Today we talk about the Purpose and Mission of Christian couples counseling. To summarize, these are the following:
1. To provide resources for couples to have thriving healthy marriages that reflect the relationship between Christ and His church.
2. To provide effective training and tools to educate, encourage and motivate couples at each stage of marriage, to grow toward personal maturity in Christ and learn how to help others have healthy marriages.
3. To provide mentors (more mature married couples) who will help the younger marrieds to grow in their relationship with each other and their children.
Why Read Another Marriage Book?
The Marital Mystery Tour is a book that will give a newly married couple a vision for their marriage, and will help an old married couple remember why they got married in the first place. Our hope is that you will read to prevent a divorce and find secrets that unlock the door to understanding each other and having intimacy in your relationship.
Assumptions For a Healthy Marriage from a Christian Couples Counseling Perspective
1. Marriage is a covenant relationship between a man and a woman for life.
We see this in Genisis 1-2 that God created them man and woman, and the two will become one.
2. Knowing where to get help is important for a healthy marriage.
Do you have a good Christian counselor who can help you, in your marriage when you don’t know what to do?
3. It is good to find an older couple who can mentor you.
Who is the older couple that you see that has “been there and done that” and is willing to share their secrets as well as their mistakes?
4. A vision for a healthy marriage is found in the Bible.
The book of Ephesians chapter 5, and Genisis 1-3, and Corinthians 13 are a good place to start. And oh, by the way, for steamy sex advice, go to The Song of Solomon.
5. Those who have gotten premarital help will have a better chance of staying married, but it is never too late to get christian couples counseling.
Too many wait for a crisis to get marriage help. When there is pre-marriage counseling at least you know some things to watch out for, and to practice.
6. Joy is a natural outgrowth of a healthy marriage relationship.
Have you ever seen a football team that is winning? The guys are prancing around like little kids. They high five and hug and yell and scream for joy. They are happy. When we are healthy in our relationship we can high five and have joy.
7. Education and resources are an important part of having a healthy marriage.
Having good books by experts in the christian community is important. To read separately or together, about a particular topic can be very helpful.
8. Marriage can be used to help those who don’t know Christ come to know Him.
How you might ask? We are told we are to represent Christ and His Church to others. When we have a healthy marriage, others see it and want what we have, and want to know how to have what we have.
9. Knowing how to communicate and deal with conflict is very important.
It has been proven that how you repair after conflict is the best indicator of whether a couple will divorce or not.
9. Helping you have a plan for finances will save you a lot of grief in your marriage.
This area is one of the most fought over in marriage relationships.
10. We must realize that we need other healthy relationships to be healthy ourselves.
We were built to have connection with others, so we can be secure in ourselves.
11. Making time for our relationship “getting away” is important we suggest the book that we wrote called Triple R Weekend (Recreation, Romance, Renewal). See our resources!
12. Planning for different life stages of our marriage is important.
The willingness to change and adapt as we go through different life stages will help us as we age.