The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom o

Description: The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller, Kathy Keller "Incredibly rich with wisdom and insight that will leave the reader, whether single or married, feeling uplifted." —The Washington TimesBased on the acclaimed sermon series by New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller, this book shows everyone—Christians, skeptics, singles, longtime married couples, and those about to be engaged—the vision of what marriage should be according to the Bible.Modern culture would have you believe that everyone has a soul mate; that romance is the most important part of a successful marriage; that your spouse is there to help you realize your potential; that marriage does not mean forever, but merely for now; and that starting over after a divorce is the best solution to seemingly intractable marriage issues. But these modern-day assumptions are wrong. Timothy Keller, with insights from Kathy, his wife of thirty-seven years, shows marriage to be a glorious relationship that is also misunderstood and mysterious. The Meaning of Marriage offers instruction on how to have a successful marriage, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to know God and love more deeply in this life. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Timothy Keller was born and raised in Pennsylvania and educated at Bucknell University, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary. His first pastorate was in Hopewell, Virginia. In 1989 he started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City with his wife, Kathy, and their three sons. Today, Redeemer has nearly six thousand regular Sunday attendees and has helped to start more than three hundred new churches around the world. He is the author of The Songs of Jesus, Prayer, Encounters with Jesus, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, and Every Good Endeavor, among others, including the perennial bestsellers The Reason for God and The Prodigal God.Kathy Keller grew up outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended Allegheny College, where she led Christian fellowship groups, before attending Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She met Timothy Keller while studying there, and they were married at the beginning of their final semester. She received her MA in Theological Studies at Gordon-Conwell in 1975. Kathy and Tim then moved to Virginia, where Tim started at his first church, West Hopewell Presbyterian Church, and their three sons were born. After nine years, Kathy and her family moved to New York City to start the Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Review "This is a book Christians need to read." —The Christian Post"The rare marriage book I would heartily recommend to any single, no matter his or her age, whether dating, courting, engaged, or disinterested . . . Rich and practical." —The Gospel Coalition"A brilliant new book that explains why marriage is in such dire straits, and how to rescue it." —BreakPoint Review Quote "This is a book Christians need to read."- The Christian Post "The rare marriage book I would heartily recommend to any single, no matter his or her age, whether dating, courting, engaged, or disinterested Excerpt from Book God, the best maker of all marriages, Combine your hearts in one. --William Shakespeare, Henry V A Book for Married People Think of this book as a tree supplied by three deep roots. The first is my thirty-seven-year marriage to my wife, Kathy.1 She helped me write this book, and she herself wrote chapter 6, Embracing the Other. In chapter 1, I caution readers about the way contemporary culture defines "soul mate" as "a perfectly compatible match." Nevertheless, when we first began to spend time with each other, we each realized that the other was a rare fit for our hearts. I first met Kathy through her sister, Susan, who was a student with me at Bucknell University. Susan often spoke to Kathy about me and to me about Kathy. As a young girl, Kathy had been led toward the Christian faith by C. S. Lewiss The Chronicles of Narnia .2 She urged Susan to recommend them to me. I read and was moved by the books and by other Lewis volumes that I subsequently studied. In 1972, we both enrolled at the same school, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary on Bostons North Shore, and there we quickly came to see that we shared the "secret thread" that Lewis says is the thing that turns people into close friends--or more. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words:. . . . Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling . . . of that something which you were born desiring . . . ?3 Our friendship grew into romance and engagement, and then from a fragile new marriage into a tested and durable one. But this only happened through the "pearls before swine" speech, the Great Dirty Diaper Conflict, the "smashing the wedding china" affair, and other infamous events in our family history that will be described in this book--all mileposts on the very bumpy road to marital joy. Like most young modern couples, we found that marriage was much harder than we expected it to be. At the conclusion of our wedding ceremony, we marched out singing to the hymn "How Firm a Foundation." Little did we know how relevant some of the lines would be to the arduous and painful work of developing a strong marriage. When through fiery trials, thy pathway shall lie, My grace all-sufficient will be thy supply. For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.4 This book, therefore, is for those spouses who have discovered how challenging day-to-day marriage is and who are searching for practical resources to survive the sometimes overwhelming "fiery trials" of matrimony and to grow through them. Our societys experience with marriage has given us the metaphor "the honeymoon is over." This is a book for those who have experienced this as a literal truth and may have fallen back to earth with a thud. A Book for Unmarried People The second source for this book is a long pastoral ministry in a city with millions (and a church with thousands) of single adults. Our congregation, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, is a rarity--a very large church that has been for years composed predominantly of singles. Several years ago, when we had about four thousand people in attendance, I asked a very prominent church consultant, "How many churches do you know of our size with three thousand singles?" He answered, "Your church is unique, as far as I know." Ministering in the center of New York City in the late 1980s, Kathy and I were constantly struck by the deep ambivalence with which Western culture views marriage. It was then we began to hear all the now society-wide objections--marriage was originally about property and is now in flux, marriage crushes individual identity and has been oppressive for women, marriage stifles passion and is ill-fitted to psychological reality, marriage is "just a piece of paper" that only serves to complicate love, and so on. But beneath these philosophical objections lies a snarl of conflicted personal emotions, born out of many negative experiences with marriage and family life. Early in our New York City ministry, in the fall of 1991, I preached a nine-week series on marriage. It has since been the most listened-to set of sermons or talks the church has ever produced. I had to begin the series by giving some justification for devoting weeks of teaching on being married to a congregation of mainly unmarried people. My main rationale was that single people today need a brutally realistic yet glorious vision of what marriage is and can be. What I said then fits single readers today, and this book is for them, too. In preparation for writing this, I read a host of Christian books on marriage. Most of them were written to help married couples work through specific problems. This volume will be useful for that as well, but its primary goal is to give both married and unmarried people a vision for what marriage is according to the Bible. That will help married people correct mistaken views that might be harming their marriage, and it will help single people stop destructively over-desiring marriage or destructively dismissing marriage altogether. Also, a Bible-based marriage book will help each reader have a better idea of who he or she should consider as a prospective mate. A Book about the Bible There is a third source for the material in this book, and it is the most foundational. Though this book is rooted in my personal experience of marriage and ministry, it is even more grounded in the teachings of the Old and New Testaments. Nearly four decades ago, as theological students, Kathy and I studied the Biblical teachings on sex, gender, and marriage. Over the next fifteen years, we worked them out in our own marriage. Then, over the last twenty-two years, we have used what we learned from both Scripture and experience to guide, encourage, counsel, and instruct young urban adults with regard to sex and marriage. We offer the fruit of these three influences to you in this book. But the foundation of it all is the Bible. In the Bible there are three human institutions that stand apart from all others--the family, the church, and the state. Theres nothing in the Bible about how schools should be run, even though they are crucial to a flourishing society. Theres nothing there about business corporations or museums or hospitals. In fact, there are all sorts of great institutions and human enterprises that the Bible doesnt address or regulate. And so we are free to invent them and operate them in line with the general principles for human life that the Bible gives us. But marriage is different. As the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship says, God "established marriage for the welfare and happiness of humankind." Marriage did not evolve in the late Bronze Age as a way to determine property rights. At the climax of the Genesis account of creation we see God bringing a woman and a man together to unite them in marriage. The Bible begins with a wedding (of Adam and Eve) and ends in the book of Revelation with a wedding (of Christ and the church). Marriage is Gods idea. It is certainly also a human institution, and it reflects the character of the particular human culture in which it is embedded. But the concept and roots of human marriage are in Gods own action, and therefore what the Bible says about Gods design for marriage is crucial. That is why the Presbyterian service of marriage says that marriage is "instituted by God, regulated by his commandments, blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ." What God institutes he also regulates. If God invented marriage, then those who enter it should make every effort to understand and submit to his purposes for it. We do this in many other aspects of our lives. Think of buying a car: If you purchase a vehicle, a machine well beyond your own ability to create, you will certainly take up the owners manual and abide by what the designer says the car needs by way of treatment and maintenance. To ignore it would be to court disaster. Plenty of people who do not acknowledge God or the Bible, yet who are experiencing happy marriages, are largely abiding by Gods intentions, whether they realize it or not. But it is far better if we are conscious of those intentions. And the place to discover them is in the writings of the Scripture. What if you want to read this book and you dont share the assumption that the Bible is the authoritative revelation from God? Maybe you appreciate the Bible in some regards, but you dont trust it on the subjects of sex, love, and marriage. These topics of ancient wisdom are at great variance with contemporary Western sensibilities, and therefore the Bible has a reputation for being "regressive" on those subjects. We would urge you give this book a try anyway. Over the years both Kathy and I have taught at length on marriage, and I have spoken on marriage at innumerable weddings. There weve learned that most people who do not share our view of the Bible or even our Christian faith are often shocked by how penetrating the Biblical perspective on marriage is and how relevant it is to their own situations. So often people have told me after the ceremony, "Im not religious at all, but that was the most helpful and practical explanation of marriage Ive ever heard." It is hard to get a good perspective on marriage. We all see it through the inevitably distorted lenses of our own experience. If you came from an unusually stable home, where your parents had a great marriage, that may have "made it look easy" to you, and so when you get to yo Details ISBN1594631875 Short Title MEANING OF MARRIAGE Language English ISBN-10 1594631875 ISBN-13 9781594631870 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 248.844 Birth 1950 Year 2013 Subtitle Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2013-11-05 NZ Release Date 2013-11-05 US Release Date 2013-11-05 UK Release Date 1900-01-01 Author Kathy Keller Pages 352 Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Publication Date 2013-11-05 Imprint Penguin USA Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:77042370;

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