Her Hand in Marriage

Douglas Wilson
95 pages, softcover

The modern dating system is bankrupt. It does not train young people to form a relationship but rather to form a series of relationships, hardening themselves to all but the current one. Recreational dating encourages emotional attachments without covenantal fences and makes a joke of a father's authority. The disrespect children have for their fathers in this area is an echo of the disrespect fathers have for their own office. Biblical courtship provides a wonderful freedom. It involves familial wisdom and godly protection. Grounded upon the involved authority of the father, courtship delights in its public connection to the lives of families. Sexual purity is a great inheritance for a marriage, and part of a father's job is to guarantee and protect that heritage. Biblical courtship is a humble affront to the sterility of modern relationships. And as a new generation rejoices in this ancient wisdom, the current waves of broken relationships will begin to recede.

Reforming Marriage

Douglas Wilson
144 pages, softcover

When visitors arrive, before virtually anything else is said or done, what is one of the first things they notice about your family?  In many cases, it is the spiritual aroma.  The source of this aroma is the relationship between the husband and the wife.  Many can fake an attempt to keep God's standards in some external way.  What we cannot fake is the resulting, distinctive aroma of pleasure to God.  This book aims to provide biblical advice for marriages, advice rarely heard in most books on marriage.  Godly marriages proceed from an obedient heart, and the greatest desire of an obedient heart is the glory of God, not the happiness of the household.

Federal Husband

Douglas Wilson
110 pages, softcover

Federal thinking is foreign to the modern mind. Federal has come to mean nothing more than centralized or big. Because our federal government has become so uncovenantal, it is not surprising that the original meaning of the word is lost.  But federal thinking is the backbone of historic Protestant theology, and the Church needs to recover the covenantal understanding of federal headship. Husbands are to lead their families, taking responsibility for them as covenant heads - as federal husbands. Reforming Marriage, by this same author, began the discussion of covenant headship. This collection of essays, the Federal Husband, continues that discussion in greater depth, dealing with more specifics of federal  husbandry.

Fidelity: What it Means to Be a One-Woman Man

Douglas Wilson
168 pages, softcover

We live at a time when marital fidelity is under assault. Driven by the forces of relativism, our society assaults sexual fidelity on numerous fronts. The push for homosexual marriages, for example, comes at the end of the fall into perversion, not the beginning. Faithless husbands began the fall long ago, and our culture, with all its washed-out self-help books, fails to   address the real problem--sin. Addressed to men, Fidelity hits hard, using clear language,   focusing on specific sins with specific solutions: adultery, divorce, polygamy, celibacy,   pornography, and more.  But in the end, the antidote to all sexual temptation is simple-the   godly honoring of the marriage bed: "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but   whoremongers and adulterers God will judge" (Heb. 13:4).

My Life for Yours: A Walk Through the Christian Home

Douglas Wilson
163 pages, softcover

How does life in each room of your home manifest the Gospel? The Christian gospel isn't just a spiritual reality. The Word became flesh and bone, and the gospel becomes our porch, dining room, bedroom, and kitchen.

The driving desire of the gospel is "my life for yours." Our desire should be to have this love transform everything we do, room by room. This book works its way through every part of the house, examining each part in light of Scripture. The claims of God are always total, and this is evident on the doorposts and in a sink full of dishes.

Self-centeredness destroys in monotonously similar ways. Giving up life for another produces a harvest of kindness and mercy. Household questions should always begin with, "is this my life for yours?"

Future Men

Douglas Wilson
199 pages, softcover

As much as it may distress us, our boys are future men. When Theodore Roosevelt taught Sunday school for a time, a boy showed up one Sunday with a black eye. He admitted he had been fighting and on a Sunday too. He told the future president that a bigger boy had been pinching his sister, and so he fought him. TR told him that he had done perfectly right and gave him a dollar. The stodgy vestrymen thought this was a bit much, and so they let their exuberant Sunday school teacher go. What a loss.   

Unbelief cannot look past surfaces. Unbelief squashes; faith teaches. Faith takes a boy aside and tells him that this part of what he did was good, while that other part of what he did got in the way. "And this is how to do it better next time." 

As we look to Scripture for patterns of masculinity for our sons, we find them manifested perfectly in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who set the ultimate pattern for friendship, for courage, for faithfulness, and integrity.

Standing on the Promises:
A Handbook of Biblical Childrearing

Douglas Wilson
170 pages, softcover

God has designed each family to be a culture with a language, customs, traditions, and countless unspoken assumptions. The culture of the family intimately shapes the children who grow up in it. It is the duty of the father to ensure that the shaping takes place according to biblical wisdom.  Some fathers establish a rebellious culture for their children and bring upon their children the wrath of God, sometimes for generations. Other fathers fail to establish any distinct culture, and outside cultures rush to fill the void.  Through the Messiah, God promised blessings to His people, "their children, and their children's children forever." The norm for faithful members of the covenant is that their children will follow them in their faithfulness. The oddity should be children who fall away. Unless we reestablish faithful Christian culture in countless homes, we will never re-establish it anywhere else.

For a Glory and a Covering:
A Practical Theology of Marriage

Douglas Wilson

This book offers the mature counsel of a veteran pastor of a wide-range of marital topics.

Praise Her in the Gates

Nancy Wilson

Give her the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates
(Proverbs 31:31)

For a Christian, motherhood is he subtle art of building a house in grace-The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands (Prov. 14:1). Each day's work is significant, for it contributes toward the long-term plan. Each nail helps a house stand in a storm.  But motherhood isn't a simple formula. Building a home-childbirth, education, discipline-requires holy joy and a love of beauty. The mother who fears God does not fear the future.

The Fruit of Her Hands

Nancy Wilson

This is a great book for wives and those planning to become wives, as it lays out clearly the biblical model for godly women and their households.  Excellent for a group study.

Building Her House:
Commonsensical Wisdom for Christian Women

Nancy Wilson

What, two covers? That's right, like leaves, apples, and wine, Building Her House comes in more than one color!

For fourteen years, Nancy Wilson has been giving practical advice to Christian women in her Femina; column in Credenda/Agenda. Now she has collected twenty-six of these columns into one convenient volume.  Written in an understanding, conversational style, these essays provide a wealth of down-to-earth wisdom for every Christian woman.

How to Be Free From Bitterness

Jim Wilson

See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." (Hebrews 12:15)

Bitterness often grows out of a small offense—perhaps a passing word, an accidental shove, or a pair of dirty socks left in the middle of the living room floor. Yet when bitterness takes root in our hearts, its effects are anything but small.

In this collection of short articles, Jim Wilson and others discuss what it means to live as "imitators of God." As the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians, we have been called to leave the bitterness and anger of the world and instead embrace the love and compassion of our God. The authors remind us that we are to forgive others just as we have been forgiven, pointing to Scriptural admonitions and examples as they offer sound teaching on the trials and temptations of everyday life.