it is a and I'll just give you the give you the definition. It's intentional time invested in one other person to grow a friendship that might lead to a life giving, lifelong marriage. So that's the basic, you know, fly over overview of the course. You talk about building friendships first, like, is that done in person? Are you encouraging the in-person activity versus the online activity? Definitely. We encourage in person as much as possible. Again, technology and science tend to have operate under the assumption that if we can, then we should, ultimately, what we really encourage is getting to know people in group settings first, which again, is another reason why it's so great to talk to high school and college students, because they're in those environments where they're around their peers, where they continually bump up against them. Whereas again, way back when we had our first classes with the young adult, which again, we have young adult classes again now. But, you know, it's it's so much more difficult for them to find, communities where they can, get to know each other in kind of a casual setting. So talk to me a little bit. You do speaking engagements. Is this like at churches, you go to youth groups, like where? What is that about and how would you know? We have a lot of pastors and ministry leaders that tune into this podcast. So what if they were thinking, hey, you know, this guy makes a lot of sense. I'd like to bring him in so he can talk to our young people. Yeah, I love that. We yes, we can speak on dating. I do, a series called The Rated Sex Talks that usually I just do for guys, but I have done it with mixed college groups and young adult groups as well, where I help them understand what's driving their sex drive, because you can't control something that you can't understand. I got free from porn because my wife and I set up some pretty dadgum stringent regulations so I couldn't get to porn, and that helped for two years. But what allowed me to break free from even the desire and the impulse to look was understanding what I was looking for when I saw that image, or for you, listing what you're looking for, when you're tempted by this other person or whatever. What, what? There's something that we think the sexual experience is going to some something it's going to do for our identity. And when you can realize what that something is, then you can see porn, sex, all that alone is never going to give those answers. It's never going to provide that fulfillment, not even in marriage, because it wasn't intended to. Our deepest need is not for sexual intimacy. It's for relational intimacy. So anyway, I kind of got off on the tangent there. But yeah, we I have a lot of series like that. We do the Freedom Fighters, which is, talking about porn. I have a series called help How Porn Will Keep you single and so and actually thank you, Covenant Eyes. That series actually was first written out for the first time in a two post series that I did for you guys. So thank you for that. Yeah, because that turned from that to like a whole video series that we did. And again, you can that's something else too. You can't afford to have me come in. You can go through a series on our YouTube channel. All of that stuff is free. And that's. Incredible. Yeah. And I was going to mention to our listeners, we're going to put a link in the show notes, but you've done a ton of blog posts and writing for us over the years at Covenant Eyes. We've got a whole page dedicated to all the articles that you have put together. And, we're going to make sure that our listeners have access to that. But talk to me a little more about the courses, because that sounds like probably the most feasible way for a lot of people to get access to this content. So where do they go to get the, the courses? And then do you have like a recommended path for people, or is it based on kind of where they are in their journey, where they should start? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Future Marriage University.com is our website. Again you'll see the date like, you know, program right near the top. That is really our main, pathway for entering because it's the book is thorough and yet it is airy. It's written blog post file. So even though it's 300 pages, almost 300 pages, it doesn't read like that. I've talked to so many people that told me they read it in a day, which I'm like, okay, I don't even think I could. In fact, I know I can't do that because I did the audiobook and it took me two days. Of course, those were two four hour days, now that I think about it. So I guess, yes. Yeah, you could read it. I wouldn't to read it in a day, but that they did. But that said, that's a great way to, to get into to what we're doing. And we have tons of blog posts that come right out of the book. So, if you listen to the audio clip, if that's not enough for you, you can we have a video series as well that goes with it. It has, 16, ten minute videos, designed to go two videos per session for eight weeks. But, I mean, you can do that. However, and, yeah, but we if you go to our homepage, you can see we got several main categories of things. You can look at. That's awesome. Well, we'll be sure to put the links in the show notes so people can get access to your website. And then take a look at those courses. And your your blog is also featured there. And I think there's a link also to get to the videos on YouTube. So yeah, I think convenient for all of our listeners out there. Well, in closing today, I'd love to just kind of leave our listeners with some takeaways and maybe some words of wisdom or some inspiration. So if you have, something you'd like to share with our listeners in closing today, that would be fantastic. Yeah. Thank you. You know, whether you are hoping to find that special someone, or you're a parent or grandparent of someone you hope will find that special someone, I just urge you press in all the more to the ones already found you. And I know that, you know, people can roll their eyes at that and like, yeah, yeah. Jesus. He's great. I get the Christian answer, but no, for real. I've been married now 30 plus years to an amazing woman who I am crazy about. And she's crazy about me. Not crazy in the same way that we were necessarily in college when we were date. But I mean, just really just so close. And yet everybody, you may go to bed with someone, but everybody falls asleep alone. It's just you and God. My wife and I don't fall asleep together. She falls asleep of the Lord. I fall asleep with the Lord. That's at the end of the day. That's who you have. And if you think you're going to leapfrog over him, or you can manipulate or bargain with him, so he's going to get you the special someone, and then your life's going to be complete. You're going to be so disappointed all the while, the lover of your soul is like, I got it all. And he knows. He knows that we are. We need companionship. Adam needed companionship. And last time I checked, it was in a path back Garden of Eden. I don't know why he needed. I don't know it. But God looked at him and he said, it's not good for him to be alone. So he sees you two. He sees your relational needs. He really does. He sees the needs you don't know you have. Press into him, dear one, press into him. If you seek his will, you may miss it. Yeah, because God's will is ultimately not to give you his will. God's will is ultimately to give you him self. So press into him. You won't miss as well. So good. That's great way to bring today's episode to a close and to our listeners out there, be sure to check out the show links and get in touch with Michael and the Future Marriage University organization. Thank you so much for joining us today, Michael. It's been a really great conversation and you're a dear friend to Covenant Eyes, and we appreciate your partnership and all of the work that you've done in the past on the blog in different ways. So thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thank you Karen. It's been a blast. Yeah, of course. All right, listeners, that's going to bring today's episode to a close. Be sure to like it, share it and get it out there. To all your friends and family.