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The Ministry of Marriage
Dr. Jim Binney shows the biblical plan for building a life together even if only one partner is pursuing it. His book emphasizes how applying biblical thinking brings miraculous results to even severe
- GenresMarriage
232 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2003
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51 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 7, 2017
This is probably my favorite book 📚 on marriage that I've read!! I love his Bible perspective on everything and if you start with anything else you have a faulty foundation!! #God'sWordHasTheAnswersForEverything
September 11, 2024
This book is a must for every married couple.
April 20, 2023
This was an easy read, so that was practical for a busy spouse/parent.
This book had a lot of fluff in the beginning, I felt, where the author tried to say why we should listen to him. I get the whole establishment of credibility thing, but ehh. Too much maybe? 🤷🏼♀️
I also had some issues with tone throughout: yes, our culture is hedonistic, but Binney could focus his time enlightening us to the beauty of God’s expectations and plan for marriage and decrying how the *church and individual Christians* have neglected the Bible to educate our family relationships, and less time repeating that the worldly world is doing its thing. Just me. I also did not appreciate his example of bragging on little girls in the nicest dresses at his school to encourage other girls to act and dress a certain way—they were “trying to please him.” Nope. I think this guy’s head and heart are in the right place about praise being a good tool, but I don’t agree with that specific strategy for the area of modesty and dress. The extra rambling made the book less compact; think he could have stayed conversational without this kind of fluff. This issue took off a star for me.
This book rivals “The Meaning of Marriage” in some key points I’ve not heard in any other book. Mainly that you can’t marry the wrong person: if you learn to live and minister like Jesus, any person is the right person, whether they are also a believer or not (notwithstanding not being unequally yoked on purpose). Along those lines that you don’t need to spend your life waiting to find the right person. A “true love” can’t promise they’ll always be the person you want them to be, because they can’t predict who they themselves will be in ten, twenty, etc. years, just as you can’t predict who you will be. The point of marriage is to commit to a lifetime of learning how to love no matter what happens, not to falling into love and fighting hard to keeping things exactly that way. Expect change and growth. And pain, and tragedy, and trials…to shape your family. This information is mostly in chapters 7 and 8, which list myths about love and marriage.
Binney references ministering to your mate’s love language in chapter 13, but he also references ministering to temperament. I have never had an author mention temperament, and I wish he would have elaborated more! Temperament is different from a love language or even personality in some ways. He also discusses that studying temperament can be wrongly motivated: “to understand yourself, to get your mate to understand you, to try to predict the responses of others, or to use this knowledge as a power leverage…” The right reasons (to better understand and then minister to your mate) are obvious, so I found the wrong reasons shining a light into my own life. Mostly I need to move past the intellectual and into actually finding ways to minister based on the knowledge I’ve gained. Binney talks about that as well.
Chapter 15 “Mercy in Action” and chapter 16 “How Do I Forgive” were clear cut, succinct, and well-written. If you read these chapters alone you would benefit. The idea that offering your mate mercy and forgiveness is a “high and holy calling, a sacred trust from God” could use much more emphasis in Christendom. We have the opportunity to intercede for our mates like no one else can or would.
This book was a gift, and I’ll keep it on my shelf for the chapters referenced above.
This book had a lot of fluff in the beginning, I felt, where the author tried to say why we should listen to him. I get the whole establishment of credibility thing, but ehh. Too much maybe? 🤷🏼♀️
I also had some issues with tone throughout: yes, our culture is hedonistic, but Binney could focus his time enlightening us to the beauty of God’s expectations and plan for marriage and decrying how the *church and individual Christians* have neglected the Bible to educate our family relationships, and less time repeating that the worldly world is doing its thing. Just me. I also did not appreciate his example of bragging on little girls in the nicest dresses at his school to encourage other girls to act and dress a certain way—they were “trying to please him.” Nope. I think this guy’s head and heart are in the right place about praise being a good tool, but I don’t agree with that specific strategy for the area of modesty and dress. The extra rambling made the book less compact; think he could have stayed conversational without this kind of fluff. This issue took off a star for me.
This book rivals “The Meaning of Marriage” in some key points I’ve not heard in any other book. Mainly that you can’t marry the wrong person: if you learn to live and minister like Jesus, any person is the right person, whether they are also a believer or not (notwithstanding not being unequally yoked on purpose). Along those lines that you don’t need to spend your life waiting to find the right person. A “true love” can’t promise they’ll always be the person you want them to be, because they can’t predict who they themselves will be in ten, twenty, etc. years, just as you can’t predict who you will be. The point of marriage is to commit to a lifetime of learning how to love no matter what happens, not to falling into love and fighting hard to keeping things exactly that way. Expect change and growth. And pain, and tragedy, and trials…to shape your family. This information is mostly in chapters 7 and 8, which list myths about love and marriage.
Binney references ministering to your mate’s love language in chapter 13, but he also references ministering to temperament. I have never had an author mention temperament, and I wish he would have elaborated more! Temperament is different from a love language or even personality in some ways. He also discusses that studying temperament can be wrongly motivated: “to understand yourself, to get your mate to understand you, to try to predict the responses of others, or to use this knowledge as a power leverage…” The right reasons (to better understand and then minister to your mate) are obvious, so I found the wrong reasons shining a light into my own life. Mostly I need to move past the intellectual and into actually finding ways to minister based on the knowledge I’ve gained. Binney talks about that as well.
Chapter 15 “Mercy in Action” and chapter 16 “How Do I Forgive” were clear cut, succinct, and well-written. If you read these chapters alone you would benefit. The idea that offering your mate mercy and forgiveness is a “high and holy calling, a sacred trust from God” could use much more emphasis in Christendom. We have the opportunity to intercede for our mates like no one else can or would.
This book was a gift, and I’ll keep it on my shelf for the chapters referenced above.
July 23, 2016
Lots of vignettes, very standard counseling/marriage book. Chapter 17 stands out, and if i could get copies of it alone, I would distribute to all my married friends. A systematic theology of sex, basically.
February 7, 2017
Good book on the reminder of the Biblical purpose of marriage--ministry.
July 29, 2016
The absolute best book I have read on marriage, and I have read a lot! This book is a game changer for sure! My own marriage is proof! I cannot recommend it highly enough!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews