Let’s Get Real: Bringing Authenticity and Wholeness to Your Marriage

As individuals we need God in our lives, so it only stands to reason that we need God in our marriages.  Dale and Jena Forehand’s book: Let’s Get Real focuses on putting Christ first in your marriage in order to have authenticity and wholeness.  The book starts out with the story of their marriage, which ended in a broken home and divorce.  When they turned to Christ, they reconciled and remarried.  Their son came into their room and said, “Since you two are getting back to together, I would like to get together with God” (p 18).

The book basically tells about the lessons they’ve learned so that others might be spared the pain they experienced.

I love that the Forehands attribute all their success in marriage to God and base all their advice on relationship with Christ and bringing God glory.  I’ve read a few Christian marriage books, and the only other two I’ve read so far that do this are Love and Respect and Sacred Marriage, which ask the question “what if God made marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?”

All that said, I recommend Let’s Get Real with some reservation.  While the principles are sound, much of the book is missing.  At the end of every chapter is a “listening section” with fill in the blank questions based on the accompanying DVD.  Unfortunately the book and the DVD are sold separately—an inconvenient marketing ploy for someone buying this book because their marriage is in trouble and their life is falling apart.

Buy the Book: $7.99
Buy the DVD: $22.49

A review copy of the book was received from the publisher.  All opinions are my own.

What Was the Tower of Babel?

The tower of Babel is another issue I wonder about, mostly because of something God says.

In Genesis 11: 4-9 we have the account of the tower of Babel: "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to heaven, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel--because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

I have heard that one reason God confused their language was because of their apparent resistance to God's will in populating the earth, but I'm not convinced of this mostly because that's not the reason God gives: "If as one people speaking one language they have begun to this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."

Apparently, left to their own devices, they would have successfully built the tower, and who knows what else afterward.

In current times as English becomes the common language of science and business, we once again see humanity's capabilities at accomplishing whatever it imagines and building towers everywhere. It is only in the past century with the advent of global colonization and the proliferation of universal languages that humanity has once again been able to push the limits of the heavens with towers, flight, space travel, etc. Pictured is the durj dubai, the tallest building in the world, and it's only half finished. It looks a lot like Babel to me.

An interesting correlation to this speculation on my part. If the tower of Babel with the confusion of language represented God's judgement on humanity's use of a common language, what did the day of Pentecost represent? Once again, God deals with language with the advent of tongues:

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. (Acts 2:4-6)

It seems to me that this advent is as much relational to Babel as Christ's sacrifice was to Adam's sin. A redemption of a common language through the Spirit as it were.

Feel free to comment.