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Showing posts with the label What Did You Expect?

Book Review: What Did You Expect?

In this book. Paul David Tripp deals honestly with the unrealistic expectations we bring to marriage and how to face reality armed with the gospel. This is not a book about behavior modification - such as do (fill in the blank) to get the desired change in your spouse and you'll have a new marriage in a week. Rather Tripp sees the goal of marriage bigger than marriage itself -  our sanctification and holiness. Sanctificaion is probably not the first thing that comes to mind for most couples. In the glow of early marital bliss, one doesn't view one's spouse as a person still battling indwelling sin, let alone have a correct assessment of one's self. But it's only a matter of time before these struggles (yes, even as believers!) manifest themselves. However, being brought face-to-face with our condition is nothing less than the grace of God. He has orchestrated every conflict as a means to rescue us from self-absorption and personal kingdom building. God's goa...

Postmortem

I'm about two-thirds through What Did You Expect? by Paul Tripp. It's been a very good read but oft-times painful as it's like reading the coroner's report on my marriage. He systematically dismantles the unrealistic expectations we bring into marriage with examples that are closer to home than I would like. Looking back, we had a pretty meager understanding of the gospel.  We were pathetically blind to the indwelling sin that remained in our lives. Hence we had the notion that I'm different;  he's different . God was doing something  special  in our relationship so somehow we were exempt from the normal failings of self absorption which plagued everyone else. We had done courtship "right" so the reward was a happy marriage. It was to be the happiest place on earth, like Disney World but spiritual of course, where the process of sanctification magically happened by some mystical hand waving of the Holy Spirit without effort, pain, and tears. Ri...