Mr. Right Isn’t Looking for Ms. Wrong
Knowing yourself allows you to understand the type of person you need to marry. You were made uniquely, and it will take a particular kind of person to walk alongside you for life.
If Your Spouse Isnโt Trying
Many people feel stuck in a marriage that they seek to improve, only to be met with resistance or complacency from a spouse. While a healthy marriage depends on two people putting in the effort, you might have to resort to an individual strategy.
Let No Adultery Separate
Adultery creates a type of pocket universe with two people living selfishly inside of it and disregarding the needs of those they have sworn to love. Flee from this sin as if your life depends on it because, in many ways, it does.
Common Traits of an Affair
People typically donโt spend their wedding day planning on how they can have an affair in the near future, but that doesnโt stop the unfortunate sin from transpiring. With affairs, common traits are typically present and must be avoided.
Avoiding Adultery
To partake in adultery is to seek temporal satisfaction while neglecting long-term consequences. Discover what Godโs Word says about this sin and how to avoid it.
Evaluate Your Parents’ Marriage Before Starting Your Own
To have a healthy marriage, you need to evaluate how healthy your parentsโ relationship was in your home growing up. This process might be the single issue that starts your marriage with the greatest potential to finish well.
Learn How to Love Your Wife
If husbands want to have a better marriage, then they need to do a better job of loving their wives. Do not wait around for your wife to make a change that you could start.
Your First Few Years of Marriage Don’t Have to Stink
If you are considering marriage, God did not leave you on your own to discover how to succeed. He has given you everything required to have a healthy relationship from the very beginning.
Premarital Caution
If you are considering marriage, I want to caution you in the right type of way. You can have a healthy marriage, but you both have to hold to one central focus to succeed.
Eliminating Newlywed Debt
Nothing can bring strain to a newly married couple like debt. Do what you can to reduce debt together and enjoy the freedom you were meant to experience.
Let No Hobby Separate
Our hobbies can easily become our obsessions when we spend more thoughts, time, effort, and money on them than anything else. Learn to like your hobbies and love your spouse.
Cherishing Marriage
Exodus 20:14 โ The seventh commandment warned the people against breaking marriage vows and entangling themselves in forbidden relationships. To avoid adultery, we must cherish marriage.
The Necessary Switch in Your Marriage
Marriage cannot work if someone has a higher priority than the spouse. There must be a thorough yet healthy leaving of oneโs initial family and a complete and eager cleaving of oneโs unique spouse.
Let No Busyness Separate
Plan for a daily connection, a weekly date, and a yearly getaway for your marriage. If any or all of those three seem impossible to obtain, that reveals how great the need is.
Marriage Provides a Healthy Connection
No person can navigate life successfully by attempting it alone. We need one another, and marriage is one of God’s gifts to address our loneliness.
Unfair Marital Frustration
If your spouse has hurt you, the issue must be addressed, but avoid showing frustration to one another for things other people have done. Don’t permit unfair marital frustration.
How to Know If God Wants You Two Married
If you’ve been in a dating relationship for some time, you might consider if this path is leading toward marriage. While relational compatibility and others’ approval are helpful, you must determine if God thinks your relationship is worthwhile.
Don’t Let a Fox Separate Your Marriage
Every person needs to be aware of the little foxes scampering around his or her marriage. All marriages have specific minor issues that will turn into major issues if the couple refuses to address them.
Prepared for a Wedding but Not a Marriage
So many engaged couples are prepared for a wedding but not a marriage. If you are considering marriage, you must prioritize preparing in a way that will keep you married.
Before You Get Married
Why do some couples make it and others donโt? Undeniably, some marriages end because they never experienced a healthy beginning.
Dragging Behind the Wedding Getaway Car
Before you hop into the getaway car at your wedding reception, realize that you will have some unfortunate baggage. We each carry evidence of Edenโs eviction behind us.
Grace & Guidance
For every single person, our sin disrupts our relationship with God and others. Without intervention, there is no hope for us, but in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can find mercy for our transgressions and meaning in our brokenness.
Truth & Consequences
When Adam and Eve first sinned, it changed everything for them and us. God counseled them during the event and led them through the fallout. We canโt hide from the reality of what our sin costs nor can we overlook His grace through it.
Shame & Blame
You will sin. Your spouse will sin. What will you do when it happens? The first couple paved the way for us to repeat, unfortunately. They immediately hid from God and framed others in the awareness of their guilt.
Commandments & Compromises
Your marriage would be much easier if sin werenโt in the picture. Unfortunately for you and your spouse, it is unavoidable. Your marriage can survive if you work together to navigate temptation, sin, and restoration when it all happens.
Fruitful & Multiply
Godโs original command to the first couple was to be fruitful and multiply. It was a call to take what He had given them in order to use it and multiply it to the best of their God-given abilities. God is up to something, and your marriage can be a part of it.
Naked & Unashamed
To have a healthy marriage, you must consider numerous components. One area that is rarely discussed from a scriptural perspective is the role sexual intimacy is intended to play. We must reorient ourselves to Godโs perspective.
Leave & Cleave
Marriage cannot work if someone has a higher priority than the spouse. There must be a thorough yet healthy leaving of oneโs initial family and a complete and eager cleaving of oneโs unique spouse. It is essential.
Helpless & Alone
God designed marriage to provide a helper because He knew that, even before sin, we needed someone to walk beside us in life. We arenโt wired to navigate life alone. In our need, He offers us a companion.
Premarital Consideration
God did not invite us to embark upon the journey of marriage unprepared without the instructions required to bring it safely onto the shore. The Bible provides the knowledge we need to succeed in marriage.
Formed & Filled
You were created by God for a certain purpose. And every person in this world will either encourage you to fulfill that purpose or discourage you from that calling. Out of all your relationships, there is none more serious than your spouse.
Premarital Caution
If God created marriage, we should assume His perspective would be superior to the wisdom of an expert or any amount of experience. You can avoid specific marital issues by simply learning and applying the truths of God’s Word.
How to Use Just (About) Married with Premarital Counseling
Just (About) Married is a premarital resource to help individuals study, couples discuss, and then a counselor unpacks the concepts to prepare for marriage. I pray it can help your upcoming marriage or counseling ministry.
Engaged & Unprepared
Next to your decision to follow Jesus, there is no more critical of a decision than if and who you will marry. While you may find yourself lovestruck at some point in your life, it is essential that you have considered Godโs role in your potential marriage.
Just (About) Married Is Now Available
I am so happy to share with you that Just (About) Married, a premarital book for intentional couples, is available today. I’ve had a burden for years to develop a resource that would assist couples in our church to better prepare for marriage, and it is finally complete.
Just (About) Married โ Chapter Breakdown
Just (About) Married is a book intended to guide a couple to prepare for more than a wedding. In these 8 chapters, driven by concepts in Genesis 1-3, a couple or a counselor can better prepare the upcoming marriage.
Premarital Preparation
You might be going to the chapel, but are you prepared for the marriage? So many people spend an unthinkable amount of time planning a 30-minute ceremony and a 2-hour reception but fail to prepare for what should be a lifelong marriage.
When God’s Commands Conflict with Your Spouse’s Desires
When you feel the pressure to conform to your spouse’s wishes that conflict with God’s commands, you cannot surrender. For the good of your marriage, you must keep God first.
Why Your Marriage Needs a Healthy Church
We neglect real wisdom when we refuse to be intentional in learning from others. Thatโs why I cannot overstate the benefit of planting your marriage in a healthy church.
Coupled Companions
Your marriage needs healthy support around it in the form of consistent, Christlike friendships. If you want your marriage to strive, ensure that you have people around you who desire the same thing.
Don’t Settle (When Considering a Spouse)
Many people have initial standards for dating and marriage, but when the candidate pool decreases, an urgency to find someone increases. Don’t settle for less than God’s best.
When Spouses Disagree as Parents
A married couple can agree in the majority of areas of their lives together, but if they don’t stay aligned in their parenting, the entire family will feel the stress. What happens when spouses disagree in their roles as parents?
Achieving Authenticity in Marriage
Every person craves the ability to be truly authentic with one other individual in life. Marriage is the God-given environment in which we should be able to be completely exposed yet surprisingly accepted.
5 Financial Differences That Can Frustrate Your Marriage
If you aren’t careful, certain differences regarding finances can frustrate a marriage in significant ways. Here are 5 financial differences that can challenge your marriage and what you can do about it.
What God Has Joined Together (Marriage Conference)
No marriage deteriorates overnight, but it can suffer due to a gradual drift. If you donโt address your marriage separators, you are unfortunately inviting the gap to widen.ย
How Sensual Exposure Affects a Marriage
One of the greatest threats to sexual purity and marital intimacy is the exposure of immoral material present in our society. Being a member of this culture ensures that you have been exposed to sinful content and suggestive comments that distort sexual sanctity.
Reprioritizing Relationships
Once you are married, you must reprioritize every relationship in your life to be subordinate to the unique and exclusive relationship with your spouse. This shift doesn’t mean that you end all other relationships, but you must reprioritize them.
The Most Important Place in the Bible to Study Regarding Marriage
Our world needs to know God’s Word on marriage. If He created it, then surely He should have the right to define it. Out of all the places you can turn to discover God’s heart regarding marriage, I believe this section is the most important place to study.
Disregarding the Marriage Owner Manual
Within his carefully crafted manual, God teaches me everything I need to start marriage well and to see it to completion. So, why do I resist learning from Him and try to do it on my own?
Evaluating Your Parents’ Marriage
Evaluating your parents’ marriage can drastically improve your own. This needed process will allow you to unpack some needed lessons and clarify some genuine expectations with your spouse.