Life Library — Marriage

Life Ministry   •   The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

• Confronting Cohabitation — In a time when so many people make the mistake of cohabitation, the church has the opportunity to proclaim the hope and promise that are ours through faith in Jesus Christ. The power that raised Christ back to life is the power that brings new life and new possibilities.
  
  
• Getting Closer As a Couple — Married couples, for various reasons, may drift apart. The vitality and sparkle that used to characterize their relationship is gone. They didn’t plan it. It just happened — subtly, slowly, silently. However, there is good news. Christian couples can break through emotional distance to revive their relationships.
  
  
• Living Together Before Marriage — There is something in the issue of “living together” that is uniquely disturbing, especially on the part of Christians, simply because it mimics, but does not honor, marriage. Indeed, the arrangement violates the very meaning, substance, and institution of marriage.
  
  
• Make Yours a Stock Market Marriage — Like the stock market, marriages have their ups and downs. Knowing that and staying the course increases your chance of success in either.
  
  
• Marriage, Life and Family: Reflecting the Holy Trinity — The Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) created and gave gifts reflecting Himself, especially the gifts of marriage, life, and family. As the Holy Trinity is the unity of three, so also marriage, life, and family form a unity of three that echoes the reality of God. This is our starting point.
  
  
• Surrogate Motherhood: A Clerical Case — The whole point of marriage as a paradigm of God’s relationship with his people is to illustrate the oneness of what we are given in marriage and in the gift of a child as its outcome. Careless sentimentality in reproductive ethics erases this message of God to us.
  
  
• Ten Commandments for Healthy Marital Communication — Couples should remember to continuously fine-tune their communication skills. Doing so will enhance a good marriage and stabilize a rocky one. Effective communication can mean the difference between a lasting, quality relationship and a lifeless marriage or a divorce.
  
  
• The APA Does It Again — Psychologists who say fathers are not necessary prove the limits of social science.
  
  
• The Mystery of Marriage — With a Christian perspective, the theology of marriage can serve as a foundation for evaluating the implications of reproductive technologies.
  
  
• Then Comes Marriage — Marriage is a blessing, a gift from the God who created us. In holy matrimony, bride and groom vow to remain faithful “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” The sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage go hand in hand.
  
  
• The Venture of Marriage — God fashions marriage so a man and woman learn to be true to each other. Through marriage, God brings us into relation with one who is different but who also reflects back something of the truth of our own nature. That image is the bold and daring vision we have to offer the world.
  
  
• What About ... Living Together Without Marriage? — This resource is reprint of a tract from The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s “What About …” series. Pastors and congregations will want to work patiently and lovingly with couples caught up in the sin of living together without marriage.
  
  
• What Is Marriage? — It is not our human prerogative to redefine marriage for the sake of political correctness, social justice, or to accommodate the changing times. As God does not change, but is ever faithful, so marriage does not change and ever proclaims the faithfulness of God to His people.
  
  
• With This Ring — At the wedding ceremony the bride and groom exchange wedding rings. They are circles to symbolize the permanence of this relationship. There are three additional aspects these rings portray.
  
  
• Your Family Vocation — Every Christian has been called by God into a family. Our very existence is by our parents, who conceived and brought us into the world. Martin Luther says, “God has given this walk of life, fatherhood and motherhood, a special position of honor, higher than that of any other walk of life under it.”