A lack of an invitation to the Gospel: Many times throughout this book I was reading and thought, “Here it comes, he’s going to present the gospel here,” and it just never came. And while this is probably more on the publisher (Zondervan) than on Comer, it limits the audience to primarily young, single girls. Comers offers four reasons for marriage as it was originally intended by God: Friendship, Gardening (vocational partnership in the journey of life), Sex, and Family. I don’t agree with much of the interpretations of the Genesis account nor Ephesians 5 presented in this book. To that end, I can regularly be found reading the desert fathers and mothers, ancient saints and obscure contemplatives, modern psychologists and social scientists, philosophers like Dallas Willard, and op-eds from the New York Times.

His passion is the intersection of spiritual formation and post-Christian culture, and to that end, he is regularly found reading the desert fathers and mothers, ancient saints and obscure contemplatives, modern psychologists and social scientists, and op-eds from the New York Times . To God, your identity — what makes you you — isn’t rooted in the past (who you were) or in the present (who you are), but in the future — in who you are becoming.This idea of Jesus as the model for how we are to love each othersounds docile and tame and cliché, but when we actually readabout the life of Jesus, it's stunning. I am a big fan of John Mark Comer’s books and how he has such a great way of telling people the truth without being condescending about it. As one who takes egalitarian positions and gender questions and as one who takes a far more progressive hermeneutic, I find it difficult to assign this book a rating. I learned plenty new things and got good reminders of things I already knew but one thing in this book peeved me a bit.

Where other books focus on rules, dos and don'ts, and specifics, he takes a few steps back to capture the big picture of what God is up to in creation, what His love is like, and the purpose of marriage within that. It was written in 2013, and I can see how it would have appealed to younger evangelical millennials of that time period, but it doesn’t age well and reads as juvenile and under-informed. Loveology uses cookies and similar technologies to provide you with our services, enhance the performance and functionality of our services, analyze the use of our products and services, and assist with our advertising and marketing efforts.It is useful being in a pre-marital stage of life myself, as I found the advice helpful in my own stage of life and I think the majority of people, particularly new Christians will hear some profound and transformative truths for the first time.