Getting married is likely to be the biggest decision you make in your life

We want to help you develop a love that has some resilient characteristics. While you are being prepared for marriage we will talk together about developing married love that mirrors God's love - and has qualities like these:

Where does the Bible fit in?

You will find on our marriage preparation programme that we often use the Bible and as Christians we see it as our authority. But whether or not you accept the Bible as your rule of life you will find an enormous number of helpful principles and inspiring accounts that will help you to build a stable and long-lasting marriage.

Amongst many other topics we will talk with you about the deeper side of marriage and how you express your love for each other. Aspects of love like these represent the model we work towards

• Commitment: While God was speaking to Moses in Deuteronomy 7:8 he said 'The Lord loved you ... and kept his promise'. So we want to foster a pattern of married love that involves genuine and consistent promise keeping with each other. These promises are not only the vows you make on your wedding day but the promises you make to each other as life goes on.
• Faithfulness: In Lamentations 3:22-24 the Bible says 'because of the Lord's great love ... great is your faithfulness'. God's love for us does not grow stale or jaded, it is - refreshing. True Christ-like love renews the person loved and does it faithfully and without manipulation.
• Self giving: Probably the best known verse of the Bible is John 3:16 where John observed that 'God so loved ... that he gave'. We believe that married love should always be like this, expressed without selfishness and for the exclusive benefit of the loved one. That is the kind of love God showed to us and the kind that keeps a marriage healthy and alive.
• Sacrifice: "Very rarely will anyone die for someone else ... but God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" (Romans 5:7-8). It is an uncomfortable truth that true love involves immense personal sacrifice. While you are doing marriage preparation we will share with you some of our experiences of sacrificing for the benefit of our partner. We'll look at ways you can say "You're worth it!"
• Permanence: Psalm 136 is punctuated with a simple statement about God that is repeated over and over again: "His love endures for ever". We want your marriage to be like that. Solid, joy-filled, dependable and long-lasting