Audiobook Recommendation: "The Mingling of Souls"

Are you looking to grow in your understanding of biblical marriage and dating principles, but you don’t like reading? Have you read the book “Song of Solomon” in your Bible but wondered how this ancient romantic poetry actually applies in your daily life? If you answered "yes" to these questions, then you would love “The Mingling of Souls” by Matt Chandler! Chloe and I recently listened through the audiobook version on our anniversary vacation on the free app “Libby” that allows you to borrow free audiobooks from your local library. We highly recommend listening through this book to glean pastoral wisdom and practical application from Song of Solomon that will prove helpful for any age, whether single or celebrating an anniversary, as the Song of Solomon walks through the story of a couple’s first meeting to their golden years of marriage.

Here are 7 quotes to whet your appetite:

1) “Quit looking for 'the one'. You have a better chance of finding an Oompa Loompa riding a unicorn, fighting Bigfoot.”

2) “When we commit to a spouse for life, we are agreeing to enter a sacred union between two sinners and Jesus, and when you’ve got two sinners walking together over the years, you will see just how sinful he or she—and you—can be.”

3) “In too many marital conflicts, we work too hard at winning the argument and too little at winning the heart. You can express your feelings and thoughts, even share criticisms and complaints, but the end goal of marital conflict should be care for your spouse’s soul, not trying to rack up the most points. Seeking to win is not love."

4) “Men, let me plead with you: The greatest fight of your life is not lust. You may think it is, but it isn’t. The greatest fight of your life will be rejecting the passivity that has infected your heart since the fall. Your natural default, especially as it pertains to sacrificial leadership of your wife, will be to mutely witness.”

5) “You don’t really need to make a vow to stick with someone in the best of times. The inclination to run doesn’t exist then. It’s the low times the covenant is made for.”

6) [In considering what to look for in someone to marry] “I think that church membership is a huge consideration, precisely because there is no such thing as a perfect church, and in our day and age in the West, we have so many options to choose from. Churches are full of sinners, so there will always be some messiness in a church. Churches are like families that way. So when a person stays in a church for a long period of time, there is evidence that she has been able to see that everything’s not perfect, but she nevertheless said, “I’m going to stay. I’m going to try to make this work. My commitment is more important than my desire to run away.”

7) “What we learn in the Song of Songs is that a marriage shaped according to this gospel of grace, forged over years of hard-earned trust and forgiveness, can be an unsafe place for sin but a very safe place for sinners. In a gospel-centered marriage, when two souls are mingled together with the Holy Spirit’s leading, we find confirmation after confirmation that grace is true, that grace is real—that we can be really, truly, deeply known and at the same time really, truly, deeply loved…Grace does not make sin safe. Grace does make sinners safe.”