So does your church require that you perfectly implement the bible in your own life before being allowed to teach about it or to tell others what you have learned about it?

My wife wasn't fully on board with MB until after she agreed to help me teach the class.

My pastor had marginal knowledge of MB, but his explanation when counseling me left a bit to be desired, IME.

The was I have my class laid out it is more about accountability to the group regarding reading the material, filling out the questionnaires etc than about sitting and listening to some boring lecture.

Can you explain POJA?

Do you have a working knowledge of the ENs and ENQ?

Can you explain Love Bustes in such a way that people will understand what a SD is, or what a DJ looks like? We can all identify the old AO when we see it, but why is IB so bad for a marriage?

You see, all the answers are really in the book. By asking the right questions you can get people to think about this stuff at a level that causes them to grasp the importance of living it rather than just knowing about it.

Without meaning to sound like I am in any way equating FILSIL to the bible, it is very much like reading the bible in some very important ways. The obvious lessons are just that, obvious and right out front where almost anyone can get their meaning.

But as you read the materials again, and discuss them with someone else who might have thought about them at a deeper level, you find that MB is like the old pealing an onion thing. We look at a layer, study it, grasp its significance, understand it and then discover that there is another layer underneath the one we just figured out and now we have to start all over again.

As far as proving the validity of MB to someone who knows nothing about it, you can't really do that very well anyway. In fact the process proves itself if you follow the steps.

My wife was far from into MB when our class started, but having read the book more fully than the first time she "glance at it" she was confident in the methods taught in the book to give a testimony in week #2 of the first class telling about how our marriage was nearly over, she was ready to walk away and it was my learning and applying MB to our situation that saved our marriage and made it better than it ever was at any time in our life together.

If you can get your wife to go through the material with you while the group is doing it too, it is really all you can do. The material makes the difference, as long as the facilitator can explain the nuances that some will miss the first time through.

Maybe our church is different because we have spent many years doing group bible studies where one person in the group might get one thing and someone else will see something else that was missed. A couple of us have been able to throw the Greek or Hebrew things into the mix and before long our DIY bible study is producing folks who understand subtle things that even some seminary graduates tend to miss.

Have you applied MB to your marriage? I didn't ask if your wife had, simply if you had done it?

Would you say that applying MB to your marriage has made your marriage better?

Would your wife agree that your marriage is better now? (Why she thinks so is not the key to understanding where this is going.)

If you understand MB, can explain it to others and have applied it to your own marriage and it has proven effective in improving your relationship with your wife, what else do you think you need in order to teach other people how it works so that they can benefit from the stuff you learned on your own or by having other less than perfect, sometimes inadequate and always amateur anonymous posters on the forums explain it?

Mark