With forty percent of marriages ending in divorce, and family breakdown and social dysfunction an increasing problem in this nation, several key leaders in the marriage and family movement have called for 21 Days of Prayer and fasting for Marriage and Family.

Dennis and Ann Outred, Co-ordinators of Marriage Week, said:

There are many things in our nation that need our urgent attention through prayer and fasting. Marriage between a man and a woman being one of the foundational building blocks of the church and the nation is among the top of the list. St Valentine’s Day on February 14 is a timely reminder of prayer and the power of sacrificial love. This makes February a good time to pray for marriage. We therefore encourage you to join this call to prayer for marriage and family.

Marriage and Family Leaders are encouraging churches and individuals to join this urgent call to prayer by initiating special prayer meetings or incorporating the call to prayer into existing activities from Tuesday 1 Feb to Monday 21 Feb 2011. For further information please contact: Dennis and Ann Outred on 02 8002 1889.

We are thrilled to bring you the January 2011 edition of Marriage Works with the following articles by our wonderful contributors:

Why should I trust you? How to understand and recover from infidelity in a marriage
by Vanessa Hall

A bigger income is rarely the answer
by Phil McGilvray

Stories behind shiny things
by Rene Thompson

Falling in love: Cupid’s random arrow or God’s good plan?
by Dr Patricia Weerakoon

This month we’d like to know your thoughts on how to make Marriage Works work for you…

We love giveaways!

We are giving away a CD teaching on how to have an UNSTOPPABLE MARRIAGE by Phillip Wagner. Phillip Wagner is lead pastor from Oasis Church in the US where he and his wife Holly, are revolutionising church in LA. The CD will go to the reader that provides the best feedback on how to make MarriageWorks better. Send us an e-mail at marriageworksmagazine@gmail.com for your chance to win.

Help us promote the latest online edition by forwarding it to friends and family or promoting it through your church bulletin, work, or local associations.

Subscription to receive all articles is free. All you need to do is register by going to www.mwmagazine.com.au

Peace and love,

LINDA MUNOZ-SCOTT AND LUKE SCOTT
EDITORS, MARRIAGEWORKS Continue reading →

Gordon and Beverley Moyes

Gordon and Beverley Moyes have been working in Christian ministry together for over fifty years. They first went out together at the tender age of thirteen and have been happily married since 1959. Following Gordon’s time at bible college, they served at a number of churches in Victoria before Gordon was chosen to lead Sydney’s Wesley Mission. Under Gordon’s 27 years of leadership the organisation grew to become Australia’s largest non-government welfare provider, caring annually for tens of thousands of needy Australians. Now living on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Gordon continues to serve as a Member of NSW Parliament. Gordon and Beverley have owned and operated Family Talk and MarriageWorks Magazines since 1989.

Jim and Grace Vine

Jim & Grace Vine met at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and married in 1961. They have served together in OAC Ministries since 1962. In 1979 they presented their first Marriage Growth Seminar at Sunnybank Baptist Church in Brisbane, and for the past 19 years they have run the OAC Family Life Programs across Australia. Their MarriageWorks Video Series for small groups was released in 2001, and last year MarriageWorks PREP was released for engaged couples. They now live in semi-retirement on the Sunshine Coast, promoting and supplying the MarriageWorks material. They officially retired from their role as editors/publishers of MarriageWorks magazine in July 2010, after 21 years of service in this ministry.

Luke Scott and Linda Munoz-Scott

We’ve been on our honeymoon since 2003. Our baby girl joined us in 2008, and our baby boy joined us in late 2010. After contributing since 2005, we’re now honoured and daunted to edit MarriageWorks. We know that marriage works, when its lovers do.

Both of us have worked as advisers in NSW Parliament. Luke completed his Bachelor of Engineering and is now finishing his PhD and running an environmental consultancy. Linda completed degrees in law and commerce and is now undertaking postgraduate research studies in sexuality, running the Puresex ministry, and looking after babies. Having served as young adult leaders at our local church, we’re now looking to serve the community at large.

Click here for Marriage Works Magazine Continue reading →

Sitting in a Hong Kong hospital with our five-year-old son, we were certainly not expecting to hear words like cancer or leukaemia. The doctor’s report left us a little breathless – our active and normally healthy child had cancer. Within twenty-four hours of diagnosis, his small body was struggling to deal with the battle going on inside. Within forty-eight hours, he was literally fighting for his life. My husband and I were trying to make sense of all that was going on around us. Our question wasn’t so much ‘why’ but ‘what’ – ‘God, what on earth is going on’?

Only hours earlier, we had been planning a dinner out with some friends and other weekend activities. We now found ourselves in a cold and uninviting hospital room, surrounded by medical personnel who showed very little warmth or sympathy for the news we had just received. We were totally unprepared to hear the word ‘cancer’. Nor had we any idea that we would be spending the next two years in and out of hospital with our son, fighting this horrible disease.

I have heard people talk about a moment of clarity that you get when tragedy befalls you. Suddenly, you see everything differently and your perspective on life changes. That did happen for us but, in some respects, it was short-lived. Within seconds of that ‘life flashing before your eyes’ revelation, the enormity and messiness of normal life can start to crowd back in. Who would care for our daughter, Sophia? Could my husband Gary have time off work? Was Hong Kong the right place to be receiving treatment? How would we cope as one of the very few, non-Chinese speaking families in a Chinese hospital? What about the fact that we lived over an hour from the hospital? Countless questions ran through my mind as I struggled to regain some sense of control over our life. Continue reading →

We all know that trust is the foundation on which all good marriages are built. But do we really know what trust is and how it works, how it breaks down and what we need to do to keep it?

Of the thousands of people I’ve interviewed over the years, in multiple countries, 99% agreed that TRUST is critical to their marriage (to all their relationships, actually).

But get this – less than 5% said they actually did anything to actively build trust within their relationships!

Part of the problem, I found, wasn’t a lack of willingness or desire to build trust, but that they simply didn’t know how to.

Of course, there are the obvious things, aren’t there: don’t lie, don’t cheat, spend time together, and so on. But how good would it be if you actually knew exactly what trust is and what you needed to do, not only to build it, but to keep it intact?

Let me share with you first, how it was that I came to dedicate my life to teaching people around the world how to build and restore trust in their businesses, homes and communities.

My son, Lachlan, who was 9 at the time, had made me a card for Mother’s Day.

I read it, told him I thought it was lovely, but then asked him ‘What do you mean ‘Sometimes she can keep promises?’

He said ‘Well, you don’t always keep your promises!’

‘Are you serious? Give me an example’, I said to him.

‘Well, a few weekends ago you said we’d go to the movies on the weekend, and then we didn’t end up going.’

I remembered what happened that weekend. Some people dropped in and we just got busy. I didn’t really think it was a promise, but he did. I then started thinking about all the times I did that with him, then all the times I did that with everyone. It’s a bit like the ‘Yes, we must do lunch’ thing that we do. My head went into a spin.

‘How does that make you feel when I do that?’ I asked him. Lachlan was sitting on the end of my bed, looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I don’t know when I can trust you.’ Continue reading →

Marriage is a mystery. We are two, but we’re also one. And with God that makes three. Or two, if we’re one. But he’s three. So that’s four of us. But he’s three in one, so that’s two. Hmmm, anyways, marriage is a mystery somewhat like the trinity is a mystery. And it’s often this union between husband and wife that we (Christians) hope to be a simplified illustration of the Godhead to the world around us. Or at least we have some kind of inkling that the way people see our marriage will tell them something about what God is like. So we need to make it look good.

Maybe your marriage has started to crack and amongst the many deep and important thoughts you’ve been processing, you’ve considered how your failed marriage will reflect badly on God. Not just to the loving Christians around you (who have been there throughout your relationship and have tried to help you stay together through their support and advice and reminders of the promise you made to one another and the times you’ve had together and how you truly love one another), not just to them, but also, and let’s face it, especially, you’ve considered how these cracks that are appearing in your marriage may look to… non-Christians (for want of a better term).

Or maybe for all intents and purposes you have an okay marriage. It’s wonderful on the surface but there isn’t any real depth, which you wouldn’t admit to anyone except perhaps yourself if you really thought about it, (which you probably won’t unless faced with a crisis of some description or a massive revelation). But it’s okay that your marriage is only wonderful on the surface, because we all know that the surface is the reflective part of an object anyway. So the good is being reflected and people can truly see God in your wonderful relationship with one another. If they continue to see your wonderful marriage they will eventually realise that this is simply a reflection of God’s relationship within himself and with us and therefore they will make the logical conclusion that life with God is ideal. No pressure.

Or maybe you have a wonderfully deep and intrinsically beautiful marriage but you still consider how your relationship reflects God to others when you occasionally have a minor lapse of composure and reprimand your spouse for forgetting to pack the wipes/pick up clothes off the floor/play Xbox until 2 am/.

But whatever your marriage picture and subsequent reflection of God to the world, maybe it’s time to consider some questions. Continue reading →

Today, the institution of marriage is under assault like never before. The biblical standard of one man remaining monogamously attached to one woman for life has been diluted to grant an individual the legal right to an unlimited number of divorces and remarriages for any cause or reason. Not only are secularists pushing for the legalization of same-sex marriage, some even are promoting polygamy. The Bible calls all these violations of the biblical marriage standard sexual immorality. The secular term is “promiscuity.” Continue reading →

Since 1989 MarriageWorks Magazine has been putting helpful and enjoyable relationship resources in the hands of young and not-so-young married couples. Now the very first edition has gone online at www.mwmarriage.com.au and is totally free. Continue reading →