Product Description
What do you want out of your marriage?
Do you simply want to get along and be happy? Or do you desire real intimacy–the kind of relationship that will challenge you to grow as an individual and satisfy you in a much deeper way than you have imagined?
Contrary to what television and bridal magazines tell us, marriage is about much more than personal happiness. Marriage is about spiritual growth. God wants to use your marriage to shape your character and to carry out his purposes in the world through you as a couple.
The book of Genesis provides a matrix for understanding the intimate mystery of marriage in light of three commands–leave (your family of origin), weave (a life together) and cleave (through sexual intimacy). In this book, Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III explore and unpack the rich implications of this pattern.
While this paper edition can be read on its own, a couple, Bible study group or Sunday school class can enhance their understanding by making their way through the bonus six Bible study sessions included in this expanded edition. Video segments introducing each of the Bible study sessions are also available online for free video download, making this book a complete small group curriculum.
The Intimate Mystery is part of the Intimate Marriage Curriculum Kit which includes everything needed to mentor individual married couples or to lead a group discussion and makes an especially helpful resource for newlyweds or young married couples.
The Intimate Mystery: Creating Strength and Beauty in Your Marriage
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I was extremely excited to read “The Intimate Mystery,” having read a number of solid marriage books over the years but nothing new recently. And I had heard good things about Dan Allender. My wife and I read the book along with a small group of young married couples from our church.
To its credit, the book has many strengths. Most significantly, the paradigm of leaving, weaving, and cleaving that Allender and Longman extract from Genesis 2 is extremely helpful. This framework for a successful, God-honoring marriage is biblical and simple.
It is also clear that these are some smart guys. I consider myself to be relatively well-read, but I literally had to check a dictionary several times to look up words in this short book. Beyond vocabulary, the book presents some higher level concepts than other marriage books, which often settle for mere self-help approaches instead.
The final positive points are more trivial. I appreciated that the book was shorter than some, which made it more readable and digestible. And the book jacket manages to be attractive without being unnecessarily feminine.
Having admitted these strengths, I will briefly explain a few disappointments. First, I was very frustrated with the experience of trying to fit together the various curriculum pieces that accompany this book. There are six different study guides, a DVD, and a leader’s guide, which are all explained to be essential to working through the material. Beyond the construction of a money-making franchise, I cannot imagine why the authors would seemingly require so many different separate (and costly) pieces. We decided to skip the DVD, and the study guides and leader’s guide were not particularly helpful. I’d encourage others to just read the book.
I was also surprised by how difficult it was for me to follow some of the authors’ points. I’m not the brightest guy in the world, but I can read Lewis, Foster, Willard, McGrath and other intellectual heavyweights. Yet, I really struggled to get through some of the chapters. I just found some of the ideas to be almost hastily or sloppily thrown together, in a way that was not clear to the reader.
Finally, our group was somewhat taken aback by some of the examples that were used. Though I suspect that the authors were using a rhetorical approach that was intended to jar and even shock the reader on occasion, our group found it to be off-putting.
In conclusion, I am glad that I read this book, as the leave-weave-cleave paradigm was presented in a way that made sense to me. I imagine that this framework will stick with me and continue to shape my understanding of Christian marriage. However, I was not overly impressed with the book and cannot recommend it highly. If you’re looking for a great book to strengthen your marriage, read Gary Thomas’ “The Sacred Marriage” instead.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book is really heady and dense, just in the way Allender writes. It is so full of great content though. I found it really helpful as I read it with my fiance. It gave us a lot to talk about and a lot of good advice for our marriage.
Rating: 4 / 5
Allender presents a down-to-earth view of the way God intended the intimate relationship between man and wife. He is candid about his own struggles in marriage and he does not candy coat the hard times. But he does offer tremendous hope in having a marriage that God designed through love, mercy, grace, taking responsibility for one’s own issues and forgiveness. This is an encouraging read!
Rating: 5 / 5
After 32 years of marriage, my husband and I find this to be the most helpful marriage book we’ve found.
Rating: 5 / 5
this book is a wonderful book to go through during marriage-when things are rough, or when they are good and you would like to grow more. it would be an awesome pre-marriage book for those looking to grow in knowledge of marriage before saying “i do!”
our marriage counselor is going through it with my husband and i and it has been a wonderful approach when just going in to counseling to “talk” is too hard. it is nice having this book as a standing ground to start conversations vs. just jumping into the deep end when talking about life is extremely hard.
i would recommend this book to anyone wanting to enrich their marriage, grow in knowledge before marriage or learn about marriage to assist others taking that walk!
hope this review is helpful to anyone out there looking to find a solid book on marriage–you have come to the right book! and it is a very quick and easy read. go for it!
Rating: 5 / 5