Love Is: How Messy Stories Can Meet in the Heart of God

So many young people enter adulthood with expectations of blissful dating followed by a romantic marriage but then discover they’ve been duped. Because they learned about love and sexuality from faulty sources—social media, their friends, Disney fairy tales, pornography, or even their own rocky past—they have no idea what healthy, lifelong love is supposed to be like. The results are often disastrous, with this generation becoming one of the most relationally sick, sexually addicted, and divorce ridden in history.

Looking to God’s design while drawing lessons from their own successes and failures, the Bethkes explode the fictions and falsehoods that have led to broken relationships. One by one, they peel back lies that include:

• the belief that every person has only one soul mate,
• that marriage will complete you,
• and that pornography and hook-ups are harmless.

Drawing from Jeff’s “prodigal son” personal history and from Alyssa’s “True Love Waits” experience, the Bethkes blend personal storytelling with biblical teaching to offer readers an inspiring, realistic vision of love, dating, marriage, and sex. Including a new chapter filling readers in on the Bethke’s married relationship today, this updated edition offers a solidly biblical view of romantic love.