We are given the opportunity to reveal God's character through our marriage to the watching world around us. Our marriage should reveal Christ's sacrificial love, enduring patience and forgiveness towards us.
But, lets be honest. Marriage can be beautiful and uplifting but it can also be messy, full of heartache, broken expectations and sometimes pain.
When marriage was instituted by God at creation in the union of Adam and Eve it was without sin and exemplified the most pure and passionate experience one can imagine. Unfortunately, as sin entered into the garden of Eden and changed life on Earth, marriage changed as well.
We are here to help give you some resources to help!
Helpful Ministries by topic
Life in Christ and dealing with sin Learn about sin and how it effects our lives, but more importantly, learn how to overcome and be set free from sin!
Encouragement for walking with Christ daily Just pick an episode from this podcast and be encouraged by what God is doing to transform His people into His image.
Let's take a look at some common marital issues
Some of the issues we often see in marriages really stem from lack of communication or lack of clarity on God's design for marriage roles and some result from hidden or open sin. Let's take a look at some of the issues and we will give some resources for them as well.
Family of Origin:
Financial: Many financial issues stem from a lack of communication and differences of expectations or thoughts about what is actually happening.
Doing a monthly budget together can really help to alleviate some of the issues. We highly recommend Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University if you are struggling with your finances.
Lack of Intimacy (spiritual and emotional): Lack of intimacy can be a big issue with marriage. It can cause hurt feelings or lack of communication which leads to more and more struggles. We really recommend that you pray and worship together as a couple each day to help build that intimacy levels. If you don't already have worship or pray together outside of meal times, start now. God is waiting to work on your marriage and give you the intimacy you deserve. We have a great resource for starting to pray with your spouse in the library at church and will link it right here as well.
One of my favorite representations of what a Godly marriage looks like is here!
Image from: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7e/27/16/7e271698f4d1ac450f0c470dab92e3aa.png
Lack of Sexual Intimacy: There can be many reasons for lack of sexual intimacy in marriage. Recognizing that men and women can have different expectations of sexual intimacy in marriage and talking about those expectations together can help. Understand that there may be physical or medical issues that might need to be addressed.
Infidelity: Cheating in marriage takes many forms. Infidelity is not just sexual intimacy with another person, but even in thought; or hiding text messages or conversations and meeting with people without your spouses knowledge. If you are caught in these things, seek help immediately.
Pornography: Pornography not only hurts the mind and expectations of the person who is partaking in it, but it also damages the person they are married to.
"In a 2004 report to Congress, Dr. Jill Manning shared that in her research over 56% of divorce cases involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites." This stat is from Covenant Eyes.
Here are a few stats from Fight the New Drug-
A majority of children are exposed to pornography by the age of 13.
Pornography is the 3rd most common form of sex trafficking.
We encourage you, if you or someone you know is struggling in this area to seek help right away. Gateway to Wholeness is an online resources for those struggling. It can be used in the privacy of your own home. It is an 8 session video counseling with a downloadable workbook. They also have some amazing additional resources such a links to apps for accountability and protecting your phone from being able to access inappropriate websites. We highly recommend this resource, but encourage that you seek help in counseling as well.