God's Prescription for Marriage and Family

God's Prescription for Marriage and Family

By

Dick Woodward

*****

Published by International Cooperating Ministries at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 by International Cooperating Ministries

This book is available in a print edition from International Cooperating Ministries

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 - God’s Prescription for Marriage and Family

Chapter 2 - The Place to Begin

Chapter 3 - The Marriage Prescription

Chapter 4 - The Seven Links of Intimacy Close Up

Chapter 5 - Communication Problems

Chapter 6 - Family Communication

Chapter 7 - The Compatibility Link

Chapter 8 - Biblical Roles

Chapter 9 - The Love Link

Chapter 10 - The Link of Understanding

Chapter 11 - Dealing with Anger

Chapter 12 - The Joyful Expression of Oneness

Chapter 13 - The Most Vital Factor of All

God’s Prescription for Marriage and Family

Seven Dimensions of Intimacy

FOREWORD

It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance of the alarming breakdown of marriage and family in our culture today. The data eloquently tells us that divorce is not epidemic. It is pandemic. More alarming than this is the hard reality that marriage and family is being redefined today. There are those who are telling us that marriage is not a relationship between a man and a woman but between two people of the same sex and the children they adopt. In America we have more people living together without the commitment of marriage than we have living together with that commitment.

Another trend that indicates the breakdown of marriage and family in America is that in 1950 we had 4 million people living alone, whereas today we have 32.7 million people living alone. In large cities like Manhattan, New York, half the population lives alone. CBS presented a documentary on this trend which they consider to be one of the most significant sociological happenings in our history as a nation. Their research showed that a large percentage of live-alone people are doing this simply because they do not want to share their space with anyone.

If you are a student of history, you know that the fall of cultures like the Roman Empire were preceded by the breakdown of marriage and family. In the thirties the Communist Party in America was plotting the downfall of America. The very first step in their strategy was to bring about the breakdown of marriage and family. This was to be done by redefining marriage and doing the very things that are well in place today.

Totalitarian dictatorships, like the Nazis in the thirties and forties and communist countries, consistently place more value on the absolute rule of the government than they do on the worth of marriage and families. The impact of the breakdown we are experiencing in America and in other cultures today will have far reaching effects that will spell calamity for our cultures if we do not do something to reverse this breakdown. It is this trend that has motivated me as a completely paralyzed pastor to write this book on the biblical model of marriage and family.

In the early nineties I was teaching the Mini Bible College to our congregation here in Williamsburg, Virginia. I taught the classes on Monday nights from October through May. It was August of 1990 and I had not yet decided what courses I was going to teach in the college that year. Late on a Saturday night, my wife Ginny and I received a telephone call from a woman we both loved. She had just finished an awful argument with her husband whom we also loved. Since most of our staff were on vacation, I gave her the number of a counselor and said to her, If you cannot reach him, come on over. Her response was, I would never do that. When I asked her why, she said, You wouldn’t understand because you’re married to Ginny! When I finished the phone call, I told my wife that I knew the course I was going to teach in the Mini Bible College that year.

I was called to this church in 1979. Because I wanted to focus on developing the Mini Bible College, I accepted the call to the church with the understanding I would not be asked to do counseling. The next morning, preaching from my wheelchair, I announced that beginning in October I was going to do marriage counseling every Monday night, from 7:15 to 8:15. Anyone in the congregation was welcome to come and to bring with them anyone they knew who might be interested in the course.

The evening arrived for that marriage counseling class to begin and we had one hundred fifty babies in the nursery! When I observed the packed sanctuary, I thought of what a missionary statesman named Kenneth Stratton said: Preachers are always scratching people where they don’t itch and answering questions nobody is asking. That night I realized that marriage is where people itch today, and the challenges and problems of marriage produce many of the questions people are asking.

As I looked a little closer at that packed sanctuary, I observed that many of the people were not from our congregation but from the community in which our church is located. My first words were that I was not a marriage therapist or counselor. I was a pastor, and everything I was going to say about marriage would be coming from the Bible. I suggested that if they were not comfortable with that, they should walk away from the class at that moment. Further, I told them that before they made their decision, I wanted to ask them two questions. First, Are you getting your signals for your marriage from the Scripture or the culture? Second, If you’re getting your signals for your marriage from the culture, how are you doing?

There followed what someone described as a holy hush. After an eloquent pause I said, Well, I see nobody has walked, so I’m now going to assume that you are interested in what the Bible has to say about marriage. I then began my course, titled God’s Prescription for Marriage and Family.

I later learned that recordings of these classes were sent overseas for translation and was shocked and concerned that they may not be relevant in a trans-lingual and trans-cultural context, because they were so very American. However, I was wrong. They have been one of our most enthusiastically received courses of study. One reason for this was that in the Providence of God I was led to use a woodcarving that was beautifully carved by an African pastor as my outline and a metaphor for the entire course. I am indebted to the late professor James Hatch of Columbia International University who was a dear friend and shared this African woodcarving with me. This wood carving shows how an African couple illustrates the seven dimensions of the oneness or intimacy God prescribed for marriage when He took a man and woman and made them one flesh. This made the course universal in its scope.

We asked the people who listen to our studies on solar-powered digital audio players what two courses of study they would like, besides our survey of the Bible, on these units I refer to as God Pods. Their first choice was this course on marriage and family. At this writing, we have some 42,000 house churches listening to the survey of the Bible along with these studies on marriage, and a verse-by-verse study of the Sermon on the Mount, which was their second choice. When I have met with some of our foreign ministry partners who oversee these house churches and I have asked them how I could pray for them personally, they nearly always say, Pray for my marriage! I just spoke through an interpreter with a Spanish speaking pastor. When I asked him What are the biggest problems in your churches? his immediate response was Marriages are falling apart.

As I began my course on marriage, so they would know that Ginny and I did understand their problems, I told them a story. On one occasion – and with good reason – Ginny threw a large flowerpot at me. It splattered on the wall, and I immediately knew two things: she loved me, because she was very athletic and did not have to miss me. And I knew it was just a warning shot across the bow as my Navy friends would say. I told the story because I wanted them to know that just as they had their problems, we had ours. People were shocked to hear that Ginny would throw a flower pot at a helpless man in a wheelchair. I had left out the important detail that this had happened when we were in our thirties, when I was in very good health, and not in a wheelchair!

Pastor Dick Woodward

Founder and Teacher

Mini Bible College

Williamsburg, Virginia

October 2012

* * * * *

God’s Prescription for Marriage and Family

Many years ago in America a man was having mechanical trouble with his old car, so he pulled off to the side of the road. He was amazed when a tuxedo-dressed man being driven by a chauffeur in a very fancy car, stopped to help him. The tuxedo-man got out of his car and opened the hood of the broken down automobile. It was a Ford, a popular model of cars in America. The tuxedo man started working on the engine and soon had it fixed. The owner of the old car asked the tuxedo man, How do you know so much about a Ford? The well-dressed man replied, I am Henry Ford. I created this automobile, and I am the owner of the company that makes these cars with my name on them.

THE LAW OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY IN THE BIBLE

Just as we would expect Henry Ford to be qualified to tell us how to fix a Ford automobile, we can expect God to be qualified to tell us how to fix a marriage. That’s why this course on marriage is based on Scripture. Because God is the One who created marriage, God is the One who can tell us in His Word how to build a strong marriage or fix a broken one. God can also tell us what a marriage is, the purpose of a marriage, and His prescription for marriage. We find that prescription as God gives us His law of marriage and family in the very first chapters of the Bible.

THE PRESCRIPTION

"God said, ‘let us make man in our image, in our likeness.’ …So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; populate the earth and subdue it’" (Genesis 1:26-28).

All through the creation account God looks at what He creates and tells us it is good. But in the second chapter of the Bible we find the words, It is not good. What was not good? The answer is it was not good for the man to be alone.

"So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they two will become one flesh" (2:21-24).

When God saw that man alone was incomplete, He said, I will make him a helper suitable for him (2:18 NASB). The Hebrew wording in the text suggests, I am going to make a completer for him. That is what helper suitable for him means in Hebrew – a completer. From the beginning God gave us role definitions for marriage. A man is incomplete without a woman, and a woman is designed to complete a man.

The creation account is repeated in Chapter 2, and a third time in Genesis 5:1-2, with an emphasis on God creating man, male and female. This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created (KJV).