I have seen him far too often. He is the man who rarely takes the lead in his home. He is the man who almost never calls the family together for devotions. He is the man who feels dumb when asking his wife if he can pray for her, or when asking if she would…
I recently sat with a group of young adults, men and women in their late teens and early twenties, and we spoke about singleness, dating, and courtship. Eventually the conversation advanced to marriage and to both the joys and the difficulties of marriage. We realized together that as these young adults are considering relationships and…
The “I love you.” You know the words, and you know the weight they carry. Recently Aileen and I were remembering back to the first time we said those words to one another. Each of us already knew how the other felt, but that did nothing to temper the thrill of actually voicing it and…
I knew next to nothing about my wife on the day I married her. We had dated for a few years, we had spent countless evenings talking on the phone, we had attended church, we had organized events, and even run a business together. But despite all that, we still barely knew one another. The…
Have you ever seen one of those videos on YouTube that shows you how something you’ve been doing for your whole life has actually been all wrong? How you’re better off eating an apple from the bottom up instead of wrapping around the sides or how those little ketchup cups are meant to fan out…
Part one of my review of Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet showed that even though I agree with the broadly complementarian thrust of the book, it is marked by a harsh and critical spirit and offers far too much foolish counsel. Today I want to point to three more concerns: poor theology,…
There are parts of the Christian life that can be easier caught than taught. A godly mentor is able to serve as a powerful display of the way truth works itself out in a life. The second chapter of Paul’s letter to Titus commands older women to take an active role in mentoring those who…
Once again I would like to take an opportunity to answer a question from a reader, and in this case, a question that deals with the frequency with which a husband and wife ought to engage in sexual relations with one another. Here’s the question, followed by my response. In a recent book review you…
There is always a hot market for books on marriage, even among men. Every husband is aware of his inadequacies and every husband is genuinely eager to find solutions, especially if the solutions are simple and step-by-step (just like laying laminate flooring or changing oil). Writing a good and biblical book on marriage—now there is…
A couple of weeks ago I offered a series of bullet points on the subject of death. I guess it’s no less strange to equate bullet points with marriage. Nevertheless, according to the Bible, marriage is… …Instituted by God, Uniting One Man and One Woman Matthew 19:4-6 – “Have you not read that he who…
Last week I shared three articles titled A Picture-Perfect Marriage. That short series looked to Ephesians 5 and the great mystery that is marriage. I showed from that text that marriage is, and always has been, a portrait of Christ and his church. But at the end of it all I was left with a…
Over the past two days I have been writing about Ephesians 5 and the great mystery of marriage–that in some way marriage is a portrait, a reflection, of the relationship of Christ to his church. In the first article I introduced this metaphor and in the second I spoke about how the wife completes her…
This morning I am going to begin just a short series of articles on marriage. Having read several books on marriage in the past few months, I found myself really intrigued by what Paul says about the topic in his letter to the Ephesians. I’ve since had the opportunity to study it and wanted to…
It must be intimidating to write a book on marriage. Store shelves are groaning under the weight of titles that claim to have the key to a happy marriage, or a biblical marriage or a gospel-centered marriage. To rise above such a crowded field a book needs to offer something different, something unique, something that…
It must be intimidating to write a book on marriage. Store shelves are groaning under the weight of titles that claim to have the key to a happy marriage, or a biblical marriage or a gospel-centered marriage. To rise above such a crowded field a book needs to offer something different, something unique, something that…
I have been reading (and listening to) Tim Keller’s new book The Meaning of Marriage, easily my favorite book of 2011. One of the subjects Keller covers is the lost sense of duty in love. We have come to think that if there is any duty in love it must not be genuine. Biblically, of…
I am hoping that this will be my final article on the Driscolls and Real Marriage, at least for the time being. I do not want this subject to dominate my web site, but I do have one more thing to say. Before I say it, I want to review a few things I haven’t…
Yesterday I began a discussion of Real Marriage, the new book by Mark and Grace Driscoll (to be released on January 3). This was not a review as much as an attempt to think through the issues raised in the one chapter that is bound to be the source of the most controversy. I wanted…
Mark Driscoll will be all over the news in the new year. Not only is he set to be a participant at the controversial Elephant Room conference on January 25, but January 3 will also mark the release of his newest book—the one that is bound to become his most controversial yet: Real Marriage: The…
A little while ago Stephen Altrogge wrote a small article he titled So You Think You’ve Married the Wrong Person and today I would like to add one thing to the discussion. Stephen’s article addresses an always-pertinent topic. It is a topic that is applicable to married folk who may one day wake up and…