Donna is a wife, mother, grandmother, writer, and Biblical counselor. She has been blogging through the Bible each year since 2012. She loves God's Word and sharing how freeing and practical it is. She is certified through the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors.
It’s time for our next marriage retreat. We’re so excited about seeing marriages like yours grow and get stronger.
Wherever you are in your marriage, you can take it to the next level with a Bible-based marriage retreat. Couples will get away and work on some of the most common marriage issues like communication, conflict resolution, growth in intimacy, and help understanding why you or your spouse responds as you do at times.
You’ll also enjoy beautiful accommodations and time spent with each other.
My husband and I will be leading the retreat. Mike is a pastor and biblical counselor and I’m a certified biblical counselor. Besides leading retreats and conferences, we started and ran a biblical counseling center for twelve years and have been counseling couples for twenty-plus years. By God’s grace, we have seen hundreds of marriages change and grow over the years.
Leaving, cleaving, weaving: Often, when a couple is struggling in their marriage, it can be traced back to a failure to obey God in one or more of these areas.
Why a fresh start through the Bible? Why “through” the Bible? Why not just read here and there, perhaps finding a subject that interests you? Or how about a short devotional? As long as you read something every day, isn’t that good enough? Today’s reading from the book of Psalms gives us a very good illustration of why it’s so important to read God’s Word in context.
The psalmist in Psalm 1 talks about a man who is like a tree planted on a riverbank where it gets plenty of water and is always fruitful. The psalmist goes on to say that God prospers whatever this man does.
I don’t know about you, but I want my life to be like that. But despite some who teach that God wants to make every believer prosperous, there are requirements for this prosperity. There are things we must do and other things we are to avoid. We also need to understand what the psalmist meant when he wrote about prosperity. If we don’t, we may find ourselves disillusioned, even angry, with God.
But this is just one example of the importance of understanding God’s Word in context, in its entirety. One of the biggest problems I find among believers is a failure to know God, to know His character, to know how He works through our tests and trials. As a result, far too many lead faithless, defeated lives.
But when we read through all of Scripture, we begin to see the big picture. As we go through the book of Genesis, we’ll look at the creation account and what it tells us about our incredible God. It will launch us on a journey through the history of God’s people and some of the most fascinating stories even recorded. As we go through the Prophets, we’ll see the many examples where their prophecies have already come to pass and our faith will grow. We will, also, come to better understand what was really happening in the book of Job, how much the psalmists were like us, and see the wisdom we can gain from Proverbs. In the New Testament, we’ll walk with Jesus and the Apostles, read Paul’s letters with fresh understanding, and marvel at the glories of eternity future.
So, why read “through” the Bible and not just here and there? So we understand the whole counsel of God and so we know the God of the Bible and not God as we think He should be.
Perhaps the question should be, “Why not read through the Bible in 2022?”
We’ve all heard the phrase “a marriage made in heaven.” But depending on your life situation, the word marriage may bring to mind different thoughts and images. Perhaps it’s of your parents’ marriage and whether it was a good one or a contentious one. Or maybe it’s your own marriage and the thoughts, dreams, commitments, and even preconceptions, you had when you married. Or perhaps, marriage is something you are still looking forward to.
Wherever you are … married, divorced, widowed, or single, I pray you’ll take away truths from this series that will help you in your own or any future marriage or help you minister to others who are married.
This year is fast drawing to a close and many of us are thinking about our resolutions for the new year. We’ll set goals for eating better and using that gym membership. We may set family goals and financial or career goals. But let’s not neglect the most important area of life … our spiritual life. One valuable goal is to read through the Bible.
But … why read through the Bible? Can’t we get everything we need by going to church, reading a verse or two each day, and listening to podcasts here and there? Isn’t it just too time-consuming? One more thing on a long to-do list?
Or what if you’ve tried in the past, only to fall behind and give up? How can you do it successfully in the coming year? Are there some strategies that can help?
One of the most concise Biblical instructions for parents appears in the book of Ephesians where it says, “… do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Some of the ways we provoke our children to anger are obvious, but others may be less so. Could you be provoking your children to anger in ways you haven’t realized?
We have been working our way through the book of Colossians in this series of posts and today we will wrap it up. In the last lesson, we began talking about how we change and grow through a process that is sometimes called the put-offs and put-ons. In this lesson, we’ll look at what it means to let the Word of Christ dwell within us and talk more about the process of putting off the old man and putting on the character of Christ.
We’re working our way through the book of Colossians in this series of posts. In this lesson, we’ll look at what it means to seek things that are above, how to set our minds on Christ and begin to look at the process of change in a believer’s life.
We’re working our way through the book of Colossians in this series of posts. In this lesson, we’ll look at one of the four elements of false teaching being espoused in Colossae, Jewish legalism, and how our union with Christ makes legalist requirements unnecessary.
