Rebecca Grace has a great interview here with Paul Tripp about marriage--described as "a flawed person married to a flawed person in a fallen world but with a faithful God."This is worth printing out and reading carefully.
Here are her questions:
- Why do so many people lack a Gospel-centered view of marriage?
- Did you have this understanding when you got married?
- So what makes your marriage healthier now?
- Since marriage is war, why is it worth it?
- What would you say to someone who is trying to decide whether or not to marry?
- What would you say to a couple with marital problems?
- What would you say to a couple with a good marriage?
- Why must marriage be rooted in worship, not romance?
- What is the greatest threat to God’s design for marriage?
- What can we do?
- Where can someone who is not connected to a church go for help?
A) Pray. Don’t just pray for outside the church; pray for the church. B) We need to teach, teach, teach, teach, teach. I think if you’re in a fairly good-sized evangelical Bible-believing church, there ought to be a marriage class every Sunday-School quarter. There ought to be marriage curriculums for folks in small groups. Pastors ought to be preaching on this issue. There ought to be counseling help available. Mature believers ought to be getting with young couples and talking about their experiences and sharing wisdom. We’ve just got to fight for this issue. It is a huge threat to the vitality of the church, and it needs to be a priority.If your church or small group can afford the $40, one of the best investments they can make is probably to pick up Tripp's 3 DVD set, with 5 hours (ten 25-minute sessions) of him teaching through his material called "What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage." It includes a reproducible (PDF) Discussion Guide and Leader’s Guide.
It's also available on CD.
