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What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage

by Paul David Tripp

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Marriage, according to Scripture, will always involve two flawed people living with each other in a fallen world. Yet, in pastor Paul Tripp's professional experience, the majority of couples enter marriage with unrealistic expectations, leaving them unprepared for the day-to-day realities of married life.

This unique book introduces a biblical and practical approach to those realities that is rooted in God's faithfulness and Scripture's teaching on sin and grace. "Spouses need to be reconciled to each other and to God on a daily basis," Tripp declares. "Since we're always sinners married to sinners, reconciliation isn't just the right response in moments of failure. It must be the lifestyle of any healthy marriage."

What Did You Expect? presents six practical commitments that give shape and momentum to such a lifestyle. These commitments, which include honestly facing sin, weakness, and failure; willingness to change; and embodying Christ's love, will equip couples to develop a thriving, grace-based marriage in all circumstances and seasons of their relationship.

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Books on Christian marriage are “a dime a dozen.” However, this book is worth every dime you can spend. The message is rooted deeply in the scripture and sound, practical theology. The book is for all: newly-weds, oldy-weds, and every kind in between them. Marriage is a lifelong project “under construction” for no marriage is perfect in this present life.

Paul Tripp begins with four of the “nuts and bolts” of a realistic marriage:
1) getting beyond unrealistic expectations to realistic ones based on the word of God
2) building the vertical relationship with God to maintain the horizontal relationship with your mate
3) submitting your imagined self-kingdom to God’s real kingdom
4) establishing good habits step by step and day by day rather than trying to live from big event to big event.

The rest of the book addresses six commitments for growing a marriage God’s way. These six commitments are illustrated very well with vignettes from the author’s counseling ministry, including his own marriage. The six commitments are:
• We will give ourselves to a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness
• We will make growth and change our daily agenda
• We will work together to build a sturdy bond of trust
• We will commit to building a relationship of love
• We will deal with our differences with appreciation and grace
• We will work to protect our marriage

Two of the best chapters are “Planting Seeds” and “Pulling Weeds.” These are two tasks that must be done daily. Weeds destroy gardens and marriages. Seeds planted, watered and tended produce fruitful gardens and marriages. What you do daily will in due time be harvested for good or ill.

Working through this book is not easy, and neither is working through the ups and downs of marriage. Yet, difficulties are providential opportunities in which God’s grace teaches and enables us to progress and show his power to transform the “impossible.”

Get the book, read it, and put it into practice to the glory of God.

View all books by Paul David Tripp