Revitalize Your Relationship with These 6 Must-Read Books

Are you looking to take your marriage to the next level in 2023? Or perhaps you already have a beautiful union that could strengthen and deepen? Christian principles and teachings can offer valuable insights into bringing joy, harmony, and deeper understanding into any relationship. We recommend checking out these 6 must-read Christian books for married couples this year. Each is packed with research-based tips, inspiring thoughts, practical advice, thought exercises, and much more! Whether you are newlyweds or have been together for decades, something within these pages can help make your marriage even better. Get ready to deepen your bond through faith shared between both of you!

Let’s dive in:

1. The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller

Fundamental Lessons from “The Meaning of Marriage”

• A Perfect Partner Does Not Exist

• Marriage Is About Serving Each Other (and Serving God)

A Perfect Partner Does Not Exist

We will never find a “soul mate,” i.e., “a perfectly compatible match.” Disney & Hollywood’s “happily married ever after” is a fantasy. Finding someone perfectly compatible was never the point of marriage; if it were, growth would be inhibited, and marriage is all about growth! Therefore marriage is about finding someone that’ll love you enough to help you become all you can.

Marriage Is About Serving Each Other 

Marriage is how two spiritual friends help each other to become the persons God designed them to be. Marriage means becoming more than you currently are with your spouse’s help. The process involves surrendering to someone else as you surrender to Christ. 

2. His Needs Her Needs by Willard F. Harley Jr.

Fundamental Lessons from “His Needs Her Needs”

Her Top 5 Emotional Needs Are (this is a generality):

• Affection- a constant expression of love                 

• Conversation – discussing the day, feelings, and plans

• Honesty & Openness- revealing both positive & negative feelings

• Financial Support – provision to upkeep a standard of living

• Family Commitment – allotting time & interest in children & family as a whole

His Top 5 Emotional Needs Are (this is a generality):

• Sexual Fulfillment- a frequency that makes satisfaction

• Recreational Companionship- care/ interest in what you enjoy

• Attractiveness of Spouse – easy on the eyes

• Domestic Support – a relaxing home environment

• Admiration – respect, rarely criticizing, praise (often)

3. Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

Fundamental Lessons from “Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas”

• The ultimate purpose of marriage is to help us attain holiness.

• Marriage is a practicing ground for the Christian virtues of love and respect.

• Marriage teaches us perseverance.

Holiness & Practicing ground

• Marriage exposes sin to teach us forgiveness.

• Marriage shows us our true selves (faults, selfish attitudes, weaknesses). 

• It requires us to repent, seek purity, and grow in godliness.

Perseverance & Sacrifice 

• Staying with your spouse through the good, the bad, and the blah, you can mirror the character of Jesus.

• Learn to emulate Jesus by embracing sacrifice and serving your spouse.

• Embrace pushing through the hard times, learning that trials and tribulations produce perfection and completeness, and ensuring you lack nothing.

4. Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Fundamental Lessons from “Love and Respect”

1. Wives are made to be loved, want to love, and anticipate love. Husbands are made to be respected, want respect, and anticipate respect.

2. When a husband feels disrespected, showing love to his wife is difficult. When a wife feels unloved, showing respect to her husband is difficult.

3. More often than not, we focus on our own needs and overlook the other person’s needs.

3 Tips To Better Understand Your Husband & Get Love

1. No husband can show affection towards a wife who even “appears” to have slight (minuscule, little, tiny, small- get the idea?) contempt for who he is as a human being. Showing unconditional respect is the ONLY way to create fond feelings of love in a husband toward his wife.

2. A husband will feel loved when you show him respect in the ways that matter to him. 

3. CRUCIAL: When men hear negative criticism (once again, EVEN if it’s insignificant to you), they interpret it as contempt for who they are. Meaning they will feel disrespected. 

3 Tips To Better Understand Your Wife & Get Respect

1. Honor her as priority number one. Do all you can to let your wife know she is number 1. Your wife should know & “feel” that you are committed to her (use your actions & words). 

2. Be affectionate and attentive daily, not just on days you want sex. Do not only use affection with the end goal of sex!

3. Every husband must learn his wife’s sensitivity and needs. Understand that being open, honest, and vulnerable allows you to connect with her at new levels.

5. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Falling in love is easy; staying in love is much more complex. Couples drift apart through distractions, conflicts, miscommunications, and boredom can get in the way of what was once a magical relationship. Staying in love takes work. Relationships need careful and attentive nurturing.

Fundamental Lessons from “The 5 Love Languages”

1. As your relationship matures, communication is key.

2. There are five different ways people give and show love.

3. Identify your and your partner’s love language to deepen intimacy.

6. The Mysteries of Marriage by Mike Mason

5 Fundamental Lessons from “The Mysteries of marriage” via quotes:

1. Are there problems in marriage? Every one of them results from the partners trying desperately to renege, however subconsciously or secretly, on a choice they have already made, a choice to which they have been led to “initially” by love.” (p. 42)

2. “Marriage comes with a built-in hatred of self-centeredness. In the dream world of mankind’s complacent separateness, amidst all our pleasant little fantasies of omnipotence and blamelessness and self-sufficiency, marriage explodes like a bomb. It runs an aggravating interference pattern, unrelenting guerrilla warfare against selfishness. It attacks people’s vanity and lonely pride in a way that few other things can, tirelessly exposing the necessity of giving and sharing, the absurdity of blame.” (p. 53)

3. “[Marriage] is one of God’s most powerful secret weapons for revolutionizing the human heart. It is a heavy, concentrated barrage upon the place of our greatest weakness, which is our relationship with others. We cannot possibly, it is true, in any practical way maintain a commitment to every other person in the world: That is God’s business, not ours. But marriage involves us synecdochically in this mystical activity of God’s by choosing for us just one person, one total stranger out of all the world’s billions, with whom to enter into the highest, deepest, and farthest reaches of a sacrificial, loving relationship.” (p. 54)

4. “Marriage means being in the spotlight, being under the unceasing scrutiny of another person, just as we are all under the constant gaze of the Lord our God. Marriage is about nakedness, exposure, defenselessness, and the very extremities of intimacy. It is about the simple, unadorned truth between two human beings, truth at all levels and at all costs. It does not care what pain or inconvenience must be endured for the habit of truth to take root, watered, and grow into maturity.” (p. 94)

5. “A marriage is not a joining of two worlds, but an abandoning of two worlds so that one new one might be formed.” (p. 103)

Wrap Up

Choosing books to read together is a great way to deepen your love and connection as a couple. All the books on this list offer powerful guidance for improving your marriage and can make all the difference in how it turns out. Whether you’re looking for modern insight, older wisdom, or thoughtful, personal advice, each piece that’s been mentioned here offers some incredible depth into the essence of a successful partnership. With fundamental lessons from each book’s key concepts, we hope you can better understand yourself and your partner with more clarity. Seeking knowledge together often brings couples closer to each other because it helps create an even stronger bond between what is known and unknown within your relationship dynamic. As always, if you find this blog helpful, we’d love for you to share it with other like-minded couples seeking good reads on furthering their marriages!