The Value of Premarital Counseling
Hannah
Almost ten years ago, Nick had recently proposed and we were beginning to plan our wedding. We had dated on and off for about five years and had lived most of our relationship tied to the world. Our relationship started off pretty tumultuous as I was saved but chose to turn away from the Lord upon entering college and Nick wasn’t saved and living the only way he knew at the time. To make a very long story short, Nick ended up getting saved in February of 2015 after we had reconnected post breakup and after we got back together, we were trying to figure out how to follow Christ. What started off as a zealous, eager, and hopeful endeavor ended up in us begrudgingly trying to attend church but never finding the right place. We had a lot of unrealistic expectations but also never had opportunities for true accountability and investment. Then we were engaged and faced with a very sobering consideration: do we truly want to seek out how to have a biblical marriage or are we just going to be lukewarm Christians? Neither of us remember how we decided to reach out to our former teacher Brandon Briscoe, but nonetheless, we knew that Mr. Briscoe was a Christian and maybe he’d be willing to take us through premarital counseling. I remember thinking to myself, “Surely, this will help us work through all of our problems.”
Brandon and Eva Briscoe decided to take us through premarital under two conditions: 1) we needed to be a part of a local church and 2) we needed to stop fornicating if that was taking place. Neither of us had any hesitation in light of these two conditions because at the time of us choosing to commit ourselves to this, we were desperate for investment; desperate for accountability; desperate for someone to teach us God’s word; and desperate for someone to show us how to honor God and bring him glory through our future marriage.
It is amazing to look back at this time in our lives because it is so evident how God orchestrated us coming to the end of ourselves in our relationship and how greatly he used the Briscoes to invest in us and teach us about what God says about biblical marriage. It has made a lasting impact on our lives in so many different ways that this entire blog post could be spent reflecting on all God has done from that point forward. But, our hope and prayer is that not only this brief testimony but the rest of this blog post would provide an overview of the impact of premarital counseling, the importance of it, and what to consider when you may be asked to take a younger couple through it in your local church.
Premarital counseling is an incredibly important part of ministry that seeks to serve younger couples by walking through God’s word and looking at what God has to say about marriage. One of the main goals is to help couples see how they can bring God glory through their marriage in all aspects of life. The lessons covered in premarital include: the purpose of marriage; the roles of marriage; family finances; conflict in marriage; intimacy; and moving forward.
Throughout each lesson, the counselors walk through what God’s word says about each topic by examining scripture, asking questions to the couple, and working through any necessary things brought up during each lesson. During this process, difficult things will be confronted — whether that be presumptions or preconceived ideas regarding marriage that each person has or things they maybe haven’t considered before. One of the reasons premarital is so helpful is because it forces the couple choosing to get married to examine themselves alongside their future spouse according to scripture. And perhaps even more importantly, it creates commitment and accountability to lead godly lives before their future spouse and in the presence of another couple by choosing to change based on their self-examinations (James 1:22-25).
It is God’s intention and purpose for two people choosing to get married to become one flesh (Gen 2:24), and while that is a beautiful and necessary part of marriage, it is incredibly difficult as couples learn to cleave to one another. Working through this difficult process is not only essential to the health of marriages, but to the church as a whole! If the church — the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12) — is one big family or a single body, then from a logical standpoint, it only makes sense that tenured married couples in the local church would choose to make a biblical investment into the lives of younger couples. The result of this, hopefully, mirrors that of a 1x1 discipleship relationship that increases the health of the body across the board: one married couple making a biblical investment into the life of a soon-to-be married couple (2 Tim 2:2). The more this type of biblical investment takes place between couples in a local church, the more healthy marriages will be in a local church. And before anyone knows it, the whole church will be healthier because Christian couples are not blindly wandering into their marriage like sheep without a shepherd. But rather, they are entering into their marriages with their eyes fixed on the solutions of Jesus Christ provided to them in scripture for the difficulties to come in their marriages.
With the understanding that marriage counseling is working towards a more spiritually sound marriage at a future time, the couple undergoing the counseling must use their present time to work through all the hard stuff. Throughout each lesson, there are discussion questions for each person to respond to and work through while sitting with the counselors. This may feel exposing or challenging but the more open and honest the couple is during the meetings, the better off they will be as things arise once married. It is imperative that the counselors do their due diligence by creating an environment where the couple feels comfortable asking questions and working through whatever they need to work through. This looks like the premarital counselors engaging with a spirit of understanding and hospitality more so than thinking they must have all of the answers. Connections are made in the engaged couple not through them feeling isolated in what they bring up, but through them feeling related to in their uncertainty. Just as we see in a discipleship relationship, we should help the engaged couple see that God’s word contains solutions to our problems and that similar experiences are shared from one married couple to another.
Nick
Hannah and I at this point have been married for eight years and have had the opportunity over the last several years to take four young couples through the Starting Right counseling material. Additionally, we are a couple months away from taking a fifth couple through the material as well. With that context in mind, what we’ve come to learn since having these types of opportunities is that couples really do need counseling before making this life-long commitment to each other.
There is a certain level of naivety that an engaged Christian couple has about what marriage will be like — and that’s fine! It’s wonderful even. It’s not a counselor's job to steal away the joy that the engaged couple feels as they imagine the potential of what their marriage might be like. It is the counselor’s job, however, to bring sobriety into that place of imagination for the married couple. For example, some of these couples have not thought critically about how they will manage their finances, and many of them have no idea how difficult a task that can actually be. Although the idea of “sharing income” sounds fun, easy, and is something that creates excitement, couples ought to be made aware that a spending and saving strategy is necessary to avoid unnecessary financial hardship down the line. I have often found out that many young couples have a very clouded understanding of how restricted their day-to-day lives might be due to their combined annual income. So just opening their eyes to the importance of responsible financial stewardship before they have a joint bank account is something that can help them to avoid a trial-by-fire scenario that so many married couples in the world today experience, often resulting in situations like divorce and separation.
Another example would be intimacy, which young, engaged couples frequently have a shallow understanding of. It is so valuable for the counselors in these relationships to discuss that there are different types of intimacy in marriages, in addition to physical intimacy, which will have a profound impact on how physical intimacy takes place. The wickedness of the world has spoiled so much about what physical intimacy is actually designed by God to do in the lives of a married couple. And with that, it is critical for these engaged couples to have their misconceptions about this topic dispelled before finding out that the portrayal of a sexual relationship in modern media is a lie. They must be taught that intimacy between a man and a woman under the covenant of marriage is more meaningful and far better than what has been demonstrated by worldly examples. All that being said, it is very important that detailed conversations take place regarding all types of intimacy, but especially physical intimacy through premarital counseling. The lesson on intimacy itself is set up so these conversations can happen in a way that is appropriate for all parties involved.
I could go through each lesson topic one by one and explain all the misconceptions that young people may have regarding the topic and marriage, but instead I’ll just say this: The world has lied to young people about the experience of marriage. The cure to dissolving every one of those lies is found in the truth of God’s word. It is the job of mature married couples in the church to point out what is untrue and to prepare them for what God actually desires for their future relationship. This is one of the key purposes of the church, to help perfect the saints and to edify the body of Christ (Eph 4:12). We must fulfill the role of teachers and make these investments with joy.
One final benefit of premarital counseling is the lasting relationship it helps establish between the engaged couple and the counseling couple. The investment creates a healthy structure within the local church by connecting younger couples with seasoned marriages that they can continue to turn to long after their wedding. Once a couple has walked through premarital counseling together, they should know they have trusted people they can reach out to for wisdom, encouragement, prayer, and support. Hannah and I have experienced this firsthand. Since completing premarital counseling with the Briscoes more than eight years ago, we have continued to seek their counsel through questions, difficult seasons, and times when we simply wanted to spend time together. Their investment in our marriage did not end before our wedding day. It has continued throughout our marriage, and God has used their wisdom, support, and prayers to strengthen us through many different circumstances. In addition to a life-long friendship beginning, their decision to make an investment in our lives all those years ago created a lasting impact on both our ministries that God is still using today for his glory by way of this connection that was made through our local church.
If you are going to go through premarital counseling or have been invited by the leadership of your local church to serve as a premarital counseling couple, take that opportunity seriously. And for the counselor, what lies before you is more than the chance to help prepare a couple for their wedding day, it is an opportunity to influence the course of a marriage, build lasting spiritual relationships, and strengthen the ministry of the local church. Above all, it is a tangible way to bear fruit for the kingdom of God. And God-willing, it will be fruit that remains and reproduces. If you desire to make a lasting impact in God’s spiritual kingdom, prayerfully say yes to this opportunity and allow God to use you to make a meaningful investment.
Nick and Hannah Hatton faithfully serve and lead in a variety of ministries at Midtown Baptist Temple in Kansas City, Missouri.
