Books to Grow Your Marriage

Recommended Books & Why We Began Reading

My husband and I began reading motivating books every night about a year ago. God pressed this on my heart for several reasons.

First, in order to trust my husband again, I needed a daily time with him to grow together. We use this time to talk about our days. We talk about important things that happened, good things, and bad things. We also catch up on the hard things to talk about from time to time. I ask him how he is doing with temptation and invite him to tell me anything I should know that would be a concern to our marriage. This has helped my husband grow with honesty. Honesty has always been one of his most difficult struggles. However, he has been coming to me with things to tell and even shares his struggles with me and when he is successful with lust. This can be very difficult to receive as a wife. But for me, I need this honesty to grow and trust him again. I feel if he does not share with me then something is probably going on behind the scenes of our marriage that would devastate me. I pray constantly that God would help me to encourage him and love him and not be offended by his temptations. I also share with him how I’ve been doing. I do go through very sad days that I question God and feel great heartache. I have to share how I’m doing or eventually I will explode. This part is difficult for my husband to receive. Basically, this whole conversation part is still growing for us. We didn’t have this for the first ten years of our marriage. Now, we both see how essential it is and try to never miss it.

Second, we read a book that helps give us insight and ways to grow in our marriage. Looking back, I can see how little by little our marriage was falling apart. We were both so busy and concentrated on different things that we let go of our growth and following God together. Therefore, I asked my husband if we could never stop growing and learning about God. I explained to him that I needed to know that we were moving forward so that we would not be stuck in the past. Now we read a few pages of a book each night and always have the next book planned.

Third, we end each time by praying together. We keep a list of our prayers and add new ones as they come up. We hold hands and agree before God that we want our marriage to be restored and better than it ever was.

Lastly, we each read books for our own independent growth. We started this one because my husband was always a huge computer, Internet person. We have realized that there are so very few websites that are completely pure. Most of the websites that my husband enjoyed for sports, news, and shopping all had terrible adds and links. Many of them can lead to being lustful and eventually to pornography. This has been a huge struggle we had to move past. Over time, we started using Godly, inspirational books to keep on hand during independent down time. My husband knew that he always spent this time browsing the Internet. He also knew that I had begun to dislike that and it made it very difficult for me to trust him. It is much easier to know that Internet browsing is done right at the table. We have agreed that the less Internet my husband uses, the easier it is for him to be pure. He has also told me that when he is alone and God speaks to him through these books, it is very convicting and helpful to his growth. When I am reading it helps me focus on the moment and not get drawn back into the past

We are always looking for new books and there are so many to choose from. Please add any recommendations as well and I will update this list periodically.

When you click on the books they will lead you directly to Amazon for a full description.

Books to Read Together