{"id":80332,"date":"2024-07-25T10:38:03","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T15:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=80332"},"modified":"2024-07-25T10:39:34","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T15:39:34","slug":"4-foundations-of-marriage-and-marriage-counseling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=80332","title":{"rendered":"4 Foundations of Marriage and Marriage Counseling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Marriage Mini-Series<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re reading Part 1 in a several-part blog mini-series on marriage. I\u2019m developing these posts from my book, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/rpmministries.org\/bookstore\/gospel-centered-marriage-counseling-an-equipping-guide-for-pastors-and-counselors\/\">Gospel-Centered Marriage Counseling: An Equipping Guide for Pastors and Counselors<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p> <strong>Where Do <em>You<\/em> Start?<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>Ephesians 5:21-33 has to be the most often explored passage by couples, by pastors, and by marriage counselors. That is true in my ministry.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, it dawned on me one day that Paul does not start Ephesians in chapter 5! Perhaps the more startling revelation was that I should not start marriage counseling or my understanding of marriage in Ephesians 5, but instead in Ephesians 1:1 and following.<\/p>\n<p>When we start where Paul starts, our core understanding of marriage changes. This is vital, because:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>The first calling of a biblical marriage counselor is to help couples define or redefine marital reality.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When we build our marriages and our marriage counseling on all of Ephesians (and all of the Bible), we find at least four foundations for marriage.<\/p>\n<p> <strong>Marriage Foundation #1: G<\/strong><strong>lorifying God\u2014Ephesians 1:1-23<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>Apart from Scripture, our marital reality contains a self-centered focus<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>\u201cMarriage is about meeting my needs. Marriage is about making me happy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Paul\u2019s marital narrative teaches that marriage is all about glorifying<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most of us as head to Ephesians 5:21-33 as our main go-to passage for marriage. How could focusing on all of Ephesians help us to build a robust biblical foundation for marriage?<br \/>\nThe post 4 Foundations of Marriage and Marriage Counseling appeared first on RPM Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":80342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[408,1011],"class_list":["post-80332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rpm-ministries-bob-kellemen","tag-marriage","tag-marriage-counseling","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Gospel-Centered-Marriage-Counseling-8.png?fit=768%2C768&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80343,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80332\/revisions\/80343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}