Training for an Excellent Marriage

Ultimately with R.C. Sproul

Ligonier Ministries

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2023

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many of us invest significant time and money in preparing for our career. Do we give the same priority to preparing for an excellent marriage? In this episode, R.C. Sproul exhorts us to consider how we may become more intentional as spouses.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If you want to have an excellent marriage, the first thing you have to be prepared to do is to work.
0:11.0	And that means studying.
0:18.0	One of the things that a professional football player has to be, he doesn't have to be an intellectual, but he better understand football.
0:26.0	If you're going to be a top accountant, you better understand the principles of accounting.
0:31.0	And you do know that intuitively.
0:34.0	People prepare for their careers in this country by going to college, investing thousands and thousands of dollars to attend courses to equip them for their vocation.
0:49.0	They stay at that preparation for years, make it an enormous financial commitment, and acquire as much skill and knowledge as they possibly can in order that they might be successful, in order that they may excel.
1:05.0	I want to ask you people, how many of you have read 50 books about marriage?
1:12.0	How many of you have spent $10,000 studying learning about marriage?
1:22.0	How many of you have read 50 books in preparation for your vocation? How many of you have spent $10,000 in preparation for your vocation?
1:32.0	If you lose your job for which you've trained and prepared and been educated, that will be a trauma for you, a serious trauma for your life.
1:48.0	But it will not affect you as adversely as a divorce.
1:54.0	Or the total loss in terms of alienation of one of your children.
2:04.0	There is a very real sense in which our families mean more to us than our jobs.
2:14.0	What man wouldn't quit his job if it meant it would save the life of his wife and family?
2:23.0	And yet in our country, we're all conditioned and taught to study hard, work prepare, prepare, prepare, train, train, train, train for vocation.
2:33.0	But marriage, you fall in love, you get the license, if you're one of those unusual people, you may get pre-marital counseling for one or two or three sessions.
2:46.0	And if you're really unmarried, maybe you even take a course in college on marriage and family planning.
2:53.0	That's about it.
2:55.0	Then we embark on one of the most high-risk enterprises that any human being can ever become involved in.
3:03.0	What I want to get out here is that if you want to have an excellent marriage, the first thing you have to be prepared to do is to work.
3:12.0	And to work hard because excellent marriages in this day and age when almost 50% of marriages in this country dissolve in divorce.
	...

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