Devotions For Dating Couples: Building A Foundation For Spiritual Intimacy Author: Samuel Adams | Language: English | ISBN:
0785267492 | Format: PDF
Devotions For Dating Couples: Building A Foundation For Spiritual Intimacy Description
From Publishers Weekly
Young, host of the syndicated radio show The Single Connection, and Adams, a clinical psychologist, present a nine-week course of daily devotionals for committed Christians involved in long-term relationships and aiming toward marriage. Weekly "disciplines" focusing on foundational spiritual themes-love, prayer, simplicity-are divided into daily mediations meant to be read in solitude. On Saturdays, suggest the authors (The Ten Commandments of Dating), couples should spend the day together and discuss their thoughts about the week's theme; Sundays they ought to attend church. The Monday-to-Friday anecdotes, which often use the prosaic to illustrate the profound (the shame of a messy dorm room, for instance, teaches the importance of "healthy self-talk"), can feel a bit judgmental and preachy. But each week's summary questions will help partners reconnect with their spiritual selves, and may even settle questions of compatibility. Successful relationships take work, the authors remind us. Their somewhat didactic approach, however, might turn off some readers, and the length and intensity of the course may mean that others lose steam partway through.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Ben Young, M.Div., leads seminars on how to build successful dating and marriage relationships. Ben is a teaching pastor at the 40,000-member Second Baptist Church in Houston, Texas.
Samuel Adams, Psy.D., is a licensed psychologist. He earned his master's from Western Seminary and a doctorate from George Fox University. He maintains a full time counseling practice in Austin, Texas.
- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Thomas Nelson (September 10, 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0785267492
- ISBN-13: 978-0785267492
- Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
This book will be very helpful for many, since much of it focuses more on spirituality and 'discipleship in the grind' (prayer, forgiveness, simplicity) than on theological issues (i.e., the "Calvinism" vs. "Arminianism" debate). There are, to be sure, theological assumptions made by the authors, but they tend to take a backseat, because the aim of the book is to facilitate discussion between you and your dating partner to provide opportunity for understanding and growth. When I went through this book four years ago, I was a high-church Anglican, and my then-girlfriend was a Baptist - you can't be much farther apart on the spectrum! But this book provides fairly common ground for a couple to engage each other, despite potential differences.
The book dives head-first into some issues (within the parameters of its scope), while it merely visits the outskirts of others, such as grace, which I think could have been given a more full-orbed treatment. For instance, the original Greek word for grace, 'charis', comes from the root 'chara,' (joy) and is linked etymologically to the word 'chairo' (health) and I suspect 'ma_kari_os' (blessed) and, obviously, 'eucharisto' (the Eucharist). It often means 'gift,' as it does in the first chapter of the holy apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and in when the 'charismata' (gifts) of the Holy Spirit are mentioned. The implications of this are delightfully helpful for our discipleship and our understanding of God, but are neither mentioned nor explored. There are a few other areas where I could raise this same complaint, but I might be asking the authors to chart out more spiritual territory for the reader than they felt needed to be covered.
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