Jim Daly Christian Blog and Commentary

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What Every Marriage Needs

  • Jim Daly Jim Daly is president and chief executive officer of Focus on the Family, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping families thrive.
  • Updated Aug 29, 2013

We’re rolling out a new marriage program here at Focus on the Family designed to help newlyweds as well as couples married for years. It’ll speak to new moms and dads just starting their family, as well as seasoned parents preparing to send their kids off to college. It has the potential to give hope and help to husbands and wives facing bankruptcy, infertility or even adultery.

Does this sound too good to be true? How can one program do so much?

Well, the answer’s simple. The program is … YOU.

Focus is working with marriage counselors and mentoring pioneers Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott as we introduce “Focus Marriage Mentors,” a new and dynamic effort that will equip couples to pour into the lives of others, all while enjoying a “boomerang blessing” themselves.

Before you say you don’t have what it takes to walk alongside another couple, let me encourage you: You don’t have to have a perfect relationship to become a marriage mentor. You don’t have to be in a marriage that’s decades-long. You don’t even have to have an answer to every question.

All you need is to be one step ahead of another couple and be willing to share how God got you through that season or situation of married life. Maybe you and your spouse overcame cultural differences. Perhaps you’re part of a blended family and together you weathered the challenges of bringing together two sets of children. It might be that you still remember how tough it was to maintain your relationship through multiple military deployments. Maybe you and your spouse have survived sleepless nights with small children and can now offer a word of encouragement to weary moms and dads. Perhaps you’ve ridden the roller coaster of adoption and feel led to walk alongside another couple as they journey to build their family.

Whatever it is, you and your spouse have a story of God’s faithfulness in your lives and marriage. He carried you through something, and you learned some hard lessons along the way.

The apostle Paul wrote repeatedly of enduring adversity. Writing to the church at Corinth, he suggested that one reason God helps us through our own troubles is “so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor 1:4).

In other words, in the modern vernacular, you’ve got to “pay it forward.”

And in this case, when you do so, you’re joining a movement that already includes more than 250,000 couples who are working to turn the tide for marriage. And if you decide to do participate, you’ll discover what they’ve already learned – that investing in another’s marriage pays back the blessing tenfold for the mentoring couple. Helping to strengthen another’s relationship makes your own marriage stronger.

You might even say that mentoring is what every marriage needs.

Visit our Focus Marriage Mentors website at www.focusonthefamily.com/marriagementors where we’ve put together everything you’ll need to equip you and your spouse for this strategic and rewarding outreach. There you’ll also find videos, FAQs, articles and resources and information on how to launch a mentor ministry in your church, and a link to start your training and certification.

I’m excited about this new venture. I believe it has tremendous potential to strengthen marriages across the nation. Join us, won’t you? Help us turn the tide on marriage … one marriage at a time.


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