IGNITE

Injecting Vitality into Your Marriage Life

Conference: People marry for many reasons, but most soon discover that marriage fails to live up to their expectations. Can a conflicted marriage become harmonious or even vitalized? Yes it can! This conference introduces a ministry that re-vitalizes marriages resulting in couples whose marriages are healthy pictures of the relationship between Jesus and His people. In the conference couples will experience a variety of IGNITE YOUR MARRIAGE workshop sessions to enable your churches to minister both to church couples and to couples in your church's community who need help and who need Jesus.

Conference Schedule & Session Topic:

Introduction of each session

Session 1: Unwrap God's Code in Women
Men, if you understand everything there is to know about your wife, you don't need this session. Ladies, if you understand everything there is to know about yourself, you don't need this session either. God made women and men differently in more ways than their gender. A better understanding of your wife or yourself just may develop into a better, more harmonious marriage.

Session 2: God's Work in Life and Marriage
God designed marriage, but when couples ignore His design, marriage becomes an ordeal. Until the last century, couples were expected to live in the misery of marriage for the benefit of their children. Now in many countries, up to 50% of marriages are dissolving, and everyone pays the price, especially the children. But there is hope, beginning with openness to change.

Session 3: Beginning Openness
Everyone has a life story, and sharing life stories develops relationships among couples that foster marital growth and the resolution of long-standing problems that couples face. We will use life maps to see and share our stories, and develop relationships for growth.

Session 4: Unwrap God's Code in Men
Women, if you understand everything there is to know about your husband, you don't need this session. Men, let's just say you need this session. Ladies, a better understanding of your husband, and men, of yourselves just may develop into a better, more harmonious marriage.

Session 5: Life Maps and Your Marriage Map
Experience how sharing life stories develops relationships among couples, and how sharing your Marriage Map develops understanding and a love for other couples. Begin to experience how working together develops understanding and compassion, then investment in loving and growing together.

Session 6: Accepting & Communication
Experience the first session of a unit of sessions that focus on marital communication. We can learn how to listen so that our mate knows we understand what she is telling us, and we empathize with what she is feeling. This session lays the foundation for positive marital communication.

Session 7: Grenades
This session, the first in a unit titled Bombs & Blessings, focuses on how couples often bring up a problem and reply to a criticism that is heard or implied. Grenades often lead to "Demon Dialogues," in which couples quarrel and may even fight. We will differentiate reacting from responding, then experience how to manage our bodies so we can respond and avoid demon dialogues.

Session 8: Awareness & Understanding
This session, the second in a unit on how a husband and wife can be on the same page emotionally and give each other emotional availability, responsiveness and engagement - the qualities they both expected from each other in marriage.

Session 9: Developing Intimacy with Jesus
This session, the third in a unit on Jesus at the Center, focuses on how God's Holy Spirit works in each of us to redeem and conform us to the image of Jesus Christ. As we are conformed to the image of Jesus, our marriage becomes a more accurate picture of the relationship between Jesus Christ and His people, The Church.

Final Session: Wrap Up the Gifts
A look at other unit titles and what they address, then take time for the Questions and our Answers.

Evening sessions: Effective Help for Needy People I & II
Whether you are a relative, friend, Pastor, Pastor's wife, elder, deacon, deaconess, parent or professional counselor and someone asks for advice, don't immediately give it.  The person asking for advice rarely, if ever, gives you enough information to understand the conflict or crisis, and he or she will only tell you his or her perspective.  Effective Help for Needy People 1 and 2 will equip you to build the kind of relationships that will help people discover how resolving the conflict or crisis can be God's way of producing change and growth in their relationship with Him and maturity in their walk with God's Holy Spirit.