July 27-28 Online Marriage Conference (Living your Messianic Marriage Today)

A Valuable Resource

While culture wants to either redefine or eliminate marriage completely, a group of couples and singles from Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, and North Carolina wanted to hear what the Word of God has to say about marriage roles and responsibilities at Word of Messiah’s Messianic Marriage Matters conference.

Sam Nadler not only uses the Bible as the springboard for his teaching, God’s Word is the substance of every session. The book Messianic Marriage Matters: Restored to Our Original Design, contains ten chapters— much more information than we can cover in the six sessions— thus, the textbook becomes a valuable resource for the conference attendees.

Communication is key

The structure of the conference is itself intended to help all couples grow. First there’s the 45-50 minute instruction and discussion on one of the six major matters in the marriage. Then there’s 10-15 minutes of question and answer, and that is followed by what is most important: the couples spend 30 minutes going through the questions together, which are at the end of each chapter. They get to listen to each other and learn to see life through their spouse’s eyes. We emphasize from the creation story that for God, who said, “Let us make man,” communication is key to creation. A creative and growing relationship needs great communication.

Living for God Today

The feedback at the end of our conferences lets us know if we are reaching our goal of making God’s Word accessible and understandable to those who register. Based on their responses, we can say, “Mission accomplished!” Baruch HaShem! Praise God!

One wife told us, “For forty years, I was doing all kinds of crazy things because I thought I needed to go backward to find the sin of my ancestors and rebuke it. I realize now that it’s simple (but it’s not easy.) It’s about following God. Trusting Yeshua. I’m grateful to realize I need to live for the Lord today instead of dealing with all of this business in the past.” 

Sam responded to her by saying, “Because we live in a complicated world, we think the complication is the problem, but the problem is sin.  And the only answer to sin is the death of Messiah, so we constantly need to go to Him. Our dependence on His finished work helps us keep the sin nature inoperative and to develop our maturity by trusting in Him more and more. For ‘He must increase; I must decrease’ (John 3:30.)

“Healing and Engaging”

Many couples were amazed at the idea that “marriage is ministry,” since your spouse may not understand your needs, let alone meet your needs; only the Lord can do that. So, when you trust in the Messiah, dying to self, He empowers you by grace to minister grace, mercy, forgiveness, and kindness to your spouse! Each person is called by God to minister His grace to their spouse. One husband was struck with this concept: “Whether it’s directing your attention to where it shouldn’t be or omitting or withholding certain things from your spouse., that has an impact on your relationship. That it is actually stealing from your wife is revelatory to me.”

In our sin-soaked society, many marriages have twisted the idea of marriage relationships. One of our single young women said, “My mom remarried when I was four. Her husband took the concept of ‘wives be submissive to your husbands’ out of context. It was helpful to see it through an accurate lens of Scripture in context. This has been a very healing and engaging time.”

Trust in Messiah

On that same note, a married man confessed, “I thought I understood about the wife being submitted to her husband, but now I see it’s the Lord’s job to tell her to do that, not mine.”

An engaged man told us, “I look forward to exploring more of this with my fiancé [who also attended] and becoming more mature. As we face some of the challenges that will come with being married, we are open to growing. We look forward to being a healthy married couple worshipping God and enjoying the blessing of God.”

A young husband saw how “society pulls us away from God—like in the way it lures boys away from getting connected to spiritual life and from recognizing that we’re spiritual beings, not just physical bodies. If we’re not taking care of ourselves as men, we cannot take care of our wives, families, or congregations.  It was a blessing to see that from the Garden …to Peter… to Revelation that even though sin impacts us, we can change by trusting in Messiah.”

There’s much more, but please pray for those who attended. “The point of commitment is the point of attack.” Pray they would apply the truth and grow in Messiah!

Our next conference will be in person in Charlotte, NC, on February 1-2, 2025. Mark your calendars! (Questions? Contact us at Conferences@wordofmessiah.org.)