Daniel Moore - Marriage as a Mission Book Interview - 34

What if your marriage isn’t just about happiness, but about holy purpose? We sit down with Daniel Moore to unpack his new book, Marriage as a Mission, and the hard-won lessons that turned personal pain into a roadmap for hope. From covenant vows to daily habits, this conversation reframes marriage as a God-witnessed commitment designed to bless more than two people.

We start with the difference between a covenant and a contract, and why “sliding” into cohabitation often sabotages long-term stability. Daniel shares how fear, cultural pressure, and shaky role models can make commitment feel risky—and how anchoring your relationship in Christ restores courage and clarity. We challenge the myth that a spouse can supply joy on demand and show how abiding in Jesus fills the cup both partners draw from, especially when expectations crash.

Then we get practical. You’ll learn to spot the reactive cycle that keeps fights looping and how to switch to a care cycle that pauses, prays, and re-engages with humility. Daniel lays out three core spiritual disciplines for couples—prayer, Scripture, and worship—as everyday tools for unity and spiritual warfare. He also walks through his six-session study guide packed with Scripture and action steps, and his 42-day devotional that gives couples a shared rhythm for daily growth.

We close with a candid look at spiritual warfare in the family and how to apply the armor of God to real conflicts: truth for honest talk, righteousness for integrity, readiness for service, faith under pressure, salvation for identity, and the Word for wisdom. If you want a marriage that moves beyond survival to mission, this episode offers both vision and a plan.

Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe, share with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts to help more couples find hope.

To learn more about Daniel and Michelle's ministry, visit https://www.marriagelifeandmore.com.

If you would like to purchase any of their books, please use the links below:

Marriage as a Mission - Living out God's Design for Marriage

Amazon (Available in Paperback, Hardback, and e-book)
Paperback: https://a.co/d/10CRf4i
Study Guide: https://a.co/d/5NlbXLa

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 1:15 From Trials To Mentorship
• 5:46 Covenant Versus Contract
• 12:05 Fear, Culture, And Commitment
• 16:40 Joy In Christ, Not Milestones
• 23:20 Breaking The Reactive Cycle
• 27:16 Spiritual Disciplines For Couples
• 33:10 Study Guide Structure And Purpose
• 37:15 42-Day Devotional For Marriages
• 41:10 Spiritual Warfare And The Armor Of God

Transcript

Kim McIntire: 0:08

Hey everyone, welcome to the It's Time to Rise Up Podcast. I'm your host, Kim McIntire. We know there are many things you can do with your time, so thank you for spending your time with us today. We pray you're encouraged and blessed by what is shared. If you're not familiar with our show, please check out our website at itstimetoriseup.org. There you will find our social media links. And for our podcast platforms, you'll find us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else to find your podcast. We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and we know you're anticipating a great new year. I want to welcome Daniel Moore into our studio. Daniel has been a guest on our podcast before. He's also the producer of our podcast, as well as our technical expert for the Rise Up Conference and Events. Thank you for being here today, Daniel.

Daniel Moore: 0:59

You're welcome.

Kim McIntire: 1:00

I'm so honored to have this opportunity.

Daniel Moore: 1:03

Everybody always tells me with my podcast they feel nervous over here. And I'm like, oh, it's fine.

Kim McIntire: 1:07

No, don't be nervous. You've been a guest before, so you shouldn't be nervous at all. New topic, though. New topic.

Daniel Moore: 1:13

New topic.

Kim McIntire: 1:15

I'm so honored to have the opportunity to talk to you about your new book, Marriage as a Mission. And I do want to remind listeners that you and Michelle were on the podcast previously, episode 18. And there you guys were sharing about your marriage testimony. And I know that a lot of the heart of this book was born through some trials that you guys have gone through and struggles that you've gone through, right?

Daniel Moore: 1:39

Definitely.

Kim McIntire: 1:40

So I would highly encourage everyone to tune into that, listen to that um episode because it was very encouraging. Um, as far as God redeeming a marriage, you guys are evidence of that. So what I love about you and Michelle Daniel is you guys have taken the mistakes you've made. And now you are teaching, mentoring, counseling with other couples who are in troubled marriages. And it just reminds me, God doesn't waste anything, does he?

Daniel Moore: 2:13

No, he doesn't. Yeah at all. Yeah, it's it's kind of come full circle. You know, it's like uh if you listen to the episode that's on Rise Up, and then episode 199 of our podcast, we also kind of went through our testimony. And you know, it's just amazing how sometimes, and and we both grew up in Christian homes.

Kim McIntire: 2:34

Right.

Daniel Moore: 2:34

And that's what's so crazy about it, because you would think that growing up in a Christian environment your whole life, and I remember vividly when I was younger telling myself, someday when I get married, I want to stay married, I want to have a happy marriage, I want to, you know, be in church, my kids be in church. Just I had all these goals.

Kim McIntire: 2:52

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 2:53

And, you know, we came to the point, got married, stuff happened, and then it was just like chaos, you know. And next thing I know, I'm divorced and got split family, then I'm getting remarried. You know, the Michelle and I had issues, and it just seemed like Satan just kept coming at us over and over and over. And every time it seemed like we tried to fix something, something else would happen. And, you know, it just I grew up in an environment where my church life, the church that I went to, a lot of the people there came off, they never shared their baggage. And they came off were like almost to perfect to an extent, kind of judgmental to an extent. And I think that that hurt a little bit as I grew up later because I felt like I had to be at that perfect standard to to match up with any of that. And in all reality, I think if any of those leadership in that church, you know, if they would have stepped up and actually shared that no, we're not perfect, we have baggage, we make mistakes, and all this other kind of thing, you know, I think that coming out of that type of environment would help tremendously for people. And so that's one thing that pretty much instigated the the ministry that for my aspect of it for sure, with marriages. We've realized, uh, Michelle and I, we were doing a college-age age life group uh about six, seven years ago. We did it for 12 years prior to that. And we came to realize that a lot of these college kids they they made a lot of mistakes, but they felt like they couldn't talk about them at church because people looked down on them. You know, they're they just had a lot of issue with that because nobody was being real with them.

Kim McIntire: 4:40

Right.

Daniel Moore: 4:41

And so Michelle and I, we've and the other couple that was helping us with that, that was one thing that we made sure we integrated into that life group over that 12-year span was to be open and transparent. You're not walking this path alone, you're not walking this trip alone. We've been there, we've done that, we've done a lot of worse things than you guys have. You know, it's like nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes. That's what the miracle of the cross is for.

Kim McIntire: 5:08

Amen.

Daniel Moore: 5:09

When Jesus died on that cross for us and paid that price, he paid that price for all those mistakes and that imperfection that we have because we're created imperfect.

Kim McIntire: 5:18

Right.

Daniel Moore: 5:18

We're created in sin. And, you know, it's we saw a huge change just within that group and how they looked at things, how they looked at themselves. Uh, it was just amazing the transformation. And so as Michelle and I have progressed and been through the things that we've been through in our marriage, and we started trying to, you know, integrate ourselves into marriage ministry, uh, helping other couples. That's one of the things that we are very open and transparent with all the stuff that we've done. You know, it's like we don't wear that as a you know as a bad thing that drags us down.

Kim McIntire: 5:57

Right.

Daniel Moore: 5:57

We use it for the glory of God. And it makes such a huge difference when you're mentoring or counseling with another couple that's walking that path that we've already been through. Uh sometimes that's all that they need, it's just for somebody to come alongside and say, hey, I've done, I've been there and done that.

Kim McIntire: 6:13

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 6:14

You know, but but God redeemed us out of that situation, and he can redeem you too. Yeah.

Kim McIntire: 6:19

It's hope.

Daniel Moore: 6:20

You're not any different. That's exactly right. It's hope. Like the cross is hope, and Christ gives us that hope with that price that he paid. And, you know, it's it makes a huge difference when you approach it that way, and you get a lot better results. They'll they'll be more sincere in trying to fix their problems.

Kim McIntire: 6:37

Absolutely.

Daniel Moore: 6:37

And trying to take care of those issues when they know that somebody truly understands that's walking alongside of them.

Kim McIntire: 6:43

So true. You go into the name, let me talk about the title of your book, Marriage as a mission, living out God's design for marriage. You really cover so much territory in the book as far as issues that couples may struggle with. But one of the things that really stood out to me that I don't see a lot in marriage books is this topic of the sacred covenant. And that is what I feel like so many people miss is that the covenant they make, the vow that they make is not just to that person. Yeah. It's a covenant between God and themselves that includes the other person.

Daniel Moore: 7:31

Exactly.

Kim McIntire: 7:32

Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Daniel Moore: 7:34

Sure. Um, one reason, and this is actually like the first chapter.

Kim McIntire: 7:39

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 7:40

The first couple chapters, I get right into that.

Kim McIntire: 7:42

Which to me is so foundational though. I love that you let out with it.

Daniel Moore: 7:45

It's got to be there because something that we're finding out today is especially with this up-and-coming generation right now, they want to try each other out before they get married. And they may never get married.

Kim McIntire: 7:57

Right.

Daniel Moore: 7:58

They move in together, they cohabit. And, you know, even in our premarital, Michelle and I are certified Simba's premarital counselors. And um, even in the premarital that we've done several of our cohabiting already. And what they don't realize is when you cohabit like that, that automatically elevates you to a 20% higher percentile of getting a divorce.

Kim McIntire: 8:20

Right.

Daniel Moore: 8:21

Right off the bat. As soon as you move in together, and that's what happened. They call that sliding instead of deciding because what happens is the couples they'll start moving little things into one person's apartment or whatever, and they eventually have everything moved into that, they just kind of slide into the relationship and slide into the home together. And so now they're living together, don't really know each other yet, but then they start figuring all this stuff out. Well, now if something big happens, they have a much harder time separating themselves from that because they've already gotten into the, they've moved in. I mean, it's it's almost like a divorce at that point, you know. Instead of waiting until the day that they actually get married, they actually decide to do it that day after they know all of the baggage of the of the other person and that kind of thing, and they've make that determination then that I'm gonna love you regardless, instead of being kind of forced into it because they've already moved in together. So um that 20 percentile range automatically elevates as soon as that happens. And if you look at statistics, um, just in this this past year of 2025 divorce statistics, um, first marriages, an estimated 39 to 42 percent of first marriages ended in divorce this year. Second and third marriages, the risk increased significantly for second marriages up to 60 percent.

Kim McIntire: 9:44

Wow.

Daniel Moore: 9:44

For third marriages, it jumps to 73 percent. And uh 66 percent of those are initiated by women. Um, the average age of the first divorce is around 30. Um, 60 per 66 percent of those divorced identify as Christians. So that's another crazy thing. About 25% of your church-going people are in are in that divorce category. And a lot of those actually have a lot of abuse, that's have a tendency to have a lot of abuse, emotional and verbal abuse in them. And what happens is they might be the perfect um elder or deacon of church. Everything looks great and wonderful, but then at home it's a totally different scenario. And there's there's just lots of things going on. Yeah, and it's just hard to believe that even within the church, that percentage is so high, it's it's very comparable just to being out in the world. And you know, a lot of this I think happens because we look at marriage now as just a temporary relationship to an extent, the world does. And from the very beginning, um the you know, in the Bible, one of the main scriptures that really talks about uh marriage being a covenant is actually in Malachi, and it's Malachi chapter 2, verse 14, it says, Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. So that scripture says two things. First of all, it says that whenever the marriage happened, God was there.

Kim McIntire: 11:17

That's right.

Daniel Moore: 11:18

He was one of the people that attended that wedding. Secondly, it specifically states that that marriage ceremony is a covenant. And what is a covenant versus a contract? A contract, it's an agreement between you and somebody else that for this certain thing you do, I will give you this. Okay, well, if somebody fails to fill that, that contract can be broken and you can get out of that. A covenant, on the other hand, is a permanent type of relationship. Uh, when you make a covenant between someone, um you're you're not only making that covenant uh horizontal between you and your spouse, but it's also vertical. Right. It's between you and God. And as you mentioned earlier, it's the three, so it's basically you can look at that as a triangle. You have God at the top and the the husband and wife at the two bottom corners. And that's how a spiritual um marriage looks like.

Kim McIntire: 12:13

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 12:13

And whenever you put God in the center of everything. And you know, a lot of times uh when we look at it as our marriages as being a covenant, you know, that that helps us as Christian couples, we can then anchor our marriage in an eternal truth rather than just emotions.

Kim McIntire: 12:30

So true.

Daniel Moore: 12:31

And a lot of times people that don't go to church and they're not church, they don't have a good Christian marriage. And I'm not saying that if you don't go to church, you're just doomed to be divorced. I'm not saying that at all.

Kim McIntire: 12:43

Right.

Daniel Moore: 12:43

There are people out in the world today that don't go to church, don't read their Bible, they don't pray, they marry their spouse and they're married till they die. I mean, that's a known fact. It's not, I'm not saying, you know, that that's an issue, but we do know though, and just statistics even show this, that if you are in a Christian marriage, everything across the board is elevated to being so much better. Your relationship is usually more solid. Um, you have a lot more joy, you have a lot more connection, you've got a lot more faithfulness, there's more forgiveness, um, grace, all of that stuff is just in an abundance in a Christian marriage. And a lot of times you won't see that in a worldly marriage as much.

Kim McIntire: 13:26

Right.

Daniel Moore: 13:26

And so when it comes down to being a covenant, that's not really taught much anymore. I don't even hear it really being taught from the pulpit necessarily.

Kim McIntire: 13:37

Right.

Daniel Moore: 13:37

It's just one of those things that has kind of been put to the wayside at this point because today, you know, everybody, like I said earlier, uh a lot of these new generations, they just want to move in and try each other out like a like a card. And if it doesn't work, they're just gonna trade it in for a new model and start over, and there's no commitment.

Kim McIntire: 13:55

Right.

Daniel Moore: 13:55

You know, it's it's like they're scared of commitment. And honestly, uh, I was listening to another podcast the other day, and they hit it right on the head because they were talking about um the covenant relationship and why it doesn't seem to be such a big thing anymore with the younger ones today. And a lot of it's fear. Um there there's a huge fear-driven society right now. It comes to the it comes back to the fact that at home they didn't have a very good model in their parents. Um, there's a lot of kids come from divorced families, and so they had the blended family thing going on, maybe two sets of parents or whatever. Maybe some of their parents got divorced two or three times.

Kim McIntire: 14:32

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 14:32

Um, they have all this stuff taking place, and then they go to church if they're a churchgoer, and they start seeing people in churches failing in their marriages, and they see divorces happen. And it seems like no matter where they go, there's no security really that they're seeing around them when it comes to the marital relationship. And so they have a fear inside of them that's what if that's me? What if I get married and then I end up just like the rest of them? And then we have kids and we've got to deal with child support and court and you know all this other stuff. And so they let this fear and anxiety just eat them alive and just become who they are. And that fear and anxiety transforms them into somebody that just can't make a commitment.

Kim McIntire: 15:15

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 15:15

And so therefore, they choose to not get married or wait for a very long time to get married, they'll cohabit and whatever it may be. They'll choose that instead because they feel more secure in that because they have an out. They don't have to worry about that for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, and all that other stuff that goes along with those vows. And so that's one reason with the book. You know, the whole the whole purpose behind this book, the meaning of marriage as a mission. Uh, one thing that I've learned is, you know, there's marriages all over the world, and I see so many marriages where people don't really contribute to a legacy, to what God has truly called the marriage to be. And we're not, we we don't get married just to be married and just exist. That's not that's not why we're here. Um, God, He created the institution of marriage and came up with that process of the man and the wife coming together so that they could pour into other people.

Kim McIntire: 16:17

Right.

Daniel Moore: 16:18

Their marriage becomes a ministry, it becomes a mission field, yeah, basically, to pour into other couples, to pour into other people that are having issues, and we can all learn from each other because we all go through different things and some and go through the same things.

Kim McIntire: 16:32

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 16:33

And we can learn so much from each other. And if we let God guide us in our marriages, we'll come to an understanding that everything we have belongs to God. In Deuteronomy, it tells us that all the wealth and everything that we have, um, God is the owner and the provider of all of that. So nothing that we have is ours, including our marriage. Yeah, that's true. God created that. And so He wants us to utilize our marriage and the trials and the tribulations that we go through, and just like you said earlier, you know, all the junk that he doesn't waste none of that. He wants us to use that for his glory. And so that's one reason with this book that I wanted to start off with the contract thing, because that it's it's in the beginning of the Bible.

Kim McIntire: 17:20

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 17:20

Um, that's one of the first things that's brought out there at the beginning. And then it's something I think the every couple that's getting ready to get married, they need to understand and come back to the uh to the foundation of marriage and what it's meant to be, of it being a covenant and not just a contract that you can just write it off.

Kim McIntire: 17:39

It's so true. So there's a quote from chapter three that really just leapt off the page to me. Um it says, Joy comes from abiding in him, Christ, not arriving at some imaginary life milestone. This is such a powerful truth, Daniel. Um, so many people, and I I was one of them. Thank God I'm not anymore. But I I can speak this not out of judgment, but out of I've done this and I've seen so many people do this, and I still see people doing this. When we're trying to find our joy and our satisfaction in a person or a thing or a position or a salary amount or whatever instead of Christ, and we're we're investing our time and energy and focus on a person or a thing other than Christ, he has to be first and foremost. The result of that is unsatisfaction and the opposite of joy.

Daniel Moore: 18:45

Yeah.

Kim McIntire: 18:46

But I think people think, well, if I find the right person to marry, that's going to complete me. You even say people you hear people say that they complete me, right? But the only one who completes us is Jesus Christ. Exactly. And so I love that you talked about that abiding in him and how important that is. Is there anything else you would like to speak into that? I just feel like that's such an important point for people to. I feel like people know it, but do they really? Like, do they really know it? I don't think we can say it enough.

Daniel Moore: 19:20

I don't think they do because a lot of times in marriages, when you start seeing a marriage breakdown, and we've seen this just when the couples that that we've been able to mentor so far, uh, it's it's been it's shown in every one of them that we've had uh ties to. But you can you can kind of go backwards and you can start pinpointing times when you see that the other spouse failed, I'm doing little quotation marks. Sure. Failed the other spouse in not meeting their expectations. And one thing that we have to understand is even if you marry your childhood sweetheart. Or, like in Michelle and my situation, we were best friends before we got married. And Michelle will be the first to tell you she put me on a pedestal whenever we came together. Uh, she thought that whenever, because her first marriage had a lot of verbal abuse and that kind of thing in it. And she thought whenever we got married, that was gonna be the solv-all. I was gonna be the one to make her happy, to make everything, you know, the way it's supposed to be. You know, it's gonna be a Hallmark movie. You know, it's just like one of those things that everything was gonna be fixed. Well, guess what? I'm human. And we got married and I started screwing up. I did a lot of things that I should not have done. I brought baggage from when I was single. I brought baggage from my first marriage right into ours. And, you know, pretty quickly within the first few years of us being married, um, I failed her.

Kim McIntire: 20:49

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 20:49

You know, I did a lot of things she never thought that she would ever see happen. And the the reality of it is there is a lie out there that people believe that and I don't, you guys, you've probably heard people say it before. They can't wait till they get married because they're they're whoever their significant other, they they're just so happy with them. They're gonna make them happy. Yeah, marriage is gonna make me happy. You know, I just I'm not gonna be happy until I get married. Yeah, you hear all these variations of these sentences, and then you've got Hollywood, just like you mentioned earlier. You know, you complete me. They come up with all these little one-liners that sound so sweet and all that kind of thing. But they're not reality. No, they're not. It works in a movie.

Kim McIntire: 21:29

Right.

Daniel Moore: 21:30

So in the real world, yeah, that is not what happens. And we have to come back to the understanding of our the whole foundation of who we are, why we're here, and the gospel. It comes back to the fact that we were born, we were created in Christ's image. And everything that we do reflects, should reflect Christ and the way that we carry ourselves, the way that we communicate with other people, the relationships that we have, the way that we serve, because we know that Jesus came as a servant. He didn't come as a taskmaster or a big, you know, tough boss. Right. Um, he came as a servant. Everything that we do, um, we need to be understanding that we are doing that through the image of our Lord.

Kim McIntire: 22:14

Right.

Daniel Moore: 22:15

And so our happiness and our joy, all the fruits of the spirit, all that stuff comes from God.

Kim McIntire: 22:23

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 22:24

There's not a spouse in this world that can create and manufacture that and pour that into your cup and fix everything because we're all human and we all make mistakes. And, you know, the the reality of it is, is a lot of times we kind of look at our spouses, you know, like they're a vending machine, and you know, we put the quarter in and I want this back, and you put the quarter in, I want that back, and you know, we just keep pushing and asking for more and more and more. In all reality, we can only give so much. And then when breakdowns do start happening, if you have conflicts and you have different things that come your way, that starts chipping away at all of those fruits of the spirit, you know. And then you got to try to figure out well, if it gets to a point where it's bad enough, we got to figure out how to remanufacture all of that stuff if we're gonna do it on our own.

Kim McIntire: 23:14

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 23:14

But we were never meant to do that on our own. That's why we always have to take any issues that we ever have. And, you know, as we mentor our couples, uh, there's a thing called the reactive cycle. And so basically everybody has buttons that can get pushed by their spouse. And when that spouse pushes that button, we always have a reaction to having that button pushed. And then that reaction usually pushes another button. Then that button causes another reaction, and then you're pushing another one. And it's just a continuous circle if you just let it go and go and go and never stop it. Um, what we have to do when that happens is we have to do what they call the care cycle. You find somewhere you have to, somebody's got to break that first of all. Somebody's got to step up and say, okay, I'm done with this, I'm not pushing any more buttons. You step back, you take a breather for a little bit, and then you pray. You bring God right in the middle of all of that and have God lead and guide both of you through the rest of that conversation to resolve that and get that back. Because when it all comes down to it, whether if it's happiness, whether if it's joy, no matter what it is in our relationship, we can never have any of that on our own to the fullness of what it needs to be unless we include Christ in the middle of that.

Kim McIntire: 24:27

That's so true.

Daniel Moore: 24:28

We always have to come back to that as our foundation.

Kim McIntire: 24:31

That kind of reminds me of of the part that you talked about in chapter four about spiritual disciplines. I mean, that's part of that. Yeah. Where you're creating a rhythm and a structure that nurtures Christ-centeredness in your marriage. Um, it doesn't guarantee perfection, which I love when you said it doesn't guarantee perfection, but it guarantees direction.

Daniel Moore: 24:56

Yeah.

Kim McIntire: 24:56

So if you have spiritual disciplines in place individually and as a couple, there's going to be a more more likely of a possibility that there's going to be strength in your marriage and joy in your marriage. Yeah. Because your your focus is on growing closer to the Lord, therefore growing closer to each other. And the marriages that I've noticed are the strongest and the most joy-filled, are the ones where the couple, they are individually seeking God and they're seeking God together through prayer and the word. So their time with the Lord alone, but they also have time with the Lord together. And I loved how you brought out the importance of spiritual disciplines in your marriage. That that was probably my favorite chapter because I love spiritual disciplines.

Daniel Moore: 25:50

You gotta have them.

Kim McIntire: 25:51

You gotta have them. I really do. If you want to l really thrive instead of just survive in anything with your life, whether it's your marriage or relationships or just everyday life. Yeah. You know, that's so important.

Daniel Moore: 26:06

Well, when it comes to discipline, that's a hard thing for us to do. We don't like to discipline ourselves. Um, we always like to think we've got it together. We always like to think that if there's an issue, especially from a husband's standpoint, if our wife has an issue, we want to fix it, you know?

Kim McIntire: 26:23

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 26:23

And so it's really hard to get ourselves into that mindset. But what one thing that we have to to do when we we get into that, uh, first of all, uh one thing that we shouldn't do is ask is this making me happy? You need to ask, is this glorifying God? So anything that happens within your marriage, whenever, no matter what that situation may be, um, you know, and we want to look for happiness in things, but again, that happiness does come from Christ. Yeah. It comes everything should revolve around that. And so when it gets comes to the spiritual discipline thing, what I was what I put together there in chapter four is spiritual disciplines as a couple is prayer, Bible, and worship. Yeah. That's the three things that I was talking about. And if you can have those three core things embedded in your marriage like it should be, then that's a lot of the main major tools that you're going to need to fight off the enemy and everything that he may throw at you. You know, we know that prayer, if we introduce that into our relationship, you can't go wrong. And that's our direct hotline to God. You know, he knows what we're going through, he knows how to fix it. And he's the one that we need to go back to as a couple whenever situations happen. Now, to have that prayer life like we need, we really need to be in the word.

Kim McIntire: 27:45

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 27:45

The word teaches us how to pray.

Kim McIntire: 27:46

Yes, it does.

Daniel Moore: 27:47

It teaches us how to have that relationship with God and what it takes to be able to bring him back into the middle of that. And when with worship, that's actually spiritual warfare.

Kim McIntire: 27:59

Yes, it is.

Daniel Moore: 28:00

Uh, whenever you consider the Israelites, for instance, there's a few battles that they won. They didn't even lift a sword. They sent the choir out in front of them and told them to sing. Yeah. They probably thought that was the stupidest thing ever, but they did it because God told them to do it and it wiped out the enemy.

Kim McIntire: 28:16

That's right.

Daniel Moore: 28:17

There is a lot of power just in worship.

Kim McIntire: 28:19

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 28:20

And those are three things that a lot of times when we start getting into situations in our marriage and we start having conflicts between each other, uh, we start letting the anxiety and the pressures and uh the fears, all the different things start to get the better of us. Those are things that we forget sometimes that we want to fix it on our own. And so we forget to bring these weapons in that that God has given us. And like I put in that little statement there that you that you quoted, uh, it doesn't guarantee perfection, but it does guarantee direction.

Kim McIntire: 28:55

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 28:56

So I know sometimes couples will go to prayer or they'll go to their Bible and read, and they don't see something happen immediately, or maybe some months down the road, they don't see anything happen. And they have a tendency to, well, God's not working in this, so I'm I'm ready to give up, or I'm gonna just try to fix it myself. And that's not the whole purpose of these trials that we go through. The purpose of it is that if we do the prayer, if we do read our word and we bring worship into the situation, God's still at work. Yeah, we may not see it, but he's got a reason. Everything's going on like it is, and it's gonna, it's gonna have a purpose in the end if we just stick it through. It gives us the but that is the good, the right direction we need to be going, even though we may not see that perfect ending at that moment.

Kim McIntire: 29:40

Right.

Daniel Moore: 29:40

Once we start digging ourselves into the word like we should be and prayer and all that kind of thing, we've got to give time for God to work.

Kim McIntire: 29:48

I loved when you said in that chapter, when you're praying, engaging the word, worshiping together, you're intentionally inviting God into every room of your marriage. Not just the Sunday morning version, but the messy, beautiful, everyday walk. That's where true strength and unity are forged. Yeah. I just thought that was such a powerful, powerful way to speak that into the reader. And I I know this truth comes from lessons learned in your own marriage, right, Daniel?

Daniel Moore: 30:21

Well, think about the rooms that you don't want to expose. Right. There's so many things in our life that it's very hard for us to walk up to someone that's close to us and say, I'm having a problem here. I'm having an issue. I need some help. Uh, a lot of times we just don't have that in us. We want to harbor it inside of us and keep it our secret and hope that it'll just work itself out in the end or we come up with some way to solve it. And so, but uh in all reality, a lot of us can't carry that load on our own. We weren't created for that.

Kim McIntire: 30:53

That's right.

Daniel Moore: 30:53

And there are some burdens that are too heavy for us to carry. It's true. And so we can go to church Sunday morning and Wednesday nights and revivals or whatever it may be that we take part in, and we can put that mask on all we want to and act like everything's perfect in our life and and nothing's going on, and then go home to all of our mess and try to handle that by ourselves if we want to. But nine times out of ten in the long run, you're not going to defeat that on your own.

Kim McIntire: 31:21

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 31:21

And you're just going to create more issues and problems in the middle of all of that. So we have to remember that, you know, God's 24-7. If we have issues and problems and whatever it may be, he's always there ready to listen, to for us to talk to, to get right in the middle of this. It's not us walking through that by ourselves. He's right there in the middle of that with us. If we allow him to be there to take part in all of that, and he will help us get that issue resolved. So true. So we just have to make sure that we draw him in and say, God, open posture. I give you, I give you everything, and I just need direction right now. This is yours, I'm putting it at your feet. What do I do next?

Kim McIntire: 32:02

That's so good.

Daniel Moore: 32:03

And bring him in the middle of all of that.

Kim McIntire: 32:05

I want to mention as well that you um also have a study guide resource available that goes with the book. And so can you just talk a little bit about the study guide? I know it's a six week, it has six sessions. I think it's formatted for a six-week um study. Do you want to just talk about that a little bit?

Daniel Moore: 32:29

Sure. So as soon as I wrote this book, I had several people ask, well, you can do a study guide because we'd like to do that with our groups at church. Um, some different friends that we have that go to different churches. Well, it had already been on my radar because when I wrote this book, I already had an outline done for the the study guide because I like studies. I just I like when I find a good book, one of the first things I'll do is run to Amazon or somewhere. Is there a study that goes with this?

Kim McIntire: 32:54

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 32:54

But one thing that I've always noticed, the study guides a lot of times fail me because I'll get it purchased and I'll get it, and it's just like they didn't really go deep enough for me, you know. And it's like I end up not using it at all because there's just not a whole lot of meat there. And so whenever I did this one, basically the book has 12 chapters in it. And so what the study guide does is it takes two chapters at a time and it combines them. So each session covers two chapters. And so when you see the commentary that's in there, it's actually completely separate commentary from the book. It actually meshes the two chapters together. And then lots of questions, lots of scripture references. I mean, I I tried to load it as much as I could because I want, if somebody goes through this, this book is good for anybody. Um, it's good for people that have good marriages. It's just a reaffirmation, maybe some reminders of a lot of things in our marriage that maybe maybe we might have forgotten. But this book is also good for people that are in crisis marriages.

Kim McIntire: 33:59

Right.

Daniel Moore: 33:59

Um, they're fighting a lot of different things and don't understand why a lot of things are taking place. And things that even Michelle and I have learned as we've been mentoring couples, I've tried to put those into these chapters.

Kim McIntire: 34:11

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 34:11

And so I wanted to make sure that if somebody like that picked up the study guide, that they would have a good, fulfilling study, that by the time they got done, they would have a much better understanding of their life situation where they're at right now and how to solve it and how to fix all to the best of the capability I had to put that together.

Kim McIntire: 34:29

Well, other than the scripture, the scripture references, I feel like the most um powerful tool or resourceful tool that that you're giving to couples at the end of every session, you give bullet points of intentional steps to live out what you've learned. So it's just very, very practical. Um and I would just I would suggest to anyone, if you're if you're getting the book, get the study guide to go with it, you do it in your small group or gather some close friends. Like you said, you don't have to be in a troubled marriage to benefit from it. No. Um and I think it's a great wedding gift. That's what I'm doing. I'm I'm using these as wedding gifts for couples that need a good marriage book. Yeah. It's so much better to read it before you have the troubles. Yeah, no date. You know? So you also have written a devotional, 42 Days to a Stronger Marriage, a Christ-centered devotional for couples. Do you want to talk about that for a minute?

Daniel Moore: 35:27

Sure. Yeah, that one was I kind of wrote all these at the same time. Uh the the devotional, it kind of goes with the marriage's a mission to a point, but it can be used as a standalone as well. Um, it is also geared towards either crisis marriages or just if you just want some good reminders and have a good devotional type thing to go through. Each day, um, it's a 42 day, and I've already been asked, what's the why is it 42? Because that's very uncommon.

Kim McIntire: 35:59

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 35:59

Well, I got to looking around, I was like, there's 40 day, but that skips the weekends. And then you've, you know, you got like 30 day, uh, all these different there was hardly any 42s, and I'm like, I'm just gonna be do something different.

Kim McIntire: 36:12

There you go.

Daniel Moore: 36:13

That's what I've done. I've done a 42.

Kim McIntire: 36:15

I love it.

Daniel Moore: 36:16

There's not very many of those, so that kind of helps with the algorithm too when you're searching on Amazon.

Kim McIntire: 36:20

Hey, the awe of God by John Vivere was 42 days as well. Yeah, so you're in good company.

Daniel Moore: 36:25

Oh my god, I'm in good company.

Kim McIntire: 36:26

You're in good company because his is read like a devotional as well.

Daniel Moore: 36:29

So that's great. It's just a fiction type story, and then that sets the application for that day, whatever the topic is, because it's broken to seven. If you look in the book, there's actually seven sections, and each section is uh has a different subject uh matter for that week that it's going to cover all seven days. And so once the little fiction story, it kind of sets the stage, and then you get into the commentary, just the nuggets, one-liners, and all that stuff, and then there's a scripture, there's a question, and then a little prayer. That's great at the end of it.

Kim McIntire: 37:07

So that would make a really great gift for couples as well.

Daniel Moore: 37:11

I tried to try to keep it you know short, sweet, simple, but tried to pack as you know as much good stuff into it as I could.

Kim McIntire: 37:18

I believe you did.

Daniel Moore: 37:19

And so, so yeah.

Kim McIntire: 37:21

You're just on a writing spree right now.

Daniel Moore: 37:23

Yeah, I've been very busy.

Kim McIntire: 37:25

Adding author to your list of things that you're that you're doing right now. Just what about podcast hosting, helping with rise up, marriage mentoring, counseling, writing books. What's next, Daniel?

Daniel Moore: 37:39

I don't know.

Kim McIntire: 37:41

It's exciting.

Daniel Moore: 37:42

If it's that to my wife, I probably better stop. Oh my goodness.

Kim McIntire: 37:45

Well, before we talk about where listeners can buy your books, if do you have a favorite chapter in the um marriage as a mission book and what is it? And do you want to just share a little snippet from that?

Daniel Moore: 37:57

Yeah, uh I actually do. I so I I did one chapter in here, it's uh chapter 10, and it's on spiritual warfare in the family. And I think one of the reasons that it's my favorite probably is because with Michelle and I, and even in my first marriage, I can look back and I can see where Satan had a huge hand in a lot of things that went on in my life at that time. I let him blind me.

Kim McIntire: 38:28

Yeah.

Daniel Moore: 38:28

And I didn't go into it with the with the proper weapons, with the proper mindset. Uh there was a lot of blame, shame, and you know, all that kind of thing that went on. And I can just really see how during that time that there were some things that was definitely in the spiritual realm that was going on in my life. And a lot of times marriages, when they're they start struggling and the the husband and wife start having the fights and the conflicts and the disagreements and all that kind of thing, uh there's two sides to that. There's one side where they know a specific reason that all of this has happened, and it's probably self-inflicted. Uh, one of the spouses has done something or whatever. But there's another side of this where sometimes couples have issues, but they don't know what's going on. And it seems like no matter what they do, they can't do anything right. Uh stuff just keeps happening and they they don't have any answer for any of it. There's patterns. And so this chapter covers a little bit of that on how you can tell the difference if it's spiritual warfare, if it's not spiritual warfare. I don't get super deep into it, uh, but I try to hit it as lightly as possible just to have a little bit of an understanding there. Because a lot of times, you know, if you do have questions, it's just like sickness. There's sicknesses out there where they've gone to doctors for years and they don't know what's wrong with them.

Kim McIntire: 39:51

Right.

Daniel Moore: 39:52

That's probably very highly possible there could be some demonic activity, some oppression going on in that person's body. We have to learn it's critical. Christians, how to discern those kinds of things so that we know how to pray. Absolutely. And how to to bombard heaven to take care of those issues. And so what I did is I went through this that chapter there and kind of tried to break that down just a little bit, and then I end the chapter with uh the armor of God.

Kim McIntire: 40:17

So good.

Daniel Moore: 40:18

And I apply every piece of armor to the marriage and how it can fit into the marriage scenario, how you can put each piece on in order to protect yourself from Satan coming in and attacking your marriage. So if I had to pick one chapter that was my absolute favorite, it'd probably be that one. I like several of the other chapters too, but that's probably my favorite.

Kim McIntire: 40:38

And so whether you are not married yet, but you would like to be, you're newly married, you've been married a long time, you're having problems, or you're not. This is a valuable resource because anything we learn, we can share with people. Sure enough. And so just even what you were just talking about, that would be so valuable to be able to share with someone who you know their marriage is just under attack from the enemy. So I'm so grateful that you took your time to share with us about your new books.

Daniel Moore: 41:10

Well, I appreciate you having me on.

Kim McIntire: 41:11

Oh, you're so welcome. It's been a joy. Where can listeners buy your books, Daniel?

Daniel Moore: 41:16

So right now, Amazon's probably the main place. Uh I eventually it will be branched out. I have hooked up with a publisher that is in the process of getting those dispersed to the other places. But right now on Amazon, you can pick up any of these books, the devotional or the Marriage is a mission book or the study guide. So just go visit Amazon and buy away.

Kim McIntire: 41:39

Well, I just highly suggest that everyone put Daniel's books on their must read list for 2026. And as we close this episode, we just want to wish everyone a happy new year. Thank you for taking your time to listen to our podcast. We'd love to hear some feedback. Please rate us or leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Again, we pray that God's grace and peace will be with you all in Jesus' name.