SACRED MARRIAGE REV EDN SC: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?

This book is one of the most awesome book I've read. It has brought tremendous changes in me. I m in love with this book.

Das Buch von Gary Thomas ist mir eher zufällig in die Hände gefallen. Aufgrund der guten Rezessionen beim amerikanischen Amazon habe ich es mir gekauft, aber es lag dann erst mal eine Weile zu Hause rum. Als mich dann aber vor einiger Zeit Fragen in Bezug auf Gott, die Ehe, Liebe, Partnerschaft usw. beschäftigten, fiel mir das Buch wieder ein. Ich habe es aus dem Regal genommen und angefangen zu lesen in der Hoffnung wenigstens ein paar Antworten auf meine Fragen zu finden. Was ich gefunden habe kann ich nicht wirklich beschreiben. Ich muss auch ehrlich gestehen, dass mir eigentlich gar nicht klar war, worum es in der Ehe überhaupt geht bzw. hatte ich eine völlig falsche Vorstellung (wie wohl leider die meisten Menschen). Die Frage um die es in dem Buch geht ist: Was ist wenn Gott die Ehe nicht geschaffen hat, um uns glücklich zu machen, sondern um uns ihm näher zu bringen? Gary Thomas erzählt in den Buch viel über seine eigene Ehe und eigenen Erfahrungen diesbezüglich und stellt auch immer wieder die Verbindung zur Bibel her. Er spricht über den Grund der Ehe und ihre Herausforderungen wie Lieben, Vergeben, Ausdauer, Respekt.... und vieles mehr. Ich kann das Buch wirklich nur empfehlen. Und es ist auch ein Buch, das man auch nachdem man es gelesen hat immer wieder in die Hand nimmt und bestimmte Seiten oder Abschnitte liest. Vielen Dank Gary Thomas für dieses wunderbare Buch!

This book is awesome!!!!! It has opened my mind and heart to important topics and on how marriage reveals what really is in our hearts, which staying single would not. In marriage we live a reality that is harder than any other and if we follow God instrucions, in His Word, not only will we find peace and happiness even during struggles but we will become holier every day more. God will be able to work in our hearts to make us better persons, will work on our selfishness, then we will want to only give and we will find that it is better to give than to receive. So difficult to express what a blessing this book has been to me and still is as I go back to it.

Good to read to understand what a real Christ-like marriage is about. Full of challenging truth.

I'm getting married soon, and this book has certainly given my future spouse and I a lot to consider and mull over as we approach the sacred union of marriage. Very good book!

Husband and I *just finished reading Sacred Marriage together. We had a couple of complaints, but we both enjoyed the overall message. Our first complaint was the word choices. Because we were reading out loud, we frequently stumbled over the verbose language—many, many times. I don't know how much of an issue this would have been reading silently because maybe we would have just assumed we'd gotten the message where we said the wrong word out loud. I'm not sure. Maybe others didn't have this issue. It could be a matter of speech and the written word being so different. Our second complaint was that there was no discussion or thought questions to go with the chapter content. Well, that is until we got to the end of the book. Which we didn't know was even there since we were reading on our Kindles. Had we known there actually was a section dedicated to discussion questions at the back of the book, we probably would have made an effort to flip back and forth, but that also would have been annoying. I think it makes more sense to include these at the end of each chapter or section and if the reader wants to skip them then it's still easier to do so. Overall, we both appreciated the message of Sacred Marriage. The important takeaways for us both were that everything in our marriage can be used to draw us closer to God. We can use our spouse's failings to view them in comparison to God--He will never fail us. We can use those same failings to grow in our love--not a selfish love that always seeks to be fulfilled, but in a self-sacrificial love that always seeks to fulfill others. We can use our own failings to remind ourselves that just as we are human and imperfect, our spouse is the same. Just as we fail and fall short, our spouse does too. And just as much as we want forgiveness and a pardon for our mistakes, our spouse does too. We can use marriage as a refiner's fire to become more like God, to love more like God, and to forgive more like God. The author uses an example (and I'm totally paraphrasing the story) of a time when his wife wasn't doing something that he wanted her to do. I can't remember what the task was so let's say it's to make the bed. And she repeatedly doesn't do this task. He gets so annoyed. One day she tells him that she's going to love him forever, and he frustratedly responds that he doesn't need her to love him forever, he needs her to love him for twenty-seven seconds. Twenty-seven seconds is all the time it takes to do the task she daily neglects to do. And she basically tells him that maybe he needs to love her for the twenty-seven seconds it takes him to do the task himself. I loved this example. So often we latch onto these little things that our spouse isn't doing, and we think to ourselves "If he/she loved me they would do this" or "he/she isn't thinking about me at all at this moment that they choose not to do/to do this task". When in reality, we're also stuck in the moment of thinking about ourselves and not just doing whatever the task is ourselves. Many times, the task only takes us twenty-seven seconds, or thereabout. We can't keep score in our marriage. Doing so helps no one and hurts everyone. Here are too many of my favorite quotes: -...in one sense, marriage might be the toughest ministry she could ever undertake. "The state of marriage is one that requires more virtue and constancy than any other," he wrote. "It is a perpetual exercise of mortification..." -To spiritually benefit from marriage, we have to be honest. We have to look at our disappointments, own up to our ugly attitudes, and confront our selfishness. -Who can be truly "happy" while filled with anger, rage, and malice? Who can be happy while nursing resentment or envy? Who can be honestly happy while caught in a sticky compulsion of an insatiable lust or incessant materialism? The glutton may enjoy his food, but he does not enjoy his condition. -You won't find happiness at the end of a road named selfishness. -I also pray it will help you to love your marriage more, appreciate your marriage more, and inspire you to become even more engaged in your relationship with your spouse. When you realize something is "sacred," far from making it boring, it gives birth to a new reverence, a take-your-breath-away realization that something you may have been taking for granted is far more profound, far more life-giving and life-transforming, than you may have ever realized. I love marriage, and I love my marriage. I love the fun parts, the easy parts, and the pleasurable parts, but also the difficult parts--the parts that frustrate me but help me understand myself and my spouse on a deeper level; the parts that are painful but that crucify the aspects of me that I hate; the parts that force me to my knees and teach me that I need to learn to love with God's love instead of just trying harder. Marriage has led me to deeper levels of understanding, more pronounced worship, and a sense of fellowship that I never knew existed. -God didn't design marriage to compete with himself but to point us to himself. -Honor not expressed is not honor. -Contempt is born when we fixate on our spouse's weaknesses. Every spouse has these sore points. If you want to find them, without a doubt you will. If you want to obsess about them, they will grow--but you won't. -Couples don't fall out of love so much as they fall out of repentance. -God doesn't protect Christians from their problems--he helps them walk victoriously through their problems. -When we're most tired, most worn-out, and feeling more sorry for ourselves than we ever have before, we have the opportunity to confront feelings of self-pity by getting up and serving our mate. -"Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power" (John 13:3), but instead of acting like a spiteful tyrant, Jesus got up from the meal and washed his disciples' feet. Instead of using his power to pout, chastise, or gloat, Jesus uses it to serve. -But when we have power over another--particularly power in an area where someone feels so vulnerable and needy and where they can go nowhere else to be served--and then use that power irresponsibly, inappropriately, and maliciously, we become more like Satan, who loves to manipulate us in our weakness rather than like God, who serves us in our weakness. -And yet, as we travel into marriage, there usually comes a moment when we wonder, "Is this really as good as it gets? Is this really all there is?" Instead of being turned away from our spouse when this disillusionment sets in, we can be turned toward God. It can remind us that even our best choice of a human partner isn't enough to satisfy us. It won't help us to change our emotional focus, recognizing we can never receive all the love we need and desire from fellow humans. Instead of realizing that our true needs can be ultimately met only in and by God, some people keep trying to find their fulfillment in new relationships, thinking that what they really need is just to find "the right person," which, when translated, usually means a new person. Christianity does not direct us to focus on finding the right person; it calls us to become the right person. Our happiness is not determined by what is around us, but rather by how we deal with what is around us. -We allow marriage to point beyond itself when we accept two central missions: becoming the people God created us to be, and doing the work God has given us to do. If we embrace--not just accept, but actively embrace--these two missions, we will have a full life, a rich life, a meaningful life, and a successful life. The irony is, we will probably also have a happy marriage, but that will come as a blessed by-product of putting everything else in order. Gary Thomas tells you the hard truths that you need to hear but you might not accept if they were coming from someone you knew. The distance of someone not intimately involved in your marriage helps you to see that this person is impartial with their advice and knowledge. Gary Thomas isn't attacking you, your flaws, your spouse, their flaws, or your relationship with God. He is simply presenting the information you most need to hear. And I highly suggest reading this with your partner as reading it first and then trying to share the information with them might come off as preachy. Yet, I know that not all spouses are interested in reading this kind of content or even in improving themselves or their marriage. If that's the case, then read this alone and put into practice all that you can on your side. Sacred Marriage's message was enough to give this book 5 Stars. The mirror it placed in front of me to confront my own selfishness and self-centeredness that isn't Christ-like and won't serve my marriage is enough to deserve the rating. I do think the vocabulary used and sentence structure was a bit much. It tripped both my husband and myself up many times. And I hope if they revise this book that the discussion questions will be included at the end of each chapter versus the end of the book. Have you read Sacred Marriage? What did you think? Let me know! *Finished this book and wrote this review back in February 2023, but review is just now going up due to scheduling.