Two weeks ago I shared a recommended reading list from a CSU professor, Peter Beck. Those books have arrived and are in the church library. Feel free to check them out…pun intended. This week I want to make a few book recommendations about relationships. You may have read some or all of these. Keep in mind they make great gifts for your grown kids, your grandchildren or friends getting married.
#1 His Needs/Her Needs: Building an Affair Proof Marriage by Willard Harley
How can couples experience a lifetime of passion and fulfillment in marriage? By identifying each other’s most important emotional needs and developing habits to meet them. One of my favorite books.
#2 Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
“My conclusion after many years of marriage counseling is that there are five emotional love languages — five ways that people speak and understand emotional love.” Chapman says that learning each other's love language can help couples express their emotions in a way that’s “deeply meaningful” to one another. We have taught this many times at JIBC.
#3 Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs
The book in three sentences: “Wives are made to love, want to love, and expect love. Husbands are made to be respected, want respect, and expect respect”. “When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband”. “Often, we focus on our own needs and simply overlook the needs of the other person”. Buy it!
#4 Wild at Heart by John Eldridge
In his book Wild at Heart author John Eldredge thrusts a generation of men, young and old, toward a journey to recover true masculinity—the soul of a man as God designed him. If you’ve already begun the journey, you know how thrilling—and hard—it can be. For too long the call of Christianity to men has evoked no higher goal, ultimately, than becoming a “nice guy.” No wonder many men are bored to tears with church. The hero instinct has been trained out of them. But Eldredge invites men to come alive again, to find their great battle, adventure, and beauty. If you dare...keep reading. Your life will never be the same. * I recommend this book for men and women.
Here is my offer. If you buy the books and don’t like them, I will buy them back from you and put them in the church library. You are going to like them.
See you Sunday as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together.
Pastor Tom
