Couple Discipleship
Couple Discipleship
Couple Discipleship
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Couples for Christ
COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Proposed Schedule
Saturday
NN 12:00 - Lunch
PM 1:30 - Afternoon Praise
1:45 - Energizer
2:00 - Talk 3: Growing in Service
2:45 - Couple Discussion
3:15 - Break
3:30 - Talk 4: Raising a Holy Family
4:15 - Couple Discussion
4:45 - Break
6:00 - Lord’s Day Celebration
7:00 - Dinner
8:00 - Fellowship
9:30 - Lights Out
Sunday
AM 7:00 - Breakfast
8:30 - Worship
8:45 - Opening Remarks
9:00 - Talk 5: Home on a Lampstand
9:45 - Couple Discussion
10:15 - Break
Action Planning / Sharing / Closing
10:30 - Remarks
11:00 - Eucharistic Celebration
NN 12:00 - Lunch
PM 1:00 - Home
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Talk 1: Heeding God’s Call
Anchor Verse: “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God
and observe it.” Luke 11:28 (NABRE)
I. Introduction
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in the service, our bid to raise a holy family, and our hope to truly place
our home on a lamp-stand that will shine in the world’s darkness.
We look back at our years together and our efforts to truly raise a
family that follows Christ’s values and examples.
We realize that indeed Couples for Christ has taught us much, but
none of these will bear fruit until we walk these good teachings in our
lives.
The Lord has given us our life in community to help us stay firmly on
the path of a Christian family.
All these talks, however, are useless if they fall on deaf ears. We need
to, beyond listening, put our learnings and realizations to action, no
matter how difficult. We need to decide to persevere, knowing that God
has given us CFC, because it is good for us.
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coordinate with each other, God has made us realize our need to talk
about how we are growing in our relationship with God and with one
another, and how such is affecting our faith walk as a couple, responding
to God’s call to us to serve Him in CFC.
IV. Conclusion
We need to pause and assess our years of CFC involvement and reflect
on how this has contributed to our growing in faith and making our
marriages truly focused on the Lord and doing His will.
Luke 4:18-21
1Cor 13:1-13
Eph 5:21-33
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Talk 1: Heeding God’s Call
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Talk 2: Deepening Our Love
Anchor Verse: For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather
of power and love and self-control. (2 Tim 1:7 NABRE)
I. Introduction
Couples for Christ, being a gift from the Lord blesses marriages. Two
individuals pledging love and faithfulness for life need God’s grace in
their union. This was God’s promise in CFC to the couples who responded
to His call – to help them truly become a couple for Christ.
The Holy Spirit worked on the personal lives of the couples, calling
them to individual repentance of sin in their lives to a renewed
relationship with God. The CLP beginnings of this process was
strengthened by the talk inputs, the discussions, friendships and
fellowship exclusive among men and among women.
As the CLP progressed, the couple had started on their individual faith
journeys, even as they shared the blessing of going through the Christian
Life Program, and later on receiving the empowerment of the Holy Spirit
to effect changes in their married life.
New friendships discovered with other couples, the men with other
brothers, and the women with other sisters, all of them wishing the
betterment of their unions and God’s strengthening grace on these,
contributed to faith development.
The role of community support was even more highlighted with the
couple’s assignment to a household, with a couple household leader and
joined by the five or six other couples. God meant them to grow together
in prayer, study, fellowship and service – their common faith walk.
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II. A Foundation of Prayer
This is why it is imperative that the couple take their prayer lives
seriously. CFC provides a structure for this to commence in the couple’s
life through its covenant. But the hope is that from this covenant, prayer
will move to become a way to life. When daily prayer times are kept
individually, both husband and wife receive the grace for a strong
marriage. Individual prayer times may even inspire couple prayer and
even couple sharing on God’s messages and actions in their quiet times.
As the couple move in their faith walk, they discover greater intimacy
with God, being able to sense His voice, His nearness, His presence. CFC
again opens opportunities for couples to grow in this through the practice
of personal sharings.
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IV. The Power of Change
The Lord’s powerful presence and movement in our lives can only
deepen our love feelings for one another. The spouses grow more
expressive of marital love relationships. Patience, gentleness, self control,
peace, joy and compassion – fruits of the Spirit, are witnessed in the
personal lives of spouses, who bear Jesus in their relationship.
V. Conclusion
As we allow the one true Source of Love to run our love relationship
as a couple, we experience not only grace and blessing but even greater
meaning, fullness and abundance.
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
3. Have we responded to God’s call to change our old ways into His
ways?
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Talk 3: Growing in Service
Anchor Verse: “Train yourself for devotion, for, while physical training
is of limited value, devotion is valuable in every respect, since it holds a
promise of life both for the present and for the future. This saying is
trustworthy and deserves full acceptance. For this we toil and
struggle,[b] because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the
savior of all, especially of those who believe. (1 Tim 4:7-10 NABRE)
I. Introduction
Couples grow in service. As husband and wife look at God and others
beyond themselves, they grow in greater love of God, Who blesses them
and their marriage.
A central point in the couple’s growth towards greater unity and love
is getting them less and less focused on themselves, and more and more
focused on the other. It is a great help for them to discover this in service.
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themselves, couples will not venture on seeking answers to challenges,
because of the focus on their hurt, their pain, their brokenness - their side
of the story; the justification, their self-centeredness.
Beyond the household, there are also ministries in CFC, the Family
Ministries and the ANCOP and Social Development Programs (SDPs),
where couples are given vast opportunities to minister, to assist or to
serve other brethren, who may no longer be couples, but who
nonetheless long to experience God in a personal way in their lives.
Christ was always clear about His purpose for coming into the world.
He came to heal the sick, give sight to the blind. He came to set the
captives free and to bring glad tidings to the poor. Christ came to serve.
Couples who serve, grow more and more in the image of Jesus.
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one’s self to change, the servant couple is led to witness this growth in
their personal life as a couple, that gives them credence and integrity.
They grow in obedience. They learn the value of Paul’s words in his
epistle to the Ephesians: Husbands are to love their spouses, as Christ
loved the Church, and wives are to submit to this love of their husbands.
Christ modeled a love that was “obedient” unto death for the Church.
Obedience is to God. “Obedience unto death” means being open to risk
dying to self. This is the ideal that Christ set for marriage. Husbands are
to love with a love that is obedient to God. And wives are called to submit
to a love that obeys God.
Just as a couple can only turn to God for every failure, frustration and
disappointment in marriage, deciding on forgiveness and extending trust
every time, they see and experience the same in service and ministry and
are bolstered in their faith; this is the way that Christ chose to love.
IV. Conclusion
The years spent in the Couples for Christ ministry have been years
meant by God for the couple to grow in greater knowing, loving and
serving God in one another through many others.
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Talk 3: Growing in Service
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Talk 4: Raising a Holy Family
Anchor Verse: “We know that all things work for good for those who
love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28
NABRE)
I. Introduction
It is our common interest in the family that attracted us, brought us
and made us stay in Couples for Christ.
The Lord has been faithful to us in CFC through all these years. He has
given us a vision to be “Families in the Holy Spirit, renewing the face of
the earth!”
And that vision, we had been privileged to witness unfold through
CFC’s years of commitment to God’s service. We had in fact raised a new
generation of families, who will continue the task of protecting,
promoting, and preserving family for the future.
Couples for Christ raises the men in the family as husbands and
fathers. They are taught to be responsible protectors, providers and
priests of their homes and grow these to truly be domestic Churches.
Maturing in this role, they are seen to eventually take responsibility for
God’s people, in Church and society.
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This is the reason why the wife and husband have specific roles. The
role of wife as support to the family head, her husband is crucial. And so
is the obedience of the children to the authority vested by God in
parenthood. The family will not thrive and its purpose not accomplished
when there is no respect and reverence for the roles given by God to each
member of the domestic Church.
But as God’s plan extends to family beyond just the couple, in order to
truly enable the home as domestic Church, God has gifted CFC with the
Family Ministries, specifically Kids for Christ, Youth for Christ and Singles
for Christ.
God had provided these ministries to help couples concretize the CFC
vision.
These ministries were to provide Christian environmental support
for our growing children at whatever life stage they are in.
KFC includes our children who are 4-12 years old. YFC includes our
teenage sons and daughters of 13 years up to their young adult years of
20 and 21. SFC is for our children who have graduated into adulthood
and are preparing to take their place in the world as professionals,
couples, religious, heads of families – the future generation of Church.
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As they grow by their respective ministries, our children are enabled
to respond more fully to the vision of truly building a home for God and
raising a family in the Holy Spirit.
It is our role as parents to get the children to discuss what they will
contribute to making this happen. We need to make ensure that every
family member sees the importance of our one goal of truly making
family work. We also need to facilitate the empowerment of each of our
children for the responsibilities that they have been tasked to carry.
Above all, we need to pray together for God’s blessing on our sincerest
intentions.
CFC has also supported the single and unmarried, married yet
separated, widows or widowers, and mature men and women of varied
circumstances in the Servants of the Lord and Handmaids of the Lord
respectively.
V. Conclusion
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Talk 4: Raising a Holy Family
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
Talk 5: Home on a Lampstand
Anchor Verse: “No longer shall the sun be your light by day, nor shall
the brightness of the moon give you light by night; Rather, the LORD will
be your light forever, your God will be your glory.” (Isaiah 60:19
NABRE)
I. Introduction
This is a goal that God has enabled us to start, but will definitely go
beyond our lifetime. To renew the face of the earth means delivering
people from the clutches of sin that is in the world. It means announcing
the salvation that Christ has come and died for. It means conquering the
world for Christ. Many are still ignorant of this grace.
Since 1981, Couples for Christ has raised husbands and wives to build
their marriages and homes for God. The work started with 16 couples.
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Today, there are ten times as many countries and territories where the
Lord has enabled the seeding of CFC.
We in CFC, are challenged to bring the same love and care that God has
lavished us with to the bereft of the world. We had initially put in efforts
to help alleviate the poor, this expression of God’s love and care,
responding to the material urgencies that stare us on our faces, even as
the poor also hunger for God’s direction and value.
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associations tasked to continue the work of furthering the good welfare
of all; in the long run enabling their transformation through Christian
values education from beneficiary to benefactor, victims to victor.
Just as we in CFC, have been led to the CLP and CFC, and through these
have experienced the fullness of relationship with God and neighbor,
paving the way for us to truly come home, our work among the massive
poor of the world is also geared towards their coming home in Christ and
finding a home’s place in His heart.
This is the gigantic work of family that CFC is tasked with. From raising
their own family in Christ to serve other families, and in effect bring the
entire family of God on earth under the footstool of Christ- truly “Families
in the Holy Spirit, renewing the face of the earth.”
V. Conclusion
God has graciously given us CFC, to prepare us and mold us to truly be
a light in the world shining brightly on a lampstand.
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Talk 5: Home on a Lampstand
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The Couple’s Vow
Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for making us come to this awakening. We
lift up to You all the love in our hearts, realizing how You had gifted us
with Couples for Christ to enable, enrich and empower our union so
that this marriage, which You have ordained may truly renew the face
of the earth.
We are grateful that You opened our hearts to heed the call. We are
humbled that You lead us to a deepened love, even as we took on the
service just for You.
We are touched that You caused us to even grow as Your true children
in the service that we many times do half-heartedly and grudgingly.
Grant us the strength, the love, and the wisdom we need from each
other and the continuing guidance of this community that You have
called us to, so that we may truly give You back the glory through this
blessed union.
Amen.
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COUPLE DISCIPLESHIP WEEKEND
FEEDBACK FORM
2. Was the time schedule well distributed? Did we have enough time
for the couple discussion?
4. Will you suggest that speakers only have their wives as sharers to
emphasize the marriage enrichment aspect of the event?
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