Love and War

(a book review)
Our marriage needs help! I am guessing if you are honest, yours does too. Marriage, like life, is in a perpetual state of growth. In the scope of the Kingdom, our marriages are of the utmost importance as a tool for showing Jesus love to the world and bringing His name Glory. Because of this, we try to make a practice of continually studying and investing in our marriage. Our latest endeavor was the book "Love and War" by John and Stasi Eldredge. Over the past few months, we have been slowly reading through the book together and this is our review of the book. This does start with a fairly negative outlook on marriage, but I don't think it is necessarily inconsistent with the realities of the world. Thankfully, our marriage has not been to the depths that they used as a starting point for much of their message, but we read it with an understanding that if not for Grace, that too could be our reality.

Obviously, there is no shortage of marriage books but equally obvious is the reality that their is no end to the complexities of marriage. "Love and War" was beneficial for us in that it highlighted areas of necessary growth in our marriage that many other marriage books dont often address. Let me pull off the pages of the book the Eldredges summary of their 3 biggest pieces of advice for marriage.

1. Find life in God
2. Deal with your brokenness
3. Learn to shut down the spiritual attacks that come against your marriage.

I have seen "find life in God" appropriately dealt with in other marriage books and will therefore not address it in this review. "Deal with your brokenness" is probably also another common theme of marriage books but the Eldredges handle this topic a little differently. By differently, what I really mean is very honestly. If you have ever read anything from the Eldredges before, you know that they write in stark honesty. We have found this refreshing in the way that they "give the gift of going 2nd." We have all been in a situation in which we may have something to say but there is no chance we would say it first. Well, the person who does say it first gives everyone else the "the gift of going second." The Eldredges provided us with this gift as they honestly dealt with their brokenness in ways that gave us the comfort and freedom to begin similar discussions regarding ourselves. #3, "Learn to shut down the spiritual attacks that come against your marriage," pushed against the limits of our comfort zone. This is a topic that I have not seen commonly dealt with in other marriage materials and similarly this is a topic that is not at the forefront of our Christian tradition. Therefore, this part of the book made us uncomfortable and I hope it was in a good way. In a way that fostered discussion, in a way that caused us to question how we have ignored the realities of spiritual attack against our marriage, and hopefully in ways that pointed us back to Jesus and the realities of the advancing Kingdom. It is sometimes all too easy in our "little peaceful worlds" to forget about the spiritual realities of the war that we are living. So, would we recommend this book, well you can read this review and decide. Again, we really appreciated the honesty and openness with which the Eldredges wrote this book. We have found so much value in committing time to thinking about and processing material about growing our marriage. Often, the quality of the material has been far less important than the time we have committed to study and growth. To God be the Glory!

***DISCLOSURE NOTICE: A free copy of this book was supplied to me for the purpose of review. No monetary exchange was given. All comments and wording in this review are purely my own.