Tag: Relationships

Digging in Deeper: Genesis 2:24

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“This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Well, here we are at another Friday when I didn’t have any idea what I was going to write about as I finished the day and got into bed, but then just before going to sleep something dropped straight into my metaphorical lap that I just couldn’t avoid. One of the things that I tell my church as often as I can make it come up naturally is that being a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean completely disengaging from any media sources that are not fully supportive of the Christian worldview. Rather, it means engaging wisely and with their worldview radar on high alert so they can identify ideas that are contrary to the truth and consciously reject them. They should do this they are engaging with various media by themselves, of course, but they should be especially vigilant about doing it when engaging with their kids both so that they are teaching them what is correct, but also so they are teaching them how to engage critically and through the lens of the Christian worldview. Well, the most recent episode of Abbott Elementary that we watched last night gave me the opportunity to do just that. Let’s talk about it.

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Morning Musing: Romans 12:16

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“Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud; instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A friend of mine pastors a church that’s hard. The congregation has a reputation for being a church that chews up pastors and spits them out. There constantly seems to be discord among the members. Someone is always upset about something. My friend spends a fair bit of his time putting out fires. From the outside looking in, the people there do no live in harmony with one another. It makes accomplishing effective ministry a great deal more difficult than it might otherwise be. A church wracked by disharmony is going to have a much harder time proclaiming and advancing the Gospel than one that isn’t. This is why Paul gave us this next series of commands for living the Christian life well. Let’s continue our exploration of his practical list of how what it looks like to follow Jesus.

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Something Special

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“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.” (Ephesians 5:25 CSB)

The much cliched saying is that time flies when you are having fun. I remember enjoying my high school experience thoroughly. I had a terrific community I was a part of in my school with strong traditions and lots of fun along the way. It never felt like it flew by, though, when the end of that season finally arrived it all felt very much surreal. The same thing goes for college. Those years felt faster, but I don’t remember consciously processing the thought that the time was moving particularly quickly. Given that, you would think that a span of twenty years as compared with that combined eight years would feel like an eternity. But the last twenty years have passed by in the blink of an eye. As much fun as high school and college were, it doesn’t even compare with the joys of marriage. Today I’ve been married for twenty years to my one and only, and the joys of the journey are only getting sweeter. Let me share a few with you.

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God Loved First

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For the last four weeks, we have been having a conversation about marriage. More specifically, we have been having a conversation about how to get back to the basics in order to fix the foundation of our marriage so that we can build properly and in a way that will lead to long term happiness and success. Most of this has been rooted in addressing our own relationship with God. Today, as we wrap up this series, we are talking about what most people understand to be the foundation of marriage: love. If we are going to get marriage right, we have to get love right. Let’s talk about what that means and how to do it.

God Loved First

Did you have a good Valentine’s Day? Guys, did you treat her right? Did you at least put a little bit of effort into doing something special? Do you know why we have a Valentine’s Day? It’s so Hallmark and Russel’s Stover can make obscene amounts of money selling cards and chocolate. It’s all a capitalist, corporatist plot to conform us to the social box they want us to fit into so they can keep making money off of us. It’s a scam! Or maybe it’s just a cynical effort to depress us for not doing enough to love our partners or to make us feel bad for not having a Valentine in the first place. Ever wallow in one of those particular puddles of self-pity? They can be a tempting line of thought this time of year, but, no, that’s not why we have Valentine’s Day. We have Valentine’s Day because hundreds of years ago, there was a pastor in Rome named Valentinus. 

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How to Talk Right

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A whole lot of our relationships are tied up in communication. This is especially true for our marriages. If we want to have the kind of marriage we desire, communicating well is going to be an essential part of the process of getting there. And, if we have put in place negative communication patterns along the way, getting this right is going to require us to get back to the basics in order to fix our foundation before building properly moving forward. In this next part of our teaching series, Back to the Basics, we are talking about how to communicate well in marriage. Let’s dive in.

How to Talk Right

The largest cruise ship in the world right now is the Icon of the Seas from Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. It’s big on a scale that’s hard to imagine. For starters, it’s as long as four football fields back-to-back-to-back. It weighs approximately 250,000 tons. It’s 20 decks high—that is, it’s as tall as a 20-story building. It can hold up to more than 10,000 people between passengers and crew. You could take the entirety of Oakboro on a cruise…times three…and still have room to spare. It’s so big that if you were to completely hollow it out, you could fit the Titanic inside of it with enough room to still play a football game at one end. In short: It’s enormous. Exceedingly enormous. So big, that you really can’t grasp it until and unless you’re standing in front of it looking up. Even then, it’s still hard to grasp. By comparison, though, the mechanism for steering it—the rudder—is remarkably small. Sure, the rudders of ships scale up with the size of the ship, but by comparison to the whole thing, it seems incredible that such a small thing can successfully steer something so large. 

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