To my dear readers: I am apologizing in advance for this post as before I even put fingertip to keyboard, I know that this write-up will be tainted. You will have to excuse me for a moment as I share something personal, which I try not to do too much here. I have been married for sixteen years and four months. I have been a Christian for sixteen years and two months of that. My spouse has not. Recently, as I was explaining my situation to a group of ladies, I was told that I am 'spiritually single'. As true as that may be, it cut me to the core. I have, of late (and before the comment), been embarked on a bit of a pity party for myself in this area. Every day I try desperately to seek after God and the Word and learn as much as I can about Him but I really feel like because I am missing that covenantal experience of marriage to a believer, I am left not knowing a very special part of being 'the Bride of Christ'. It would be different if I was single, as the Apostle Paul chose to be, and could live my life in that vein. Yet here I am as a married woman, yearning desperately for that connection through Christ in my marriage, and continually denied this precious gift year after year. Please don't get me wrong, I in no way feel that I deserve this experience or even expect that it should happen one day. It is just something that I feel would elevate my journey with God to another level and that is what I long for most of all.
How this relates to the book I am discussing is that the authors come from a perspective of being married to a fellow Christian and both spouses striving to improve their relationship with God first, and then each other. There was not one mention in the entire book about the possibility that a reader may be yoked to an unbeliever. Now, I understand that not a lot of Scripture is devoted to my particular situation (1 Corinthians 7:12-16, 1 Peter 3:1-5) but I can't be the only one out here (except it would seem in my home church that I am). So the book left me feeling a bit 'un-spoken to' but I will try to tease out things that will be valuable to all. Oh, and be careful to whom you give this book as there is a lot of descriptive sexual content and for someone who has a history of, or currently is, struggling in this area I would not recommend it at all. Just in case.
This won't be my normal post, with copious quotes, but rather a rundown of the book in general. The first half of the book is about marriage. The Driscolls provide an interesting reflection on their lives both before and after they met and are very candid about parts of their history that played a role in their marriage relationship. The basis of their teaching is "[h]usbands and wives who want their marriages to be enduring and endearing must be friends" (p. 24). Part of that friendship "involves healthy conflict and hard discussions as God reveals sin and repentance, and reconciliation takes place" (p. 25). They provide many different areas and ways where we show our devotion to our spouse as our closest and best friend. "It is in the darkest seasons of life that God reveals to us our most devoted friends...In marriage, being a devoted friend in all life's seasons is key to building oneness, intimacy, and trust (p. 39).
After this introduction to the author's marriage philosophy, Mark has written a chapter to the men and Grace has written a chapter to the women. Mark talks about many stereo-typical types of men and then says "[w]hen you consider how many men are really just boys who can shave, think about how terrifying it must be for a woman to marry" (p. 48). He believes that the husband's primary goal should be to honour his wife - physically, emotionally, verbally, financially and technologically (yes men, you do need to turn off your phone). Mark goes on to discuss the concept of having a covenant marriage where "[a]s the covenant head, you cannot remain distant, unwilling to get involved in the messiest parts of your family life, or tell your wife to get her act together apart from your loving inclusion. This is not to say that your wife bears no responsibility for her own sin, but that you bear it with her out of love" (p. 56). Finally he says that the three things he believes will aide a marriage in going well are getting involved in a good church, agreeing on what the Bible says, and worshipping together at home. The chapter that Grace wrote to the women was probably my favourite chapter of the entire book. She believes that the wife's primary goal should be to respect her husband. Her idea of respect involves your head, heart and hands. She encourages women to pay close attention to how we are thinking about our husbands and if there is even a shred of disrespect "it will seep into your heart and eventually come out in your words and actions...We need to stop disrespectful lies and sinful thoughts before they 'give birth'" (p. 67). Grace tells us to confess our sin of disrespect and listen closely for the Spirit's conviction for change. We need to be watching our husbands closely and "start a journal or make a list of things you appreciate about him" (p. 69). As our hearts grow into respect for our husbands, our words will reflect this change. Our hands respect our husbands by being a helper to him. We should use our hands to pray, touch, feed, hunt and fish (a.k.a. doing something he likes that isn't necessarily your favourite thing to do) and open the Bible. Grace talks next about disagreeing respectfully. "We've never known a couple to agree on everything and live in perfect harmony unless they were in denial or didn't want to allow change or healthy conflict in their own lives. The key is to fight as friends and not as foes" (p. 74). We need to pray before we go into any discussion about a disagreement and ensure that we are not trying to put our husbands in a place of submission to us. "Every disagreement is an opportunity for oneness or division. Every day we are either drawing together or drifting apart. As wives, we can be a tremendous blessing if we continually seek, by the grace of God, to be respectful helpers fighting against being either silently compliant or loudly contentious, and fighting for the glory of God and the good of our husbands" (p. 79). There is a section on submitting respectfully which I would encourage you to read as Grace gives an extremely balanced and biblical perspective on this often sensitive subject. Her bottom line is that we, as wives, need to use Jesus and His place in the Trinity as our example of submission and know that "a woman can simultaneously be respectfully submissive and vocally honest with both her husband and God about how she's feeling" (p. 84).
The final chapter of the marriage portion of the book is about how to deal with sin within the marriage relationship. "We can kill our sin, or sin will kill our marriages" (p. 88). This involves repentance and forgiveness. "Forgiveness is loving despite sin. Just as God forgives not just undeserving but ill-deserving sinners, we must too. We do not forgive our spouses because they are good or deserving, but rather because God is good and deserving. Forgiveness includes wanting good for the spouse who sinned against you, being able to pray for his or her well-being, and not keeping a record of wrongs against your spouse like a pile of rocks to throw when convenient. Forgiveness is an ongoing lifestyle that is incredibly costly to us and lived out of love for God and others" (p. 94). We also must work against bitterness getting a foothold in our marriage. "In seasons of bitterness, we have a proclivity to blame others, most likely our spouses, for our bitterness, as if they placed it in us through their transgression. The truth is people, even the worst of them, do not embitter us. Rather, they provide an opportunity, or temptation, to choose bitterness, for which we remain morally responsible" (p. 96). I loved their very simple sentence to round out this section which said "Marriage either gets bitter or gets better" (p. 99). Simple and to the point. You can probably look at all the marriages around you and tell in a few moments in which direction each is headed.
So, on to the second half of the book. It's all about sex. "We are to pour all our passion and pursuit of sexual pleasure into our spouses alone, without comparing them to anyone else in a lustful way" (p. 110). The authors beliefs are that we make sex a god, gross or a gift and a lot of where we stand on this has to do with our past. Grace came into the marriage with a history of abuse in a past relationship. They devote a chapter to discussing this; how it affected their marriage and what they did to try and heal her wounds and the wounds it had caused in their marriage as the abuse was not revealed until after they had been married for some time.
A chapter about pornography was very eye-opening to me. I found myself crying as I read stories about women who had been lured into the industry and how it ravaged their souls. And the information about the damage that it does to a marriage relationship is shocking. "The natural chemical 'high,' what some call a 'biochemical love potion,' resulting from sex and orgasm was designed by God to bind a husband and wife together. In the best sense of the word, God intends for a devoted married couple to be 'addicted' to each other, bound together in every way" (p. 141). When pornography is viewed, this binding happens with other people in mind and leads to addiction. The harm that pornography does to God (it grieves His heart), the viewers (it rewires their natural sexuality), and women (it objectifies them) is astounding. "It is the Holy Spirit who gives us desires that are deeper and stronger than sinful desires. Thus, a holy life is the most passionate life that does not settle for petty things like sexual sin but rather passionately pursues the glory of God in all things" (p. 153). We must seek and practice sexual contentment with our spouse alone. "Sex is a part of your life, but it is not your life...you must frequently seek evidences of God's grace to you through your spouse. Spend more time thanking God for what you have from your spouse than you do picking at what she or he does not have or give, and your attraction toward and satisfaction with your spouse will increase" (p. 154).
In one of the final chapters, Mark and Grace discuss the issue of being either a selfish lover or a servant lover. Obviously, God calls us to be servants in this area of our life as well. Pride is our biggest barrier to success in being loving servants. "If we do not choose humility, God will choose humiliation for us. So we must willfully, earnestly, and continually humble ourselves" (p. 158). I appreciated when they revealed that it takes "between nine and fourteen years for a couple to become not entirely unselfish, but rather less selfish, and begin to shift from 'me' to 'we'" (p. 159). That explains a lot. "Marriage is for our holiness before our happiness...God will use our spouses to expose our selfishness and make us to be increasingly more humble servants like Jesus Christ" (p. 159). They give many great points about ways we are selfish lovers and why we are selfish lovers. Also, there is a really in-depth discussion about Song of Songs and I had very little knowledge about this book of the Bible. It was enlightening.
I watched the introduction to the Driscoll's teaching sessions on this book and the chapter that Grace thought was going to get them in the most trouble was the "Can we ___?" one. I can see why she thought this as they discuss many different sexual acts from the perspective of Is it lawful?, Is it helpful? and Is it enslaving?. I will let you tackle this one on your own when/if you read the book. They do say "Our aim is to open up the topic to married couples so they can lovingly, graciously, and prayerfully discuss what they would like to do and not do. We want to emphatically state that our intent is to inform heterosexual married couples of the full range of their sexual freedom. But we do not want this information to be used in any way to force someone to act against his or her conscience" (p. 203).
After this is all said and done, they ask the readers to have a getaway with their spouse and plan the rest of their marriage. The desire should be for our marriages to be full of intentionality. Our days should be full of prayer and purpose and we should be looking to hear from God when we are organizing our life. There are pages full of questions to discuss from how the bedroom will look to major changes that will have taken place. "The goal is progress, not perfection" (p. 220). This is something that I would absolutely love to to with my husband. He has agreed to peek at the book when he has time. Would you pray with me that it would be a catalyst to the end of my 'spiritually single' life?
Note: April 21, 2012. I have rethought this post so many times since I put it up. But I will leave it as is and just ask you to take the time to read this review as well. This author says so well the things that I was not able to say but really felt in my heart when I was done the book.
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