God, marriage, personality type and culture differences.
Marriage on the Rock is a great Christian marriage series that I highly recommend. Before we started going to church, I tried many things to get my marriage on track. I went to counseling to figure out and resolve my psychological issues that were getting in the way and causing problems, and I studied Japanese culture and language to better understand our cross-cultural differences. My first book Culture Shock! Hawaii evolved out of this search to understand cultural differences. At the same time I studied personality type as a means to better understand our differences as a couple. My second book, Where in the World Do I Belong??, evolved out of this search to understand personality type and cultural differences. Lastly, a marriage counselor recommended the The Five Love Languages book to me, and learned all I could about the love languages.
I have a natural passion and interest in counseling/therapy and people differences (cultural, personality type, and love languages) and I used these tools to try to get my marriage on the right track, but none of it worked because I got it all backwards—we must have Jesus in our marriage first.
God is a trinity or triune being consisting of God, the son of God (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. God also “created man to be a triune being. Man is composed of a body, a soul, and a spirit. Man was only one of God’s many creations. The atom is a triune object. It is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons” - Doctrine of the Trinity by Ed DeVries.
Jimmy Evans, in his Marriage on the Rock series, explains that God also created marriage as a triune being. Men fulfill the role of Jesus Christ (e.g. the church is the bride of Christ); women fulfill the role of the Holy Spirit. God made woman the helper to man and Jesus called the Holy Spirit a helper (Jesus said He would send a helper in the form of the Holy Spirit). The third part of the triune is God at the center of a marriage (one that has been dedicated to Him).
Jimmy Evans states that God made man in the image of God but marriage is really the closest image of God. “Only God can meet the deepest needs in a marriage…and release the potential of your marriage.” We must have God in our marriage first, then we will reap the fruit of the Holy Spirit. After that, we will see results in Christian marriage counseling and in our efforts to understand differences (cultural, personality type, and love languages).
