Marriage Strengthens Families

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How do Christian marriages strengthen the faith of our children??

We're going to explore this question with our 2nd chapter in the Small Group study book (Parenting with Purpose and Grace).  

This post is meant for my mom-friends who were absent from our group this past week.  Any blogging friend of mine is welcome to stay and linger....pull up a comfy chair, grab a steaming mug of your fave hot beverage and leave comments to join in on the discussion.  Our small group, Got Teens?!, is made up of 8 women who have children in the tween and teen categories (ages 9-12; 13-19).  We are also including the Emergent Adult (college aged).

Our meeting began with yummy autumn desserts and a short prayer.  
Huge thanks to Hope for bringing the pumpkin bread, Monica for the apple pie, Carla for the chocolate-maple bars....(I donated some maple creme cookies I had purchased at one of the Amish shops from last weekend's trip to Central NY).  We all agreed the treats were a great addition to small group! :)

Chapter 2 begins with a great quote "the best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother" (source unknown)

• We began our discussion by reading the Scripture that was the foundation for the chapter "Strengthening Your Marriage".  Ephesians 5:21-33  is often misunderstood by Christians and definitely misunderstood by the world!  We discussed the answer to question 2 which asked about the foundation of all human relationships. 

 What is it?

 LOVE (as evidenced by the previous chapter).  (This study seems to build on itself so it's important to do each lesson).

• We then discussed what healthy, Biblical submission is and is not.  We first agreed that when love is in place, it is much easier to submit to one another...no matter what the relationship is. (friend to friend, parent to child, wife to husband, husband to God, wife to Christ, worker to boss, etc.). Everyone in the group meeting shared something personal about submission in their own marriages...due to this being an open blog, I will not go into those personal accounts but the discussion was excellent and we learned things about each other...it was a time of some deep sharing and I am so thankful the women in the group feel that it is a safe place to share.  To God be the glory!!
• we skipped questions 3 & 4 as those were self-explanatory based on the portion of Scripture.  Summary of those questions:  the husband is to love the wife the way that Jesus loves the church.
• Question 5 was about the differences between love and respect and how they are both forms of submission.  Much discussion centered around this question as well. Again, some of this is very personal so I won't be sharing the testimonies here.  Main points for this discussion:

             respect includes the idea of honor and must be earned

            love is unconditional (or should be)

            we need to be thinking of ourselves as servants to each other like Christ serves us and in turn we serve Him.

• Question 6 was discussed briefly. Summary: love and respect are both forms of submission as we learned earlier and the man is the earthly example of Jesus (not that man is perfect, but that his character in loving the wife is like that of Jesus the Bridegroom loving His Bride (the church) We then all took a turn answering the 2nd part of #6 which asked:  Who do you think has the harder job?  Explain your answer.

This was a good one!  Several friends thought the woman has the harder job (respect), and several thought the man had the harder job (love). My answer: Neither!  They are both DIFFERENT! The roles are different in a Christian marriage.  Both are important.  We agreed that the man will be held accountable for his role as husband before God to a higher degree than the woman.  Do we know this for sure?  not really but that's the way we left it!

• Question 7, in my opinion, was the most important in the chapter because of the vision I have for the small group:  to be the best Christian moms we can be to our tweens/teens.  The question asked "What impact might it have on children to see their parents submitting to each other in love and respect?"  We came up with a few ideas:

       1. it gives them a sense of security

       2. it helps them learn how a godly marriage works (we won't have perfect marriages because we are human, but...if our goal is to have a Scripturally-based marriage, they will see us role modeling God's perfect plan)

       3. it shows them the earthly example of Christ's love for us!

• Question 9 is also very important for parents:  "When is behavior better than words in communicating our faith to our children?"  We all agreed that times of trial, rebelliousness, heartache, hurts, conflict are when mercy and grace are needed...sometimes more than verbalization.  I pointed out that boundaries and consequences are still extremely important in raising tweens/teens, just like they were when the children were toddlers/preschoolers.  I then gave an example of someone's blog post about mercy and an abandoned baby.  You can read about that here.   I talked about how important it is to have mercy on people....our children, our teens, our emergent adults, our spouse, our friends, our co-workers, our "used to be friends but now they won't speak with us" our friends who got upset or angry about something.....mercy, grace and forgiveness is so important to model for our children/teens so they can then practice it with others. Accepting people, starting over and trying again, all those things help us model Christ's love. He lets us start over!  Let's do the same for our relationships.  This was a great discussion!

Another portion of Scripture that was used was from I Peter 3: 1-7 and the last question we discussed (#10) was about moms having the inner beauty that Peter talks about having:  a quiet and gentle spirit (this sets the tone for the home!), good character over perfect bodies.

The last 2 questions in the book (11 and 12) were not discussed because no one had problems answering those....#12 was for personal reflection.

Summary:  in the marriage relationship we are to model for our teens the model that Christ put into place as found in Ephesians 5.  We will never get it perfect because we are human but we can strive to love, honor, and respect each other....and in doing so, those things make it easier to submit to one another!  Let's strengthen our marriages with the Love of Christ...and in so doing, we will strengthen our families.

Please note:  there was a small portion directed towards the single mother but since our group is made up of women who all have a spouse, we passed over that part of the study.

image taken from superstock.com

We closed in prayer  after playing a little word game.  We wrote our husbands' names on a card and had to come up with 3 adjectives that describe 3 different qualities/character traits he has with the first letter of his first name.  For example, I'll share mine:  DAVE:  devoted, disciplined (spiritually), disorderly. Most of us stayed for extra dessert samples and chit-chat after our prayer time.  It was a great meeting!!

What are your thoughts on on strengthening your marriage??  please share in the comment section!