RC Sproul. The Intimate Marriage: A Practical Guide to Building a Great Marriage. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, March 31st, 2017. 163 pp.
5 out of 5
Purchase: Amazon
How is your marriage doing? Are you growing in loving each other and also growing in godliness? Do you desire to read a book that would help you strive to grow in these areas for your marriage? If so this book is for you. I realize the title of the book might sound its about sex but it isn’t solely on sex, though it does talk about that subject for one of the chapters. It’s really a book on godly love between a husband and wife and what does God’s way looks like. My wife and I immensely enjoyed this work. I found this work very helpful so much so that I incorporated some of the insights of the book into my twenty four session series on marriage difficulties.
This was first written by the late RC Sproul in 1975 though it was reissued by the publishers in 2003. Given that this was one of the earlier books by Sproul I found the work refreshing and also it was more “raw,” in the sense of him speaking in quite a transparent and honest manner about his flaws and desires. I was kind of surprised at some of the things Sproul talked about!
This book has six chapters. Chapter one is on communication in marriage, chapter two is on the role of the man and woman in marriage while chapter three is about problems in marriage and chapter four is about divorce. Chapter is about communication and sex while chapter six is titled “The Institution and Sanctity of Marriage.” Each of the chapter’s topic is important and relevant. They are biblical and practical.
I recommend this book!
Here are some of the insights I appreciated from the book:
- Intimacy is more than physical sexual relations. One can have sex without intimacy but one cannot communicate in marriage without intimacy (12). That intimacy between a husband and wife must also proceed before sexual union and of course intimacy increases with that coming first before sexual acts.
- Husbands and wives should work hard to learn and know about each others. The task of learning about one’s spouse never ends (23).
- 50/50 marriage is a myth. It isn’t reality and two things happen when one strive to have exactly 50/50 marriage: the marriage becomes paralyzed by stand off and/or there’s a constant struggle for authority (47).
- A wife shouldn’t subvert husband’s authoritative role even is the husband neglects his responsibility of leading the family. That’s similar to the way a son does not become the dad just because the dad neglect his duty of being a godly father (49).
- It’s all too easy for married men to give more attention to his spouse when he was courting his wife than when he’s married. But this ought not be.
- If marriage problems are solved it must be done biblically (66).
Thanks for the great review. Very helpful. I really appreciated RC’s work.
Blessings.
Thanks for the good review! I appreciate all of your efforts to help married couples to strengthen their relationship according to Biblical principles. This never gets old because no one ever “masters” being a spouse. I just ordered a used copy from Amazon.
Glad to hear you ordered it on Amazon! We all need to grow. I haven’t finished 10,000 steps since I left for my trip, hoping to work on that today. How’s your steps?
I did marathon leafblowing and tarp-dragging Fri. and Sat. and amassed 30K steps total those two days 🚑 so yesterday was only 3.4K and today’s back to normal with 8K. Hope you have a good step day! My wife keeps trying to convince me to go the YMCA with her, but I have my (free) home workout and walking routine down pat. Don’t need the Y.
That’s a good review of what must be a good book. I especially agree regarding the myth of the 50-50 marriage. When that comes up in premarital counseling, I ask the two of them to imagine standing at opposite ends of a room with soft balls and trying to throw the balls so they meet in the center of the room. Very difficult to accomplish. Then I ask them to imagine standing side by side with the same soft balls, throwing them at a target. Now the balls are much more likely to meet at the target. J.
That’s a good analogy/exercise you have a couple do. You still do premarital counseling?
I’ve only done one wedding in the last ten years. But, yes, I did conduct premarital counseling with them before the wedding. J.
I never heard of this book by Sproul before
Me neither
That makes two of us
Thanks for sharing this review SlimJIm ☺️