Date Your Wife by Justin Buzzard

Date Your Wife by Justin Buzzard, I believe, is going to be one of those books that revolutionize men and their marriages and I'm praying that would be the case for mine. Justin writes this in the beginning of the book, "Marriages can be jumpstarted; the sacred union between a husband and a wife can receive new life and power. Everything can be made new. It's harder and easier than you think. Men, it starts with you. You and I and the men we know want something more. What you really want is a marriage that feels like a mission, a marriage that's moving forward toward something exciting, mysterious, and grand―kind of like the way dating felt." Justin asks for us to think back to our first date; "What was your first date with your wife like? Where were you? What did you do? What did you talk about? What did you learn? What were you feeling? What was she wearing? How did your date happen in the first place?" He then goes on to say, "What's your story? My assumption is that all of our first date stories have one thing in common: we acted like men. We pursued our wives-to-be. We made the move. We initiated. We took a risk. We took the lead." For some reason, we as men and husbands have seemed to forget about all that as soon as we say "I do." We viewed getting married as the mission and once we said "I do." it was as if we had arrived and didn't need to worry about all the stuff we did while we were dating. However, as quoted earlier we want a marriage that feels like a mission. I soon as we get married, the mission hasn't ended, it's really just begun. Justin reminds us that we as husbands need to date our wives.

He breaks the book up into four parts; the good, the bad, the new, and the perfect. Marriage is good. God created for two people to share. Justin shares that the first time a man looked at a woman, Adam and Eve, marriage happened. Adam and Eve didn't invent marriage, God did. Then there's some bad news for husbands out there; we are the problem with our marriage. We have failed at the job gave us through Adam, to cultivate and guard our wife. We begin to have a religious mindset in our marriage, that it's all about our performance and that will be good enough. And we failed to keep on pursuing our wife. We did so well at it while we were dating, but we believe that the mission ended when we got married. That's the bad news. However there is good news. Justin says that "If you want to change a marriage, change the man." Where marriages go wrong is with the husband; that's the bad news. However, where marriages go right is also with the husband; that's the good news. The difference is instead of trying to do everything in our own power, we draw our power from God. We are given a responsibility, but we have to have the right power source to carry it out. Justin uses this quote from another guy, "Responsibility: My response to His ability." It's a lot to do with identity. We as men are always trying to find ways to measure our success, but becoming new is because of our response to the gospel. We now can rest in the fact the true measure of a man is from God says about him. It boils down to an idolatry problem, but we can now beat that by focusing on the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Through the power of the gospel and the grace of Jesus Christ we can have a new future. The last chapter brings everything full circle and links us back to the job God gave Adam in the garden and that is to cultivate our wife, to help her flourish in her relationship with Christ. Justin calls us to look at the end, "until death do us part," when she will become truly perfect, her future glory-self. Justin writes this about the structure of the book,

"This book has followed a four-fold structure: the good, the bad, the new, and the perfect. This is the four-fold storyline of the Bible and of our marriages. Things start out good. Relationships are in tact, secure, and exciting. Then things go bad. We sin, we screw up, we hurt, and we get hurt. We cry out for help. Then God hears, and God shows up. Grace happens. Jesus comes to us, forgives us, and makes things new. And, eventually, everything becomes perfect."

Another part of this book I really appreciate is that Justin's wife, Taylor, writes a small section at the end of the book specifically for wives. This is a book that I think every husband and engaged man needs to read.



Special thanks to Crossway for providing this complimentary book to read and review. You can purchase the book here on amazon.com.