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Extreme Romance

When the Jost family came to church a couple weeks ago they had some CDs, books, and other neat stuff for sale.


So, we splurged and got a variety of what they had available. This post will be about the book we bought, called Extreme Romamce: A Single's Guide To Building True Love written by Jesse and Heidi Jost.


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Available here and on the Jost Family's website.

Back Cover: Marriage can be the sweetest thing that ever happened to you, full of rich surprises and fantastic adventure. However, it can also be something that can fill your life with pain and heartache, and not only your life, but also your spouse’s and your children’s. A bad marriage can be a terrible chain around your neck that will torment you for years.



What kind of marriage will yours be? It’s up to you.



The decisions you make in your single years will go a long way in determining the quality of your marriage. Your choices are going to affect your future. Wise decisions are going to bear delicious fruit that will bring great pleasure. Foolish decisions can grow deep-rooted weeds that will choke and stab you for many years.



A good marriage is possible, but it will take a lot of work and preparation. This book gives you the tools you need to build a strong foundation. Start investing right now in your future marriage relationship. God’s got a blueprint for making true love. He holds out to us the necessary supplies. Now it’s up to you to make true love a reality so that you too can experience extreme romance.


My Review: I think these type of books are very good to read, whether you are single and plan to (or not to) get married, or whether you are married, because the knowledge you can gain from it can be so helpful in many ways (every day life, interactions with other people, discussions, writing, and such).

And even if I don't agree with all someone may write (I think I agreed with all-to-most of what he said), it can at least show you another perspective.

The first chapter told how they (Jesse and Heidi) met, courted, and married. It was very interesting and unique - I won't give any spoilers away ;)

I don't have the book with me right now, so I can't share some of what I REALLY liked, at least not word for word. But something that does stand out was their perspective on true love.

Before marriage, love is mostly infatuation. Real love is sticking together, supporting each other, being selfless, not backing out of your agreement as soon as something horrid happens, being considerate of each other, respecting the other one, and mostly realizing the other person is different than you. Another person won't respond to something like you will, words may have a different meaning and affect on them than you could have possibly meant, actions mean one thing to one person, and something different to another.

So, basically love needs lots of blindness to the other person's faults.

Some topics they discussed were;

- Waiting on Yahweh for marriage, and using your life to please Him meanwhile. This means being totally surrendered to His will, and accepting the fact that it might not be His will for you to get married.

- How to have a pure courtship.

- How to avoid giving away too much of your heart to too many people

- They describe romance books as being just as bad for a woman as pornography is for a man (read the book and it will explain why)

- How the world defines love, how most Christians think of love, and what the Bible says on the matter.

- Courting? Dating? Betrothal? Which is the best way? As he explains, all three are used in very similar ways to mean the same thing. It doesn't matter what you call it, but how and why you do it.

- And last of all, commitment (there's more in the book, but my mind is drawing a blank). How and why should you commit yourself to another person before marriage, and how you can still keep pure.

Who else out there has read this book? And if you did read it, what did you think of it?

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