Pope Francis' Advice to Married Couples

Hey, if the Pope who is sworn to celibacy can give expert advise on marriage, then I think I can too.

I've been training half of my life for the day I'm blessed to enter into marriage, just like I would if I desired to be an Olympian. I always knew that I wanted to be married, and I always knew through basic observation, that marriage is no easy task. If I wanted to be a champion Olympic Swimmer, I would probably look towards Michael Phelps. I'd try to find out everything that he does to be as successful as he is. I'd figure how he trains  (reports say he trains six hours per day). If I could, I'd follow his specific regiment. I'd find out what he eats to give his body the energy that it needs to sustain itself.  Phelps eats big. He claims to eat 12,000 calories per day.

The church doesn't always do a great job teaching what it means to be a Christian man and what a Biblical husband looks like, but I'll keep collecting, and eventually applying, all that I can on the subject until the day that I die, because being a man is tough, and being a husband and father is even tougher

Want A Quick Way To Destroy Your Marriage?

Want to inject some toxic poison into our relationship?  Letting the seed of lust grow in our hearts and minds is a sure way to destroy our relationships with both God and our spouses.

Dr. Smalley opens up about some taboo topics such as lust and porn and their affects on our lives and relationships and how Christ equips us to deal with them.

What is God's Dream for Marriages?

Here are some notes from the opening to one of Chip Ingram's sermon series on marriage title Experiencing God's Dream For Your Marriage. To sum it up, Chip said:

• Most couples do not know the difference between love and infatuation
• Most couples have baggage they don't know how to deal with from past family or other relationships and do not know how to deal with it
• Most couples do not have good communication skills
• Most couples have unrealistic expectations
• Most couples entered marriage with financial problems and no clear plan on managing their finances together
• Most couples do not have
• Most couples come from homes where they did not see deep love and commitment modeled by their parents
• Most couples did not have a clear picture of what a healthy relationship looks like but assumed that if they just loved each other, everything would just all work itself out

Pastor Chip makes the point that You wouldn't just start building a house without a blueprint, and neither should you start a relationship without a blueprint. God has a blueprint for marriage that draws us closer to Him and to each other. God wants to use marriage as one of the most powerful spiritual models of following Christ. Some people ho go in blindly do figure it out better  than others, but how foolish it is to go into anything unprepared, let alone a demanding and lifelong commitment  such as marriage.

Let's remove the word "may" from this sentence, because the fact is, holiness is exactly God's purpose for marriage. That was His design, and we're to live it out.

 

In his book Marriage Matters: Extraordinary Change Through Ordinary Moments, Winston T. Smith reminds us that,

“'God is love' is much more than a nice thought. Your ability or willingness to love your spouse says as much about your relationship with God as about your relationship with your spouse.”   

One of my all time favorite love songs.

Marriage isn't romance

Marriage isn't about romance. Don't get me wrong, all marriages should be full of romance, but no lasting marriage can have romance as its cornerstone. Think about it - are you going to feel romantic waking up together after your first night as husband and wife and seeing your spouse's sloppy hair and smelling their stinky morning breath? If love is all about romance, your marriage pretty much ends right there.  But love is far more than just romance, because the foundations of love are commitment and devotion, even when you wake up and the person laying next to you looks more like a zombie than your spouse and a whiff of their breath makes your run for the Listerine.