If you one day hope to get married or are looking to make your marriage better, The Wife Academy wants to help you.

“The Wife Academy is a virtual place where modern women can learn the fine art of being a wife,” said author, speaker and educator Michelle Stimpson who founded the site.

“We’ve got a generation of women (myself included) who have grown up with strong single mothers, single fathers, blended families where the step-parent played a minimal role in their lives, or even two-parent, church-going families that were dysfunctional and looked nothing like God’s design,” Stimpson said. “If today’s woman is anything like me, she can honestly say: No one ever sat me down and told me how to be a wife; let alone showed me. The Wife Academy is, at least, a start.

“There are many things that churches teach women these days—everything from how to start a business, how to follow your purpose, how to put on make-up. Those are certainly helpful classes, but what the women of the church were actually directed to teach can be found in Titus 2:4–5. That’s why I started The Wife Academy and put it online. I was teaching a wives’ class at my home church and realized that the women in the Dallas Fort Worth community weren’t the only ones who needed this information.”

The information is intended to help all women, regardless of their marital status.

“Originally, I thought it was for married women,” said Stimpson who plans to take parts of the course and add it to an app that will be released later this year. “But over the years, I’ve heard from single women who have gained so much from the courses. It has prepared them to understand that marriage is a ministry.

“The lessons are based on what the scriptures tell us older wives need to teach younger wives in Titus 2. They include how to actively love a spouse and children; how to take care of and guard your home; how to be kind, self-controlled, and pure. At first glance, I think a woman might say to herself, ‘Oh, I intuitively know how to do those things.’ But if the Word says they need to be taught, then they don’t come naturally. It’s not normal to forgive someone in three seconds flat—it takes some instruction in the Word!”

A high-speed internet connection is needed to participate in The Wife Academy. Interested women can go online to www.HopeForWives.org either alone or with a group of friends and click on the lessons and resources where they’ll have free access to the videos and handouts.

(via Hope for Women magazine)