Tag: Marriage

Digging in Deeper: 1 Corinthians 6:18

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“Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The Bible is just an antiquated set of restrictive rules that were put in place centuries ago and without any understanding of what the modern world is like. They were hardened by a bunch of prude men who were looking to tell people what they could and couldn’t do with their own bodies. They look to limit our freedom and take all the real fun and joy out of life. The Scriptures often get a bad rap today and the lyrics often run right along those lines. As a result, when people hear that “the Bible” says they shouldn’t do X, Y, or Z, they often roll their eyes and do it anyway because life is better when it’s fun. Besides, modern science has conclusively shown that the Bible can’t be trusted. But what happens when modern research starts to discover that the Bible wasn’t – and isn’t – perhaps so wrong as we’d like to believe? Let’s ponder that question for just a bit together today.

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Digging in Deeper: Psalm 127:3

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“Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? The fruit of the womb his generous legacy?” (Msg – Read the chapter)

I love being a dad. My bride adores being a mom. That doesn’t mean every day is easy – they aren’t – but it is without a question a blessing and not a curse. Even on the hardest of days I wouldn’t trade it out for the alternative. Children can be a source of blessing and encouragement for moms and dads in a way few other things can. Today’s culture, though, is making a subtle, but significant shift away from this kind of thinking. An episode of The Good Doctor I watched the other night put this on display in a way that got my attention. Let’s talk today about this shift and what it means for us and for our kids.

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Perspective Shift

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This week we finally reach the end of our teaching series, Married for Good. This week, to wrap things up, we are talking about one of the simplest but most powerful ways we can improve not merely our marriages, but all of our relationships. Starting next week, we’ll begin an Advent series you won’t want to miss. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Perspective Shift

Everybody loves a good life hack. A life hack is a simple thing you can do to make some normal part of life easier and more efficient than it is right now. In honor of that this morning, I found a few life hacks to share with you. We’re getting into prime baking season. If you happen to be making cookies in the next few weeks, but you just don’t have time to do it from scratch (I see you) so you are using one of those premade logs of dough, use a bit of dental floss to slice them instead of a knife. You’ll get much cleaner and prettier slices. This also works really well if you are someone who makes cinnamon rolls from scratch (just saying). 

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Power Struggle

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For the last couple of weeks, we have been working through Paul’s challenging words about marriage to the Ephesian church. What he describes there sounds awesome when it works, but the reality is that it doesn’t often work. Ideals are nice, but reality is rarely ideal. So, what do we do when things aren’t working like God intended, particularly when it comes to our marriages? That’s where something the apostle Peter said comes into play. This week, we are talking about what to do when reality falls short of ideal. This idea applies to our marriages, yes, but it applies more broadly than that as well. Read on to find out what to do and the impact it can have.

Power Struggle

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: Polycephaly is better than being monocephalic. Wait, you’ve never heard that one? Well, how about this version? Two heads are better than one. That probably sounds a bit more familiar. Be honest with me, though: How many of you have ever heard of the medical condition known as polycephaly? It is a rare genetic defect causing a creature (including human creatures) to be born with two heads. Perhaps you’ve seen a picture of a turtle like this one. This poor calf just tugs at your heartstrings a bit. This last one, however, is probably something you could only imagine seeing in a nightmare. As a general rule, God designed the various creatures He created to have one head. That’s all they need. When a creature enters the world with two heads, that is unfailingly a signal that something has gone wrong. If you want to be all theological about it, it is one of the many impacts of sin on the world. 

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Love Lived Out

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Last week we began taking a look at what I promised would be some of the most important, but also the most challenging words on marriage we can find in the Scriptures. Paul’s counsel on how to get marriage right for the Ephesian believers starts with the command for wives to submit to their husbands and doesn’t get any easier from there. Without context, it just sounds like an ugly mess we rightly want to avoid. So, we started out this look last week with context. We explored the larger purpose and theme of the entire letter and came to the conclusion that something entirely different from what the world sees in these words is what Paul actually meant. This week, we are exploring Paul’s counsel itself and seeing what kind of sense we can make from it in light of the proper context. Keep reading to see how we did.

Love Lived Out

Have you ever done one of those hidden image pictures where you have to essentially color-by-number in order to discover what the image is? If you just look at it without doing any work on it at all, it looks basically like a bunch of random shapes all jammed together. At least, that’s the case if they’re done right. Until you begin filling in blanks, you aren’t able to really understand what you are seeing. If they’re created really well, you have to get several blanks filled in before you begin to get a clue. But at some point a picture starts to emerge. Once you’ve gotten a sense of where you’re going, then, the energy and intensity to work on it begin to increase. As you have a clearer and clearer sense of the end toward which you are working, you can move in that direction with greater diligence and speed. 

This is all a little like what we are going to be doing today. 

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