 Okay, so good morning everybody. Good morning. Good morning to all the online students as well as to those who've joined us on the e-learning portal. I hope you're following through and able to, you know, just continue on with what we're doing and able to follow the flow with which we're taking these chapters and these lessons. So let's just start with the word of prayer and we'll dive right in. Heavenly Father, we thank you God for this new day. Thank you, Lord, that you have connected each one of us from different places to learn more about your institution. God, even as we delve into bits and pieces of marriage, Father, we pray that your wisdom would be supreme. Lord, your understanding, Lord, would be great over our lives. Lord, for those of us who are in the institution of marriage, may we conduct ourselves, Lord, in a way that is pleasing to you. Lord, that will give you glory. A marriage is Lord that are testaments to you. And Father, we pray for young people who are listening in. God, who desire Lord to be married. Father, I pray that you will build these truths into their hearts and prepare their hearts, God, for what you have instituted. I pray with us, I pray for all those who are here, all those who are yet to come. God, thank you that your grace is over each one of us. We ask this in your precious name. Amen. Okay. All right. So over the last couple of weeks, we have been looking at different elements of marriage. We started off with looking at communication. Then we did conflict resolution. The last week we did becoming a good team. We're still on that same topic of different elements in marriage. And today we're going to cover two aspects of it. One is very practical in itself of managing a home. And the second one is about sex and sexuality, another important aspect of marriage. So if you would have looked through the books, I'm not going through a chronological order, but you can be sure everything will be covered by the end of this course. So I've just gone a little bit here and there, taken a lot more of the heavy chapters earlier, maybe the lighter ones later depending on the topic in itself. Okay. So if you have a book with you, we're on page 83. And if you have a soft copy with you, we are on page 81. Yeah. Page 89. Page 80. Okay. So we're on page 80. So if you'd like to follow through, please do so. Okay. So in this first hour, we're just going to be looking and discussing about simple tips on how family can manage their home. Simple practical tips that's needed for our everyday life. And we have, we've read this earlier in Proverbs 24, 3 and 4 that a house, a home is built on the foundation of wisdom and understanding. Right. So in all that we do, even managing a home, how we manage it, it takes understanding, it takes wisdom to do so. Okay. And this, a lot of these tips may be things that you've probably learned from your own homes. And these are things that can help you. Nevertheless, whenever you see maybe some aspects of the way that you manage your home needs a change, it's always good to rework something so that there is maximum efficacy and maximum utility of your time and your resources and whatever that that's required. Okay. So like we like it, like the chapter says, it may be just knowledge, maybe something that's common sense to most of us. But nevertheless, it's important to address these areas because there are times that even these issues could cause conflicts in couples. Okay. So the more the better way of doing it is always the best. Right. And it gives you, it actually helps you to succeed much better in your relationship. So we will look at a few of this, it may not or may not be everything per se, but then maybe the most important aspects of how do you manage home. So the first important part of managing home is knowing where to stay. Okay. Learning where to stay. So it's definitely necessary and important for a couple who are considering marriage to really discuss about where they are going to make their home. Okay. And it's something that should be discussed prior to marriage and maybe at the preparation or premarital preparation. I know sometimes in cultures, depending on the culture that we all come from, there is a certain tradition that one may follow, which is probably staying in the husband's home. And I know that there are different cultures that are matriarchal and so then they stay in the wives' home. Okay. I think among the northeastern states, it's very matriarchal. So you have the groom actually going and staying in the bride's home. So nevertheless, I mean, I think there are a lot of cultures that may have it very differently. But a recommendation is that it's always good for a young married couple to live by themselves, which means to separate from their immediate family or their place of stay, so that there is greater freedom to really focus on their marriage relationship. And also in a way to learn how to work together, adjust together, do things together, divide probably common work that needs to be done at home. So it's a recommendation that it's good for couples to live by themselves away from their parents so that they learn on how to manage marriage and how to manage the family. And this is definitely something which is encouraged in the early years of marriage when there's a lot more focus that you can keep on each other rather than later when there are much more responsibilities that come your way. Nevertheless, there can be times and there could be situations or maybe decisions that a couple could make or plan to live in either side of the family, either the husbands or the wives. But this should come with a mutual understanding and an agreement to do so because it shouldn't come in as a surprise or it shouldn't be something that's not discussed because then it can lead to a lot of conflict later. There should be an agreement, I think especially if there is an understanding that the couple is going to live with either side of the parents. There should be an agreement that the interference, the way that we had spoken about the inner sanctum, that there shouldn't be an interference in that relationship. And because a lot of problems can occur simply because parents are involved and interfere in a couple's life by making their decisions or by controlling what they do, how they do things or even interfering in certain patterns right of the new member that comes in or even interfering later at the time the way children are bought up. So there should be an agreement that or there should be an expectation of the other members not interfering in this husband wife relationship. So it is like we said there could be different reasons why a newly married couple may need to stay with one of the parents home. This could be because of maybe financial constraints or probably practical issues or maybe there is a relocation. However, the recommendation is to keep these times short and for the newly married couple to set up their own space, their own place so that they can focus on their marriage and building their lives together. So that's the first one to be able to stay independently. The second one is how do you manage schedules, daily and weekly schedules. So at this point of time, in the current time that we are living in, both the husband and the wife may be working people. So what happens is there can be differences in the way that each of them have their work schedules. So for example, if the husband is working a night job, the wife is working a day job, then the schedules kind of are not matching. And so what happens that is over time that they get to be a disconnect because there's so little time they have together and that could definitely impact the marriage. So it's important to address these situations and look at why priority needs to be given to the marriage and family. Just especially after a couple is married. Yes, career and opportunities and growth in maybe personal career is good, is important. Nevertheless, the priority of a marriage and family, you're living together in your initial years just yourself happens only once. So it is important to schedule that. So if there are challenges like this, it needs to be planned. You need to plan ahead to work those schedules. And it's also with wisdom we do say that if it is viable, if it is financially possible, it would be good to make any changes in the way that the work timings or work investment that happens. So making those changes is also important. So it could be like a change of a job or reducing hours or maybe probably taking a break also can be recommended till a time the focus is on the marriage and that priority is made. The next thing are certain household chores and these household chores are many. Nevertheless, there are a couple of ones that are written in the book of cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, paying bills and I'm sure there is a whole lot more. Nevertheless, it is important for both the husband and the wife to share the responsibility of managing the home. Because managing a home is not a one time job. It's something that needs to be done on a regular consistent daily basis. Some tasks are done daily. Some tasks are done maybe weekly. Nevertheless, there is a routine that needs to take place. So it's always helpful that the tasks for the home are shared between the husband and wife and wherever it is not possible getting the support of outside help. So it can be unfair, especially when both the husband and the wife are working for one of the members or for the wife to be carrying the entire load of the household tasks herself. So it's important to, you know, pitch in, work alongside with the responsibilities, these responsibilities because as time goes by, when the responsibilities become more, when the children come into the picture, when there is aged parents that one needs to look after or when there is other things like for the career or maybe ministry. It puts in a lot of strain on that one person. So all of this is one part of working together as a team where each one is doing their part to help each other and stepping in when there is a need for the other to come in. The next that we look at is how we engage with technology, the use of technology. And now with our current, the way that we currently see and process things, everything is through something with technology, right? And that's become so much a part of our lives, even connecting with others, doing our work, even administration, anything that you see would probably need some form of technology or some form of device that you use. So it's, yes, in a way it's a blessing, it's important to work through that. However, it's important to know and understand the balance of its use because most of the time they connected on maybe a phone or a device for our work, we feel a sense of pressure to keep being connected on it with matter of work, right? And so that in itself takes away time from the home or there could be recreational activities like the television or any kind of social media that could again take up the free time. Often that's looked at as leisure, right, or a time of entertainment or a time of switching off. So it is important to have disciplines across this on the way that we use our phone, the television, maybe connecting with others through messaging, through emails, through calls. All of this needs to have some boundary. So it's good that every member of the family, not just the children, keep their gadgets or distractions away at certain points, at certain times of the day, like maybe a meal time, or when everyone's connecting together or maybe on a drive, or when everyone's sitting together probably at prayer. So it's important to schedule to important to limit and place some of those boundaries so that it doesn't seep in to the family time. Okay, there could be certain situations where there are emergencies and that of course can be attended. But what we're looking at is as a general practice to keep certain boundaries in the way technology and gadgets all are used. Are we all here? Are we all in? Okay, all right. Okay, thank you. Yes. The next part of it is what we look at is what is important for families to do together is to have times together of recreation, okay, or times of a vacation. Now, each family may have different ways of doing this, and it could be, you know, some families do it probably much more frequently, but then it's just probably going out, or maybe it's shopping together, or it's just doing a picnic together, or going for a movie, or attending a sport, or attending a literary activity. It can be anything, some kind of a recreation time will be helpful to connect and also because it builds in the interest of others, right? So maybe it's one week or one month, it's following the interest of one of the members and then the next week it's someone else's. So it is your sharing with each other's interest and each other's company. And as you're doing this, there is relaxation, there is a recreation. So it's good to identify what you can do together or what are the activities that you can do with each other. So this is something that again has to be done intentionally, planning, knowing the place you're going to go to, what is the budget that you're using for, and nevertheless, you know, you attempt to keep it going either for some families. Like I said, it may be regular, it may be one every month, it's just probably a day off, or it may be once or twice a year with an extended time. Whatever it is, however you're able to manage it, that should be good. The next one we're going to look at is how do we deal with money and budgeting or basically understanding finances in family? How do we work through finances? We know that often money becomes a problem generally in most marriages. That is one of the areas of significant conflict because we all have a different view or a different understanding of how money should be saved, money should be used, money should be invested. And this also speaks probably of the kind of values or the ideas we have about money. And sometimes it is how we were raised, what our lifestyles were, what we have been used to, what we've seen in our own family, what have been the experiences as a result of money matters in our own homes. So first and foremost it's important to understand each other in this area and come to some place of an agreement. So the first and foremost understanding is what does money mean to people? What does money represent to each person? So for some it could be like a sense of security, for some it could be a sense of independence, for some it could be just a means, for others it could be something that you get so that you can bless others with. So there could be many other things or on the other side of it for some it could be a sense of fearlessness, the fact that okay I have money and that in itself keeps me safe. So there may be different things of the way that we see money and it's important to identify those values. So in the book you have a small table that helps you understand what your values are about money and your assets and your possessions. It's a good thing to actually go through this and understand where you are when it comes to material possessions and money because it really helps to know yourself as well as know what your partner's understanding of money is. So it's just a reflection about what money really means to you, what does it represent to you. When we're looking at financial finance and financial planning, one of the first things that we like to highlight as believers is giving to God's kingdom, agreeing to type in giving to God's kingdom. As we read in Proverbs 3 9 to 10, it says, honour the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase. So we are agreeing to give to God, whatever he has blessed us with, we are giving to God. There is also the verse in Malachi chapter 3 verses 8 to 10. So it says, will a man rob God yet you have robbed me but you say in what way have you robbed me, robbed in tithes and offerings. So it is to being agreeable to give together to the Lord or his work and that's something that you can come in agreement to. It's important also to learn how to live with money, to learn how to handle your finances and also to learn to live with contentment with what you have without a sense of greed or a sense of comparison. Or even the sense of a feeling that you should be better off than others. So it's important to live with simplicity and also to be generous and also serve God's purposes with money. Now as part of money, apart from tithing, one of the key important things that a couple needs to formulate is to be able to develop a budget. Deciding together what are the expenses that could come for the family. It's a good practice to do because it helps both the couple, both the husband and the wife to really formulate what means, within what means they should be living. And it's important to do that because this is what we call as wisdom. To come together to understand what is the income and what is the expenses so that you're living through each month well rather than falling short or being in absolute debt or even the other way, living very miserly and stringently. So much so that you don't even have three meals a day. So it's important to develop and come together to form that budget. And this happens only if both the husband and wife are open about their earnings are able to share information about their income and develop a plan. So before we just and we'll be looking at some of this in the next part of it in saving and investing. When you're developing a budget, it's good to have a mental breakup of a percentage. So if you work it backwards, we're saying that when you're tithing, you're tithing a minimum of 10%. Now it can even go more than that depending on how much you're able to give. So let's say 10 to 20%. So when that gets cut off, you have maybe a 90% or an 80%. Out of that, there is maybe a 20% that you are investing. 20% you're saving and the rest 50% is expenses. Now these percentages can change. The 50, 20, 20 can change. I was just giving you the least, the most minimum basic one that is useful and that's wise to do. 50% of expenses, 20% of saving, 20% of investing and 10% of type. So when you're actually able to understand this, it really helps in allocating maybe for something in the future. Like when you're saving at 20%, you're probably saving maybe for a set that you want to gather. Maybe it's a house or a land. I'm sorry, when you're investing, you're moving into something like that probably at a later point. Or you could be saving for that or saving for buying a car or buying a house or something that you may need to make life a bit more comfortable. All of this actually helps and it's a way of planning in able to budget. With this, alongside with this, it's also important for the couple to come to certain goals, certain financial goals. Agreeing on some financial goals, maybe certain short term goals about what you would like to see. What do you have? What are the goals that's there? So as we were saying, there may be some smaller goals that you may have probably it's moving into another house or buying a vehicle. Or it can be a long term financial goal, which is building a greater set on to something or getting into a business or any of that. But it's important to discuss this and come to a plan that two people can work together because we need to use money wisely, especially if you are looking at developing or having some big goals in mind. It is important to use that money carefully. As part of financial management, like I said, is also saving and investing. Now, they are saving and investing is a wise thing to do and it's good planning. What is saving and investing doing is it's actually making money for you and it is important to save systematically. So there are very many ways that you can invest money and allow it to grow. And the book actually talks about many different systems or plans that are there that you can use. And so if you do find yourself lacking on understanding this, it's also good to consult a good financial advisor who can help you with this. I'm just going to stop here for a couple of minutes. Is there any question? Any question that anyone has still where we covered right now? No one? No question? So we'll go to the last two, which is the relationship with the extended family. It may be parents, it may be in-laws, it may be the extended family. So we had made an emphasis and if you look through that entire space, there are many verses that talks about how you preserve and protect your one, your marriage, and also in the same time the way that you honour your parents and how you treat them. So there is a balance in all of this. Now as we did emphasise that there is the husband and wife living independently without the interference of the parents or the family members. Now this does not mean that you disconnect or keep them away from you. As you've read in scripture and there are many verses over here, it talks of Proverbs 18-19, just quickly read them. Help your relatives and they will protect you like a strong city wall, but if you quarrel with them, they will close their doors to you. Proverbs 19-26, he who mistreats his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings an approach. Proverbs 20-20, whoever curses his father or his mother, his lamp will be put out in deep darkness. Ephesians 2 and 3, honour your father and mother, it's the first commandment and so it will go well with you and you will have a long life. So if you look at scripture, it really talks of how you need to hold parents in honour, hold them in respect and honour and bless them. So it is important to maintain cordial loving relationships with your parents and your in-laws and continue to just bless them and have good relationships with them. Maintain that healthy relationship with them and it is important also to be able to show your love to them. So we're not advocating that you disconnect or you distance, maintain good cordial loving relationships. However, being careful of not allowing them to influence your marriage or impact or interfere with your marriage. Sometimes there can be younger couples who may need financial assistance from their parents and they need help. So this is something that you do with mutual understanding. You need to come in agreement to do this. Again, it's also not to treat one set of parents partially, it is to treat both of them equally and with love. The last one here is being able to care for the elderly or the widowed or often in your family. So there can be times because of the challenges that life brings that may be a need or as parents become older, there may be a need for the young couple or a couple to take care of elderly family members. It's not something, scripture talks about it, it says in Proverbs, James 127, it says, what God the Father considers to be pure and genuine religion is this, to take care of orphans and widows and their suffering and to keep oneself from being corrupted by the world. So it is our responsibility to take care of their needs. So this is where agreement needs to take place as a husband and wife coming together in agreement to address the needs of the extended family or the elderly family and to be able to do this with support and your complete understanding and wholeheartedness as you are taking care of the family. So doing it out of your reverence and your love for God so that they're all supported. So there are some of these areas that we've spoken about, generally those that needs to be managed at every home. Are there any reflections or any thoughts, any questions? You don't have to have any questions, you could also have some reflections. So if there's someone who likes to unmute and speak, that would be good, that would be helpful. No one has any thoughts, any questions? You know actually this is, you would find that a lot of marriages, they have conflicts because of some of these areas. We may think it is a simple but these could be the sources of the conflict like money. Money becomes a huge issue or the use of technology where both people are really busy at work or busy at entertainment. So that could be it or even this inequality about how you take care of the home, there's a whole lot of burden on one person. So all of this actually causes a lot of conflict and strife. So there should be, I believe that there should be a lot more discussion on this. Okay, I think Rin has spotted a message about how to treat our family members when married is something new that I learned. Okay, all right, okay, thank you, thanks Rin. Yeah, I think it's, maybe I'd like to probably put in a thought over here or maybe an observation of what are some of the things that I've come across. You know, at times when I help marriages is the ability of, this could be generally the husband, but this is not always true. I have seen even wives not being able to cut off emotional connection with the parents. And so for every small thing, there is a huge dependence that, for example, that cooking doesn't happen in the home. Food is always bought from home's house, right? And so what happens is there isn't, you know, the family, the husband and wife don't learn to adapt to change, to improvise, to eat burnt stuff. They don't learn it because there's always parents bringing things to comfort the children. But in actuality, when a young husband and a young wife are learning to do things on their own, there's a lot of things that are, a lot of learning, a lot of dynamics that's building up behind. It's not just about bringing food on the table, but there is coming to a place of agreement. There is being patient with one another. There is supporting one another. There is encouraging one another after something is made. There is cleaning up together. All of this adds in value and skill, right? So often I think parents themselves make the mistake of hoping to make things very comfortable for a young bride and groom. So much so that, you know, everything, when a home is set up and the fridge is there, the things in the kitchen is there, the car is there, everything, they just have to start living. That in itself, and I remember, I think, you know, my parents telling me when they were married, they had nothing. They had to really build on everything right from scratch because one is they were not living with my father's parents. They had to move away from their state and move to another state because of job issues. But that's when a lot about life and each other gets learned. And that's really, really significant, you know. So if you can weather through, in family therapy, we say if a couple can weather through the first year of marriage, the significant changes happen in the first year and then it happens in the next 10 years, so that if that first year is something that a couple can actually weather through, you know, you see that there's a lot more of success. The success rate is a lot more in marriages. Okay? Yeah. All right, yeah, I just wanted to share that. Anybody else? Very quiet class today. Yeah, something that I would also like to share for my parents. The struggle was, you know, like my dad had to get all his sisters married. So my mother, my mother faced the entire thing in her initial ages, like to build up our family. It was a little bit difficult because the entire financial strain was on my father because he had gone to Saudi. So they, my grandparents were looking out for my father to stand and take care of everything. So as I was listening to this also, you know, like we learned a lot from our parents, things, mistakes and things like how we should not do certain things. So it's like, always I felt that, you know, we keep on learning in a marriage. It's new every, and each marriage is so unique. And as you mentioned very rightly that small financial things can become big conflicts. It might be a small thing of very, it is not even, maybe we won't even use that thing afterwards, but it might be a small thing, but that just to buy that, you know, like buying a pet or, you know, these can become major conflicts and which is actually unnecessary. And I think we should all, I felt that as I was listening today, like these are things that we should submit to the Lord every day and ask his guidance and put things, the financial things, give it to his hand first so that everything else will fall in place. But God is the one who teaches us, right? So each time we learn something and I'm so thankful that even now I'm, God is teaching me and I'm grateful for all that I'm learning. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. Thank you so much. That is, yeah, I think we're, I'm sure a lot of us have, maybe especially those of us who are married or we've seen our parents. We have a lot of stories in this, in this part. I think one more thing that maybe I'd like to share is coming from, you know, a southern state in India, Kerala. One of the things that I've seen across a lot of homes in Kerala is the way that the woman is the one who actually bears the entire brunt of the home. And it can, it actually can be extremely taxing. In fact, a lot of times men marry just so that they have, they have another helper at home for the mother, right? Because in some of the homes, I'm talking about traditional homes in Kerala, maybe it's changing right now. Right now I think the issue is that all the children have left and they go abroad and the elderly parents are stuck back in Kerala. So that's the new problem that's coming. But I'm talking about maybe a couple of decades earlier, is that marriage happens because they need a woman, an extra hand of help in the house to take care of things. And so the burden just, you know, that culture just keeps passing on where the manager goes out for work and there's no other contribution that he brings into the home and it's the woman who slogs and everything. And so you build another generation thinking that it's a normal practice. It's okay to do that, you know. And we still see that being infiltrated within our community. I know I have some people from Kerala here. I don't know if you'll agree with my observation or you may have a different observation. Anybody? Okay. All right. We'll close our, so we've just completed the managing home. What we can do with the next hour, we will be looking at sex and sexuality. So let's take a break. We will come back at 11 o'clock after our break.