As stated yesterday, now that I’ve been married for three years (and a few days), I can be seen as something of an expert when it comes to marriage… and, I believe, women in general.
Here’s everything I’ve learned about women:
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Love them.
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That is all.
Now that I’ve had three ‘successful’ years as a husband, I feel justified in sharing unsolicited advice with the world about marriage.
Ready?
Here it goes:
While there are certain principles within Scripture and common sense ground rules that should inform our marriages, people are different and every individual marriage is unique.
That doesn’t mean we should never seek coaching and counsel, but I think it helps us understand the kind of coaching and counsel we should seek. If our marriage mentors or counselors are sharing ‘what works’ only from personal experience it should cause us to pause—what ‘worked’ for them may not work for everybody… but someone who helps to see the joy of Christ as the foundation of marriage and who can help work through the tough stuff of life without saying, “This is exactly what you need to do.” is someone who understands the unique nature of individual relationships.
And that’s my unsolicited advice for the day.
Check back tomorrow when I share what three years of marriage has taught me about women.
Yesterday, Sarah and I started into our fourth year of married life together. In our first three years we lived in two states and three homes, have endured issues of health and future, changed career directions, known great abundance as well as financial hardship, dug deeper into understanding God’s leading in our lives, purchased our first house, adopted our first puppy, replaced various pieces of our first house because of damage caused by our first puppy … the list could go on and on and on. But I would not change any of it.
I’m excited about what our fourth year will hold and am thankful for the incredible blessing of heaven in whom I have been given as a wife and co-journeyer. I am a blessed man indeed.
<Image courtesy of bejealousofme>Christmas is coming.
Now, we may not be very far into autumn, Halloween is still almost a month away, and Thanksgiving is a distant thought for those of us here in the US. But reminders are everywhere that Christmas is coming and retailers are working hard to instill a bad case of the gimmies in every consumer. It’s a disease that strikes young and old alike, when raw consumerism and selfishness reign, and though self-restraint may keep us from actually verbalizing, “Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie…” the sentiment can still be found in many.
But The Gimmies aren’t something unique to the Christmas spending season or retail marketing. Somewhere deep within each of us is the desire to grab a hold of the stuff that isn’t ours but we think we deserve.
In Joshua 7, Achan did exactly this. He grabbed a hold of some of the very things God said were only God’s, and, as shared in the last Joshua post, the result was disastrous for the people of Israel. Achan held onto something that wasn’t his and the consequences were dire. His actions should cause each of us to ask if we aren’t holding onto things not ours… things even greater than the shiny new _______ (you fill in the blank) we desire when flipping through the Sunday ads.
Are we attempting to possess something that isn’t really ours? Do we recognize that even ‘our’ job is simply God’s chosen vehicle for his provision in our lives and that it isn’t really ours at all? That our job isn’t ours to squander or take advantage of; it isn’t ours to do with as we please… because it simply isn’t ours?
What about ‘our’ church? We often try to make church what WE want… either in the name of some sacrosanct tradition, because of ‘righteous indignation,’ or in the name of ‘reaching the lost at any cost’ when, at the core of it all we’re just fighting for personal preference and comfort… what we want when we want how we want. And yet, Scripture is clear that the Chruch is Christ’s body over which he is the Head… and as the Sovereign King, His design and desire are all that matter.
Or how about family? Parents (I’m treading lightly here because I recognize I’m not a parent) sometimes forget that ‘their’ children are really lives which belong to God and the parent is given brief stewardship over. Spouses are called to love, respect, protect, and submit to one another not because they belong to each other but because God has, in a sovereign but loving manner, given husbands to their wives and vice-versa.
We all too often commit the sin of Achan, taking the things that are devoted to God and trying to claim them as our own. To those of us in Christ, our call is one to a life of continued, consistent obedience, even in those areas of life which may seem too big/special/scary to trust to God. But they (and we) are His, and so is the victory we seek.
<image courtesy of clearly ambiguous>Beginning this evening, I’ll be preaching a series of messages for a ‘revival’ being held in Watts Towndship at the Wesleyan Church there.
I know it sounds old-timey, and the concept of ‘revival meetings’ has long ago lost its luster in many places… but I’m incredibly excited about this opportunity. The desire of the church’s pastor is true ‘revival’–“to stir up or rekindle a fire which is slowly dying.” The heart of the pastor and many of the people is that by dedicating a few pointed hours of their weekend to hear and heed the Spirit of God, a dying flame will be rekindled into a full-on blaze.
As excited as I am, I’m also a little scared: the people are praying for, hoping for, and expectant of a genuine revival in their hearts and church which will spill over into the lives of their community.
Why does this scare me?
I’m the preacher.
And I am very much aware of my own fallibility, shortcomings, and plain-old human-ness. If ‘genuine revival’ comes, it won’t be because of me… it will be in spite of the preacher. As much as I recognize work being done in the lives of others is only God’s to do, I feel a great weight of responsibility in preparing myself to be used… and a certain level of terror when I recognize the incredible honor I have and the truth that “every time you preach, you stand before a living God and dying Man.”
Hold on. I think I need to throw up.
