New study to begin in February: Bring Home The Joy

An invitation to invest in your relationship!
Starting next week we will begin a new study for married couples. I also recommend that those who are engaged participate.
The book, Bring Home The Joy, is a series of articles by some of the greatest minds on marriage.  The study is designed to help couples “strengthen and [...]

Ten Ways to Ensure that Your Spouse Feels Loved

This is from Family Dynamics Institute.

1.     Pray with your spouse every day.
2.     Enjoy a “date” every week with your spouse.
3.     Spend 10 minutes each day listening to your spouse share his or her day.
4.     Discover & fulfill four ways your spouse likes you to receive affection.
5.     While at home wear [...]

Intimacy: Chapter 11

Finding Sexual Agreement
This is a good chapter, my friends. Dr. Weiss talks about the ’sexual system’ that most people do not realize they have developed and use. The system is unspoken, unclear and never agreed-upon. For many couples, this system is dysfunctional and has manipulation at its core and injury results.
God gives men and women [...]

Intimacy: Chapter 10

Date Your Spouse Or Go To Therapy!
It is so amazing to me that folk who got together in the first place by dating forget how to date once they are married. Add at least one child in the mix and dating begins to seem like something that folk used to do in the dark ages. [...]

Intimacy: Chapter 9

Building Intimacies
We’ve been discussing ways to create intimacy in marriage. Weiss teaches that many marriages lack the structure to encourage intimacy and are ill-equipped and often disappointed when our spouses don’t meet our needs.  The following are key points Weiss teaches.

Passion begins to falter when our priorities are out of alignment. “Passion is a dividend [...]

Chapter 8: Priorities

This chapter is the one that leads couples to really make a 100 day commitment to their marriages. The author details three activities that every couple ought to do together every day: pray, share feelings, encourage each other. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Also sounds like something we ought to already be doing on a daily [...]

Chapter 7: Money Matters

This chapter really gets at the ways that husbands and wives communicate about finances. It sparked very interesting …. conversation… in our class. The writer details three developmental stages for money management: financial child, financial adolescent and financial adult. There was a lot of discussion about the pressure on the spouse who does the [...]

Chapter Six: Sexuality

The deeper we get into this book the more convinced I am that this is a must-read for married couples AND for couples who are engaged. In fact, I am performing my first marriage and am going to require the couple to read the book. Both of these individuals have been married before and I [...]

Lesson Five: Relational Plaque

Chapter Five relates toxic buildup in relationships to what happens if you don’t keep your teeth brushed. Relational plaque is caused by little acts of neglect as well as large offenses that are not dealt with. Weiss says us that many Christians have a problem with the word sin. We justify sinful behaviors [...]

Lesson Three: Physical Intimacy

As we discussed in the first two chapters, physical intimacy, at its deepest level, is not possible nor is it sustainable unless a couple has first cultivated spiritual and emotional intimacy. Once couples have recognized the importance of these two levels, this important third level takes on a new level of depth and beauty.
God created [...]