Welcome to Living My Faith, a weekly show that celebrates the everyday believers who are walking with Jesus not just on Sundays, but in every area of their lives. From relationships and parenting to health, habits, and home, our guests share how they keep their faith at the center of it all. Hosted in Jacksonville, Florida and supported by Christ-centered partners, Living My Faith is a space where real life meets real faith. Today our hosts, James Fenimore spoke with Thomas Oppong.
Thomas Oppong
Co-Founder and Creative Director of Called To Marriage
Website Address: www.calledtomarriage.org
Short company description:
Called to Marriage is a Christ-centered community for young couples who believe marriage is more than a milestone, it’s a calling. We help couples build joyful, God-honoring marriages rooted in faith, friendship, and purpose through honest conversations, practical guidance, and shared growth. Whether you’re newly married or preparing for what’s ahead, we offer a space for you to grow together and build a home that reflects God’s design.
Can you share a moment or experience that significantly deepened or shaped your faith journey?
One moment that deeply shaped my faith was traveling to China as a student, against all odds and with very little certainty about how things would unfold. It was a season that forced me to rely on God in a way I never had before, trusting Him step by step in an unfamiliar place and culture. It was also there that God surprised me in the most personal way: I met my wife, and we eventually got married in China. Looking back, that journey wasn’t just about travel or opportunity; it was God using obedience, risk, and surrender to shape my faith and write a story I could never have planned on my own.
In what ways do you actively live out your faith in your daily life — at work, home, or in your community?
I live out my faith by being intentional about how I show up at home, at work, and in the spaces where God has given me influence. With my wife, I co-create content through our marriage, parenting, and Christian living podcast. We share our real experiences, lessons, and struggles in a way that points people back to Christ and God’s design for family. Beyond the podcast, I stay closely engaged with members of our private online community on Heartbeat, offering encouragement, prayer, and practical guidance as we walk through faith, relationships, and everyday life together. For me, living out my faith means using my voice, my work, and my relationships to serve others and reflect Christ consistently, not just on Sundays but in the rhythms of daily life. I’m also very open at my workplace and everywhere I engage online about my faith, and pastoral and counseling services at my local church. Anybody who’s asked me how my weekend went has heard me talk about men’s meeting at church, or teaching the congregation about something (that is if I gave the sermon).
What encouragement or scripture has been especially meaningful to you in this season, and why?
1 Timothy 6:6 “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” My wife is a stay at home mother, helping raise our two boys (with one on the way). We have learned to be content and joyful in having our basic needs met. We’ve been the most joyful since we decided after our first child to honor the Lord by being obedient to train up our kids and homeschool them in the Lord, and live on one income.
What advice would you give to someone who’s struggling to live out their faith or looking to grow spiritually?
Make truth and sincerity your values. Start small, it’s not that hard. The Lord often requires small steps, not crow-moving actions. Reconcile what you believe and know to be true with your actions or walk. If it is true you believe it to be so, then unleash it. Uphold sincerity and resist any form of duality. Live in the light of the liberty of God, and of life in the natural sense.
Transcript:
James:
Hi, welcome to Living My Faith. I’m James Fenimore, and today we’ve got a very special guest for you. Joining me is Thomas Oppong. Thomas, how are you doing?
Thomas:
I’m doing great, James. And thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure.
James:
Oh, thank you so much for joining us. Our audience is going to love talking to you today, so I can’t wait to get started. Thomas, we start the show with one simple question. How are you living your faith?
Thomas:
That’s an interesting question, and thanks for asking. I would describe how I live my faith as helping young couples enjoy their marriages and honor God and raise godly children.
That is the simplest way I can describe how I’m living my faith. My wife and I have a marriage ministry that is thriving. We are excited about marriage. We are excited about what God is able to do with marriages and homes, and that’s the way I’m living my faith.
James:
That’s very noble and beautiful. Probably one of the most noble things you can do.
So this is your business. You help couples, or is it through—okay, so this is your business. That’s right.
Now let me ask you this. What do you see as the biggest reason people come to you? Or maybe a bigger problem they have—anything like that that’s very common that we could share with the audience today?
Thomas:
I would say it’s hopelessness.
And it’s really interesting because a lot of people have generations of family dysfunction in their homes. Maybe they lived through it themselves. Maybe they witnessed how their parents lived through marriage. Maybe even their grandparents or even their great grandparents.
So it sets them up on the wrong foot, and they’re up against the tide. So they’re just holding on to find a thread of hope.
Will my marriage work? Should I even consider getting married myself?
Because they are just so used to hearing—not just hearing, but maybe even witnessing or living through—the negatives of broken homes.
So the dominant question we get is usually centered around hope. I’ll say in the negative it will be hopelessness.
Of course it comes in different directions, but each question is about finding hope. How do I find hope to get to the point where I’m able to believe that mine could be different and that God has a plan for me, a better plan for me, and that I can make it out of this?
And that is usually the kind of question or questions that my wife and I get.
James:
That’s great. I really appreciate the hopelessness because that’s it, right? That’s the most despair we can have.
How do you help people find that hope in their marriage or even, like you said, just wanting to eventually get married and finding the hope that this is the right thing for them?
Thomas:
So okay, I’ll share a brief story, and hopefully attempt, as I’m answering the question.
My wife and I met and got married in China. Now I was born and raised in Ghana. I lived with a single parent. I traveled to China for school. I was in engineering school.
My wife was born and raised in the US in Boston, and she traveled to China to teach English. We met at our local church. This is how we came together to get married.
Now totally against all odds, coming from a totally different culture in Africa paired with American culture, meeting far away in China—it doesn’t check all the boxes.
We got married without even having a wedding. It was a very small church party that married us. We got blessed, and we went to the Chinese civil affairs office.
And through all that, it became very clear to us what marriage is really about. When you strip down all the fancy aspects of it—planning the wedding and everything—we couldn’t do that because our families couldn’t travel all the way to China. It was just too costly.
So we had to literally take away things.
Okay, we’re not doing this. This is not going to work for us. Our marriage is going to be different. We have to take this away.
Okay, what is left? What really makes a marriage marriage?
We had to face that question. If we can’t do this and we can’t do that, if we are not going to experience this, what is it going to look like?
That really forced us to look at the intrinsic value of marriage. And it goes back to Christ.
The path that we went on—and we had a lot of church folks that helped us out—goes back to answering your question.
There is a direct correlation between our journey toward Christ, or in Christ, and our journey in marriage.
We often think of our marriage as a separate thing. As a Christian, you often hear that my marriage is just my marriage and it doesn’t really have anything to do with my faith.
But there is a direct correlation between a person’s growth toward God and their growth in marriage.
There is a famous quote by C.S. Lewis—I believe he was the one who said this—that when we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of Christ.
And there is another one that says that as we get out of the center, Christ gets into the center.
So there are a lot of misunderstandings around love. There are a lot of expectations that people put on marriage.
What we try to do with the couples that we meet with—and we meet a lot of young people—we have a private online community that we engage with every weekend.
What we try to do is really get into the intrinsic value of marriage.
We believe that once you understand that, you are not only going to find your identity as a wife or as a husband, or just really as a Christian with the understanding that Scripture presents, you are going to be in a better position—having understood what biblical marriage is really about—to then play the role of the husband or the wife.
Because what we find is that a lot of people haven’t got the foundation down yet.
So they get thrown into a role. It’s like handing a rifle to an untrained soldier and sending them off to the battlefield.
They don’t even know what to do.
And that shock usually wipes people out. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you talk about marriage and family.
But the couples who are able to go deeper and understand the intrinsic value of marriage—with a Christian perspective or viewpoint—are able to show up much more prepared.
They’re able to weather the storm, so to speak, because the foundation is very strong and well set up.
So that is the approach that we use.
We often focus on five specific areas.
My wife and I developed this approach. We look at:
- Values
- Communication
- Intimacy
- Finances
- Support system
These are the five areas that we use to basically coach young people.
We help them understand what they believe about values. What are your core values? Do you even have any values that you’re willing to die for?
Can you straighten them out and can you talk about them, especially before you get married?
Why do you agree? Why do you disagree?
How is your communication?
Intimacy—we talk about that.
Then we talk about finances. What are your finances looking like? What do you believe about finances?
And finally we talk about support systems. Who do you have in your circle?
Because marriage is not done in isolation.
So these are the five ways we use to talk about the biblical understanding of what marriage is.
Sorry I’m in a multitude of counselors, there is safety.
So we bundle the first four with the support system, which is who you have in your circle.
That will determine how well you’re going to do in marriage, especially when life gets tough and things are not going as you planned them.
James:
Thomas, thank you so much for sharing all that. That was really in-depth, and it gives our audience a real opportunity to start thinking about those five things for themselves.
I want you to know that all of your information is going to be right below this video. So if people want to reach out to you or your ministry to get help, or share this with somebody they know who could use that help, they’ll be able to do that.
But I really want to thank you for joining us today, Thomas.
Thomas:
Thank you, James. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
James:
It was a real honor.
Yes, this has been Living My Faith. I’m James Fenimore, and I can’t wait to see you next time.
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