Dennis Rainey is the author of “Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood,” and President, CEO and Co-founder of FamilyLife, a subsidiary of Cru. Since the organization began in 1976, Dennis leadership has enabled FamilyLife to grow into a dynamic and vital ministry that offers families blueprints for living godly lives, marriages, and families in more than 109 countries around the world.
Herb: Dennis, what would you say are the strengths a Christian man can bring to a marriage?
Dennis: He can bring a surrendered will to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It takes Jesus Christ to turn us into real men. Marriage is the union of two forgivers, of two people who are surrendered to Christ. I don’t know how two sinful, selfish human beings can live together for a lifetime apart from being surrendered to Christ and having Him help us become the men we need to become to love our wives the way they need us to love them. I cannot even imagine where I’d be today had He not redeemed me and taught me how to love. Because the world has done a lousy job of teaching me how to love.
Herb: You’ve been married how long and how many kids do you have?
Dennis: Barb and I have been married for forty years. And we have six adult children, five of whom are married. And we have nineteen grandkids. There’s a lot going on in our family!
Herb: What would you say are the key distinctives between a Christian view of marriage and the world’s view of marriage?
Dennis: The world says, “What can you give me?” A Christian view of marriage says, “I want to deny myself to give to you.” The world’s view of marriage is utilitarian. It’s based on happiness. God’s view of marriage is that it’s a part of reflecting His image. It’s a part of reproducing a godly legacy. And it’s a part of His plan for a couple to reign together in spiritual warfare against the enemy and accomplishing God’s purposes. The world has no noble vision for marriage. The Scriptures paint a noble view of marriage to not only lift us above what the world believes but also give us a vision for using our marriage to impact eternity. I think that’s one of the problems.
Most couples getting married today are getting married to achieve happiness on their own. And they aren’t even sure how that’s done. All they know is that’s what the world’s trained them to do. God says the way you live is you die. The only way a grain of wheat produces fruit is to first fall into the ground and die so it can bring forth fruit. And that’s the picture of Christian marriage. If Barb and I have made any contribution as a couple, it’s because we as a couple have learned the art of dying. And in the process have discovered the art of living.
Herb: What would you say to a man who is reading this interview and he is struggling in his marriage?
Dennis: First of all, he needs to do a throne check. Who is on the throne of his life? Is it him? Or is it Jesus Christ? I don’t see how a marriage works with self being on the throne of your life. Bill Bright used to talk about introducing people to the savior and that once He takes over our lives and He is our Lord and Master and we’re to surrender to Him, then self is in its rightful place, yielding its rights and giving control of his life to the one who made him. And so I’d start there.
Secondly, most of us struggle because we’ve got the wrong blueprints. We think that because we’ve gone to church that therefore we have the right blueprints on how to build a godly home. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a given. One of the things we’ve done over the past thirty-eight years is create a conference called A Weekend to Remember marriage getaway that gives a husband and a wife the same set of blueprints to build their marriage and family. And if you think about it, if two builders have two different architects with two different sets of blueprints and they were trying to build a single home, that would be a challenge. It’s hard enough to build a single home with two builders with one blueprint made by one architect, namely God. That’s what we give people at the conference.
And thirdly, he has to figure out what his job description is from the scriptures to know how to love, how to nourish, how to cherish his wife and to be able to meet her needs. And that’s a lifetime assignment and one that you don’t start out your marriage being naturally good at and you need a mentor. So I would say to any man who really desires to become the man God meant him to be, find a guy who’s a few laps ahead of you in the race of life who has got a marriage that others would say is a spiritually growing marriage relationship. And go strike up a mentoring relationship with that guy and ask him to mentor you for a year. And if it’s really good, two years.
Herb: I didn’t realize how selfish I was until I got married. Do you hear that a lot from other guys?
Dennis: I hear it from other guys, but just in terms of myself, I spent the first two years of my life discovering how selfish I was after I got married. Then we had kids! And I mistakenly thought that God had given me kids to raise them. But I think God gave us six kids to finish the process of Him raising us. You can’t be selfish, be married, and raise six kids simultaneously. All of that takes self denial, it takes self sacrifice, and it takes surrender to Jesus Christ and to the Scriptures.
Herb: What do you feel are the key qualities to a healthy marriage?
Dennis: First of all, fulfilling God’s purpose for them, which is to reflect His image, to reproduce a Godly heritage, and to reign together in spiritual battle as a couple. I think secondly, to know your job description as a husband and your job description as a wife from Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3. And third, one of the key things couples today are missing is they don’t share a common mission together. And I think that’s really wrapped up in that third purpose I mentioned, reigning together in spiritual warfare. I think couples were designed by God to be on a mission. Ephesians 2:10 says “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. Which he has prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” And so if we believe that we have been saved by grace, and as a result, he’s not only written our names in the Book of Life, but He has purpose for us. He has a reason for us to be here. And I think He has a reason for a couple to be here. So the question for any couple is, what’s God’s purpose, what does He want you to uniquely do as a couple? Is it service in the church? Is it service in the community? Is it service with the poor?
Family Life as a ministry believes that there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lay men and women who are looking at what’s happening to marriages today and they don’t like it. They are ashamed at what’s happening. It makes them mad. But they don’t know what to do. So what we’ve been doing for the past three years is creating tools to put in their hands to push back against evil and to begin to teach other couples how to have a godly marriage and a family. We’re doing that through one resource called “The Art of Marriage” which has now been seen by about 325,000 people in two years. And it’s all being led by laymen.
Herb: If someone wants more information on your ministry, where can they go to?
Dennis: They can go online to FamilyLife.com. There they can find out information about our books, the radio program and the couples conferences at the website as well.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North America and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt widows, single moms and fatherless children in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church at newcommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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