Love between Equals


Book Description

Learn how to successfully negotiate conflicts and deepen our most intimate relationships in this practical and thoughtful guide by an experienced Buddhist teacher, psychotherapist, and couples counselor. A committed relationship, as most people see it today, is a partnership of equals who share values and goals, a team united by love and dedicated to each other’s growth on every level. This contemporary model for coupledom requires real intention and work, and, more often than not, the traditional archetypes of relationships experienced by our parents and grandparents fail us or seem irrelevant. Utilizing the wisdom of her years of personal and professional practice, Young-Eisendrath dismantles our idealized projections about love, while revealing how mindfulness and communication can help us identify and honor the differences with our partners and strengthen our bonds. These practical and time-tested guidelines are rooted in sound understanding of modern psychology and offer concrete ideas and the necessary tools to reinforce and reinvigorate our deepest relationships.




The Real Heaven


Book Description

Heaven has received a lot of attention in recent years as bestselling books and movies have told the stories of people who claim to have been there. But what does the Bible actually say about heaven? What difference does it make? What happens the moment after we die? What will our relationships be like in heaven? Chip Ingram sets aside the hype and myths and digs into the Scriptures to discover what God actually wants us to know about the hereafter. Most importantly, Ingram shows why our understanding of heaven matters now, in this life. Because what we believe about heaven actually affects us today in ways we may not have imagined.




Spirituality & Intimacy


Book Description

This book is about passion, romance, intimacy and spirituality. Its task is to destroy the myths that in turn destroy relationships. The book sets up a genuine challenge for couples of all ages encouraging them to breathe new life into their relationships by taking a deeper look into how relationships can be guided by a Torah perspective.




Devotions for Dating Couples


Book Description

If you are like most dating couples, you are looking for more than just a companion—you want a soul mate! This dynamic book will help you discover how to make your most important love relationships—with God and your potential mate—strong, lasting, and radiant. The essence of a true soulmate relationship is that of deep spiritual connection and a shared commitment to God. Learn to enrich your inner lives while building a strong foundation for a lasting marriage as you focus on basics of love, prayer, Bible study, forgiveness, and more. Relationship experts Ben Young and Samuel Adams, authors of The Ten Commandments of Dating and The One, give user-friendly tips for nurturing your personal walk with God and enhancing your spiritual connection as a couple through in this 9-week devotional. As you read through the daily lessons for individuals and the weekend studies for couples, you will: Become a great lover by learning to love God first Develop the essential disciplines of a lasting relationship Focus on the important things in life Discover a sense of spiritual purpose and meaning Understand that grace is not just for "beginners" – it is for you, every day Whether you are dating seriously or engaged to be married, these daily personal devotions and weekly couple's devotions will help you discover the way to lifelong love.




Sacred Pathways


Book Description

Sacred Pathways reveals nine distinct spiritual temperaments--and their strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies--to help you improve your spiritual life and deepen your personal walk with God. It's time to strip away the frustration of a one-size-fits-all spirituality and discover a path of worship that frees you to be you. Experienced spiritual directors, pastors, and church leaders recognize that all of us engage with God differently, and it's about time we do too. In this updated and expanded edition of Sacred Pathways, Gary Thomas details nine spiritual temperaments and--like the Enneagram and other tools do with personality--encourages you to investigate the ways you most naturally express yourself in your relationship with God. He encourages you to dig into the traits, strengths, and pitfalls in your devotional approach so you can eliminate the barriers that keep you locked into rigid methods of worship and praise. Plus, as you begin to identify and understand your own temperament, you'll soon learn about the temperaments that aren’t necessarily "you" but that may help you understand the spiritual tendencies of friends, family, and others around you. Whatever temperament or blend of temperaments best describes you, rest assured it's not by accident. It's by the design of a Creator who knew what he was doing when he made you according to his own unique intentions. If your spiritual walk is not what you'd like it to be, you can change that, starting here. Sacred Pathways will show you the route you were made to travel, marked by growth and filled with the riches of a close walk with God.




The Art of Intimate Marriage


Book Description

From a two-time nationally award winning sexuality researcher - The Art of Intimate Marriage. God's plan for sexual intimacy in marriage is the work of a Master artist and genuine intimacy is like a beautiful masterpiece. Your marriage is going well but you want to make your sex life better and you’re looking for help on how to do that. You want to know what God has to say about how to build a fulfilling sexual intimacy in your marriage. Your sexual relationship has been full of pain, discouragement, and frustration and you need some answers. You have some medical issues that are making sex difficult and you would like to rekindle experiencing mutually pleasurable sex. For these issues and more, The Art of Intimate Marriage provides direction and guidance on how to get there. Creating that masterpiece may mean learning God’s view of sex, gaining life-giving intimacy skills, and figuring out how to work through conflict in a way that creates deeper connection. It may also mean overcoming things in your background, healing things in your marriage, or dealing with those medical challenges. We have the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of God’s loving heart through being deeply known and erotically bonded with our spouse. The Art of Intimate Marriage gives us a road map to experience growth toward a more rewarding, spiritual sexual relationship.




Praying Together


Book Description

Praying together as a couple is important. You know that praying together offers lots of benefits: better relationship, more respect, more intimacy, deeper love for your spouse, better communication, and the list goes on. So, why aren't you doing it? What's holding you back as a couple from one of the richest experiences in your marriage? Praying Together offers a guilt-free understanding of the hidden reasons we as couples aren't going to the Lord in prayer as a team. Birthed from their own shortcomings and transformed marriage, authors Sam and Vickie share a model for prayer within the marriage relationship that is compelling, simple, biblical, and powerfully transforming. While each chapter closes with sample Scripture and prayer for husbands and wives to use together, Praying Together equips couples to pray with one another after the book is finished.




Advanced Spiritual Intimacy


Book Description

A practical guide for both individuals and couples to transform sexual energy into spiritual and erotic fulfillment • Explains how to awaken advanced stages of sexual development for spiritual intimacy and deep erotic satisfaction • Includes illustrated instructions for exercises and techniques based on yoga, kundalini, breathing practices, mantra chanting, and chakra meditation • Explores how this practice can deepen a life partnership, enhance creativity, heal emotional scars, and awaken new understandings of gender Sexual development does not end in adolescence. There are advanced stages of glandular, emotional, and erotic development based in the lifelong “puberty of the spine.” Known in India as kundalini awakening, these stages form the energetic basis of all yoga forms and deeper erotic aspirations. They present an opportunity for couples and individuals to explore the consciousness-expanding abilities of sexual energy as both spirituality and sexuality transform into what Michel Foucault called ars erotica, far beyond the Freudian scientia sexualis sexuality of the Western world. Offering a guide to the advanced stages of human sexuality and a passionately infused tantric yoga practice, Stuart Sovatsky explains how to awaken the complete spinal puberty, resulting in spiritual intimacy and orgasmic pineal maturity that far surpasses the gratifications of modern sexuality. With illustrated instructions, he reveals flow-yoga asanas, mantras, and devotional breathing practices for solo kundalini yoga as well as couples’ yoga practices and chakra meditations to awaken the heart and the divinely eroticized mind. He shares inspiring stories from those on this path about ever-deepening life partnerships, enriched family life, enhanced personal creativity, profound new understandings of conception, masculinity, femininity, and gender itself as well as healing emotional scars of romantic breakups and sexual abuse. Sovatsky shows that by transcending conventional Western sexuality and returning to the ars erotica beliefs of ancient India, we can harness the divine energy--glimpsed for only an instant by most people--at the heart of all erotic yearning.




Happily Ever After


Book Description

30 devotional readings for couples from John Piper, Francis Chan, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, and 10 others. / God designed marriage as a pointer to and catalyst for your greatest joy. It's not meant to be a storybook ending, but a fresh beginning, to help ready you for the true "happily ever after" when we see our great Bridegroom face to face.




To Love, Honor, and Vacuum


Book Description

"Sheila speaks to both the heart and habits of the woman who is wife and mother. The lessons in this book are biblical, doable, and affordable!"--Margaret B. Buchanan From advertisements to mommy blogs to Pinterest, scenes of domestic bliss abound, painting a picture of perfection and expectation nearly impossible to live up to. Why can't you work a full-time job, stylishly clothe yourself and your children, plan a party for twelve with handmade decorations, keep your house sparkling clean without chemicals, and bake a gourmet meal in the same day? Everyone else is doing it! For many women, housework has become more than chores that need to be done; it is a symbol of identity. Sheila Wray Gregoire wants to stop that thinking in its tracks and help women back to a life of balance--for their sakes and for their families. She encourages women to shift their focus from housekeeping to relationships and shows them how to foster responsibility and respect in all family members. The second edition retains the helpful, concrete advice on everyday situations such as strategies for tackling chores and budgets and tips on effective communication, while incorporating the wisdom Sheila has gained through her interaction with thousands of readers of her blog and through her speaking ministry over the past ten years. Through the principles in To Love, Honor, and Vacuum, Gregoire promises readers they can grow and thrive in the midst of their hectic lives--even if their circumstances stay the same.