Great Marriage Advice

"...Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave." 

"...There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage." -Martin Luther (1483 - 1546) 

You Must Read Jared Wilson

One of my new favorite authors is Jared Wilson, a pastor in Vermont. He blogs at Gospel Driven Church and he is the author of “Your Jesus is Too Safe” and “Gospel Wakefulness” (I highly recommend both of these) in addition to co-authoring “The Explicit Gospel” with Matt Chandler, which is easily the best book I’ve read in the last five years. I can’t recommend it highly enough.  In his latest blog entry he writes:  
“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling
– from Philippians 2:12
Fear and trembling. Paul uses this phrase a couple of other times (2 Corinthians 7:15 and Ephesians 6:5), apparently with the connotation of submissive humility and receptive meekness. It is an affections-full being put into one’s place, I think. A disposition appropriate to the circumstances. The command in Psalm 2:11 is “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling,” showing us that fear is not without activity and trembling is not without joy. 
Here I remember Emma Thompson’s beautiful portrayal of Elinor Dashwood at the end of the film Sense and Sensiblity when Hugh Grant’s Edward Ferrars reveals it was his brother who got married, and not himself. Thompson’s Elinor is an expert at keeping her emotions bottled up — until this moment where we see “fear and trembling” brilliantly and movingly in display. It chokes me up every time.
Pent-up hopes and dormant affections brought near the super-electric current of a fearsome reality. The hair on our arms stands up, gooseflesh springing, a sense of fresh air and being winded at the same time. Overwhelmed. That’s fear and trembling. As it pertains to having the living God draw near to us, fear and trembling assume it is truly God and the glorious Christ we have encountered and not some pitiful caricature. The god of the prosperity gospelists is a pathetic doormat, a genie. The god of the cutesy coffee mugs and Joel Osteen tweets is a milquetoast doofus like the guys in the Jane Austen novels you hope the girls don’t end up with, holding their hats limply in hand and minding their manners to follow your lead like a butler, or the doormat he stands on. The god of the American Dream is Santa Claus. The god of the open theists is not sovereignly omniscient, declaring the end from the beginning, but just a really good guesser playing the odds. The god of our therapeutic culture is ourselves, we the “forgivers” of ourselves, navel-haloed morons with “baggage” but not sin. None of these pathetic gods could provoke fear and trembling.
But the God of the Scriptures is a consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24). “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). He stirs up the oceans with the tip of his finger, and they sizzle rolling clouds of steam into the sky. He shoots lightning from his fists. This is the God who leads his children by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. This is the God who makes war and sends plagues and sits enthroned in majesty and glory in his heavens, doing what he pleases. This is the God who incarnate in the flesh turned tables over in the temple like he owned the place. This Lord God Jesus Christ was pushed to the edge of the cliff and declared, “This is not happening today,” and walked right back through the crowd like a boss. This Lord says “Nobody takes my life; I give it willingly,” as if to say, “You couldn’t kill me unless I let you.” This Lord calms the storms, casts out demons, binds and looses and has the authority to grant us the same. The devil is this God’s lapdog.
And it is this God who has summoned us, apprehended us, saved us. It is this God who has come humbly, meek, lowly, pouring out his blood in infinite conquest to set the captives free, cancel the record of debt against us, conquer sin and Satan, and swallow up death forever.
Let us, then, advance the gospel of the kingdom out into the perimeter of our hearts and lives with affectionate meekness and humble submission. Let us repent of our nonchalance.”

A Bigger Slice of Life

"In rejecting the way of the Creator we reach for a bigger slice of life and find out that it
tastes like death."  - Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen, "The True Story of the Whole World" 

....Not the absence of sin...

"It is not the absence of sin but the grieving over it which distinguishes the child of God from
 empty professors."       - A. W. Pink

The Bible: One Glorious Story

In their excellent book, "The True Story of the Whole World", Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen write:

"Today, as in the ancient era, the Church is confronted by a host of narratives that contradict and compete with the gospel. The pressing question is: Who gets to narrate the world?"   "... The Bible tells the true story of the world." "... The Church finds its identity in the role it plays in the biblical story; theology deepens our understanding of this story; worship enacts and tells this story; spiritual formation (discipleship) equips the Church to embody this story; and the believer's life in the world, including all of public life, is a witness to the truth of this story." ...  "Every part of the Bible- each event, book, character, command, prophecy, promise, and poem- must be understood in the context of the one story line."  "... According to the biblical narrative, the meaning of our whole world's history finds its meaning and purpose in the person of Jesus. We may either embrace that story as true or reject it as false, but we must not simply reshape the Bible to suit our own preferences. The Bible's claim to tell the one true story of our world is central to its meaning." "... Why have Christians, who claim to believe the Bible not seen what treasure they have? The problem is that Christians, even Christian scholars, break the Bible up into little bits: historical bits, devotional bits, moral bits, theological bits, narrative bits. In fact, it has been chopped into the kind of fragments that fit the nooks and crannies of the Enlightenment story! When this is allowed to happen, the Bible forfeits its claim to be the one comprehensive, true story of our world. It is held captive within the other story- the humanist narrative... And that other story will shape our lives." - Bartholomew and Goheen, "The True Story of the Whole World"
2009, Faith Alive Resources, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I think these men have hit the nail on the head. And I am convicted deeply in my heart. I wonder how many times I believed and acted on God's Word, or just simply used God's Word. Do I just want to slice and dice it to simply prove a point, or do I find myself within the story God has written and find my place and purpose in HIS story. God's Word is one story about ONE main character. The Bible is NOT about me... The Bible is about God.
Lord, help me to be more faithful to your Word and to your ways.... Amen