In our socially networked but disconnected age, we find ourselves longing for stronger, deeper connection.
Love Lock, Creating Lasting Connections with the One You Love is perfect for couples who are serious about growing closer – and an essential read for those who want the closeness back. We were created for connection, yet many marriages are coming apart as couples “unfriend” each other long before they head to court. Love Lock couples are looking for ways to connect beyond what they allow people to see on social media. They care about friendship over filters, love over “likes.”
Using the easy, engaging exercises in Love Lock, couples can discover or rediscover the intimacy and deep connection God intended.
Rich Rollins and Marty Trammell have done it again! Writing in the same practical and thoroughly biblical style of Redeeming Relationships, they offer a road-map for young couples just falling in love, hope for couples experiencing fractured relationships, and confidence for couples like Debbie and me (coming up on our 44th anniversary) who are in the latter portion of their married life. Couples who answer the questions together and engage in the activities at the end of each chapter are sure to find immediate benefits.
William J. Katip, Ph.D.
President
Grace College and Seminary
Co-author of Redeeming Relationships (FaithWalk Publishing/CCS) and Spiritual Fitness (Credo). He has written stories for Chicken Soup, Guideposts, Waterbrook Multnomah, Bethany House and notes in study bibles for Tyndale, Thomas Nelson, and Zondervan. Marty is a popular communicator who has been nicknamed “Dr. Love” by college couples who come to him and his wife, Linda, for pre-marital counseling and help with their marriages. He has been the Valentines’ Day guest chapel speaker for 14 consecutive years and has presented more than a hundred marriage workshops on the West Coast and as far away as Torino, Italy. He is the English/Communication Chair at Corban University (Salem, OR) and a pastor at Perrydale Church. Marty and Linda have three sons and two daughters-in-law who share their ministries and help them enjoy sports, music and travel.
Co-author of Redeeming Relationships and Spiritual Fitness, served as Executive Pastor at Valley Bible Church for over two decades, has appeared on Family Life Today with Dennis Rainey and served as a healthcare professional, college Vice-President and church consultant. For more than forty years, Rich’s work on relational conflict and spiritual growth has made him a sought-after counselor and conference speaker. Rich has also served as director and announcer for Truth for Today, a radio program featuring Valley Bible Church. He has written articles for Focus on the Family's online magazine. Dr. Rollins has also been the key note speaker at over twenty Family and Marriage conferences.
Rich and his wife, LouAnna, live in Southern California. They have been married for over fifty-four years. They have two daughters and sons-in-law, three grand-children, and two foster daughters.
The title of our book was inspired by the growing romantic trend for couples to fasten padlocks on bridges in Rome and Paris, and the research that suggests millennials and screenagers are searching for more permanent relationships. Although Paris and Rome have imposed fines because their historic bridges are being compromised by the weight of the locks, officials there are still finding it difficult to dissuade couples from the practice. Why? Because hanging locks on a bridge and throwing away the key symbolizes the hope that a stronger, more permanent, and more secure kind of relationship is possible. If it is still true that “what the world needs now is love,” it is certainly this kind. The more Rich and I prayed, the more we realized that the love lock phenomenon also reflects humanity’s deep, universal longing for connection and commitment—for a love that God describes as “stronger than death” (Song of Songs 8:6). This book is our studied response to the needs we’ve observed in our combined sixty years of counseling, and it is our humble attempt to point out the Bible’s answers to the growing loneliness and lack of connection documented in the research journals.
We organized the content into sections that respond to the most common reasons couples self-report for seeking counseling:
● I need to feel understood.
● I need to feel valued.
● I need to feel a part of the one I love.
● I need to feel respected and cherished.
● I need to be able to trust the one I love.
● I need to experience more resolution and less conflict.
As you read through these pages, we believe you will find what others have already found—that we CAN experience a deeper connection, an honest human love that locks on to “the life that is truly life” (I Timothy 6:19).
Warmly,
Rich and Marty
