marriage

Just Some of My Own Observations

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I am a people-watcher. Not in a creepy stalker way. But I do tend to watch how people behave and act and I have come up with some of my own observations over the years.

Most people are serial daters rather than those who practice biblical courtship. I heard something profound once about the current dating system that stuck with me– a lot of the current dating involves pretending to be married and practising for divorce. Ouch.

I think that thanks to the media and the unrealistic view of love given to us by the movies and television, most people are in love with love and not their significant other. Most are much more interested in planning the perfect wedding day than preparing for a marriage with a solid foundation that will weather the seasons and survive the storms.

Along those lines, I think a lot of people are good at falling in love, but not at staying in love. If you fall in love, you can fall out of love. Love that lasts is always a choice to seek the welfare of the other at your own expense, regardless of how you feel or if you feel like it or not.

Many parents are seeking to raise their children in church, but not to raise them in Christ. In order for faith to be genuine and to last, it must be your own and not your parents’. Children are always watching to see if you practice what you preach and the way you live speaks much louder than the words that come out of your mouth.

There are many professing Christians, but not many disciples. Many say they love Jesus, but far fewer are willing to do what He says. Even fewer are seeking to get to know this Jesus and find His heart for the world. Jesus Himself told us that those who love Him will obey Him.

Many have their opinions about what’s wrong with the world, but those who criticize are rarely the ones who are trying to make the world better. Those who are seeking to make a difference and be God’s hands and feet to transform their world rarely have time for criticism.

In the end, if I want to find out what’s wrong with the world, all I have to do is look in the mirror. I see when I failed to do right and speak up for the defenceless and be salt and light. If I want to find out the solution to all the world’s problems, I go back to that same mirror. With God working in and through me, I may not change the world, but I can at least help one person, and as the Jewish saying goes, to save one person is to save the whole world.

My First Letter to My Future Wife in 2012

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It’s been a while since I wrote one of these, but I thought it was time. I’ve learned a lot about myself and God and the whole waiting process since then.

I almost gave up on you. In fact, every day it’s a struggle not to quit believing in the possibility of you being out there. It’s hard to believe that I can ever be the man of God who will be able to be your husband and take care of you. In fact, it will probably take a miracle.

Then again, all the best things in life are miracles. Every time a child is conceived and carried to term and born, it’s a miracle. Every time a child grows into a man or woman whose faith is intact despite a thousand voices that tell him or her to deny that faith, it’s a miracle.

I am learning that in order to find you, I must seek Him. I must seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything that encompasses. I must follow hard after Jesus so I can look beside me and see you running just as hard and fast in the same direction. Then I’ll know.

I pray your faith is stronger than mine and that your doubts win out less. I pray you can rest more in your Abba’s sovereign grace and live out of the peace of being in the center of His will, even if that will doesn’t look anything like you thought it would.

I pray you see your beauty radiating from the inside out, coming from Jesus shining through every part of your being. I pray you love who God made you as He made you and can look at yourself in the mirror and see what God saw when He said, “It is very good.”

Tomorrow will be another struggle to hold on to hope for you, but whatever the cost in sweat, blood, tears, and pain, it will have been worth it when I finally meet you. So I wait.

A Prayer for My Friends Tonight

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God, I bring my friends before you tonight. I know that You know what they need better than I do and even better than they do.

God, they are burdened and heavy-laden with work and with school, with spouses and with romantic relationships, with family and friends.

Grant them Your perfect peace tonight and enfold them in Your arms so that they can feel You near to know that You are just as near when they can’t feel You.

Grant them the joy than transcends circumstances and events, good or bad. Joy that can only come from You and that other people can only attribute to You.

Give them wisdom in their friendships. Bring people into their lives who will draw out the God-colors in them and inspire them to hunger and thirst after righteousness and to above all yearn for Jesus more than life itself.

Remove the people who hinder them being who You called them to be. Lord, even me, if I am a hindrance to Your work in their lives. Give them the grace to let the people go who You take out of their existance.

Above all, give them a single passion and vision: to follow hard after You, regardless of what it costs or what anyone else around them thinks. May they see only You and love only You. May their love for others be Your love flowing through them.

Lord, cause Your face to shine on them and be gracious to them. Take them to the lowliest people and let them be Your hands and feet to those who will never be able to repay what You do to them through my friends.

I pray for success and prosperity and good fortune for my friends. More than that, I pray intimacy and a deeper, wilder love for You, even if it comes at the expense of success and prosperity and good fortune.

Thank You for my friends. May they know how grateful I am. Much more than that, may they know each and every day and all through the night how You love them and how fond You are of them and how You call them beloved and how You are their Abba Father. May they each hear the sweet sound of You singing with joy over them in the deep waches of the night.

That’s my prayer for them tonight. Amen.

My Review of The First 4 Pages of The Weight of Glory

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I am a fan of all things C.S. Lewis. I’ve read almost everything I can find with his name on it. I’ve seen all the Narnia movies (even the BBC ones that look like they had a special effects budget of $5). So it would make sense that I’m reading his book The Weight of Glory, a book of essays and sermons.

So far, 4 pages in, I get the idea that desire is not wrong. It’s not our desire that’s so bad, but what we desire. We’re thinking way too small when all we long for is a bigger house, a better car, the ideal spouse, perfect sex, and a host of other amenities we can dream of.

C.S. Lewis said it way better when he wrote, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

 I don’t know about you, but mud pies don’t appeal to me in the least. I’d rather take the Hilton Head vacation package any day of the week. And if any of you kind people are offering, I am taking. Just throwing that out there.

One thing he said that struck me was that a proper reward for doing something was the consummation of that activity. In other words, the reward for being a good husband would be a happy and joyous marriage. The reward for being a good parent would be children that are a delight.

Maybe my reward for pursuiing the heart of God is finding it. Maybe the full reward is finding that the heart of God is so big that I can never get to the bottom of it, not even after an eternity of searching. The deeper you go, the more you find and the better it gets and the more there is to uncover.

Ok, so I started the book today and didn’t get very far. In my defense, I read the introductions (notice that I read both), which I hardly ever do. That’s how much I like C.S. Lewis. Further reports to follow. Stay tuned. Oh, and be sure to drink your ovaltine.

A Letter to My Future Wife on June 18

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I was strolling down Main Street in Downtown Franklin today, admiring all the old buildings, when I had an epiphany. It was about you.

I think I realize that all the times I thought I was interested in someone, what I saw in them was a little of you. Maybe it was a smile. Maybe it was a laugh. Maybe it was a compassionate heart or a kind soul. Whatever it was, it was a sneak preview of you.

I haven’t written you in a while, but that certainly doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about you. I have grown up a little since the last time I wrote you. I’ve seen more of myself that I don’t like, but I’ve seen that if I am willing, God can heal and change me. And He is.

Maybe what so many others have said is true, and I will find you when I’m not looking for you. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll both be 80 and living in a nursing home, sharing a can of Ensure. That would be odd, and a little disturbing, but also a little romantic, too.

I don’t have much to write. Just pray that I won’t give up or settle or lose heart, and I pray you won’t either. Of all I’ve seen and done in this life, I know that life rarely ever turns out the way I planned, but usually what God gives me is much better in the end. Remember that and don’t ever stop chasing after God and wrestling with Him for answers and resting in His tender care.

Thanks for waiting for me. It’ll be worth it one day.

Thoughts on Valentine’s Day

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Someone on the radio made an interesting correlation today. It was about how we as a society are pretty much unique in not giving much if any thought to any life beyond this one, thinking that this is all there is. We are also a society consumed with romantic love as a kind of salvation. Almost all our love songs speak to someone who can give us meaning and hope and make our lives make sense. How romantic love can save us. We are obsessed with the idea of falling in love.

Love is a great concept and a wonderful idea, but she makes a pretty poor idol. Love that we worship eventually turns to lust or hate or neediness or anything but the true love we think it is. But there is True Love that never disappoints or fails.

Jesus came as the perfect Embodiment of what Love really looks like. Every love song ever sung, every love sonnet ever compose finds its complete fulfillment in Jesus. He’s the one who truly gives meaning and hope and does more than make our lives make sense– He makes our lives shine!

Even the best marriages leave something to be desired, an ache and a longing that’s left despite all that we’ve been taught about how that special someone will complete you and bring you fulfillment. A sense of “Is this really all there is?” While marriage as God intended is a beautiful and poetic thing, it is a pale shadow of Christ and how much He loves His bride, the Church. True fulfillment and completeness comes in Christ and marriages find those things as the two draw nearer to each other by both passionately pursuing Christ.

The greatest love story ever told was when Jesus saw us from afar and set His affections on us. He set about wooing and winning our hearts by paying a price far beyond what He should have paid. The ultimate love song was a Man stretched out on a cross, blood pouring out, saying, “This much I love you.” It was His giving everything, holding nothing back, for you. For me. No greater love song will ever be written.

Know that today you are desirable, because Jesus desires an intimate relaltionship with you. Know that you are loved, with a fiery and untamed love much too big and too wild to have come from a merely human heart. Know that Someone is thinking about you today and that you matter to Him. You are wanted. You are loved. You are a treasure to Christ, because He gave you infinite worth when He died for you.

Let that be your Valentine. Jesus says, “You are Mine forever!”

Amen and amen!

Expectations

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My expectations are this and only this: God will be faithful. People are people and are weak and fallen and fickle. I am one of those weak and fallen and fickle people. I should not expect from them what only God can do. I should not put my hope in people, because people won’t (and can’t ever) live up to such high expectations.

I can look in my own heart and see the condition of every human heart. We have such high ideals and such good intentions, but so often our feet stray from that path of good intentions and high ideals. We want to be good, but can’t. Only God can. Only Jesus can. And only Jesus in us can ever be good enough.

So I fix my eyes on Jesus. I pin my hopes on Him. I have high expectations that He will come through and do something magnificent with my life. I can’t help when my hopes get built up, but I can help where I take those hopes in prayer (thanks to a friend for that insight). I can help how I take those unfounded hopes captive and submit them to the authority and lordship of Jesus.

I would love to be married. I would love to have a girlfriend. Right now, I want good friendships with good conversations. But my hope is in God forming me into the right man to attract the right woman. My expectations are that Jesus will give me exactly what I need, will be exactly Who I need Him to be at all times, and will always do the very best for me.

I have to surrender my own expectations and hopes and dreams and trust that God has bigger expectations and hopes and dreams for me. Way bigger because He is way bigger, and His vision is so much more far-reaching than mine. Surrender is a hard, daily process, but Jesus is completely worth whatever effort, whatever blood, sweat, and tears it costs me. Even if it costs me my life, He is supremely worth it.

So I lay it all down in hopes of receiving a thousand times more both now and in eternity. And all that I laid down will seem so very small compared to all that I am gaining. If Jesus gave all for me, how can I hold onto anything and not give it back? Here, Lord, is all of me. Take it and break it and multiply it like the fishes and loaves and use it to bless the multitudes. Make my life a blessing to the world.

Amen and amen.

Yet Another Letter to My Future Wife (Something I Learned Today)

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Here I am writing to you again with this insight. The most attractive part of me and the best gift I can give you is my masculinity. Me being a man.

I don’t mean drinking a gallon of beer or wrestling grizzly bears in the wild or climbing Mt. Everest. I mean me being a spiritual leader who’s not afraid to stand up for what’s right, who’s willing to sacrifice for what I believe in, and one who will lead by being the best servant I can.

You are worth fighting for. Not me boxing someone for your hand, but me being willing to do whatever it takes to be a man who deserves you. You are worth me being humbled and broken. You are worth me having to relearn what I thought I knew already.

I don’t want you if I don’t have to pay a price. The higher a price I pay to win your heart, the more of a treasure you will be to me.

I just now figured this all out. I was afraid and co-dependent and needy nearly all of my life. Then a famous writer who signed my book put as the inscription “For a true warrior.” I do have what it takes to be a godly man and a great husband. I have everything I need in Christ, because He is in me and He is my hope of glory.

I am learning how to live this all out. I am learning how to be strong in all the right ways. I am learning that practically everything that the media and society told me to be attracted to in a woman is wrong, and that what really is attractive in me is Jesus.

I can’t wait to show you all this one day soon and to learn to love you better through all our years together. I can’t wait to see how I can release your true beauty, captivate your heart on a daily basis, and set you free to become all the woman God meant you to be.

But I will wait. I am learning to wait well and to be still and to rest in God’s promises. I think that’s called learning to trust. I pray you will trust God and wait well for me. I pray God’s best for you and I pray that one day I can be God’s best for you. Thank you for waiting for me.

My Calling

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I feel like I’m called to live my life like a gentleman, a prince, and a warrior. My quest is to find a woman who lives like a lady, a princess, and a  heroine. She won’t just be a damsel in distress for me to rescue, but a heroine to share in the adventures we will have together.

I may have eliminated the majority of girls, but the one I find will have been more than worth the wait and the effort. In an age when chivalry and manners and courtesy are all but dead, men like me aren’t really a hot commodity. In fact, I am probably nowhere near any girl’s ideal. But one day I will be God’s man for one woman. That’s my prayer.

When I find her, my calling will be to love her with my life and with everything I have at whatever cost to me, even at the cost of my own life, to present her totally free and alive and radiant in her beauty before Christ and the world.

She won’t just be a pretty face, but someone whose face shines with the radiance of Christ from inside her.

Her life will not go unnoticed, for I will notice. Her actions will not be in vain, for I will be her witness. I will be her biggest fan and cheer her, as I hope she will do the same for me.

This is a reminder to me of what I’m really looking for. I forget sometimes and need to be reminded that what I’m looking for is rare, but rarity makes something much more precious and valuable and sacred.

I strive toward this, and though I fail time and time again, I always fail forward. One day, I will land at her feet.

A prayer for my future wife

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Here I am, thinking about you again and wondering if you’re thinking about me. I have come to the point where I am finally starting to give up striving and trying to make my own plans and my own timing work. I am starting to learn to rest my mind and my heart in God’s plan and His timing. As the name of the book I just got in the mail says, I Gave God Time. That’s all He needs to pull off the biggest miracles– time.

So I pray that your heart is at rest. That you are comfortable where you are and not striving like I have been most of my life. I pray your heart is captured and captivated by Jesus and that you are so enamored and enraptured by His love for you that He becomes everything to you and every other thing in your life falls back into its proper place.

I pray that you are fully coming alive to all that God made you to be. That you know where your beauty comes from and that you treasure your femininity as a gift from God. I pray that your loveliness comes from a Christ-filled countenance and a heart full of compassion and kindness.

I pray that your heart is being set free to love. That all your fears and insecurites are driven away in the face of the Prince of peace, and that peace will rule your heart and mind. I pray you look at every heartache and heartbreak as a means of molding you into the woman who will completely dazzle me.

Waiting is hard, but the longer the wait, the more we will treasure finding each other. I can’t wait to be your husband and do all I can to be a part of  unveiling your true beauty for the world to see. I am waiting for that day, letting God transform me into the man you deserve.

Until then, take courage, dear heart. The night seems long but dawn is just around the corner. Hold on.