Love Like You Mean It™ Cruise 2011

On February 14 we embarked with 2200 guests on the inaugural Love Like You Mean It™ marriage cruise. Our responsibilities were to pray during each session for our guests, the speakers, artists and entertainers, and our staff. We were encouraged to have a number of others join us in the prayer room at various times throughout the four-day cruise.


From pre-cruise prayer requests we knew that there were couples looking for immediate help in their relationship and couples looking for encouragement in their already good marriage. Our over arching prayer request was that God would meet couples in their area of need and that many couples would come away encourage to disciple others in marriage relationships. From the below selected comments we are encouraged that God answered our prayers.


We were really struggling! This trip was an answer to prayer. God opened my eyes as a Christian man and husband to step up and be intentional about changing me and my marriage through the power of the Holy Spirit. This marriage cruise saved my marriage!! - married 4 years

This was very instrumental in reviving my heart and re-dedicating my life to Christ. It really helped me figure out how to take my chaotic life and get back to what’s really important. The speakers helped me to sort through my feelings and figure out how to get back to God and a Christ-centered home. We were given the tools we needed to improve our marriage and work through issues. You’ve changed our marriage and our lives! Thank You!! - married 11 years

We were in love when we came, but we are more in love after 4 intense days than we could ever imagine. We have become “contagious” with a message that we can’t wait to get home and “spread” what we caught! - married 40 years

2010 ended on an exciting note, actually more than one!

Seeing the seriousness of the relationship between Rebecca and her boyfriend Jeff, we invited them to attend the Weekend to Remember® in St. Louis with us. They accepted and off we went for a weekend getaway.  Jeff, the assistant men's golf coach at Texas Tech, was on a recruiting trip and flew in from Dallas.  Rebecca and we flew in from Little Rock.  Our fights arrived early enough in the day to allow us some time to play on Friday afternoon giving us an opportunity to spend personal time with Jeff and Rebecca. A trip to the St. Louis Zoo fit the bill very nicely as we were able to walk and talk as we experienced many exotic animals.

The Weekend to Remember was a hit with both Jeff and Rebecca. Midway through the getaway Rebecca even commented "Mom and Dad,

God Space, A Review

God Space, Where Spiritual Conversations Happen Naturally (127 pages) by Doug Pollock, 2009, Group, Loveland, CO, group.com is a unique book for all generations. I was captivated by the title because of my personal belief that I needed to refresh my approach to evangelism and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I highly recommend this book as a resource for both evangelism and discipleship.

I was raised in a religious culture that specifically frowned on proselytizing, so personal sharing of one's faith simply was not practiced. After my college and military days I was introduced to the Person of Jesus Christ by a friend in a working environment. By God's grace ...

Our New Role at FamilyLife

It is with great joy that we enter into a new phase of ministry here at FamilyLife as the National Prayer Directors for the Weekend to Remember® (WTR). It is the perfect time, the perfect place, to serve a Perfect God. We are excited to see how God will manifest himself according to John 14:13-14

As the National Prayer Directors we will provide an effective and transferable scripture-based prayer effort for the WTR through a volunteer organization in each Weekend to Remember getaway area. We will help the local WTR City Ministry Team and the Regional FamilyLife Staff in selecting prayer leadership and intercessors for each WTR getaway. We will also provide the personnel training, organizational strategies, and resources necessary for each Weekend to Remember getaway area to have effective and specific prayer coverage for the WTR getaway cycle culminating in on-site hour by hour prayer coverage during the WTR sessions.

Grandparents

Now that I have been a grandpa for a couple of months I have a whole new perspective on prayer.  It started when we got the phone call but really set in when I received the following 'official' birth announcement from our son.

 "We have been reminded of our smallness and of God's majesty these last few weeks and continue to marvel that Father God would give up his Son on our behalf. That He would pay mind to us who are so small and even exceed that by giving us joy in the arrival of our own smaller son has helped us cling to Christ even more. Please join with us as we worship Christ our creator who thought it for our best to give us a baby boy:

Zebulun Miller (Zeb) - 7 lbs, 20 inches long, born on Aug 25th @ 12:24 AM and healthy to boot!!!"

Not being able to be hands on in raising Zeb, I realized that my greatest influence on Zeb is and will be by praying for him and his mom and dad.

If you are a grandparent, aunt or uncle you may be interested in the following quote from The Family Manifest regarding grandparents.

"We believe grandparents are to be honored as valued family members. We believe their

The Art of Marriage

August was an exciting time as we joined the entire FamilyLife staff for our staff conference. Our time of fellowship and training was capped with the premiere of The Art of Marriage. Wow! This video event makes it possible for individuals and churches to bring the biblical principles of marriage to their local community.


 The Art of Marriage is like no other video 'conference' experience you have seen.  This is not a recording of a live event but is designed specifically for the video audience.  Take a look at this clip, The Art of Marriage , then decide how you might use The Art of Marriage to minister to those in your sphere of influence.

Marriage, The Foundations

As Margie and I celebrate 30 years of marriage today I was reflecting on our beginnings and journey to this point in our lives.  I attribute our 'success' in marriage to three things; Jesus Christ, mentors, and biblical blueprints.  Our personal relationships with Jesus Christ gives us the capacity to grow together in unity.  Christ-following mentors early in our relationship lived out a picture of what it looks like when two imperfect people join together in marriage.  Biblical teaching in our churches and the Weekend to Remember® getaways we attended throughout our years of marriage have provided solid blueprints on which to build a strong marriage foundation.

In a recent Marriage Memo article, God's Purposes for Marriage, Dennis Rainey writes that "three purposes give your marriage a sense of direction, internal stability, and the stamp of God’s design. They lift your marriage above the everyday, run-of-the-mill relationship and place it on a high and lofty spiritual plane." These purposes are; 1) Mirror God’s image, 2) Complete each other and experience companionship, and 3) Multiply a godly legacy. Margie and I took these teachings to heart in 1980 and look at us now!  To God the glory!

You can find out more details about building a strong marriage foundation in the book Starting Your Marriage Right, by Dennis and Barbara Rainey, Thomas Nelson Publisher, 2000. Or you may listen to Dennis and Barbara on a Starting Your Marriage Right CD from FamilyLife®.