Thursday, March 14, 2019

Prayer influences the circles of your marriage


I’m a big fan of Mark Batterson’s book The Circle Maker, and have enjoyed his other books based on the “circle” theme, including Praying Circles around your Children; so I was interested in another praying circles book.
Joel and Nina Schmidgall have defined several circles of influence in a marriage, and done an admirable job of explaining each of those circles: Vision, Romance, War, Dance, Support, Storm and Legacy in their book Praying Circles around Your Marriage. (Zondervan, 2019). Since the authors are both marriage counselors, they collectively bring a wealth of information about the subject.  And then they add in the importance of prayer, so what’s not to like?
They discuss each of the circles in layman’s terms, and share a lot of how each of the circles, coupled with prayer, has played out in their own marriage.
Overall I would recommend this book to engaged or recently-married couples; however, I think the cover is slightly misleading. The authors are listed as the Schmidgalls, with Mark Batterson. I really struggled to find much of Batterson in this book other than some references to the authors’ relationship with him, and a few quotes from some of his other books. Then to top it off, when I went to a major etailer to look at info about the book, Mark Batteson is listed as the author.  I don’t regret reading the book, but might not have signed up for the launch (and had to purchase the Kindle version myself) if I had realized how little of Mark Batterson I would be getting.
4/5

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