Ready or Knot?

Ready or knot? Scott Kedersha

I’ve been looking for a new book to replace our standard recommended reading for a couple who is newly engaged. Finally, I think I've found it.

Scott Kedersha has provided an excellent resource for couples considering marriage. He addresses 12 topics to think about and work through together, covering pretty much everything I want addressed (and that we do in our own marriage preparation with couples). These include: the purpose of marriage, communication, having faith as your foundation, personality differences, family of origin, sex, financial stewardship, friendship, biblical roles, children and church community. Each chapter finishes with questions for each individual, questions to discuss together, and a prayer to pray together as you continue to work through the issue.

Kedersha seems eminently qualified, having run a marriage ministry for 13 years in Texas and having helped thousands of couples prepare for marriage. Each chapter is founded on scripture, is clear and very relevant. Published last year it is also up to date, and addresses issues older books don’t deal with as well, such as challenges of technology and the potential impact of previous sexual experience and pornography on a marriage. Each chapter includes an extended illustration of one couple and how they have managed that issue in their marriage. This gave a personal voice to the content, and will help starry-eyed couples see what challenges they may face down the track. I appreciated that these weren’t sugar-coated, there were couples who had had affairs, struggled with anger and had hopes dashed. But all came to be confronted by the grace of God in their lives and were able to enact real change.

He flags that as couples work through things, they will need consider whether an issue is a green light (proceed to marriage), orange light (reconsider, postpone, work on things), or red light (time to walk away). One potential red light issue he flagged was a partner who never asks for forgiveness. Very insightful.

I have a mental list of topics I would like to see covered in pre-marriage books. Things like: how to manage technology use, couples who were already sleeping together, what physical boundaries to consider while engaged, what friendships with the other gender might look like once married, considerations over having children, and contraception. I was thrilled to see each of these and many more covered.

There were a few minor things that could have been better. There was one very poor biblical reference to Rev 2:4-5, where Jesus rebukes the church for forgetting their first love (him), which Kedersha uses to say you have to keep the fun activities you enjoyed early on and keep doing them later in marriage. I would have liked to see him raise the red light issue if you have concerns regarding your partner’s anger or any violence. And in the chapter on biblical roles, he did not address decision-making. We find the majority of couples think headship and submission comes down to decision-making and I would have liked to see him address this oversimplification. 

While I appreciated the breadth of topics he discussed, the real strength is the way he addressed them. All were designed to bring you back to Christ, and what it means to serve him in your marriage both biblically and practically. This book will assist many engaged couples thoughtfully assess how they want their marriage to honour God and each other.