The Complete Marriage And Family Home Reference Guide

Several concerns confront today's families. Some issues are relatively simple, while others are painfully complex. Dobson provides help through the Bible, well-proven "wisdom of the ages" and many year's experience as a psychologist and counselor. In this book, he responds to nearly 500 family-life questions with practicality, Biblical wisdom and Christ-like compassion. Repackage edition of "Solid Answers".

We all know of families or marriages in crisis. When those suffering in such situations turn to us for help, where do we turn? The Quick-Reference Guide to Marriage and Family Counseling provides the answers. It is an A-Z guide for assisting people-helpers--pastors, professional counselors, youth workers, and everyday believers--to easily access a full array of information to aid them in (formal and informal) counseling situations. Issues addressed by Clinton and Trent include affairs and adultery, communication in marriage, parenting, sibling rivalry, and many more. Each of the forty topics covered follows a helpful eight-part outline and identifies: 1) typical symptoms and patterns, 2) definitions and key thoughts, 3) questions to ask, 4) directions for the conversation, 5) action steps, 6) biblical insights, 7) prayer starters, and 8) recommended resources. About the series The Quick-Reference Guides are A-Z guides that assist people-helpers--pastors, professional counselors, youth workers, and everyday believers--to easily access a full array of information to aid them in (formal and informal) counseling situations. Each of the forty topics covered follows a helpful eight-part outline and identifies: 1) typical symptoms and patterns, 2) definitions and key thoughts, 3) questions to ask, 4) directions for the conversation, 5) action steps, 6) biblical insights, 7) prayer starters, and 8) recommended resources.

Through a probing investigation of conservative Christianity and its response to an issue that, according to the statistics of conservative Christian groups, affects only a small number of Americans, Ludger Viefhues-Bailey alights on a profound theological conundrum: in today's conservative Christian movement, both sexes are called upon to be at once assertive and submissive, masculine and feminine, not only within the home but also within the church, society, and the state. Therefore the arguments of conservative Christians against same-sex marriage involve more than literal readings of the Bible or nostalgia for simple gender roles. Focusing primarily on texts produced by Focus on the Family, a leading media and ministry organization informing conservative Christian culture, Viefhues-Bailey identifies two distinct ideas of male homosexuality: gender-disturbed and passive; and oversexed, strongly masculine, and aggressive. These homosexualities enable a complex ideal of Christian masculinity in which men are encouraged to be assertive toward the world while also being submissive toward God and family. This web of sexual contradiction influences the flow of power between the sexes and within the state. It joins notions of sexual equality to claims of "natural" difference, establishing a fraught basis for respectable romantic marriage. Heterosexual union is then treated as emblematic of, if not essential to, the success of American political life--yet far from creating gender stability, these tensions produce an endless striving for balance. Viefhues-Bailey's final, brilliant move is to connect the desire for stability to the conservative Christian movement's strategies of political power.

Relationships.

The recent rulings on gay marriage and debates on family-related issues have placed marriage and family at the forefront of the public eye. More so than at any point in history, we are now confronted with the need to carefully define the meaning of marriage and family. Professor Andreas Köstenberger and ethics expert David W. Jones speak to the issues at hand and guide us through the fray. Presenting a Christian theology of marriage and parenting, they offer insight on issues such as: abortion contraception infertility adoption homosexuality divorce Marriage and Family: Biblical Essentials points the way to the spiritual solution to our culture's confusion: a return to, and rebuilding of, the biblical foundation of marriage and the family.

Every preacher, teacher, or writer knows the value of a good illustration in helping connect the truth of the passage with the congregation or class—and how hard it is to come up with good illustrations week after week. This book contains the cream of the crop: 1001 illustrations carefully selected from among thousands on Christianity Today International’s popular website PreachingToday.com. These illustrations are proven, memorable, and illuminating. As the saying goes, they will preach! And they’re fresh, all written within the past seven years. Of course the best illustrations are no good if you can’t find the right one. These illustrations have been arranged according to twelve master topics, each divided into several subtopics. Further, they’ve been indexed according both to Bible references and to 500 keywords. A searchable CD-ROM is included, allowing you to get the illustration into your lesson or sermon with ease.

The lucid, straightforward Preface of this Handbook by the two editors and the comprehenSIve perspec tives offered in the Introduction by one ofthem leave little for a Foreword to add. It is therefore limIted to two relevant but not intrinsically related points vis-a-vis research on marriage and the family in the interval since the fIrst Handbook (Christensen, 1964) appeared, namely: the impact on this research ofthe politicization of the New RIght! and of the Feminist Enlightenment beginning in the mid-sixties, about the time of the fIrst Handbook. In the late 1930s Willard Waller noted: "Fifty years or more ago about 1890, most people had the greatest respect for the institution called the family and wished to learn nothing whatever about it. . . . Everything that concerned the life of men and women and their children was shrouded from the light. Today much of that has been changed. Gone is the concealment of the way in which life begins, gone the irrational sanctity of the home. The aura of sentiment which once protected the family from discussion clings to it no more .... We wantto learn as much about it as we can and to understand it as thoroughly as possible, for there is a rising recognition in America that vast numbers of its families are sick-from internal frustrations and from external buffeting. We are engaged in the process of reconstructing our family institutions through criticism and discussion" (1938, pp. 3-4).

Sociologist George Yancey critiques four models of race (colorblindness, Anglo-conformity, multiculturalism and white responsibility), and introduces a new model (mutual responsibility). He offers hope that people of all races can walk together on a shared path toward racial reconciliation--not as adversaries but as collaborators and partners.

Why are Americans of African descent, as a group, not flourishing like other racial groups in America? Dr. J. M. Sparrow, in Rebels with Insufficient Cause, proposes that value formation through the biblical model of the family is lacking. The secular world is redefining and reinterpreting the social structures that God created in order for humans to enjoy maximum human flourishing. Every person or social group that chooses to ignore God's designs for humanity will experience chaos, but every person and social group that submits to God's designs for humanity will experience order. Americans of African descent are experiencing that chaos in greater measure than any other racial group. Since this book holds to a biblical worldview that teaches that all humans are created equal, Americans of African descent are not inherently more debased than other races. However, since the out-of-wedlock birth rate is astronomically higher in black communities than in others, they are experiencing a greater share of the chaos. Yet all is not lost. When Americans of African descent begin to hold up the truths of the Bible as normative and encourage future generations to practice the same, things will begin to turn around. Americans of African descent must choose to reject the victim mentality, see themselves as part of the larger American culture rather than as outsiders, and inculcate biblical values on their children in the midst of loving, supportive, and God-honoring family units.