Product Description

This updated and expanded edition expands some of the subjects that were discreetly touched on in the earlier edition, explores how the latest discoveries in the field of medicine and social practice confirm the principles taught in the book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51050 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 400 pages

From the Back Cover
This updated and expanded edition gives a fresh informative edge to an already definitive book. New sections discuss "sex after sixty" and five reasons why God created sex, all supported by the very latest findings in the fields of medicine and sociology. For engaged couples and newlyweds who want to make lovemaking a joy from the start . . . For couples who have been married for years and want to maintain the flame or rekindle the embers . . . for every husband or wife who wants to be a better lover -- here are the insights into each other's bodies, psychosexual makeup, and need for tender, unselfish affection that can help you achieve your goal. With over 2.5 million copies in print, The Act of Marriage has helped thousands of Christian couples maximize their joy in sexual union and saved countless marriages. Pastors, doctors, and psychologists alike have endorsed the frank, practical insights.

About the Author
Tim LaHaye, D.Min., Litt.D., is a noted author, minister, educator, and nationally recognized speaker on Bible prophecy.He has written over forty books, including The Act of Marriage and The Act of Marriage After 40 (both with Beverly LaHaye), How to Win Over Depression, Spirit-Controlled Temperament, and the best-selling Left Behind fiction series (with Jerry B. Jenkins). Tim and his wife, Beverly, live in Southern California.She is the founder and chairwoman of Concerned Women for America and shares a daily devotional commentary on the nationally syndicated radio show Concerned Women Today. She and her husband live in southern California.

Excerpted from The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love by Tim Lahaye. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
This book is unlike any other I have ever written. It should be read only by married couples, those immediately contemplating marriage, and those who counsel married couples.
It is deliberately frank. I have long felt a need for a clear and detailed presentation of the intimate relationship that exists between a husband and wife. Most Christian books on this subject skirt the real issues and leave too much to the imagination; such evasiveness is not adequately instructive. Secular books, on the other hand, often go overboard telling it like it is in crude language repulsive to those who need help. In addition, such books usually advocate practices considered improper by biblical standards.
To keep the facts that every couple needs to know from being offensive, I am writing this book with the help of Beverly, my wife of fifty years. In addition to the delicate sense of balance she brings to this work, I have drawn on her extensive counseling experiences as a minister’s wife, conference speaker, and registrar of Christian Heritage College.
Both of us have counseled enough married couples to convince us that an enormous number of them are not enjoying all the blessings of which they are capable or for which God has designed them. We have discovered that many others find the intimacies of married love distasteful and unpleasant. Through the years, we have developed several teaching principles that have helped such people in a relatively short period of time. The requests of counselors, pastors, and others persuaded us that these same principles could help thousands of people if presented in book form.
Before we had had time to begin the project, Dr. Robert K. DeVries, then executive vice president of Zondervan Publishing House, invited us to lunch to present us with the first printed copy of my previous book, How to Win Over Depression. "A book that is sorely needed today, written by a Christian couple, would concern sexual adjustment in marriage," he remarked, "and we would like to ask you two to write it." We thanked him and promised to pray about it.
At first Bev was reluctant to get heavily involved with the endeavor until the Lord gave her a specific sign. Within the next two months she counseled at least ten wives who were averse to sexual intercourse. The success those women soon achieved in their love lives convinced her that God required her active participation in the project.
As we began to read current literature on the subject, convinced that God meant lovemaking to be enjoyed by both partners, we prayed that He would lead us to make this work fully biblical and highly practical. He provided many counseling illustrations and pertinent suggestions from pastors, doctors, and friends, among them Dr. Ed Wheat, a family physician who has prepared a superb series of lectures on the subject. When we met him at our Family Life Seminar in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he presented us with a complete set of his cassettes and graciously offered us the freedom to use anything in them. We recommend these cassettes to every married couple and those planning to be married in the near future; they are unquestionably the finest we have ever reviewed. In fact, Dr. Wheat includes information in them that we have not found in the fifty or more books we have scrutinized on this subject.
Inasmuch as most of the people we counsel are Christians, we concluded through our reading that Christians generally experience a higher degree of sexual enjoyment than non-Christians. However, there was no way to prove our assumption. We then prepared an intimate survey for married couples and offered it to those who have attended our Family Life Seminars. By comparing the responses with those of secular sex surveys, our conclusions were confirmed and other interesting and valuable facts were discovered. The results of our survey appear in chapter 13, and parts of it are scattered through the book.
While we were writing the last chapter of this book, Redbook magazine published a Sexual Pleasure Survey showing the preferences of 100,000 women. The survey was taken by the magazine and written by Robert J. Levin (coauthor with Masters and Johnson of The Pleasure Bond). The most significant finding of Redbook’s survey and the one listed first was that "sexual satisfaction is related significantly to religious belief. With notable consistency, the greater the intensity of a woman’s religious convictions, the likelier she is to be highly satisfied with the sexual pleasures of marriage." Naturally we were delighted to find that Redbook’s survey revealed results quite similar to those of our survey. On the strength of his research Mr. Levin emphatically confirmed that "strongly religious women (over 25) seem to be more responsive . . . [and] she is more likely than the nonreligious woman to be orgasmic almost every time she engages in sex." This further convinces us that our presupposition is accurate.
No single book by human beings will ever become the last word on any subject; therefore we don’t claim this manual on married love to be final. But we do believe it contains much valuable information helpful to almost any married couple, and several of its insights are not currently found in any other book of its kind. We therefore send it out with our prayers that God will use it to enrich both the love and the love lives of those who read it.

Customer Reviews

LeHaye provides a wonderful Christian perspective on sex
The Act of Marriage was very beneficial to me before I was married. I had never heard or read anything about sex from a Christian perspective. The LeHayes provided a course of the physical aspects of marriage (sex), while at the same time focusing in upon the more relational and spiritual. The physical aspects included things like the role of male and female hormones in the arousal of sexual feelings. The relational and spiritual focused upon things like pleasing your spouse and finding out what is most pleasing for your partner. I was especially pleased to hear about the physiological components of sex from two Christians, because my experience with Christians and sex has been very Victorian and repressive. The LeHayes are not like that at all.

I was very nervous and scared about the First Night. I found out that my spouse was also very nervous. The LeHayes book helped to lessen and queit our fears. I think the best part of the boo is the description of the Brain and mind as the most important sexual organ. Overall, the LeHayes did a wonderful job.

A basic book of marriage
Very good book, which everyone who is going to be married should read. It does give good guidelines to enter the act of marriage. It deals with those problems which unfortunately most men and women have with sex.

If you live in the 21st century, look elsewhere
As a young married christian who has been married around four months I bought this book hoping it would be both encouraging and helpful in a practical as much as an emotional way. At the same time I also bought "A Celebration of Sex" by Douglas Rosenau. The differnce between the two could not be more marked. Whilst the LaHaye's insist on telling the complete history of psychological thinking on the issue of sex in an incredibly boring and frustrating manner and never quite getting to the point, Rosenau is practical and sensitive in his writing, covering everything the 21st century christian marriage might possibly need to know. This book can be confusing and contains very little practical advice, unless you're having trouble with your pelvic floor muscles.
Seriously, unless you also want to read results from a scientific survey on sex conducted at some point during the 1980's do yourselves a favour and give this one a miss.