If you are in marital crisis and are looking to scripture for advice, encouragement, and hope, or if you just want to have the best marriage possible by looking to what scripture has to say about marriage and relationships, what you believe about scripture is very important.

What you believe about scripture will influence how you understand and apply passages about marriage, and about such things as love and hope. It will have a major impact on what your life, and the life of your descendants, will look like in the future.

I have been a Christian for many years and in the past have studied how the scriptures were passed down to us and the reasons it is reliable. I recently read the book, Another Gospel by Alisa Childers, which was a good refresher on these topics and other topics related to scripture.

It was a relatively easy read for such heavy topics and included a lot of her personal story of going from faith in scripture, to doubt, to faith again. I have been on a similar journey from time to time in the past, so it was very helpful to hear her story and to be reminded again of the importance and reliability of scripture.

If you are someone who is either new to the faith, or who has just grown up in the faith but really have not studied issues about the reliability of Scripture before, this might be a good book with which to start such a study. If you are like me, and over time you have forgotten some of the reasons why you believed scripture, this might be a good refresher.

About 40 years ago, I read a book that goes a little deeper on these subjects, and is very much more detailed. The book is Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. The updated version of this book is Evidence that Demands a Verdict: Life Changing Truth for a Skeptical World by Josh and Sean McDowell.

Often during our separation what got me through hopeless and painful days was clinging to various promises and instructions in scripture.

If you don’t have a solid foundation in your belief in scripture, when things get tough in marriage it will be a lot easier just to go with whatever the friends or world suggest you do that day or to make decisions mostly based on your negative, hopeless feelings on a bad day, rather than the timeless truth of scriptures.

What books have helped you on your journey of understanding the reliability of scripture? What has your journey with scripture looked like over the years?