The Love Everybody Wants

Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ECPA BESTSELLER • Speaker and author Madison Prewett Troutt shows you how embracing God’s love allows you to truly love yourself and cultivate deep, meaningful relationships.

“Packed with incredibly wise, practical insights and biblical truths, this book will help you find the love that lasts and transforms lives.”—Craig and Amy Groeschel, founding pastors of Life.Church and authors of From This Day Forward

Is there something wrong with me? How many more wrong ones until the right one? Am I hard to love?

Madison Prewett Troutt knows what it’s like to ask these questions in the middle of the night—to doubt and worry about never finding the love so desperately hoped for. But Madi has discovered a deeper truth now, that the love we’re searching for is already ours.

In The Love Everybody Wants, Madi sets aside the shallow messages our culture shouts every day to help us hear God’s beautiful whisper: I have loved you with an everlasting love. And nothing will ever change that.

Drawing from Scripture and stories from her own life, Madi invites us to embrace God’s unconditional love so we can love ourselves well—and never settle for less. The Love Everybody Wants empowers you to

• view relationships in whole, holy, and healthy ways
• rely on biblical strategies for healing when your heart is hurting
• overcome lies such as “I have to follow my heart and feelings above all else”
• understand that a life partner is meant to complement you, not complete you
• look to your future with joy—because you were made to love

This isn’t a manual for how to get a boyfriend or a manifesto for getting married. It’s a book about the abundant love already at your fingertips—the love God has for you. The love that lasts forever, the love that changes everything. The love everybody wants.“In her new book, The Love Everybody Wants, Madison Prewett Troutt shares her heart for God-honoring relationships with passion and compassion. Packed with incredibly wise, practical insights and biblical truths, this book will help you find the love that lasts and transforms lives. Anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of love and build stronger relationships with those around them will appreciate this message.”—Craig and Amy Groeschel, founding pastors of Life.Church and authors of From This Day Forward

“Waiting to be loved can be one of the loneliest places in the world, which often leads us to compromise. I love that Madi shares the truths on why the right person is worth the wait and how God wants to use this season to lavish you with his love! Madison does not shy away from the hard topics and always brings it back to what God says about you.”—Brittany Lake and Brandon Lake, Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter

“The Love Everybody Wants is a much-needed breath of fresh air in our dating-crazed culture. Every page feels like you’re sitting down having coffee with your best friend or favorite big sister, getting to hear how she navigated love, heartbreak, and everything in between. This book reminds us that true love is still possible and that God can turn the pain of our past into something more beautiful than we can imagine.”—Oneka McClellan, co-pastor of Shoreline City Church

“This book will not only help you navigate singleness and relationships, but it will also help you love God more. Madi’s journey to marriage is so relatable, entertaining, and inspiring! She will minister to you and your friends while giving you great relationship advice and helping you realize the love you already have.”—Jonathan Pokluda, lead pastor of Harris Creek Baptist Church, bestselling author of Outdated, and host of the podcast Becoming Something

“Reading this book was like having a sister eloquently express everything I’ve felt while looking for love in all the wrong places. It is a kind yet firm reminder that we are more valuable than we can possibly imagine.”—Jess Clarke Higgins, social media personality

“Madi is fiercely in love with Jesus. Ultimately, there is no other love that will satisfy. But The Love Everybody Wants will be a helpful guide for all of it—loving God and wrestling with our desires for love on earth too. This book will give you hope!”—Jennie Allen, New York Times bestselling author

“As a dating coach who gets to work with hundreds of single Christian women, I find this book to be profound. Madi addresses so many lies believed by singles, as well as ways to conquer those lies and fight for truth and freedom. There are so many tools for healing and wisdom in these pages that every single Christian woman (at any age) needs to hear and be reminded of.”—Kait Tomlin, bestselling author, dating coach, and founder of Heart of DatingMadison Prewett Troutt, bestselling author of Made for This Moment, is a speaker and social media influencer best known as a finalist on the reality television show The Bachelor. Madi has a degree in communications from Auburn University and a certificate in ministry in pastoral leadership through Highlands College. She has been involved in many outreach programs, including Adullam House, Make It Matter, Autlive, and Auburn Dream Center. Madi started her career working as a foster parent recruiter in Birmingham, Alabama. She lives in Waco, Texas, with her husband, Grant.1

Looking for Love

Searching in All the Right Places

We love love. We love the rush that bubbles up inside when we think about it. We can easily be swept up. Obsessed. Infatuated. We are hardwired for connection. We want to be seen, known, and, yes, loved. We want to be chosen, to be valued. Maybe you could even say we are made to love. But it doesn’t take a PhD in the psychology of modern romance to know that finding deep love and connection is, well, not easy.

I know this has been true for me. Want a sneak peek of the real conversation going on in my head when I started to write this book as a single woman?

How many more wrong ones until the right one?

Is there something wrong with me?

Do I settle for good enough?

What if no one else will love me?

What if I end up alone?

What if I get hurt again?

Why is it so hard to let go?

Am I hard to love?

Am I enough?

Ugh, why can’t relationships be easy?

How many more breakups until I finally get the whole “till death do us part”?

How many more tears and fears until peace and joy?

Will I ever be happy?

My guess is I’m not alone in constantly asking these questions. We’re glued to our phones, social media, and TV dating shows. We’re bombarded with images of love and relationships and sex and happiness and weddings and influencers who seem to have picture-perfect lives. But so many of us feel alone and confused. We’re asking, Why hasn’t love panned out for me? I’m tired of not being chosen.

It might come as a surprise to some that I struggle with this—but I do. You may know me from season 24 of ABC’s The Bachelor, which aired in 2020. You may have read my first book, Made for This Moment. Or maybe you have no idea who I am, but you’re desperately hoping to hear something refreshing and helpful on the topic of love. Something that goes beyond “Don’t have sex until you’re married” and “Wait on God’s timing.” Though I’ve tried to put both of those pieces of advice into practice myself, I know that something more is needed during the in-between. We need something greater than a list of rules so that if we do meet our someone, we’re ready for them.

Trust me—I did plenty of dating “Madi’s way” and ended up with regret. I wound up hurt and feeling either like I was being rejected or like I was wasting valuable time and emotions. I’m not perfect and will never claim to be—just ask my friends and family! But I have suffered to the point that I was willing to do something different in order to find peace and joy. I stopped searching for love and instead started at the foundation of love itself—by learning to bring my longings to God and to accept and love myself first.

By the way, I think it’s worth mentioning that loving yourself doesn’t always look how culture and social media make it look. It’s not just about posting workout selfies or getting massages with girlfriends. More on that later, but another goal of this book is to encourage you to look beyond what you see online and on TV. Not just about love, but about people’s lives. Those are such one-dimensional portrayals of reality. I should know—people are always shocked when they get to know me and see that I’m just as insecure, just as tired of dating, and just as worn out as they are. I was anyway. What happened in between the worn-out and where I am now?

That’s exactly what I’m going to tell you.

But first let me say, there are no simple answers to questions on dating and marriage, mostly because our hearts are funny things, and people aren’t always simple. A quick internet search reveals plenty of people eager to dish out oversimplified relationship advice. But here’s what I want to tell you: I think there is a better way. A deeper way. A way forward that sets our hearts in order and helps us see our longings and experiences in a new light.

And before you think I’m setting out to write a “how to get a boyfriend” book, you should know that’s not the goal. I want to show you how to look to God, see yourself, and find deep love amid our culture’s shallow ideas about romance.

Because the truth is, finding the love everybody wants isn’t nearly as complicated as we’ve made it. In fact, the Bible tells us pretty clearly how love works in Matthew 22:35–39—my inspiration for writing this book:

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

First and foremost, we must set our hearts right with God, know the depths of his love for us, and believe that his words about us are true. Then comes the often-difficult work of learning to love ourselves. When we get those two relationships where they should be, only then can we start to talk about loving other people, whether that’s cultivating a deep community of friends, better relationships with family, or a romantic relationship—all three of which combine to create a healthy support system.

If you want to use a tried-and-true metaphor, imagine your life as a house. Your relationship with God is the foundation. Your relationship with yourself is the framework and walls. You can’t start adding furniture and decorations before the foundation and walls are in place. I mean, you can try. But you won’t be successful.

The message of this book isn’t that the ultimate finish line in life is to find a spouse and live happily ever after or that in order to be happy or have purpose, you have to find your person. It’s not my intention to help you get married off. My goal is for you to understand that while we aren’t made to go through life alone, we can’t expect to have thriving friendships or romantic relationships until we’ve established our relationships with God and with ourselves.

What if we never find the person we’re searching for? Does that mean we can’t be fulfilled? I remember being young and praying, “God, I trust you in everything, but I’m kind of hoping that singleness is not your will for my life.” Why is that? Why do so many of us connect marriage with wholeness? The truth is that as I’ve grown older, I’ve experienced the ways building meaningful relationships with God and with ourselves leaves little room for loneliness or unfulfillment.

On the search for a deeper understanding of love, we all must work through the clichés and shallow ideas we’ve come to accept as truth—ideas like, If I just had a significant other, I would feel whole and I have to follow my heart above all else. While there are obviously wonderful aspects of being with another person, these ideas aren’t the fullest expression of God’s love and calling for us. That’s not to say we should ignore our emotions. That would be unrealistic—impossible, even. But we can’t be controlled by our emotions either.

These clichés can make their way into our hearts and influence how we think things should be. We often think we’re owed love the way the world defines it. In light of that, each of the following chapter titles is a common phrase related to dating and relationships that has become ingrained in our vocabulary through social media and culture. I want to help you examine these ideas and evaluate the truth of them. And in doing so, I believe we can arrive at a deeper understanding of what God says about love, because it’s only by embracing this understanding that we can experience peace, joy, and wholeness without fear for our future.

In this book, I’ll lay out some of the issues we’re facing emotionally and spiritually, addressing everything from social media relationship trends to biblical insights into God’s ideas for marriage and identity. Together, we’ll tackle love, faith, dating culture, and personal worth in a refreshing manner. Beginning in chapter 2, you’ll find QR codes embedded at the end of each chapter. These links will direct you to short videos and other digital resources covering a range of topics—things like the essentials I look for in a relationship, prayers for when your heart is hurting, and words for seasons of waiting. My prayer is that as I share my experience, you’ll be encouraged no matter where you are in life.

When we can learn to see relationships with God, ourselves, and others in whole, holy, and healthy ways, our hearts will stop looking for love in the wrong places. We’re made for love, but it takes work to get these loves in order. But believe me when I say, it’s possible to know the love of God. It’s possible to love—and maybe even like—yourself. It’s possible to navigate the matrix of relationships with confidence and hope. It’s possible to look out to your future with joy—because you were made for love.US

Additional information

Weight	12.2 oz
Dimensions	0.9200 × 5.6600 × 8.5600 in
Imprint	WaterBrook
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09780593445242
ISBN-10	0593445244
Author	Audrey Roloff, Madison Prewett Troutt
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FAM029000, SEL031000
Subjects	dating books, healthy relationships book, books for strong women, books about self love and growth, the love everybody wants, the love everyone wants, madison prewett, dating shows, intimate relationships, strong women gifts, bachelorette gifts, christian gifts for women, self love books, self love books for women, self love gifts, self love book, self love, love book, christian books for women, self help books for women, scripture, bachelor, relationship books, faith, god, dating, family, relationships, relationship, SEL031000, FAM029000