From “ Captivating” by  John and Stasi Eldredge

“Adam’s sin and Adam’s woundedness come together to result in the passivity or drivenness you find in so many men. Why won’t he talk to me? Why won’t he commit? Why is he so angry? Why is he violent? You won’t begin to understand a man until you understand his Question,his wound, and how Adam also fell. His search for validation is the driving force of his life. ..the greatest obstacle to loving a woman was this:too many men take their Question to Eve. They look to her for the validation of their souls…She looks like the answer to his Question…It’s not about sex–it’s about validation. She makes him feel like a man.She offers him her beauty,and it makes him feel strong…If he hasn’t found that deep validation he needs from God, he’s a sitting duck…I ‘ve tried in every way to help men understand that no woman can tell you who you are as a man…As men ,we have got to take our Question to God, our Father in heaven. Only he knows who we truly are.Only he can pronounce the verdict on us. A man goes to Eve to offer his strength. He does not go to her to get it. “

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From “Sacred Marriage” by Gary Thomas

“But marriage is a spotlight showing us that our search for another human being to “complete” us is misguided. When disillusionment breaks through,we have one of two choices: Dump our spouse and become infatuated with somebody new, or seek to understand the message behind the disillusionment-that we should seek our significance,meaning,and purpose in our Creator rather than in another human being. 

Approached in the right way,marriage can cause us to reevaluate our dependency on other humans for our spiritual nourishment, and direct us to nurture our relationship with God ilnstead.No human being can love us the way we long to be loved;it is just not possible for another human to reach and alleviate the spiritual ache that God has placed in all of us. 

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From “Captivating” by John and Stasi Eldredge

‘God, in his faithfulness, is changing me. But I remain an extrovert. In fact, instead of making me into someone else, he is making me more me. And that is one of the beautiful things about him . That the more his we become, the more ourselves we become;more our true selves. So it is a good thing that I misunderstood the Scripture,Peter doesn’t mean that beautiful women rarely speak above a whisper, if they speak at all. No.To have a gentle and quiet spirit is to have a heart

of faith,a heart that trusts in God, a spirit that has been quieted by his love and filled with his peace. Not a heart that is striving and restless.

    A woman in her glory, a woman of beauty is a woman who is not striving to become beautify or worth or enough. She knows in her quiet center where God dwells that he finds here beautiful, has deemed her  worthy, and in him, she is enough.In fact, the only thing getting in the way of our being fully captivating and enjoyed is our striving.

We do not always get what we want,but that doesn’t mean that we no longer want. It means we stay awake to the unmet longing and ache. Wait thee. Invite Jesus to come ,there.

   And he will come. Not always to satisfy us by giving us what we want. But to come himself; to meet us with his very Person and to satisfy us with himself.

We have all heard it said that a woman is most beautiful when she is in love.It’s true.You’ve seen it yourself. When a woman knows that she is loved and loved deeply,she glows from the inside. This radiance stems from a heart that has had its deepest questions answered.”Am I lovely/ Am I worth fighting for? Have I been and will I continue to be romanced?’ When these questions are answered,Yes, a restful,quiet spirit settles in a woman’s heart. 

And every woman can have these questions answered.Yes. You have been and you will continue to be romanced all your life. Yes. Our God finds you lovely, Jesus has moved heaven and earth to

win you for himself.He will not rest until you are completely his. The King is enthralled by your beauty. He finds you captivating. “

“Every song you love,every memory you cherish,every moment that has moved you to holy tears has been given to you from the One who has been pursuing you from your first breath in order to win your heart.God’s version of flowers and chocolates and candlelight dinners comes in the form of sunsets and falling stars,moonlight on lakes and cricket symphonies; warm wind,swaying trees,lush gardens, and fierce devotion.

The romancing is immensely personal .It will be as if it has been scripted for your heart.He knows what takes your breath away,knows what makes your heart beat faster. We have missed many of his notes simply because we shut our hearts down in order to endure the pain of life.Now ,in our healing journey as women,we must open our hearts again, and keep them open.Not foolishly,not

to anyone and anything. But yes, we must choose to open our hearts again so that we might hear his whispers, receive his kisses.”

“She is the crescendo,the final,astonishing work of God,Woman.In one last flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam,but Eve.She is the Master’s finishing touch.How we wish this were an illustrated book,and we could show you now some painting or sculpture that captures this…Eve is ….breathtaking.

Given the way creation unfolds,how it builds to ever higher and higher works of art,can there be any doubt that Eve is the crown of creation? Not an afterthought.Not a nice addition like an ornament on a tree.She is God’s final touch ,his piece de resistance.She fills a place in the world nothing and no one else can fill.Step to a window.ladies,if you can.Better still,find some place with a view.Look out across the earth and say to yourselves,”The whole ,vast world is incomplete without me. Creation reached its zenith in me.”

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From “Care of the Soul” by Thomas Moore

“Therefore ,nothing is more suitable for care of the soul than family,because the experience of family includes so much of the particulars of life. In a family you live close to people that otherwise you might not even want to talk to. Over time you get to know them intimately.You learn their most minuscule,most private habits and characteristics. Family life is full of major and minor crises–the ups and downs of health,success and failure in career,marriage, and divorce–and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It’s difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul..

When things go wrong in society, we immediately inquire into the condition of family life. …A family is a microcosm,reflecting the nature of the world,which runs on both virtue and evil….the dynamics of actual family life reveal the soul’s complexity and unpredictability,and any attempts to place a veil of simplistic sentimentality over the family image will break down. 

Family has many meanings,depending on the context. The sociologist thinks of it as a social group or construct. The psychologist imagines a fount from which personality flows. The politician talks about the family in an idealized way …But we all know the family in its particulars. This is the nest in which soul is born,nurtured, and released into life. …The family is to the individual what the origins of human life are to the race.Its history provides a matrix of images by which a person is saturated all through adult life. 

We bring the Dis-functions of family into the therapy room as problems to be solved or as explanations for current difficulties because intuitively we know that the family is one of the chief abodes of soul.In psychology there is much talk about family, and”family threapy” has become a major form of counseling.By “getting to the root” of present problems in family backgroud,we hope to understand  what is going on, and in the understanding we hope to find a cure.But care of the soul doesn’t require fixing the family or becoming free of it or interpreting its pathology. We may need simply to recover soul by reflecting deeply on the soul events that have taken place in the crucible of the family.,,If we don’t grasp this mystery,the soulfulness that family has to offer each of us will be spirited away in hygienic notions of what a family should be. The sentimental image of family that we present publicly is a defense against the pain of proclaiming the family for what it is—sometimes comforting,sometimes devastating house of life and memory.” 

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from “Sacred Marriage” by Gary Thomas    

“A wedding calls us to our highest and best-in fact,to almost impossible-ideals.It’s the way we WANT to live.But marriage reminds us of the daily reality of living as sinful human beings in a radically broken world

Most of the Christian classics were written by monks and nuns for monks and nuns. The married could at best feebly try to simulate a single pursuit of God;the thought of pursuing God through marriage wasn’t really given serious consideration;instead,the emphasis was largely on pursuing God in spite of marriage…Being married forces you to face some character issues you’d never have to face otherwise…All things considered, the sexual aspect takes up just a fraction of a married couple’s time…Instead of getting up at 3:00 A.M. to begin prayer in a monastery the question becomes,”Who will wake up when the baby’s diaper needs changing?”

Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value, and I slowly began to understand that the real purpose of marriage may not be happiness as much as it is holiness…

If the purpose of marriage was simply to;enjoy an infatuation and make me “happy”, then I’d have to get a
“new” marriage every two or three years.But if I really wanted to see God transform me from the inside out,I’d need to concentrate on changing myself rather that on changing my spouse

This is a book that looks and points beyond marriage .Spiritual growth is the main theme:marriage is simply the context.Just as celibates use abstinence and religious hermits use isolation, so we can use marriage for the same purpose–to grow in our service,obedience,character,pursuit ,and love of God…The ultimate purpose of this book is not to