Secrets of a Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch (Sounds True) (Available in 2 CDs, Running time 2 ½ hours, or Audiocassette format) If you think you need to change your marriage, think again. It may well be that your marriage is trying to change you. In Secrets of a Passionate Marriage, Dr. David Schnarch, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist, director of the Marriage and Family Health Center of Evergreen, CO, shares a revolutionary approach thousands have used to take their relationships to new and lasting heights of sexual ecstasy and intimacy. “Emotionally committed relationships,” he teaches, “are people-growing machines,” and sexual difficulty and other challenges are actually signs of a healthy, maturing relationship. Moving beyond traditional therapies that work “a little,” Dr. Schnarch brings straight talk and humor to his three decades of expertise

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. —Proverbs 4:23 NIV

Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive by John Eldredge (Thomas Nelson Publishers) In Waking the Dead, author John Eldredge asks: How has this central truth been lost... that the heart is the center of human life? It is the creative powerhouse within each soul. It is the connecting point between the self and others—between each of us and God. In fact, the heart is where we receive that life God offers and we long for—a life flowing through us, as Jesus said, in rivers. And it is through each individual heart that God wants to change the world.

Eldredge, author, counselor and teacher, founder and director of Ransomed Heart Ministries in Colorado Springs , explains to readers of Waking the Dead how God restores their hearts, their true humanity, and sets each person free. There are four streams, Eldredge says, though which we can discover the abundant life:

• Walking with God
• Receiving His intimate counsel
• Deep restoration
• Spiritual warfare

And once the “eyes of our hearts” are opened, we embrace three eternal truths:

• Things are not what they seem.
• This is a world at war.
• Each of us has a crucial role to play.

What Did Jesus Do: Gospel Profiles of Jesus' Personal Conduct by F. Scott Spencer (Trinity Press International)  “What Would Jesus Do?” is a popular phrase in Christian circles, but answers to that question might be more on-target if we spent more time exploring, as Scott Spencer has, “What Did Jesus Do?”

In What Did Jesus Do, Spencer, Professor of New Testament at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond , Virginia , examines both the Synoptics and the Gospel of John as he tries to catch a wide-angled vision of Jesus’ behavior in the gospels. Rather than focus on sayings or pronouncements as an authoritative code of conduct, he studies Jesus’ deeds or actions as keys to his identity and vocation. While not ignoring Jesus’ teaching, this study is more interested in discovering how Jesus personally lived out and lived up to his own moral instruction in his personal conduct. Chapters are devoted to Jesus’ actions with respect to his family, his friends, his body, his possessions, his work, his reputation, and the environment.

Spencer suggests paths – and pitfalls – for relating Jesus’ personal conduct to individual behavior, how we might move from “what Jesus did” in the New Testament to “what we should do” today.

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