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As someone belonging to a generation of believers in constant anxiety about “God's will” for them, this is refreshing. This book may come off to some as a dry or impersonal approach, but frankly, this is how we ought to be making decisions as Christians the vast majority of the time. I absolutely believe in “writing in the sky” truly happening to some people, because you can't put God in a box - the Scriptures show that much very evidently. But superstitious, ritualistic thinking has infiltrated the thought patterns of many Christians (including myself) and some corrections are necessary. My prayers are now less oriented toward God revealing His will to me and more toward asking for wisdom, discernment, and the strength to resist sin. So helpful!

Really loved everything this book had to say about the church and has led to my own de-construction of our modern church in America. However, I'm at a loss with what to do with this information, and I would have loved it if Pastor Chan went into more detail on how your average Christian can act on it.

A great work of fiction that simultaneously speculates on what the eternal state will be like.

I read this book as a guy getting married in less than a week. I'm familiar with Sheila and Keith's ministry: both the Bare Marriage blog and especially The Great Sex Rescue. Much of what they have to say through these pipelines is a great asset to the church, even though I disagree with their egalitarian theology.

Much of the Good Guy's Guide (GGG) was review for me, thanks to the Gregoire's aforementioned other work. But there was so much new content worth reading in here! There were two particularly heart-touching stories that actually made my jaw drop in the car as I listened to them. Sheila & Keith are fighting an uphill battle in this book -- they have to work against popular yet harmful teachings on sex, even from within the church. The GGG, particularly as written for husbands, is focused on the wife and how we as men can work with her to achieve marital & sexual satisfaction.

Even though some might say that the key to a good sexual relationship is a variety of physical things (technique, frequency), it's abundantly clear in this book that the foundation of a good sex life is a good marriage. If we as husbands are not honoring our wives and sacrificing ourselves daily for them, then that's going to have a negative impact on the sexual part of our relationship. The Gregoires describe sex as a thermometer, not a thermostat, for a marriage. And, when we do have that foundation, the care and sacrifice do not stop in the bedroom. We have to make the effort to understand our wives as our own body.

The only reason I dock half a star is for somewhat of a lack of biblical exegesis/citations. This book isn't meant as a comprehensive treatment on marriage as a whole, but they barely touched 1 Corinthians 7, which is probably the most useful teaching on sex specifically in the entire Bible. I suspect that they may have laid off on a lot of Scripture to make the book appealing to both egalitarians and complementarians, since their theology would presumably bleed through in many places. But, I'd prefer a larger amount of honest treatment and usage of Scripture, even if it is from another perspective.

It's clear that, after this reading, all the GGG really teaches is another point of the ultimate command: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself." Our wives are fundamentally different from us, and anatomy is only the tip of the iceberg. It's as simple as communication, patience, and kindness. If we obey the commands of God, our whole life will be better; the marriage bed is no exception to this.

As an aside, I found the honeymoon appendix at the end of the book to be a useful addition.

A brilliant exhortation that's been extremely formative to my pattern of thought in the faith. It's nothing but pure orthodoxy when Pastor Chan says that lukewarm Christians are actually not Christians at all, but the fact that he has to add a warning before that truth shows how desperate the situation in the modern American church really is. I think this book should be read not as telling you to do the exact same thing as many of the examples, but instead really counting the cost of following Christ and how you can apply that radical worldview to your own life. Will be reading Bonhoeffer’s "The Cost of Discipleship" as a follow-up to this.