Host: What are the benefits of premarital counseling?

Rev. Bill Cochran: I believe the benefits are tremendous. When you involve yourself in premarital counseling with your intended, you are opening yourself up to help discover the strengths in your relationship which also brings yourself up to discover some of the areas that you may want to grow in. Often times it's those growth areas that can be a stumbling block keeping you from moving your relationship ahead. Perhaps you are thinking well we need to work through this before we move it to the next level. So the benefits are that you discover a lot about yourself. I know most couples when they come for pre-marriage counseling, kind of have the idea that we know just about everything there is to know about each other.

We talked about everything and it's kind of fun for me to watch them as we get into it they say, Oh, that's right we need to talk about that. Often couples will put off things that they feel are just bit harsh or might lead to an argument and rather than to have that argument they just won't deal with it. So pre-marriage counseling really gets down to the level of helping you to pull out those things that you tried to bury or put under the rug and really deal with them before marriage. Pre-marriage you are as positive as you can be. You have got stars in your eyes. Give it a few years it's tougher for me work with you this positively.