Coming up on marriage today with Jimmy and Karen.

And you say, well you don't love them as much as I love them.

Well, let me talk about this for just a minute.

Okay, first of all, a lot of people are very emotionally damaged, you know, when they've had a previous marriage or

previous relationship. Okay so you don't love them as much as I love them. You know the

greatest love on earth is a decision not an emotion. I can choose to love your

children just as much as you do. I can

honestly say today I love those kids like my own but it didn't happen overnight.

It's a commitment to a process. A blended family, when you define blended families, it's a marriage where one or both spouses bring children with them from a previous marriage or relationship.

Sometimes it wasn't a marriage.

Sometimes it was an unwanted pregnancy that resulted in a child or children or maybe

multiple marriages or something like that.

But there's a different dynamic to it.

50% of all families are blended families.

But there's also higher divorce in blended families, which isn't necessary.

It's really necessary because there are dynamics present day one in blended families that are not

present in other families. And you know, I mean, there's enough risk of divorce in a regular marriage, but when you have

a blended family marriage, we need to understand the special issues related to that.

I want to talk about non-biological parenting is again and this is a very special challenge for blended families.

Here are the challenges. Number one, the protective instincts of a biological parent keeping their child away from the step-parent.

Now this is one of the leading causes of divorces in blended families.

The law of possession, there are four laws of marriage in Genesis 224 and 25.

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