Marriage is not a place to “stand up for your rights.” Marriage is a decision to serve the other.
I Corinthians 7:4
Let's be honest. The “till death do us part” of the marriage vow rings increasingly ironic.
We’ve all heard the startling statistics saying fifty-percent or more of today’s marriages will not survive. What we know for sure is that 200,000 new marriages each year end prior to the couples’ second anniversary.
The numbers can be massaged and debated, but most marriage experts agree that divorce is chipping steadily away at traditional values in our society. For too many of today’s new couples, marriage has become “till divorce do us part.”
Equally startling as the predictions and statistics, however, is the fact that less than a fifth of all marriages in America are preceded by some kind of formal marriage preparation.
Did you catch that?
Only 20 couples out of 100 get pre-marriage education or counseling.
And since three out of four U.S. marriages are blessed by a member of the clergy, columnist Michael McManus has long been calling churches “blessing machines.” He makes a good point.
The truth is that most engaged couples prepare more for their wedding than they do for their marriage.
We are out to change this.
In this week’s Devotion we want to tell you about a brand new tool we’ve been working on for years.
It’s called the SYMBIS Assessment. SYMBIS stands for Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts.
If you work with engaged or newlywed couples in any capacity we hope you’ll take a moment to look into it and become a Certified SYMBIS Facilitator.
We are passionate about getting this game-changing tool into the hands of people who can use it.
Reflect and Respond
What kind of pre-marriage education did you have when you got married and how did it impact your relationship?
Go ahead, tell us in the comments.
Related Resource
With more than a million copies sold, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts has become the gold standard for helping today’s engaged and newlywed couples enjoy lifelong love. This expanded and updated edition has been honed by years of feedback, professional experience and the latest research, making it more helpful and informative than ever.
How do you become a certified SYMBIS facilitator?
Excellent question Vicky.
When Jim & I got married we went through the traditional amount of meetings with the pastor. Maybe because we were over 40 & my husband was married once before he didn’t think we need much counseling (not true we actually needed more.) I did more on my own 5 love languages, your assessment tool, we saw fire proof & bought the book. These things help only if you put them into practice daily. SYMBIS would make a great blog post where people can share freely. The young couples getting married today may not have had the benefit of parents & other family members with long marriages. In addition to this marriage on television are portrayed as superficial. The addition of homosexual marriages on tv it’s no wonder these kids are confused. We’ll be married 7yrs November 25th it hasn’t always been easy we’ve both had to learn a lot. My father says “getting old isn’t for sissies” I say getting married isn’t for sissies or selfish people
“One fifth” of couples getting marriage counseling would be about 20 couples out of 100, not 5 out of 100. Still a low number.
Thank you. Came here to say that. Still low but four times better! Phew!
It was my first marriage to my widowed husband and I trusted that we would do fine since he had been married for 27 years. He didn’t believe we needed counseling so I disregarded my own dating philosophy. We had no prep for a blended family and had I known what I know now I would never have married my husband. We have stayed for fourteen years and I can honestly say that for me life has been much more difficult .
Great thing to promote.
My wife and I went through pre-marriage classes with a pastor that my wife knew and then we did the Saving your Second Marriage before it starts by you two. We had both been married before and were both hurt by our former spouse. We have found that the book and workbooks were a great asset to our marriage and we talk about it to other couples who are going down the road again. Our church in Orlando, has classes for married couples called MCU, Marriage Care University, and we have been attending since it started 7 years ago. “The Marriage Care University (MCU) exists to provide married couples the opportunity to devote a semester of time to the deepening and maturing of their marriage relationship.”, from our church website. They also have a pre marriage class as well.
The pre-marriage class, the book, and the MCU classes have really helped us with our marriage.
God Bless
We did SYMBIS with our Lutheran pastor over 15 years ago. We recommend it to anyone we can!
My husband and I went through a program with Touch Pointe Marriage Seminar mentors before we got married. 4-5 classes with video clips and then time for discussion, as well as a lengthy on-line quiz about marriage expectations, family of origin questions, etc, that the mentors went over with us to see where we agreed and where we had growth opportunities.
It was a big blessing to do the program! I had been married before, to a mentally ill, abusive man. Hubby had not been married, but has a son and a rough engagement to his mom before his birth. It gave us great talking points and helped him to consider some areas of marriage that he had not thought about or dealt with before. Plus, it gave me encouragement that I could/would be a good wife to a husband who was mentally healthy.
We have been married for 2 1/2 years and our pre-marital counseling/mentoring has definitely helped!
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[…] can’t stress this point enough…get premarital counseling! Statistics reveal that less one-fifth of marriages in America are preceded by some kind of formal marriage […]