Beyond Sex & Salvation is the first LoveEd study guide series. It consists of three eight-lesson guidebooks that can be gone through individually or in any order.
Beyond Sex & Salvation – Part 1 addresses three critical life lessons you want to learn before you fall in love. Keep in mind, life lessons take a lifetime to learn. You're not going to have them all sewed up in eight weeks, but you'll be miles ahead of most people just because you're pursuing them. These are deceptively hard lessons, but they only get harder to learn the older you get. Indeed, many choose not to learn them, but their relationships pay the price. Then when they get married, their marriage pays the price. Sometimes that price is divorce. At the very least, it's major marital dissatisfaction.
If you don't wish to join the disappointed and disillusioned, determine to pursue maturity in these areas now and set yourself up for relational success:
* with family members
* with co-workers
* in friendship
* in dating
* in your future marriage
What is Love Education?
If you've grown up in the church, there are likely only two things you've been taught about marriage prior to premarital counseling:
1. You should wait until you're married to have sex.
2. You should marry a believer.
Is that it? Of course not. There are innumerable truths for relational success that you should know about marriage beyond sex and salvation. So many things, in fact, that waiting until after you've already fallen in love with "that special someone" is dreadfully late to start learning. This is true for three big reasons:
Practical:The time and energy you've already invested in your relationship predisposes you to defend it instead of dissect it.
Relational:It feels disloyal to acknowledge the faults of your partner or the deficiencies of your relationship.
Emotional:The brain chemistry of being "in love" entails hormones flooding your brain which make it incredibly difficult to view your partner and your relationship objectively.
That's why this study guide series was written to prepare you for relational success when it counts: before you fall in love. We call it love education. It's the essential missing link between the sex education you got back in middle school and the premarital counseling you won't get until you're coupled up.And it's the wise individual who seeks it out, whether marriage is a deep desire or a vague curiosity. Are you that wise individual?
