featured — Fruitful and Intentional

Getting married is more than a lifestyle option or just something that would be "nice if it happens." Not only is marriage good and natural to want, it's what most of us are called to pursue. That's the message of Get Married: What Women Can Do to Help it Happen.

There's a difference between making it happen and helping it happen. This isn't a book about desperation or the hyper activity of joining every dating service and singles group. It's not about making cold calls or tackling a list of 100 tips for meeting hot men.

Get Married is about living like you're planning to marry. It presents a lifestyle that esteems marriage, encourages men, empowers women, and embraces Christian community and a biblical understanding of what marriage is for. Most importantly, it shows women that marriage is a worthy goal that's within their grasp.

You can be content with where you are today and still desire marriage in a way that honors God. And there are things you can do to help it happen.

See all posts related to getting married.

ENDORSEMENTS

Candice Watters offers genuine help to Christians thinking about marriage, adulthood, and God's purpose for humanity.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., from the Foreword

A hopeful and empowering message for Christian women.

Danielle Crittenden, Author, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman

Get Married is forceful, persuasive, and a must-read for today's Christian single.

Gary Thomas, Author, Sacred Marriage

Get Married not only brings healing and renewal to the Christian single confused by scriptural misinterpretation, it offers them practical advice to get to the altar.

Debbie Maken, Author, Getting Serious about Getting Married

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING

After reading your book, I finally had a breakthrough! I realized that it was not wrong for me to desire marriage, and that marriage is the normal state for most people. Your book also gave me great hope that I can do more than just pray, and not be too forward. For once in my life, I actually was hearing encouragement rather than discouragement about my desire to get married! It was truly a breath of fresh air! --Molly

Thank you for writing Get Married. I Kissed Dating Goodbye-type messages were appropriate for me at 15 and 16, but at 23-years-old this is exactly what I (and other single women) need to hear. The applicable and practical advice of appropriately balancing God's role and our role in marrying well was fabulous. Thank you! --Emily

I just finished reading your awesome book. It was inspiring and enlightening to read, even the sections directed primarily toward women. It helped me have a better appreciation of what my Christian sisters go through. --Jeremy

I received your book as a 31st birthday present from my younger sister. I found it very encouraging, as well as practical. About a year ago, I felt prompted to make my future marriage a matter of daily prayer, and your book strengthened me in this resolve. Your writing has also encouraged me to be more open to set-ups or other unexpected avenues that God might want to use.

I liked the book so much, I lent it to my parents, who married early, and aren't sure how to encourage me in my prolonged singleness. They say little, but pray a lot. I think it's safe to say that they're suffering right along with me, and my four unmarried younger sisters. Since they read the book, I've already noticed more hope in our conversations on the subject, and I think they are praying with renewed faith. My dad really appreciated your lucid explanation of the fact that God calls most people to marriage. He said that everybody should read it, and even recommended it to our pastor. --Elisabeth

Ready to start the journey? Read the excerpt that follows, then order the book.

EXCERPT: "Marriage is Good"

You may have a hunch it's not as easy to get married as it once was. If so, you're right. Since 1970, the marriage rate has declined 50 percent. In that time, the proportion of American women ages 25–29 who have not married has quadrupled. Currently the average age of first marriages is 26 for women, 27 for men — as old as it's ever been. Conventional wisdom says later marriage means the bride and groom will be more prepared for the responsibilities of marriage, but many women are ready now. And they're frustrated by the delay. Sociologists blame the delay on the additional educational and career development necessary to marry well. Add to that the confusion over gender roles, cultural worship of youth, the lack of biblical literacy, uninvolved parents and extended family, the fallout from divorce, disengaged social circles, and an often silent church and you have the makings for much uncertainty. Women are left wondering, what's the best path to marriage?

... If in the midst of these cultural realities, "just pray and wait" sentiments leave you depressed, I think you'll be encouraged by the message of this book: there's something you can do.

Whether you're wondering if you'll ever get a date, stuck in a "just-friends" relationship or worried that the guy you've been seeing forever will never move toward marriage, this book offers help. It's for all the women who long for marriage but are afraid to admit it; embarrassed by their deepest desires or concerned that maybe they want it too much. It's for the parents of single women who wonder if there's anything they can do. And it's for married friends of singles who want to help but don't want to intrude.

This is not another book about seeking fulfillment in your singleness. As beings created in God's image; we were designed for relationship — that's why extended singleness leaves so many women discontent. It's also why we should be intentional about finding fulfillment in marriage. Getting married isn't just something that's "nice if it happens." It's what most of us are called to pursue.

Pursue, but not dominate. I'm not advocating getting married at all costs. But marrying well, for God's glory, is a worthy pursuit. There's a difference between making it happen and helping it happen. I'm not going to parrot the "girl-power," feminist worldview. Men have a key role to play. And how the single women they know relate to them has everything to do with their momentum toward marriage. This isn't a book about desperation or the hyper activity of joining every dating service and singles group. You won't find a list of 100 tips for meeting a hot man or five things you can do today to help you get married tomorrow.

What you will find is a way to live like you're planning to marry. Not just having a hope chest — but cultivating a lifestyle that is consistent with the season of marriage ahead. A life that's in harmony with God's work on your behalf. A life that nurtures men and the community around you to play their role so that you don't have to carry it all. Finally, you'll find in the context of this marriage-minded lifestyle a new confidence to pray like you never have — trusting that marriage is a goal within your grasp. You can risk hoping that you will get married. You really can help it happen.

Ready to learn how? Order now.

Starting a family is a soul-shaping, world-altering experience. Unfortunately, in a culture of competing values and protracted timelines, couples are increasingly backing their way into parenting or missing it altogether. By the time the average couple tries to have kids, they are often beyond their late twenties and surprised to learn they are sliding past the peak of their fertile years. In our book Start Your Family, we encourage couples to be intentional about their timeline in the early years of marriage and to trust God to help them boldly launch their families. Responding to the most common doubts and hurdles, we offer biblical inspiration for the questions, "Why have kids?," "When is the best time to start?" and "How can we fit kids into our lives?"

See all our blog posts on starting a family.

EXCERPTS

Why Have Kids?

We of the Xer generations and following stop to ask, “Why?” We don’t just do things out of tradition or expectation. We don’t just have kids because that’s what’s expected or because it’s what our parents did. We’ve moved beyond that. We have kids as a statement, as a lifestyle choice. But the choice to have children now sits on a shelf in a growing supermarket of options leaving couples asking why that choice would be better than any other. More

When's the Right Time to Start our Family?

Most couples have some kind of timeline in mind for when it feels right to have a baby. Maybe it’s vague, maybe you haven’t talked it through as a couple to land on a precise target, but you likely have a sense of what you think needs to happen first and what conditions you think would be optimal for a good start. More

How Can We Fit Kids Into Our Lives?

Having a vision for why and when to start a family can give you new momentum, but you’ll need all the extra motivation you can find once you start thinking through the logistics, the how. This is the place where the things that might be stirring in your heart meet the practical questions from your head: “How can we afford this?” “How will this affect our work?” “How are we going to manage all the care a baby will need?” “How do we prepare a home for a baby?” More

REVIEWS

"Snuggling the Stork" in Christianity Today's Books and Culture, by Jenny Schroedel, author of Naming the Child

The Watters suggest that you don't have to have a water-tight plan or the funds for a Pottery Barn Nursery to begin the process of conception. Just begin. Begin where you are, Begin with hope: that's the message. Start Your Family is not a pregnancy manual or a preconception checkbook. It is a guide through the emotional, financial, and spiritual geography surrounding the choice to procreate. The Watters talk about the choices they wish they'd made differently as well the struggles and joys they experience daily as the parents of four children. (keep reading)

Review by Kevin DeYoung, author of Just Do Something

Start Your Family is a surprisingly good book. I say surprisingly not because I expected a bad book, but because I expected an overly-sentimental, "children are so awesome", lightweight kind of book. But this book is much better than that.

Review by Carolyn McCulley, author of Radical Womanhood

It's an engaging book, easy to read, and persuasive in its arguments. The foundation of the book is the idea that being intentional about starting a family is a good and godly thing. But because in the last half century, "choice has grown into one of our greatest commodities," many young couples see having children as a lifestyle choice and fail to understand the biblical reasons for having children.

Order your copy here.

ENDORSEMENTS

The appearance of Steve and Candice Watters' START YOUR FAMILY is a joyous event. They understand that God was serious in commanding the newly created man and woman to "be fruitful and multiply." The Watters correctly argue that starting a family remains "a soul-shaping, world altering experience." As Martin Luther once put it, the adventure of producing and bringing up children "is a kind of faint image...of that blessed living together" in Eden, a chance to participate in "the greatest work of God." Ably written and offering both practical advice and spiritual encouragement, START YOUR FAMILY should be read by every Christian couple entering into marriage or considering whether to start a family or have another child. —Allan Carlson, President, The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society

This book is astutely wise. It cuts against the grain of weak and fearful thinking. It will startle you and free you to trust God with your family and your future. That's when you find what real life is all about. You can never afford to have kids--so why not trust God and get started?—Steve and Mary Farrar, authors of Point Man and King Me (Steve) andReading Your Male (Mary)

A remarkable, go-against-the-grain book, with wisdom, practical advice and biblical application bounding from every page. The Watters have written an emotionally aware and intellectually astute book that is as sensitive as it is compelling.—Gary Thomas, author of Sacred Marriage and Sacred Parenting

Just like "in the beginning," the family today is at the center of a great spiritual battle. Start Your Family will certainly inspire couples to reclaim the blessing of children and, through that, build a true culture of life.—Christopher West, fellow, Theology of the Body Institute, and author of The Love That Satisfies and Good News about Sex and Marriage