Praying for Your Future Husband by Robin Jones Gunn, author of the popular Christy Miller series, and Tricia Goyer, author of several fiction and non-fiction books, hits store bookshelves next week, a welcome addition to the multitude of relationship books for young women. However, unlike most relationship books for teens, Praying for Your Future Husband asks teen girls to look towards the fulfillment of a future relationship instead of focusing on the immediate satisfaction of a present one.
Both Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer, now married women with children, share their own experiences of praying for their future husbands and subsequent love stories through chapters that are each designed to focus on a specific character quality to pray for, like patience, protection, and contentment. The book is not a lengthy one, but it is packed with encouragement and advice for young women who don't want to be caught up in the what-relationship-can-I-have-now? wave but want to look to the future and wait with expectancy and hope. In the process, Gunn and Goyer encourage young women to pray the same things for themselves, so that while praying for future husbands, God can simultaneously grow and shape them.
I love that Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer don't try to preach to girls about how (or how not) to date or have relationships. Instead, they encourage girls to pray for their future husbands, and that in itself solves the rest. In my own experience, it is much easier to ignore the wants I have for a relationship now when I'm habitually praying for a future relationship that will most likely appear when I least expect it. I've added this book to the top of my list of books to give to young women I know.
Before I end, I have to mention the two extra bonuses that come with this book. The first is that each chapter includes discussion questions for use on a girl's own or with a small group. I think this would be an amazing 13-week (there are thirteen chapters in the book) study for a teen girls' group. The discussion questions the authors have put together are really thought-provoking. Another thing is that at the end of the book, Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer have compiled 52 verses (one for each week of the year) to pray for the readers' future husbands. It's a great list, one that they encourage girls to add to. To me, both of those are like little bonuses from the authors.
"When your heart connects through prayer to the One [God]
who is the source of true love,
you'll find that praying for your future husband
will wondrously result in your heart being changed.
And when your heart is changed,
your life is transformed."
(Gunn and Goyer, 7)
Praying for Your Future Husband is 207 pages long and is published by WaterBrook Multnomah. I received my copy of this book from the publisher.
