A couple’s devotional for fighting less in marriages, featuring weekly scripture, prayers, and faith-based skills-building exercises for navigating through difficult conversations and for establishing healthy communication Even the healthiest of relationships can be thrown off-balance when there are breaks in communication and trust. Pray More, Fight Less by Karin Earl, LMFT, helps couples find spiritual and practical support while recentering marriages on God. Faith-based therapy exercises round out the weekly devotions to guide couples who are navigating through conflict establish healthier communication and stronger bonds. Pray More, Fight Less features: • 52 WEEKS OF PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONS: Powerful scripture and God’s truths with real-life anecdotes provide guidance on refocusing marriages on God when communication and trust break down. Each devotion offers a prayer for God’s strength, wisdom, and healing in seasons of conflict. • FAITH-BASED COMMUNICATION EXERCISES: Practical faith-based exercises and activities to help married couples navigate through conflict, build communication skills, and establish stronger connections • LICENSED FAMILY THERAPIST: Author and therapist Karin Earle, LMFT’s, credentials and passion help others to live and experience spiritual healing

Offers a devotional for couples intended to bring them closer together while bringing them closer to God.

Build a Biblical Foundation for Your Marriage With devotions that reflect the joys and challenges that many couples face today, the bestselling NIV Couples' Devotional Bible is designed to help you build your relationship on the one foundation you can count on: God's Word. The devotions cover a variety of topics, including communication, careers, sex, money, fears, setting goals, step parenting, forgiveness, and more. By learning to openly discuss these topics through the lens of Scripture, you will become more aligned in your marriage as you grow together in Christ. This devotional Bible was developed in partnership with the team at Christianity Today International and features material from bestselling experts in relationships and marriage, so you can be confident that the devotions are relevant, trusted, and honest. Features: Complete text of the accurate, readable, and clear New International Version (NIV) 260 weekday devotions 52 weekend devotions with advice from bestselling writers, marriage therapists, and pastors, including Les and Leslie Parrott, Gary Thomas, John Townsend, Henry Cloud, and Gary Smalley Weekend devotions include tips, helps, quizzes, activities, and a “Let’s Talk” section that promotes application and interaction Book introductions Subject index List of contributors

Guide for Celebrating® Matrimony walks through each part the revised ritual noting best practices and appropriate adaptations while providing pastoral guidance for forming and catechizing couples; ideas for leading wedding workshops, handling difficult situations, and developing parish guidelines; as well as offering suggestions for parish evangelization and hospitality. This book includes: Theological reflections on the Sacrament of Matrimony; Historical overview of the development of Marriage rituals; Answers to frequently asked questions; A glossary and suggestions for additional resources; Inspirational and instructive quotations from Scripture and Church documents; Ritually instructive photos.

From communication, conflict, and careers to sex, in-laws, and money. Questions Couples Ask is your first resource for help with the foremost hurdles of marriage. Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott share cutting-edge insights on the 100 top questions married couples ask. Whether you want to improve your own marriage or nurture the marriages of others, Christianity's premier husband-wife marriage counseling team equips you with expert advice for building a thriving relationship: How can I be honest without hurting my partner's feelings? What do we do when one of us is a spender and one of us is a hoarder? What can we do to protect our marriage against extramarital affairs? How can we be more spiritually intimate as a married couple?

This study explores the way Calvinist experientialism provided both a theology and an epistemology in the poetry of five early modern English poets: William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, John Donne, Fulke Greville, and John Milton. In both official church ecclesiology and informal devotional practice, the Reformation introduced the idea that an individual's experience of devotion did not only entail feeling, but also thought. For early modern English people, bodily experience offered a means of corroborating and verifying devotional truth, making the invisible visible and knowable. This volume maintains that these religious developments gave early modern thinkers and poets a new epistemological framework for imagining and interpreting devotional intention and access. These Reformed models for devotion not only shaped how people experienced their encounters with God; the changing religious landscape of post-Reformation England also held profound implications for how English poets described sexual longing and access to earthly beloveds in the literary production of the period. In placing the works of English poets in conversation with devotional writers such as William Perkins, Samuel Hieron, Joseph Hall, and William Gouge, this book demonstrates how the English Calvinist tradition attributed epistemological potential to a wide range of ordinary experience, including sexual experience.

This pocket size book is for the soul looking to learn how to be ever more devoted to Our Lady. Fr. Emile Neubert, a 20th century, French Mariologist, writes this work in-depth as compared to his condensed book, "My Ideal, Jesus, son of Mary." Fr. Neubert, a Marianist, one of the finest Mariologists of the twentieth century, is not only the author of scholarly works, but of an amazing number of excellent books on matters spiritual and pastoral from a Marian perspective. This work, only now published in an English translation, first appeared in France in 1952 and was quickly translated into most European languages, but never in English. Fr. Neubert considered it one of his most important works. Countless priests have found this text an inspiring book of meditation and a source of priestly renewal. Throughout this work, Mary is presented especially as Mother: the Mother of God, our Mother, the Mother of all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Mary’s Motherhood is an image of the maternal character of the Church. For Fr. Neubert, Marian devotion consists not so much in specific practices but, rather, in offering one’s life to the Virgin Mary, an offering which has an ecclesial dimension. For St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, Marian consecration is a solemn renewal of one’s baptismal commitment confided to the Virgin Mother. For Blessed William Joseph Chaminade, Marian consecration is to assist Mary in her apostolic mission: as she gave birth to Christ, “the First-born among many brethren, she cooperates, with a mother’s love, in the generation and formation of the faithful” (Lumen Gentium 63).

From New York Times bestselling authors Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller comes a gorgeously packaged daily devotional that takes us on year-long journey into discovering the meaning of marriage Marriage is the most profound human relationship there is. Coming to know and love your spouse is one of the most rewarding and wondrous things we can experience in life. But it is also one of the most difficult and painful. In this 365-day devotional, Timothy Keller and his wife of forty-three years, Kathy Keller, share powerful instructions on how to have a successful marriage. The Kellers draw from and expand upon lessons they first introduced in their book The Meaning of Marriage, offering stories, daily scriptures, and prayer prompts that will inspire anyone who wants to know God and love more deeply in this life.

The idea to write fictional letters to marital couples on how to use God's lifetime warranty on their marriages came into being in the process of a sermon preparation as a guest pastor for a local church in November 2011. I prayed about which message to deliver for many days. About two days before Sunday, I had a dream that a young lady participated during my sermon. After the sermon, her family greeted me well and said I made her speak in public for the first time and I gave her the encouragement that she needs for the rest of her life. Then I woke up. On the actual Sunday service, during the sermon, I asked the congregation how many of them had a dog or a cat. A young lady - a 17 year old said she had a cat. I asked if she ever took her cat for a walk, she said, "no." I asked, "why not?" She replied, "Nobody does!" Then I said people take their dogs for walks, but this does not mean that dogs are more important or better than cats. Cats have their own usefulness. God who created us knows that we are not the same and that we cannot function in the same way. One should not be boasting that s/he is better than the other. After the service, the grandfather of the cat owner who spoke during my sermon and her aunt came to me and thanked me for the opportunity given to the young lady to talk for the first time in public, which would enable her to express herself publicly. When I was praying at home after the sermon, I had the feeling that God wanted me to tell people to try out what seems to be unusual for them. It has been my concern for many years that many couples don't take their wedding vows seriously. It is affecting children a great deal; many children have two or three stepparents. Those children without stepparents seem to be the odd ones among their peers. In Canada, about 50% of first marriages may likely end up in divorce. One may presume that the rate of divorce in second marriages would be lower, but instead it is higher at 72% while, third marriages have the highest divorce rate of 85% (Comparative Annual Divorce Rate in Canada). Similarly, in America, the first marriage divorce rate ranges from 41 - 50%; second marriage divorce rate is between 60-67% and third marriage is between 73-74%. (Information on Divorce Rate and Statistics). This book is fictional. The stories are not real stories. They are about my past experiences with heterosexual couples in my counseling or pastoral care. I do not have a particular person or couple in mind. No names in the book are real names. If anybody's name or any couples have the same names as used in the book, I would like them to know that I am not telling their particular story or using them as an example. The Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the bible stories/instructions/messages and the same Holy Spirit is still talking to us today. I believe, I was inspired to write the book. I will encourage anyone or couple whose story or stories are similar to what's in the book not to be too critical but to take it (the book) as a means through which God is speaking to them to change. No marriage is too bad that God cannot change for better. Don't fold your arms and accept your troubled marriage as a done deal. I will advise the readers to call upon the author of marriage, God through Jesus Christ, to fix their marriages. He is able. Since the idea of letter writing is becoming obsolete, one may be wondering why letters to marital couples, and not email, text, or any other modern means of communication. Letter writing is an old form of communication, which is to inform, correct, and educate. In the New Testament, there are many letters written by Paul the apostle and others to individuals and churches to deal with issues, circumstances, and problems faced by the recipients. We never read about their responses or their initial letters to the Apostles. Similarly, only letters written to the couples are featured in this book. Most of the Letters in this book are long term correspondence with the imaginary couples. The objectives of the letters are to: 1). Encourage couples not to give up on their dream of having a successful marriage and to continue fighting until the victory is won. 2). Enable the counsellors/pastors to keep their counselees' hope alive as long as they are still interested in counselling. 3). Help families and friends to keep on supporting the couples in crises. Note that some of the letters end with prayer, while some didn't. The idea is we don't have to impose prayer on people. Praying with people is as important as praying for people in absentia. We need permission to pray with people, but we don't need permission to pray for people while they are not there. In both my pastoral and counselling ministries, the most prevalent issues are marriage and family matters. This book thus serves as a handbook to help couples in crises or prevent couples from getting into a marital mess. It can be used in marriage enrichment groups or as a counsellor/Pastor's handbook. The group Leaders, Counsellors or Pastors should not use the book as a weapon of judgment against anyone, but as a means of correction and education. The book is calling people who just want a family and not a marriage. Many couples lose love in their marriages. Love is the greatest gift God gives to people but many people do not accept it. They choose anger instead of peace or love from God. The book is calling the readers who are making wrong decisions for wrong reasons. We should not let bitterness, anger, frustration, alcohol, drugs, etc., ruin our marital relationships. The principles of marital solutions in the book focus on God. May God bless you as you read the it. Shalom!

First published in 1962, Reason and Imagination presents collection of fourteen essays dedicated to Marjorie Hope Nicholson and is divided equally between works of her colleagues and of her former students. It contains themes like noble numbers and poetry of devotion, Cromwell as Davidic King, the isolation of the renaissances hero, Milton’s dialogue on Astronomy, music, mirth and galenic traditions in England, the Augustan conception of history, Locke and Sterne, and literary criticism and artistic interpretation, to weave a narrative of the history of ideas in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of literary history, philosophy, comparative literature, and English literature in general.