Venom or Virtue: Are Your Words Poisoning or Blessing Your Spouse?
ARTICLE • Words can heal like balm or kill like snakebite. Are any of these 13 toxic communication patterns lurking in your marriage? It’s time to recognize the effect your words have on your spouse—and to lace your speech with grace.
Read time: 7 min
Your Marriage Is a Subplot within God’s Story of Redemption
WEDDING SERMON • Human marriages are sacred subplots within God's grand Story of Redemption, finite stories given context and meaning by four master plotlines of the biblical metanarrative: (1) the cultural mandate, (2) the curse on mankind, (3) the conquest of Messiah, and (4) the consummation of Christ’s marriage at the end of time.
12 min
Christian Marital Counseling: Eight Approaches to Helping Couples
Book Summary • Everette L. Worthington Jr., editor, Christian Marital Counseling: Eight Approaches to Helping Couples (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000). 254 pp. $31.
Read time: 12 min
“Husband” Is a Verb Too
ARTICLE • Husband has its origins in Old English, derived from the Old Norse, “húsbóndi,” which means “cultivator of a house.” The word combines “hús” (house) and “bóndi” (tiller of soil). How might this imagery inform your household?
Read time: 3 min
Counseling a Husband Exhibiting Avoidant Attachment Disorder
PAPER • Attachment theory and its related attachment style paradigms may be of benefit in describing unhealthy relational patterns in marriage, but Scripture diagnoses and treats the root causes of so-called ‘avoidant attachment style.’
Read time: 54 min
The Mystery of Marriage
SERMON • For many, marriage is little more than a social contract in which two lovers team up to relentlessly pursue their own pleasure. God, however, designed marriage to be radically God-centered. Marriage exists primarily as a joyful, human picture of the union of Christ and His Church. As such, our marriages must not mimic ever-changing societal norms but echo the eternal love story of Jesus and His Bride.
49 min
What is the “Gift” of Singleness?
PAPER • In 1 Corinthians 7:7, did Paul suggest that the “gift” of singleness is the preferable state of all believers in a fallen world—as has been argued by some—or the grace-empowered, voluntary celibacy of a relative few? This paper critiques the former view and makes a case for the latter, depicting celibacy as a special calling not superior to the enduring sanctity of marriage.
Read time: 12 min
Theology Is to Marriage What a House is to a Home
ARTICLE • "By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches” (Prov. 24:3-4).
Read time: 4 min