This book has been on my reading list for years. So many of the wives I look up to list it as one of their favorite books on marriage. I love reading books that help me become the best version of myself, and in this new role of wife there's plenty of room for improvement!
The subtitle of this book is so poignant: "What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?" Our culture shouts the opposite: test-drive the opposite sex, use others before marriage, it's all about your happiness and your gratification. It's no wonder we have so many divorces in our society when we're encouraged to simply focus on our own happiness all the time!
Author Gary Thomas radically challenges us to the opposite in this book. He asserts that God intended marriage to sanctify us, to make us holy. And sanctification involves pruning, molding, burning away our selfishness. The beautiful thing about this realization is that it no longer becomes about you. The pressure is off for a perfect marriage of perpetual happiness (which doesn't exist anyway!). Instead, your marriage becomes an offering to God, a union open to His hand and His transforming power. Thomas gives historic, spiritual, and practical insight within these chapters. I would highly recommend this book to any couple discerning marriage, engaged, or already married. As an added bonus, my husband and I are reading the devotional that accompanies this book: Devotions for a Sacred Marriage. It's been neat to have him experience the same principles in devotional form that I'm reading in the longer book.
Christmas is coming up in two months! Either book would make a cozy read by the fire...and might stir those coals in your marriage, too.
Have you read Sacred Marriage? What's your favorite book on relationships?
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