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Money issues present one of the four biggest challenges in marriage, the other three having to do with communication, goals/values and intimacy. And financial stress can take a toll on the couple’s communication, test their commitment to their agreed upon values and even zap their emotion and physical energy, leaving them lacking in or frustrated with their sex life. So, it’s very important  for a couple to keep financial stress at bay.

Joseph provides us with a very helpful example of financial wisdom. This is the Joseph the patriarch, son of Jacob, great-grandson of Abraham, of the Old Testament, not the husband of Mary, mother of Jesus. We find his story in the last fifteen chapters of the book of Genesis.  

God had gifted Joseph with, in addition to wisdom in leadership and keen administrative skill, the ability to interpret dreams. He found himself, at the end of a long string of mistreatments, in an Egyptian prison. That’s when the Pharoah, king of Egypt, called him into his court to interpret two bothersome dreams he’d had. 

Interpreting the dreams served as a segue to Joseph’s revealing his wisdom in financial management to Pharoah. As a result, Pharoah appointed Joseph to the highest position in the most powerful nation in the world at that time. Only Pharoah, himself had more authority than Joseph, and he delegated to Joseph all decision-making power over the nation’s commerce, agriculture, real estate and public service personnel. 

As a result of Joseph’s performance in his newly appointed role, Egypt’s net wealth, as well as it’s gross national income (GNI), its ability to bring in income for itself, skyrocketed. Under Joseph’s leadership, the nation obtained virtually all the grain, livestock, land and servants of that part of the world. During Joseph’s tenure, Egypt increased its value probably 200% to 300%. 

All those great accomplishments occurred through the practice of this principle: A vital building block for financial prosperity is one’s positioning for opportunity. Positioning essentially means having the resources to invest when opportunity comes along. 

Joseph positioned Egypt for opportunity with one critical number. He chose the number 20, instead of the number 14. The dreams he had interpreted predicted what would happen over the ensuing fourteen years. There would be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of lack. To prepare for the seven years of lack, Joseph set aside 20% of what each of the first seven years of plenty produced. If I had been in Joseph’s position, not being nearly the giant of financial wisdom he was, I would’ve set aside 14%. 14% would’ve provided just enough to survive. 

But Joseph saw the situation as one to not merely survive, but as an opportunity to grow in prosperity. Instead of having a store of 100% of resources needed to provide for the nation of Egypt for seven years, Joseph stored 140% of what was needed to survive. He had an additional 40% with which to advance Egypt’s wealth, and he used those resources to purchase additional property for Egypt as people and people groups who weren’t positioned to thrive had to surrender their resources to Joseph for food to survive. 

Now, some four hundred years later, the Jews left Egypt with all that wealth, wealth that, in my mind, was rightfully theirs since their ancestor Joseph had amassed it to begin with.

The point here, though, is to see a financial principle that makes the difference between the struggling and the wealthy. Following this principle often determines whether one will be prosperous or poor. 

And for a husband and wife, it can either contribute to or detract from their marriage. I pray God gives us all the wisdom to live by the principle of positioning ourselves for opportunity.

If we go all the way back to the very first married couple, all the way back, just after the creation of marriage, immediately following the fall of mankind, the birth of sin and the ensuing pronouncements of judgement, we find the tap-root of marriage’s tree of challenge. Right there in the Garden of Eden, home of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life, sprouted the Tree of Marital Challenge. 

The serpent would crawl on its belly amid the dust of the earth. He would bruise mankind’s heel, and mankind would bruise his head. The man would find the earth cursed and his work extremely difficult. The woman would have, in addition to intensified pain in childbirth, the desire to control her husband, but would instead be controlled by him. 

Consequently, marriage has three serious challenges.

1. They have an enemy for the ages working to undermine them.
2. The husband finds his work daunting.
3. The wife finds in her heart the desire to supplant her husband’s role as head of the marriage relationship. 

With such a towering tree of challenge, what’s a poor married couple to do? Well, that tree has to come down. But how?

When God made these pronouncements of judgments, he knew exactly what their solutions were. In fact, He used the whole unfortunate fall of mankind as a stage on which to bring His Son. And therein lies the solution. Once again we find a problem whose answer is Jesus. 

Christ established the New Covenant, expressed in the New Testament, which provides the solution for the husband’s insurmountable work challenge. Love your wife, husband, as Christ loved the church and gave His life for her. 

The husband’s challenge has to do with how difficult his work is. There appear to be two tendencies for husbands, and most incline to one or the other. He either works too hard, overcompensating in an effort to succeed, or he’s intimidated by the difficulty and shies away from working to provide. Thus, many are workaholics, while many others are seen as lazy. 

But how does loving his wife address his work challenge? Follow this logic: If he loves his wife, he’ll resist the urge to fall into either extreme; he’ll find the work-life-balance that allows him to succeed in providing while reserving a healthy amount of time for his family.

The wife’s challenge, the desire to take the reins from her husband, is overcome by accepting her New Testament solution of submitting to her husband.

Ladies, please put down your stones. I know you want to hurl them at me but think about this. You aren’t the only spouse in your marriage that God is asking to submit. Try loving as Christ loved without submitting. It can’t be done, and that’s the calling your husband has. 

What does submission have to do with solving the wife’s problem? Here’s the logic for her: the decision to submit completely replaces the desire to rule over her husband. The dreaded idea of submitting to the husband is the very thing that relieves the pain of the ancient curse.

What about the enemy? The biggest thing is to not repeat the mistake the inaugural couple made. Do what God said and don’t listen to the deceiver. 

If we do these three things – love, submit and don’t listen to the enemy – we’ll find that we’ve felled the Tree of Marital Challenge.

How can you enjoy immense freedom in marriage?    

First, understand what freedom is. Freedom is the absence of limitation, confinement or restraint. 

Also, there are varying degrees of freedom. The greatest freedom is the freedom Jesus has obtained for us. He said that if the Son sets you free, you’re free indeed. I take this indeed to mean the greatest possible freedom there is.

That begs the question, free from what? Jesus offers freedom from sin and its consequences. That means guilt, condemnation and control. But how do we get this freedom? Answer: move into God’s presence. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” Paul wrote (2 Corinthians 3:17), “there is freedom.” 

Jesus came to free us from sin and reconcile us to the Father, which means we get to move into the presence of God where the Spirit and real freedom are. 

So how does this apply to marriage? Remember that Jesus and His bride, the body of Christ (the church) serve as the perfect model for marriage. So, how did and does Jesus bring freedom to His spouse (us believers)?

Jesus went to great lengths to bring freedom. We mere humans have an eternal future, but not an eternal past; our existence began when our parents conceived us. God the Son, however, has both an eternal past and eternal future.  He was in the beginning (See John 1:1). My point is that Jesus left a perfect eternity to enter a sinful world to bring us freedom. To what lengths can we go to help our spouse live free.

Jesus sacrificed all of Himself to gain our freedom. He gave up His rights, any claim to what He deserved and all comfort and privilege to bring us freedom. How many of our rights, our merits and our comforts can we forego for our spouse’s freedom?

Jesus gave up His voice, His breath, His body, His blood – His life to afford our freedom. What sacrifices can we make for the freedom of our spouse?

Jesus offers forgiveness to free us from our sins. For what can we forgive our spouse to set them free from guilt and condemnation?

These are just four things we can see that our Bridegroom did as both a gift and an example. 

Now lest we have the idea that freedom’s purpose is something other than itself, consider Galatians 5:1, which states, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Obviously, God wants us free, not constrained by something destructive. And that goes for spouses, too.

What if we get into the habit of waking up daily with the goal of helping our spouse live free?

Let’s try it.

There’s a leadership vacuum. That’s what I’ve heard for years, but I never believed it. Leadership isn’t complicated, I thought. But I’ve been in several work situations over the past few years that have shown me there is, indeed, a deficit in the way many leaders lead others. 

I’m always looking for ways to apply principles to marriage, since I’m in a season of focusing my writing, counseling and teaching efforts on marriage. So, these leadership principles I hope to share in a way that will help married couples.

Leadership is influence, so both husband and wife need it, both needing to have a Godly influence on their spouse.

If marriage seems hard, a real struggle, then maybe VIE will help as you struggle – or vie to have a good marriage. VIE is an acrostic for Value, Intrinsic & Exemplary

Value-oriented. Effective leadership begins with valuing the people you’re leading. The more you value them, the more you’ll want to invest in them. 

Intrinsic Motivation. Good leadership is understanding that people are best motivated from within, rather than by external rewards, like money, gifts and the threat of consequences. There’s a time for extrinsic motivation (to reinforce intrinsic), but intrinsic is more respectful and ultimately recognizes the person’s power to make their own choices.  

Example. Leading by example is as basic as leadership gets. If a leader lacks the self-discipline, work ethic or willingness to sacrifice that they’re asking of others, they soon won’t have any followers. 

For married couples, 

1. Value your spouse very highly.
2. Help them build motivation intrinsically (in their heart). Never use coercion or ultimatums.
3. Set the Godly example they can follow (rather than modeling something that conflicts with God’s vision for them).

A Godly marriage is spouses influencing each other toward Godliness. Vie for your marriage.

Conflict is a word that comes from the Latin confligere. Its two word parts (con: together and fligere: strike) combine to mean to hit one another. Conflict is literal and physical in its most basic meaning but we also use it figuratively to include verbal and emotional, meaning people can hurt each other emotionally with their words. Of course, conflict can come by nonverbal communication as well. 

Conflict is one of the most common challenges in marriage. Since it’s as likely to happen inadvertently as on purpose, it’s pretty much inevitable for the married couple, so the best strategy is to manage it, rather than to expect to prevent it completely. 

Here are four keys to help manage conflict in a marriage:

1. Agree with God’s Word. So much conflict comes from spouses disagreeing with each other. Some people are downright disagreeable, meaning they have a pattern of contradicting whatever is said. The best way to deal with a disagreeable person is to speak only what aligns with God’s Word. Then, if they disagree, they’re disagreeing with God, not you. God’s Word can be interpreted differently by different people, but an effort to align your life with Scripture can’t hurt. However, I would stay away from using God’s Word to support your side of an argument; arguing about God’s Word can get ugly. In First Corinthians 2:2, Paul writes that he had determined to know only the crucified Christ when he was with them in Corinth. This precluded his being seen as a know-it-all, and an ever-awareness-of-Christ-crucified is the attitude I’m describing here. 

2. Don’t die on any hill. Historically in warfare, warriors have attempted to hold a hill against their enemy. They’d risk their life, of course, for whatever hill they fought for, so choosing a worthwhile hill would be important. In marriage, the only victory in an argument is when both spouses come into agreement, making both winners. So, every marital conflict needs to end with agreement. It may be hard to remember when you’re focused on making a point with your spouse, so you may want to write this down somewhere so you can grab it when your emotions are soaring. The words are: No hill is worth more than my marriage. 

3. Choose humility over being right. Humility is what’s at work when you position yourself lower than another. You do this by words, decisions and actions. When this happens, the others involved see that you aren’t trying to hurt them so they can trust you. Humility is always the position for victory in marriage. 

4. Walk in the Spirit. The single best way to keep a close, peaceful, joyful relationship with your spouse is to stay close to God. Close to God means that you’re in whisper range of His voice and your heart desires Him more than anything else. Walking in the Spirit is really the key to the Christian life.

Conflict may be inevitable, but that doesn’t mean spouses have to live in constant disagreement and defeat and devoid of peace and joy. If we manage it well, our marriages can still be very good.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog about Marriage Club. I have more to share with you about it.

My wife, Sharlene, and I host this Marriage Club gathering one Friday night gathering each month. It’s made up of married couples and those couples who are working toward marriage. At every meeting we share a meal and then another half to three quarters of an hour watching a video and on a topic followed by discussion and prayer. 

I love leading small group discussion. I study, pray and work to be prepared on the topic, yet the wisdom of God comes out so much better through the comments of the group’s members than through my individual preparation. One of the gifts God has developed in me is that of leading a group to find wisdom and answers in the group’s collaboration by questions, answers and discussion. 

This happens in Marriage Club, so every couple leaves each time with an improved understanding of how to have a Godly, fulfilling marriage. 

It’s so edifying when we hear other members talk about how they’ve experienced and overcome some of the same challenges we’re currently facing. What a blessing to hear the example of a couple we know living out Biblical marriage principles in real life.

Open, honest sharing of struggles may make couples feel vulnerable, but the reality is that we who are listening gain a deeper respect for them, and we all feel more comfortable opening up, ourselves, because of the example they’ve set. That happens on the regular in Marriage Club.

Community is a need everyone has. Community in our culture goes beyond that of previous generations when it was determined by geographical proximity. These days people drive across town for community because they find community in mutual interests and like situations. Marriage Club is community based on couples wanting to have the best possible marriage relationships. I’m not sure there’s a more important basis for community. 

After doing Marriage Club for four years, I can say I’m better equipped as a husband because of members’ testimonies of how they’ve dealt with conflict, money problems and the difficulties of parenting, in-laws and communication barriers. And that’s happened for my wife and me, even as we’ve led the group.

So, again, I invite any couple who has interest to seek God about leading a Marriage Club of your own. For more understanding about starting your club, please read my previous blog by clicking on the “Marriage Club” title below. 

Marriage Club

2025 would be a great year to start something impactful, like a Marriage Club. I pray God leads you as you consider it.

The Christmas story, lovely as it is, is a hiding place where many life lessons can be found. Here are four of them as they apply to marriage.

1. God makes and fulfills outlandish promises. Telling an obscure engaged virgin girl that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, causing her to conceive and bear the Son who would be the King sitting on the eternal throne of David can certainly be placed in the category of outlandish. 

God also made the promise during the very first week of His creation that a man and woman coming together in matrimony would no longer be two, but one. That, too, is outlandish. And just as the coming of the Messiah would require deeply intimate divine intervention, so does oneness of flesh in marriage; it’s made possible only by God, thus Jesus’ statement, …what God joins together…. Remembering that the Spirit that sowed the Messianic seed in Mary’s womb is the same Spirit that joins together a husband and wife should cause all us married folk to view with trembling the marriage relationships that join us with our spouses. Let’s allow God’s Spirit to draw us most closely together this Christmas.

2. God often uses the humblest in His loftiest works. A peasant girl. A carpenter. A group of shepherds. A manger. These are the players God conscripted into His story of the Savior’s birth. Not a princess, a prince, a group of noblemen or a brass crib with goose down bedding and a midwife. No, God chose the lowly, the meek, the things deemed foolish to the world.

The choice ingredients of a Godly marriage are those things which bring us to a humble position. I’m sorry. I was wrong. Sacrifices. These are the things God uses in a marriage. They require us to take a position lower than our spouse’s. Let’s give our spouse the gift of humility this Christmas. 

3. The loftiest enemies of God’s plan will ultimately come to frustration. Herod never got his murderous hands on the Christ child. The wise men subverted his plan by not reporting back to him. And Joseph heeded the voice of God and took his family of three to Egypt until Herod had died. 

The enemy of our marriages is the same spirit that incited Herod to seek to kill little Jesus. That evil spirit wants to spoil God’s plan, which is to have us spouses enjoy each other and dwell in homes of kindness and peace. This Christmas let’s have peace in our marriages and goodwill toward our spouses. 

4. God has factored “detours” into His plan. Living in the country God had told His people to never live in again must’ve seemed almost wrong to Joseph and Mary. But God has His reasons for making His exceptions, and preserving the life of the Messiah was a perfect one.

Life can hit our marriages with circumstances seemingly designed for our destruction. But these are just detours. Unemployment. Parenting challenges. Health hurdles. If we can just remember that these difficulties haven’t caught God by surprise, that He’ll work them all for our good and that we can be stronger by going through them, maybe we can keep a Godly attitude through them all and have stronger marriages on the other side of them. If you’re on a detour this Christmas, may God comfort you, strengthen you and give you wisdom, you and your spouse.

Merry Christmas!!

Five years ago my wife, Sharlene, and I had it in our hearts to start something we call Marriage Club.

We invited several couples to meet with us once a month on a Friday night; we would have dinner (we would enlist the couples to contribute to the meal), after which we would have a marriage topic about which we would watch a video, lead a group discussion and pray out. Almost all of our videos were YouTube videos; it’s pretty amazing how much is available on YouTube that matches up with our Marriage Club needs. 

We just completed our fourth straight year of Marriage Club. We’ve had a blast with it, grown closer to dozens of couples and seen our and the other MC members’ marriages strengthened. Now we’re gearing up for year five.

This year, we’d love to see others lead their own MCs. Perhaps you’d be interested in starting up one. If you’d love to get one going but aren’t confident that you can lead it, you can spread out the responsibilities across a couple different roles and take the multiple-leaders approach. It’s essentially like a church small group without being under the umbrella of a church or ministry organization. 

Sharlene and I considered organizing it in a way that MC chapters could form under a growing MC umbrella but decided against it. We don’t care to have a “big” ministry or have any control over its growth and development. We prefer to let it grow organically in grassroots fashion, allowing freedom for the Holy Spirit to use others to make it whatever He wants it to be. 

We also considered developing a leader’s guide but decided that isn’t necessary because it’s such a simple model that it can be explained in a single blog post, thus the blog post you’re reading now.

Here’s all you need to know. But it’s important to customize, think innovatively and organize things in a way that works for you. This is not anything close to a cookie cutter template, but just based on our experience; your club may look very different from ours. We do strongly suggest your club agree from the start to recognize the Bible as the standard for marriage and to build your club on its principles.

Roles. These can be filled by a team of couples or just one couple; it can even be a different team from month to month.

• Host (should have the space to accommodate the size gathering that forms)
• Food Coordinator (can decide how much and what food to contribute themselves and how much others need to contribute; should be gifted as an organizer of people)
• Childcare Coordinator (should search for options of sitters – usually teenaged girls by our experience – and schedule them in advance; should coordinate the paying of those serving in this way; we ask members who can to contribute to the childcare fund each month)
• Discussion Leader (They need to be gifted in leading small group discussion; this role is not that of teacher, but they should be somewhat knowledgeable and able to help the group share and receive the wisdom God has imparted to each of the members while keeping the discussion on topic; it’s ideal if a couple can do this as a team, which Sharlene and I do, but if only one person is gifted for it, better for us all to work in our own wheelhouse. Sharlene sometimes includes a game that reinforces the topic, which adds to the gathering’s fun and enhances the learning and growth process.)
• Members (We invited married couples and couples considering or working toward marriage; there are no attendance requirements, allowing couples the freedom to decide for themselves the priority of MC in their lives from month to month; attendance can be fluid from month to month, even having couples join and un-join organically) 

Topics. There are 12 meetings a year, unless you take off one or more months; whatever number of meetings you have is the number of topics you need. I suggest making sure you cover the following seven and decide what other topics you’ll cover to fill out the year. 

• Understanding Your Unique Spouse, Self and Marriage (we use The Five Love Languages, How Am I Smart, The Birth Order Book, Personality Tests, Enneagram Scores and other resources as tools for this.)
• Understanding Marital Love
• Biblical Roles of Husband and Wife
• Communication in Marriage
• Managing Conflict in Marriage
• Money in Marriage
• Sex and Romance in Marriage

Various Settings. We encourage member couples to connect outside the monthly gatherings. The group discussion can be only so personal and open. Couples can find opportunities for deeper connection as they form friendships that transcend monthly MC meetings. Sharlene and I also offer some counseling to interested couples; however, this is part of our skillset and gifting. If this isn’t a specialty of yours, you may be able to recommend trustworthy Christian marriage counselors, which you can search and find in your local area, to your members. 

If you ‘re interested in MC but have questions , please feel free to DM me; I’d love to help in any way I can.

I know we haven’t even gotten to Thanksgiving yet. But we’re still very close to Christmas. So, I want to look at a marriage from the first Christmas and see what we can learn from it.

God could have sent His Messianic Son to earth in any number of ways. He could’ve, like Hanna with Samuel, entrusted Him to the high priest. Imagine the miracle of a baby being delivered to the temple without any woman conceiving carrying or birthing Him; the priests just find Him in the temple one morning. Or what if God had given a child to one of the religious groups, like the Pharisees, the Saducees or the Essenes. He could’ve had King Herod one day discover a divine baby in his royal palace. 

But God chose man and woman betrothed but not yet married. Here are some gleanings from the Marriage of Mary and Joseph.

A High Purpose and Calling. Joseph and Mary were given the greatest responsibility of any couple ever, to bring up the one who would save the world from sin’s consequences. I believe God has a high calling and purpose for every married couple, something neither of them could do alone, something they can accomplish only as a one-flesh married couple. 

This is an awesome prayer focus for a married couple, to ask God what it is that He wants them to accomplish together.

A Sacrificial Love. Joseph risked his reputation by marrying Mary; surely people thought the child was his. And Mary risked a broken heart; would Joseph stay around to raise a child that wasn’t “his”?

It’s certain that God wants married couples who will humble themselves for each other and for carrying out God’s plan and calling for them.

Spontaneous Obedience. Joseph moved his new family to another country after a dream in which God warned him to do so. He and Mary didn’t require any preparations or long-advanced notice from God. They just left.

Would you, as a married couple, do the same? If God made it clear to you that He wanted you to make a major change in your life immediately, and His instruction was the only reason for doing it, no other factor supporting that message from Him, would you do it?

May your marriage be merry and bright, like the Christmas marriage was!

And Happy Thanksgiving!

8.3333%. That’s the percentage of disciples who stepped out by faith onto the stormy sea. One out of the twelve disciples used his faith to walk out on the water toward Jesus.

The estimated percentage of troubled marriages that survive is much higher – nearly 70%. 

The data includes marriages that see a counselor when they have trouble; about 70% of them make it through the storm. 

So, we’re actually talking about going for help, not walking on water. But what Peter walking on water has in common with married couples getting counselling in their troubles is that they both look outside themselves for help in getting through the storm.

But it goes deeper than that. (Pardon the pun.)

Why did Peter walk on the water? The eleven others felt safer in the boat; why didn’t he? Was it just that he had a sense of adventure the others didn’t have? Or was there a longing, even in those peculiar circumstances, to be where Jesus was and do what Jesus was doing? Let’s assume the latter. 

If your marriage is in a storm, do what Peter did. We see phases in his experience.

Faith Phase. It took faith to step out of a perfectly good boat and walk on water toward Jesus. It also takes faith to reach out to God for marital help and heed the advice He gives in His Word and by His Spirit. 

Fail Phase. Before Peter arrived in Jesus’ arms he sank into the deep. Sometimes things get worse before they get better when you trust God’s process of redemption. Obedience of a Biblical principle can bring testing by fire before it yields the desired fruit of marital healing.

Fulfillment Phase. Ultimately, Peter got what he wanted: the embrace of his Savior; his felt need was fulfilled. A married couple desperate enough to seek help and wise enough to seek and heed God for it will enjoy the rich fulfillment of replacing their storm with His calm, strong presence. 

Finally, to clarify, while marriage counseling is valuable, it’s really God and His direction that I’m advocating here. Secondly, there are some wise and skillful counselors who aren’t Jesus followers, but my advice is to find a counselor who can help you find the counsel of God for your marriage. He’s its creator and knows its blueprint better than any other.

The account of Peter and Jesus walking on the water is found in Matthew 14:22-33.