Don’t just plan for your wedding — plan for your marriage
Counselor offers practical advice for couples
on
putting Christ at the center of their marriage
Advised by both tellers of fairy
tales and harbingers of doom, many engaged couples don’t know what to expect from marriage. They may believe
God created the institution, but many of the unions around them exhibit
frustration or end in heartache. Other couples focus their energies on planning the perfect wedding day
instead of preparing a relational foundation on which their lives together can be
built.
Rob Green, a pastor and veteran
pre-marital counselor, provides young couples with a blueprint to follow in his
new book, Tying
the Knot: A Premarital Guide to a Strong and Lasting Marriage (New
Growth Press/February 1, 2016/ISBN: 978-1942572596/ $17.99). Green
assures couples the joy, fun and love they hope for is not wishful, romantic thinking;
it’s God’s plan for marriage. It’s
also within reach for every couple willing to do the work needed to center
their relationship on Jesus intentionally.
For Green, a person’s walk with the Lord
and their marriage are inseparable. “There are many moments in marriage where
our commitment to Christ is challenged,” he shares. “What happens when one
spouse wants to be intimate and the other doesn’t? When one spouse says
something mean to the other? Tens of thousands of these scenarios will occur in
50 years of a relationship. How one responds to them will be rooted in the
strength of their walk with Christ.”
Tying the Knot offers soon-to-be-married couples a practical vision
of what a Christ-centered marriage looks like, with advice that is realistic,
hopeful and actionable. The nine-session study guides couples through issues such
as conflict, expectations, communication, finances and intimacy, showing how every
challenge can be resolved successfully through making Christ the priority in their
life and relationship. “I tell couples you were not created to be each other’s
savior,” Green reveals. “You were designed to be a spouse because the job of
savior has already been filled. When couples live for Jesus, they will live
obediently to the Word, focused on prayer, dedicated to service and willing to
give of themselves for the betterment of others.”
Knowing the stresses and needs of a
couple during their season of engagement, Green has designed the study to require
a manageable 60-90 minutes of at-home work per session, with questions and
exercises to build communication and intimacy at the end of each chapter. Tying
the Knot also includes an appendix for mentors, making it easy for a seasoned
married couple, lay leader or counselor to lead an engaged couple through the
book.
Green
hopes Tying the Knot will put couples on the path to becoming
the godly examples young people need to cut through the cynicism in our culture
toward marriage. Readers of the book will find the resources they need to reorient
their life and relationship, making it possible for them to experience all the
blessings of this institution as God designed it.
Learn
more about Tying the Knot and Rob
Green at www.newgrowthpress.com.
Advance
Praise
“From
now on, this is the book I will recommend for premarital and marital
counseling.”
~ Bob
Kellemen, author
of Gospel-Centered Counseling and Gospel Conversations
“Tying
the Knot is a great book for those considering marriage. The topics are
highly relevant and the homework will help any counselor or couple to put these
crucial lessons into practice.”
~ Garrett
Higbee, Executive
Director of Biblical Soul Care and the Biblical Counseling Coalition
Rob Green has been the pastor
of counseling and seminary ministries at Faith Church in Lafayette, Ind., since
2005. His responsibilities there include oversight of the Faith Biblical Counseling
Ministry and teaching New Testament at the Faith Bible Seminary. Green wasn’t
always a pastor; he has a B.S. in engineering physics from Ohio State
University and after college wrote computer programs to process credit cards.
After feeling a call to the ministry he entered seminary, eventually earning a M.Div.
and a Ph.D. from Baptist Bible Seminary.
Green
also serves on the council board of the Biblical Counseling Coalition and has
authored a number of counseling mini books. He and his wife, Stephanie, have
three children: Joseph, Samuel and Mackenzie. The family makes their home in
Indiana.
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