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 There’s no shortage of books on marriage: Amazon currently lists over 14,000 under the search term “marriage help.” And there’s no shortage of books by the married psychologist couple Drs. Les & Leslie Parrott: they have already written over a dozen.
So what does this book add that is useful? It is a good discussion of personality temperament psychology as it applies to marriage. Originating in ancient Greece, temperament theory poses that there are four basic flavors of personalities, that cause people to desire and react differently. In the ancient system, these were known as choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. Forty years ago then young Christian writer Tim LaHaye re-popularized this theory with a series of books including his classic Spirit Controlled Temperament. In the 1990s psychologist Gary Chapman repackaged the four temperaments concept in his popular marriage book Making Love Last Forever using the animal word pictures of lion, beaver, otter, & golden retriever.
In L.O.V.E, the same basic breakdown is used, but repackaged as “love styles” with the labels Leader, Optimist, Validator & Evaluator (that spells out L. O. V. E. in case you weren’t looking.) There are chapters that explain each of the four types, and then chapters on how to best relate to each of the four types in a relationship.
The material is well written and organized, and provides some useful insights both into yourself and your mate. Reading through L.O.V.E. I had some new “aha!” moments even though I have read other personality typing books in the past.
A few qualms: I didn’t appreciate that the four “styles” are presented as original, even though they are obviously based on previous typing systems. Second, I was bugged by the book’s repeated references to the extra cost online typing test that the Parrots’ have on their website. Lastly, except for a few generic Bible verses, this shouldn’t be considered a “Christian” book— there is no talk of grace, no talk of the role of the Spirit, no talk of God’s plan for marriage or the differing roles of husband and wife. Overall, however, L.O.V.E. is a good read that should be useful for any marriage.
 It’s the unspoken elephant in the room: why aren’t professing Christians, by and large, any different than non-Christians? We often struggle and fail at the same sins, have the same divorce rates, and generally don’t stand out as being more kind or loving than devoted moral adherants of other religions— despite our theology that we have been “born again.” Ask many, including pastors, the question, and the reply often comes down to some variant of “they aren’t trying hard enough” or “they aren’t really saved after all.”
But the question behind the question is “So, how do people really change— how does a person who has become a child of God actually become radically more loving, more peaceful, more self-controlled, in a way that isn’t mere psychology and that can’t be explained or experienced by a non-Christian?”
Few people can give a robust, Biblical, detailed explanation to this fundamental question. Timothy Lane & Paul Tripp can, and do, in this wonderful book. They give us a truly Biblical & congruent theology of how people change, and show us a path to meaningful personal change in our own lives.
The first five chapters lay a foundation for what real Biblical life change is and isn’t– they talk about how easy it is to substitute external change like formalism and activism for true change of the heart. They lay out the crucial understanding of our marriage to Christ, and how God designed real change to take place in the context of community. There is a lot of rich thought provoking truth on every page of these foundation chapters.
Next, they move onto their central Biblical picture of how God has designed change: that of the tree. They explain chapter by chapter that the “heat” of living in a fallen world brings out fallen human responses of sin and evil “thorns.” But as we turn to the cross of Christ and His presence we gain the ability to bear beautiful fruit, new supernatural responses to the same “heat” that before would only produce thorns.
True “fruit” only comes from the nourishment that God provides, and we need to be able to recognize the thorns and the fallen nature behind them to be able to choose Christ instead. This book is a wonderful Biblical mirror to hold in front of your soul, to be able to see yourself, the good and the bad, and see the work of God within. Highly recommended.
I was counseling a patient last week who was having trouble with proper boundaries in his relationship with his girlfriend. He had a new job opportunity that he wanted to pursue, but his girlfriend thought it would take too much time away from her. “I really want to do this, but I don’t want to hurt her,” he confessed to me.
“YOU are not hurting her by making this choice,” I explained. “SHE is choosing to hurt herself.” I went on to explain that she had the power of choice, and she was making the choice not to support him, and to feel hurt. She could choose differently. She could choose to be happy for him, to be willing to be positive, to be willing to see what would happen, to be willing not to take it personally. All these were options open to her, and were her choice to make.
He could not choose for her, and he could not live his life trying only to figure out what would not hurt her. He had to make HIS best choices. Of course he needed to consider her feelings and the impact of his choices on her, but he still needed to take the responsibility for his choice, and she needed to take the responsibility for hers.
Afterwards, I started thinking not about the advice I gave him, but the advice that I would have given her. I would have said, “Look, I know you’re hurt, or disappointed, or frustrated with this situation, but how you react is STILL YOUR CHOICE. You can choose anger, or bitterness, or despair, or you can choose hope, or forgiveness, or perseverance instead. You are only hurting yourself by choosing a painful emotion.”
So, how about you? How are you hurting yourself with bitterness, or anger, or despair? Be honest. There are few people who don’t have some area in their heart where they are choosing to hurt themselves.
If you look, your heart will say, “But I can’t help but feel this pain— look at how painful this situation is.” But choice is always yours: Helen Keller could have chosen bitterness when she lost her sight and hearing, but she came to choose gratitude. Victor Frankl could have chosen despair in a Nazi concentration camp, but he chose hope instead. Thomas Edison could have chosen frustration the first 900 times he tried and failed to perfect the electric light bulb, but his dogged choice over and over again of persistence changed the world.
You have the same power of choice. You can choose to look at your life & look at your heart. You can choose to let go of emotions that only hurt you, and choose a better path.
“But I just can’t, I can’t let it go,” you feel your heart say. It really is a matter of the heart, isn’t it? That’s where God comes in: He is the One who knows our hearts better than we know them ourselves, and He is the only One who has the power to change our hearts. Even when we feel our heart can’t change, our hope can still be in God to change our hearts. In Ezekiel 36:26 God says,
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Has God given you a new heart through Jesus Christ? Then you have the power to choose the path of love & life. Have the courage to ask God for the wisdom and strength to choose that better path today.
Have you ever lived in a cave before? Are you living in one now?
No, not an actual hole in the side of a mountain, but a hole in your soul, one that you’ve crawled into of your own choosing.
What am I talking about? Someone lives in a cave because they’re hiding from something, something that they fear may hurt them. When you act or fail to act out of fear, it’s like you are hiding, living in your own little cave.
You fear being ridiculed in a meeting, so you retreat into your cave and never speak up. You fear not being good enough to be picked for a team, so you stay in your cave & never try out. You fear an ugly argument regarding a thorny area of your marriage, so you play it safe in your cave & never bring it up.
Your cave is yours and yours alone: you have constructed it out of your own fears, your own past failures & mistakes, and the pain, pressures, & expectations that others have thrust upon you.
It’s so much easier and safer living in your cave. You don’t get hurt, you don’t have to risk, and everything is fine as long as you stay inside your nice safe little cave.
Or is it?
Is your life really safe, really ok inside your cave?
What happens to people who live in caves? For the security & safety that you gain, what do you lose?
First, people who live in caves lose connections. If you prefer security to risk, you will find that you will move toward isolation to stave off the possibility of rejection. That cave you’ve made is only big enough for one soul, and its walls will keep out anyone who tries to connect with you.
People in caves also lose strength. Keeping the muscles of your soul in shape requires regular exercise, but the safety of staying in your cave constricts you from stretching, from moving, from growing, from trying new things. Little by little, your willpower & courage will weaken & wither away.
Next, you will start to lose vision. As you back further and further into your cave, you’ll be able to see less and less of your world. Tunnel vision will take over. You’ll not see options, you’ll not see opportunities, in fact you’ll not see anything outside of your cave. Yes, you’ll be shielded from that risky thing you were originally trying to avoid, but you’ll end up being shielded from everything else as well— growth, excitement, joy— everything but the dark walls that you’ve retreated into.
Finally, if you spend enough time in your cave, you’ll even forget who you are. The classic example is the creature Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. Retreating underground in his fear of losing his precious ring, he eventually forgot even his own name. Fear can do that: it can make you forget who you are: your strengths, your mission, the very essence of your soul. Before you realize it, the very life of your soul that you originally sought to protect has been lost not to the thing you feared, but to the fear itself.
Don’t let fear do this to you. Look, honestly, at your life. What cave are you hiding in? Whatever safety it seems to afford, it’s not worth the cost to your soul. Come out into the light, and live with courage. Life is too wonderful to spend it in a cave.
 To be able to enter into a transformative relationship with an infinite being, to commune with Him, to hear & be heard– prayer is an incredible gift that God bestows on us.
Prayer is something we can all learn more about as we walk with God. Unfortunately, this video course on “Centering Prayer” is full of statements that blatantly contradict the teachings of the Christian Bible. I’ll share just a few direct quotes:
“We need to be free to serve the needs of the universe”— the last time I checked “the universe” doesn’t have needs. God created the universe to glorify HIM. This is logically on par with saying that I need to be free to serve the needs of my toaster.
“God doesn’t judge us, the beauty of our own soul judges us”— there are so many dozens of passages in the Bible showing God as judge I won’t even bother to elaborate on how wrong this statement is.
“Entering into God’s emptiness”— God is infinite, He is the most FULL being imaginable, it is absolutely bizarre to even use emptiness & God in the same sentence.
Walk with God, and spend focused time with Him daily in prayer. Just don’t use this video to guide you.
 How do you handle people you disagree with?
An honest answer would be “it depends.” If it’s a trivial issue, then often you ignore it. Othertimes you negotiate, or acquiesce. We often hear that the wisest and most productive path is to find common ground, to engage, to dialogue, to fully understand the other person so that they will try to fully understand you.
But what do you do when the issue concerns God, concerns worldview or religion? Many Christians would say the path of gentle dialogue is not only the most productive but is certainly the most loving, considerate, and “Christian” approach.
But in The Jesus You Can’t Ignore, John MacArthur literally asks, “What did Jesus do?” How did Christ actually interact with people and religious leaders who differed from Him? Did He choose dialogue, discourse, & common ground? How did Christ handle the touchy, thorny areas?
In The Jesus You Can’t Ignore, MacArthur examines the Biblical record carefully & exhaustively, & concludes that Christ did exactly the opposite: He chose bold confrontation of theological error; He went out of his way to expose hypocrisy; He deliberately provoked the wrath of leaders who would not acknowledge His truth claims.
This book is classic MacArthur: readable, well-structured, on-target, and full of sound Biblical exposition. However, I don’t think I enjoyed or benefited from it as much as some of his previous works, just because I didn’t need 200 pages to convince me that theological error can’t be molly-coddled. For most people, I think a single article would have been all they needed to read on this subject, but having an entire book that is solidly written is still a welcome addition to my library.
 Dr. David Jeremiah is a gifted pastor teacher through his local church, a national media ministry and book writing. His latest book, Living With Confidence in a Chaotic World, is based on a sermon series that gives practical Biblical counsel on how to live in uncertain times.
The book explains that in spite of the chaos of 21st century living, we can live with confidence if we stay calm, compassionate, constructive, challenged, connected, centered, confident, & consistent. Each of these “C”’s has a chapter devoted to it.
Each chapter contains sound Biblical advice. While reading each chapter, I could easily tell from the structure and flow that these were originally ten separate sermons. As such, the book doesn’t have any particular place it is going or any real conclusion: each of the chapters is basically a stand-alone teaching that doesn’t specifically connect or build on the others. I also tend to judge a book by how many sentences I underline as being especially insightful or memorable: I ended up with only a handful in this book. Overall, I think this is certainly a good, but not great, book. Sound teaching from a godly pastor, but not anything that gripped me or changed me.
 This is the most honest book on marriage that I’ve ever read, and the one that has the most promise to be truly helpful.
I’ve read marriage books that basically say follow these principles, or just learn these handy techniques, and all your troubles will melt away. And I’ve read other well-meaning books that are some variation of a Bible lesson: here’s what God intends for you to be as a godly husband and wife, so just obey all these verses to guarantee you a picture-perfect relationship.
John & Stasi Eldredge take a different approach: that marriage is hard, and that it is hard because of our own sin & brokenness, and that no principle, technique, or even Bible verse will magically fix the mess that is our souls. Eldredge writes, “So long as we choose to turn a blind eye to how we are fallen as men or women, and to the unique style of relating we have forged out of our sin and brokenness, we will continue to do damage to our marriages.”
What is the solution? It is first to realize the nature of the battle and the nature of what marriage can be, then to let God use the crucible of marriage to change you, transform you into the holy man or woman that He has intended you to be, while battling against the Enemy. Eldredge summarizes it thusly:
- Find life in God.
- Deal with your brokenness.
- Learn to shut down the spiritual attacks that come against your marriage.
Love & War contains a lot of Biblical wisdom, a lot of honest, hard, and humorous stories, and a lot of very blunt tell-it-like-it-is in-your-face challenges. It’s unlike any other book on marriage I’ve come across, that lays out the true nature of the soul ugliness behind marital dysfunction, and shows a path to growth and healing. You need this book: for you, for your spouse, for your friends. Get it, read it, and have the courage to move forward with your marriage and your life.
 True or false: People fail to lose weight and keep it off because they don’t realize they need to eat healthy food and exercise.
We know that isn’t true– everyone knows about healthy food and exercise. But isn’t that the message of most “diet” books? Once you find the right magic foods and the right magic exercise, once you have that secret knowledge not found in any other diet book, then YOU will lose that weight!
If we are willing to be honest, the real reason we are not losing weight is US— we end up choosing to eat that dessert, to sleep in instead of pounding the pavement, to say to ourselves “this is never going to work.”
And that’s where The Spark starts: with how we view and live our life and how we can make sustainable positive change. In fact, it doesn’t even start talking about what foods to eat until page 84.
Where it starts is with four “cornerstones” of positive living: focus, fitness, fire, and positive force. The author takes a chapter on each of these concepts and lays out how they apply to life in general and a life shift like weight loss in particular.
So, does this work? Does the effort to really understand the principles of positive change make a difference? Well, this book is really just the distillation of a website & online community, www.sparkpeople.com, which has helped tens of thousands of people make meaningful change. In fact, the center of the book contains short bios and color photos of seventeen people, real people, real people who you can actually contact through the sparkpeople online community, who have used the principles to lose big weight (most of them 100+ pounds) and keep it off and really change their lives.
Yes, the healthy diet and exercise tips are in there, just like in every diet book. But what makes this book different, and special, is that the focus isn’t the food, but you: a practical plan to change your outlook and jump-start your motivation so that you can practice a healthy lifestyle and change your life. A very good way to start out the new year, or any time you decide to change for the better. More information on the book is available at the book’s website.
Wow, it’s hard to believe that 2009 will mark the eleventh Christmas our family has been living in Kingsport. Composing this letter makes me realize that Gail & I have now spent half of our married lives here and seen our children grow up in this house. Speaking of children…
 Andrew celebrated sixteen in a big way, getting his driver’s license and his Dad’s Honda Accord. (It was so weird seeing him drive the kids to school for the first time.) He completed a leadership training experience at Doe River Gorge this summer and really loved it. He played varsity soccer for the first time this year as well. We are starting to look to see where God will guide him for the right college and the right major for his gifts.
 Lily at thirteen continues to blossom like a flower, more beautiful with each passing year. She continues to do good work at school, and is becoming a gifted volleyball player. She continues to enjoy photography and hanging with her friends. She has had a lot of fun with her friends doing Cotillion this Fall.
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 Michael at eleven is as infectiously joyful as this photo shows! He continues to develop his academic, social, musical, and sports gifts. He loves learning, loves soccer, and loves being with people. He is fascinated with everything and is always asking questions and trying to figure things out.
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 Gail continues to relish her role as Mom, and I have been very grateful for the multiple opportunities that God has given me this year to minister as a husband, father, friend, physician & writer.
God has indeed blessed all of our family this year, and I am truly thankful. But I am also keenly aware that the foundation of my joy & my hope should not be in the blessings of family, friends, health, or even ministry. My one and only hope should be firmly fixed on nothing less than what happened in a stable two thousand years ago. Romans 15:12 reminds us that “The root of Jesse (Jesus) will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in Him will the Gentiles hope.” May the reality of Christ fill your hearts with hope & joy this Christmas season.
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