Marriage Matters Manual (Facilitator's Guide): Extraordinary Change through Ordinary Moments - Softcover

Winston T. Smith

4.17 out of 5 stars

6 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936768097 ISBN 13: 9781936768097

Publisher: New Growth Press, 2011

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Can Ordinary Marriages Become Extraordinary? He snapped at her during breakfast. She brought up a past mistake. He walked out angry. She left without saying good-bye. An ordinary day in an ordinary marriage. But what if things could be different? What if the moments that seem the most ordinary moments of annoyance, conflict, pain, or cold indifference could become moments in which you're able to understand God's incredible agenda for love and begin to do something new? Winston T. Smith, drawing on his extensive experience as a marriage counselor, offers a simple yet powerful prescription for changing your marriage. He shows how examining the everyday disappointments and irritations in your marriage will help you understand yourself, your spouse, and your need for God's love. Change begins with seeing day-to-day interactions from a different perspective, taking simple steps to love one another more effectively, and then learning how to take those steps over and over again. Interactions that used to devolve into pointless annoyances and fights can become an opportunity for God's activity and love to become increasingly evident and powerful. The principles in this book will take your marriage to extraordinary places and lead you into a deeper relationship of discipleship with an extraordinary God. Don't settle for an ordinary marriage, learn to live out God's extraordinary love in your most intimate relationship.Marriage Matters Manual Study Guide and Marriage Matters Manual Facilitators Guides launch an interactive ten-week course that uses discussion questions, small group exercises, vignettes, Bible study, and relationship building activities to help couples apply and live the principles from the book together over an extended period of time.Each unit gives clear direction on how to understand, love, accept, and wisely speak the truth and ends with homework that gives couples the opportunity to put what they have learned into practice. The study guide covers a broad array of topics including communication, conflict, forgiveness, intimacy, sex, and marriage roles and is suitable for a small group study, a marriage enrichment program, and for a marriage counselor or mentor to use with individual couples. The Marriage Matters Manual Facilitator's Guide provides extra content and direction for pastors, counselors, and mentors as they work with couples in small groups and in individual counseling sessions.

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About the Author

Winston T. Smith, M.Div., is a counselor and faculty member at the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF), has extensive experience as a marriage and family counselor, and teaches seminary students how to counsel couples. He is the author of the minibooks, Divorce Recovery: Growing and Healing God's Way; Help for Stepfamilies: Avoiding the Pitfalls and Learning to Love; It's All About Me: The Problem with Masturbation; Who Does the Dishes? Decision Making in Marriage and Burned Out? Trusting God with Your ""To-Do"" List.

Review

It is impossible to capture the genius of this outstanding book in a few short sentences. Winston demonstrates how we can turn our ordinary marital disappointments into opportunities for growth in love, faith, and intimacy. Rich in exegetical insight, exquisite theology (don't miss the chapters on conflict and division: superb!), and warm pastoral insights all presented in a simple and flowing style, this book can help to make your marriage sing. My only regret is that I did not surrender the marriage course to this wise man much, much sooner --John Bettler, Former Executive Director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation

Through his own transparency as a husband and his expertise as a counselor, Winston Smith offers very rich, yet very practical insight on how to function relationally from a divine frame of reference. Marriage Matters brings the rich theology of Scripture from the abstract to the real- life, from the cerebral to the experiential, offering couples amazing truth that holds the potential to completely reshape their view of relationship. Very refreshing. Very encouraging! --Jeremy Lelek, M.A., L.P.C., President, Association of Biblical Counselors

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