Even if you are in a bad marriage, I have often said that there is never a completely one-sided divorce. Even if one party contributed 99% of the conflict, the other spouse hasn’t been perfect. While I have counseled that logic for years, I have changed my mind recently regarding that claim. After years of teaching, writing, and counseling, …
Many men start strong but fail to finish well. Every person has stories of those men who became derailed overtime. In losing their integrity, their family, or their commitments, many of them have no one to blame for the crash other than themselves for walking dangerously upon the tracks. Why do men fail to finish well? The graphic story …
Marriage is bound to have some troubles. You must address conflict with your spouse wisely, and many things need to be addressed. But I believe there are some things of which you simply need to let your spouse off the hook. Don’t get me wrong: some things need to be addressed! But you need to address that which the spouse …
Every married couple fights. Even if you don’t want to give your disagreements such an extreme designation, the reality is this – conflict will come between each other. So, how do you survive such times? If you are going to fight, you better fight fair. Here are 5 fight rules for married couples: #1 – Never Go to Bed Angry …
Writing and releasing a book on marriage is a dangerous thing. I suppose writing a book on anything is dangerous, but the topic of marriage is an especially bold topic to address. As a minister, I have often heard people communicate disapproval for a “younger” pastor sharing wisdom on marriage. What does he know about it anyway?
I definitely don’t understand it all, but I do understand it some. Here’s why I didn’t wait until I turned 99 to write a book on marriage.
Since I have released my book on marriage this week, I have been encouraged by feedback. Granted most of the encouragement has come before they have read the book, but I appreciate it nonetheless! What God Has Joined Together was a resource I struggled with starting and finishing.
I’m happy to announce that my new book, What God Has Joined Together, is now available! This targeted resource on marriage seeks to help equip you and your spouse to build the type of marriage the glorifies God. You can get your copy on Amazon.
What God Has Joined Together is a book written for the purpose of strengthening marriages. Putting together this resource was such a daunting yet rewarding assignment.
Parents want the best for their children. Would you be willing to give the best to your children even if it included getting intentional and personal? Psalm 78:1-8 teaches that each generation needs to be reminded of 3 things: The Faithfulness of God The Frailties of the Past The Focus of the Future The Faithfulness of God The next generation …
I am still working on the edits on a new book on marriage. It is titled, What God Has Joined Together. The book focuses on 31 short chapters of specific issues that attempt to separate a marriage.
My prayer is that these specific chapters will help strengthen and protect marriages. One of the most difficult things about this project was coming up with the list of needed chapters. What do you include? What do you leave out?
God’s plan for your family is not complex. We make it that way, but it is truly simple. This is the plan:
God wants to reconcile the world to Himself through Christ-following parents who disciple their own children to multiply gospel transformation to all people.
I mentioned a few days ago, that I am in the editing phase of a book on marriage. I have been so encouraged by those who read the premise of the book and have been praying for me and motivating me to finish it. It will prayerfully serve as a biblical and practical resource to help equip marriages. The thought was to call it “What God Has Joined Together” and each chapter would be a particular item that could possibly separate the marriage.
I have more book ideas than I have time to write them. While I enjoy writing books, it is a difficult process that takes a lot of time and an unknown amount of effectiveness. I’ve got a notebook with many ideas that have been started yet unfinished. Years ago, I couldn’t shake a particular book concept that kept moving up the prioritized list.
It would be a biblical and practical resource to help equip marriages. The thought was to call it “What God Has Joined Together” and each chapter would be a particular item that could possibly separate the marriage. I liked the idea so much I tried to get someone else to write it, but eventually, I could see my burden for it was pushing me to work on it personally.
One of the greatest sources of conflict in marriage is finances.
Money isn’t the root of evil. The love of money is the root of evil (1 Tim. 6:10). Money alters the way people think and act. People think, say, and do unexpected things when it comes to the increasing accumulation of wealth.
I’m a parent. And as a parent, I have primary responsibility for the formation of my children. Whether it is spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, physical, or sexual development, as their parent, I am responsible to God to set the pace and to establish the curriculum. While we each may have certain areas that are easier for us to talk about than the others, we must prioritize teaching our children about sexuality.
Open up your Bible and open up your life to teach your children regarding God’s design for gender, sex, and marriage.
Adultery ruins lives, but no one would engage in something if they knew that was the result. So how do people end up there? One of Satan’s greatest tactics against marriages is his fantasy-type portrayal of adultery. The adventure of seduction awakens many bored spouses. The danger of it all provides an excitement that may have been lacking for …
Marriage comes with baggage. In particular, in-law baggage. When you marry a person, you inherit a family. Whether or not you realized it, your marriage came as a packaged deal. You just added a slew of people who are now considered as family. The marriage union is distinct from any other relationship. Once the vows have been spoken, your previous …
Marriage takes time. Unfortunately, time is one of those things that we feel as if we simply don’t have anymore. As we give our minutes, hours, days, months, years, and lives away to different pursuits, we can never take back the time invested. The tragedy of how we spend our time is that often our marriages suffer. The one who …
An effective job has so much to do with what we do, how we do it, and who we do it with. While we are much more than what we do, a significant portion of our lives will be spent in the 9-5 realm. That’s why how we approach work is so vital to our overall outlook in life. Most …
Children are a blessing as long as you don’t lead them to be a burden. Part of the role of parents is to shape children to be all that God has called them to be. That takes time. Growing weeds doesn’t take effort – growing gardens demands patience and care. If you want your children to be successful, you have …
For a marriage to succeed, a couple must possess mutual motivation. Determine what is the mutual motivation for your marriage to succeed. What is the desired result? What is the common goal for the marriage? What is the win for the home? If you look to the pages of Scripture, a worthy goal is not to get along peacefully, raise …
When your spouse fails to meet your expectations, you begin to question if you married the wrong person. Many people claim that is the problem with their marriage. If they could go back and press rewind, if they knew back then what they know now, they would have made different decisions. Due to rising conflict in marriages, people just think that …
As an adoptive family, we have more random stories of interactions with strangers than we care to count. For whatever reason, close associates or random passerbys feel inclined to make conversation regarding your family when they realize a child is adopted. In our situation, it is very obvious that we are an adoptive family, and so we have heard it …
With the rise of social media and the barrage of technological connectivity, marriages can become endangered if proper precautions are not in place. Operating from numerous devices and connecting through various mediums, we are able to connect with people in a host of ways. The ability to have pseudo-community with other people is at an unprecedented level and will continue …
In a time when few families watch TV together, eat a meal together, or share a Saturday playing together, the thought of worshiping together seems like a far-fetched goal. Our culture bombards us with the notion that children need to be independent and have room to develop on their own. Children use the overstated line that their friends get certain …
Welcome to Christmas. Tis the season to be broke. In the midst of the holiday pressures, I wanted to make sure that you don’t start the upcoming year in a bad, indebted way. Here are some financial tips to survive the Christmas season: Make a Christmas budget. Here’s how we do it. We establish how much money we have saved …
Many marriages struggle due to dealing with extended families. One common issue for many couples is how for adults to interact with their adult parents. Regarding your parents, there are two equal marital dangers: dishonoring abandonment or reluctant detachment. Even while it seems difficult to obtain, there is a healthy balance. When you start your family with your spouse, …
In my series on healthy fight rules for couples (you can see all of them here), I have finally come to the last one for now: Couple’s Fight Rule #5: Never Play Out of Bounds What I mean by this is that each couple is unique and each person in that couple is unique. There are some trigger words for …
Marriage would be easy if your spouse wasn’t involved. And he or she probably thinks the same thing. In reality, marriage is straightforward, but when you introduce the human dynamic, things always get challenging in a hurry.
In an attempt to make you couples live together in a more harmonious way, I have been posting couple’s fight rules that we have developed in our own marriage. You can read all of the fight rules here. Here’s the fourth out of five. Couple’s Fight Rule #4: No Double-Teaming If you are playing a sport, double-teaming is when two …
In my continuing effort to help couples learn how to fight more fairly with one another, I am listing healthy fight rules. You can view the previous ones here. The next one is: Couple’s Fight Rule #3: No Reloading Discarded Weapons Here’s how this one goes down: a spouse does something to upset his or her significant other. That spouse …
Looking for Bible verses to study or memorize on a particular area? One of the best ways to fight for holiness and combat against sin is by memorizing Scripture. Here are 10 verses for how husbands should love their wives. Col. 3:19 – Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Eph. 5:25 – Husbands, love your wives, as …
I wish I could be a perfect father for my children. How I wish that I had always been intentional, patient, endearing, Christ-honoring in everything that they have heard me say and have seen me do. It is so easy for me to compare myself to other dads in our culture and think I am doing better than most. Better …
My wife and I came up with five solid fight rules that we put into practice within our marriage. I wanted to share them with you for you to agree with, disagree with, or maybe even put into practice. Here is the second couple’s fight rule that we have established in our home. Couple’s Fight Rule #2: Can’t Use a …
Whether you call them fights or disagreements or squabbles, every couple has them. Since we all are selfish people, every couple are going to have to work through issues together. As we have learned to work together in our home, we established fight rules to disagree by so that our marriage can really improve throughout the years. We came up …
When you enter the New Testament, the idea of a father’s blessing is not as prominent due to the church functioning as the people of God rather than a family basis. In these pages, though, we have the best example of a father blessing his son in the example at Jesus’ baptism. Within the pages of Scripture, biblical blessings happened …
The Bible talks about blessing your children more than it does praying for your children. In some ways, a parental blessing is what you are praying to be fulfilled through their lives. Praying for our children must become a regular, intentional, specific part of our lives. As you think about your children, how would you pray concerning them in the …
Throughout the Bible, parents would bless their children. Have you ever wondered how a parent is supposed to give what is called a biblical blessing? “As heavenly Father, God set up a pattern of blessing for His people: verbally affirming His acceptance and support of them, painting vivid pictures of their expected future, and investing Himself and His resources to …
Does a child have a right to complete privacy regarding technology? The two parental extremes are: Grant your children complete privacy because you don’t want to push them away. Grant yourself complete access to everything possible so you can discover what they are really doing because you know the dangers. There are many options in addition these two, but every parent must make …
When a newborn is put into the hands of a parent for the first time, that parent has 936 weeks before that child turns 18. 936 Saturdays to go on adventures. 936 Sundays to worship together. 936 Mondays to seize the week. 936 Wednesdays to get over the hump of the week. 936 weeks. They are a gift. While parenting …
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