The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis & John Eldredge

Book Review by Carol Kim

In The Sacred Romance, we are reminded of the adventure that God draws us into. It is an adventure where we are His bride and He is our Hero. Where His great and radical love for us has moved Him to give us life with full knowledge that we would betray Him, lie to Him, and forsake Him. Where He chances to give us free will to love Him, even when He has the power to demand our devotion. Where His passion for us would compel Him to continue to pursue us despite our infidelity and self-prostitution to other gods. Where His inexorable love for us causes Him to sacrifice the life of His only begotten Son to redeem us. Where throughout the ages, He continues to pursue us by the precious gift of His godly friendship and counsel through the Holy Spirit. Our God is no ordinary God. He is a wild, radical adventurer. He is a lover of cosmic proportions. He is the quiet, almost imperceptible, yet real and persistent desire of our hearts to transcend this life and the "less wild" lovers of this world posing as work, alcohol, sex and other distractions. We have all been, at one time or another, trapped in the descending vortex of the comfortable, whether it be in the form of the wrong relationship, the dead-end job, the rut of daily life, the boredom of sitting in a church pew. What keeps us tied to the "comfort" is not contentment, but rather fear of the unknown, fear of venturing out and engaging because we are afraid of rejection or pain or failure. And it is often at these times when the enemy arrives opportunistically onto the scene, whispering lies such as, "You don't really have anything good to offer" or "Life will never get better...just live and be content with what you've got". But we need not have this fear of the unknown or force ourselves to be content in the status quo because when we enter God's story, WE ALREADY KNOW THE ENDING. He promises that both the ending and journey will be more than we ever dreamed, because we simply cannot outdream God.

The authors encourage us by urging us on, into God's story, into His adventure. But to survive the sometimes bumpy journey, we are reminded that we will triumph by recalling "our Love's past deeds on our behalf and His promise of continued faithfulness to us." The survival of many marriages depends not only on dogged commitment to one's betrothed, but also by remembering the romance before the bills rolled in, before arguments over the dishes erupted, before the stresses of daily life turned our hearts away from our beloved and the romance once promised. The sacred romance that we share with our God is no different. He asks us to truly remember who He is and what He has done to love us, and with gentle whisperings, He beckons us to a transcendent life with Him. Dare we step into the Romance to which He calls us?