Promoting Godly Marriages: Dealing with the Reality of Breakups and Unrequited Love

My not-too-controversial opinion is that pastors and people in our evangelical churches need to improve greatly in how they handle breakups and unrequited love among the single people in our churches. There are a lot of excuses that men and women have for why they break up with dating partners and engagements. My belief is that for some the paths to divorce may start in junior high school with the way that they’ve learned to date. Moreover, there are a lot of simple, compassionate things that can be done to assist single people in dating and when dating relationships and engagements come to an end. And maybe sometimes the better choices that men and women have had for their spouses were people whom they broke up with or did not even consider after they went into marriage that later failed.

In the video I refer to Psalm 147:3 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+147%3A3&version=ESV .

In the video I also refer to the book by Laura Smit, Loves Me, Loves Me Not: The Ethics of Unrequited Love https://www.amazon.com/Loves-Me-Not-Ethics-Unrequited/dp/080102997X/

Promoting Godly Marriages: From Personal Independence to Mutual Interdependence

Independence is not a destination in itself; the goal of marriage means reaching beyond independence toward adult responsibility and mutual interdependence. This video is my suggestions on how to get on that journey.

Promoting Godly Marriages: Making Wise Introductions

This is the second in my projected 8 part series in which I give some guidance from the Bible and experience to how our evangelical churches can promote godly marriages in the never married, scripturally divorced, and widowed. There is a real place, I believe, for making wise introductions of single (never married, scripturally divorced and widowed men and women) to each other in the church. But few people follow the path which I mention here — but I’ve seen it actually become very successful!

Promoting Godly Marriages: Confronting Foolish Fixup Behavior

This is the first video in a projected 8 part series in which I give some guidance from the Bible and experience to how our evangelical churches can promote godly marriages in the never married, scripturally divorced, and widowed. So, to start, we deal with do no harm first. This first part deals tendency of some in the church to try to fix up any single man or woman that they might happen to meet with any other single person of the opposite sex that they might happen to know. I give 12 reasons why this is foolish. Do we have such an overabundance of godly husbands and wives and fathers in mothers in our churches that we can continue to play such childish, self promoting games with the lives of other people — especially the most significant decisions in their lives?