The Intimate Mystery: Creating Strength and Beauty in Your Marriage (Intimate Marriage) [Hardcover]

Dan B. Allender (Author), Tremper Longman III (Author)

Book Description

Series: Intimate Marriage | Publication Date: June 1, 2005

Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III have together written this brief, simple and charming introduction to help couples build healthy and happy marriages. Their model follows the "leave, weave and cleave" imagery of the Bible: leave your parents, weave a life together and cleave to each other. This book is part of a kit that includes everything needed to mentor individual married couples or to lead a group discussion. It will be especially helpful for newlyweds or young married couples who are just beginning their new life together.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Helps couples build healthy and happy marriages Draws from the ""leave, weave, cleave"" imagery of the Bible Brief, simple and charming introduction Designed to complement a curriculum kit for counseling individual couples or leading group discussions Part of a marriage curriculum kit but also available separately There is a companion DVD available with engaging discussion openers to accompany each session Appropriate for group discussion or one-on-one discussion by a couple Studies are written by Tremper Longman, part of the NLT translation committee using the NLT Sidebars with biblical background information are included with the studies"

From the Author

IVP: How is this book and curriculum different than others on marriage?

Longman: We felt that Christians need more than another how-to, step-by-step book. Rather, we thought it would be more helpful to get people in touch with important biblical ideas about the nature of marriage. The Bible tells us everything we need to know about marriage--its purpose and goal, and its importance. We also learn important principles about the most essential aspects of marriage such as communication, sexuality, and most importantly, about repentance and forgiveness. IVP: What do you mean by the "intimate mystery" of marriage?

Allender: One the mysteries of marriage is sacrifice. "Sacrifice is not merely cleaning the floor or doing the laundry; it is suffering for, with and against the other without turning away from desire. Sacrifice compels us to enter the heartache, stories, dreams, desires and sin of the other in order to bless them. It calls us to lose ourselves in the complex web of their soul. The mystery is great--in doing so, we find ourselves. We find our truest self and the God who is true to our self. The sacrifices of love open our eyes to the mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection for us."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 107 pages
• Publisher: IVP Books (June 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0830821317
• ISBN-13: 978-0830821310
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Dan Allender received his MDiv from Westminster Theological Seminary and his PhD in counseling psychology from Michigan State University.

Dan taught in the biblical counseling department of Grace Theological Seminary for seven years (1983-1989). From 1989-1997 he worked as a professor in the Master of Arts in biblical counseling program at Colorado Christian University, Denver, Colorado. Currently, Dan serves as president and professor of counseling at Mars Hill Graduate School in Bothell, Washington.

He travels and speaks extensively to present his unique perspective on sexual abuse recovery, love and forgiveness, worship, and other related topics. He is the author of "The Wounded Heart" (NavPress), "The Healing Path," and "How Children Raise Parents" (Waterbrook Press) and has coauthored four books with Dr. Tremper Longman, III--"Intimate Allies" (Tyndale House Publishers), "The Cry of the Soul" (NavPress), "Bold Love" (NavPress), and "Bold Purpose," (Tyndale House Publishers). He and his wife, Rebecca, live in the Puget Sound area with their three children, Annie, Amanda, and Andrew.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent but underwhelming..., May 30, 2007

By 

Chad Oberholtzer (Boalsburg, PA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Intimate Mystery: Creating Strength and Beauty in Your Marriage (Intimate Marriage) (Hardcover)

I was extremely excited to read "The Intimate Mystery," having read a number of solid marriage books over the years but nothing new recently. And I had heard good things about Dan Allender. My wife and I read the book along with a small group of young married couples from our church.

To its credit, the book has many strengths. Most significantly, the paradigm of leaving, weaving, and cleaving that Allender and Longman extract from Genesis 2 is extremely helpful. This framework for a successful, God-honoring marriage is biblical and simple.

It is also clear that these are some smart guys. I consider myself to be relatively well-read, but I literally had to check a dictionary several times to look up words in this short book. Beyond vocabulary, the book presents some higher level concepts than other marriage books, which often settle for mere self-help approaches instead.

The final positive points are more trivial. I appreciated that the book was shorter than some, which made it more readable and digestible. And the book jacket manages to be attractive without being unnecessarily feminine.

Having admitted these strengths, I will briefly explain a few disappointments. First, I was very frustrated with the experience of trying to fit together the various curriculum pieces that accompany this book. There are six different study guides, a DVD, and a leader's guide, which are all explained to be essential to working through the material. Beyond the construction of a money-making franchise, I cannot imagine why the authors would seemingly require so many different separate (and costly) pieces. We decided to skip the DVD, and the study guides and leader's guide were not particularly helpful. I'd encourage others to just read the book.

I was also surprised by how difficult it was for me to follow some of the authors' points. I'm not the brightest guy in the world, but I can read Lewis, Foster, Willard, McGrath and other intellectual heavyweights. Yet, I really struggled to get through some of the chapters. I just found some of the ideas to be almost hastily or sloppily thrown together, in a way that was not clear to the reader.

Finally, our group was somewhat taken aback by some of the examples that were used. Though I suspect that the authors were using a rhetorical approach that was intended to jar and even shock the reader on occasion, our group found it to be off-putting.

In conclusion, I am glad that I read this book, as the leave-weave-cleave paradigm was presented in a way that made sense to me. I imagine that this framework will stick with me and continue to shape my understanding of Christian marriage. However, I was not overly impressed with the book and cannot recommend it highly. If you're looking for a great book to strengthen your marriage, read Gary Thomas' "The Sacred Marriage" instead.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heavy, but great, January 17, 2009

By 

Lisa N. - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Intimate Mystery: Creating Strength and Beauty in Your Marriage (Intimate Marriage) (Hardcover)

This book is really heady and dense, just in the way Allender writes. It is so full of great content though. I found it really helpful as I read it with my fiance. It gave us a lot to talk about and a lot of good advice for our marriage.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book!, February 22, 2009

By 

Anna L. Georgi "Ann Georgi" (Columbia, SC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Intimate Mystery: Creating Strength and Beauty in Your Marriage (Intimate Marriage) (Hardcover)

Allender presents a down-to-earth view of the way God intended the intimate relationship between man and wife. He is candid about his own struggles in marriage and he does not candy coat the hard times. But he does offer tremendous hope in having a marriage that God designed through love, mercy, grace, taking responsibility for one's own issues and forgiveness. This is an encouraging read!