After reading my article called Biblical Advice for an Unhappy Christian Marriage, one AGW reader recently asked if Christians can divorce for abuse in marriage. It was such an important question I felt compelled to write a whole new article addressing this issue because it is really different than when I talk about the general struggles that usually occur in an unhappy marriage.
What does the Bible say about being pregnant before marriage? Is having a child out of wedlock a sin or a blessing? What is the most biblical, Christian response to unwed pregnancy?
How can you love people better? How can you love your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, friends, or coworkers like Christ loves you? How can you love less conditionally?
In this video, my wife and I answer the question, “How does parenthood affect marriage?” Having kids is such a blessing from the Lord, but it definitely changes your life.
Read two free sample chapters from my newest book, Intertwined: Our Happiness Is Tied to God’s Glory (Two Free Sample Chapters PDF)
As children we imagined we would find the perfect spouse, the perfect job, buy the perfect house, go on perfect adventures, and well . . . have the perfect life. Somewhere along the way, however, we quickly realized we will experience many things on this earth, but perfection is certainly not one of them.
According to the Bible, God’s grace saves Christians from the punishment we deserve, but it does not always save us from the consequences of our actions and it never saves us from God’s discipline.
When it comes to leading, parenting, responding to offenses, or just having authority over people in all the varies roles that exist on earth, it is crucial to know the biblical differences between punishment, discipline, and consequences.
You are not going to find the term “personal boundaries” in the Bible. However, the Bible does talk about personal boundaries in principle.
As Christians, most of us have a general awareness that it is a good thing to pray for other people and to have other people praying for you. But perhaps praying for each other is more than “good,” perhaps it is crucial.
So why should we pray for others? What benefits are there to interceding for people? Why is it so important that we pray for each other?
As soon as my son was born, I wanted nothing else than to be a great dad. As all parents quickly realize, the pressure to raise our kids to the best of our ability can be immense. No one has kids with the hope of ruining them. We want them to grow up happy, healthy, and totally in love with Christ.
And so as new parents, my wife I made the subtle mistake most new parents make – we began to prioritize our parenting over our marriage. This seems like a natural, loving thing to do when you have kids. Ironically, however, as we realized the hard way, when we placed our parenting over our marriage, our parenting and our marriage both suffered.
Why did God create us?
Well of course anytime you ask a question that starts with, “Why does God . . . ?” you can always answer it with the right theological answer, “For his glory.” Everything God does, he always does for his glory.
But how did creating humans bring God glory? To answer that, we need to remember what the glory of God really is. In short, one basic definition of the glory of God is when the invisible qualities of God are made visible or knowable.
With this definition, it’s not hard to connect the dots: If God is glorified through making his qualities visible, he would then glorify himself by making beings in his image. Because we bear God’s image (Genesis 1:27), we thus glorify God (Isaiah 43:7). Sin has marred this image, and thus the more we sin the more we “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The more we are sanctified and remade into the image of his Son, the more we glorify God as he originally intended (Romans 8:29-30).
But I’ve talked about all that before. Let’s take this a step further. How else did creating humans reveal God?
God revealed his love and fullness through creating humans just as a healthy marriage reveals its love and fullness through producing children. Let’s dig deeper into this idea.