Hero Husbands

For all your Christian husbands, I commend sustained meditation on Ephesians 5:22-33. By "sustained meditation" I mean, like, say, reading it everyday for a month (for starters). And when you read it, I don't mean blow through it in a minute and run off to work. I mean read it slowly and thoughtfully and prayerfully. There's nuclear-powered grace in there for your marriage.

Christian marriage is about the gospel. It's intended to be a living parable of the gospel of Jesus - his love for his bride, the church. And, Christian marriage only becomes a beautiful portrayal of that gospel when it is soaked in that gospel. So, dive into the deep pool of gospel grace in Ephesians, all won for you by the sacrificial love of Jesus. And then you'll find power that animates you to live that parable in your marriage.

I love an illustration I've heard Russell Moore give on a couple of occasions. It's a great example of the fruit of meditation on Ephesians 5. It goes something like this:

What if I said, 'Men, I want to draw your attention to (fill in your name) here. This man is a hero. Do you know what he did? 

When he went to bed last night, he adjusted the pillows in such a way as to provide maximum comfort for his body. 

When he woke up this morning – imagine this! – he got into the shower and washed his body with warm water and soap. He cares for his skin in such amazing ways! 

He then lovingly checked the weather – he checked the weather! – just so that he could clothe his body in clothes appropriate to the day’s temperature range. 

And that’s not all! He then went downstairs and he prepared food. He did the hard work of getting out a bowl and choosing a cereal that appealed to his body’s appetite. He then pulled the cold milk from the fridge, and poured that milk over his cereal and he intentionally!, proactively!, perseveringly placed bite after bite of delicious cereal into his mouth so that his body could have energy from which to draw strength for the day. 

Can we get a round of applause for (your name)? This guy is a hero!'

Silly, huh? But it's actually pretty serious...and convicting...and helpful.

It's aimed at helping us understand Ephesians 5:28-30, and live it out in real time.

"In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body."

You and I are called to love our wives as our own bodies. To love your neighbor-wife as yourself. We all naturally nourish and cherish our own bodies. Well, the Bible says that our wives are one flesh with us! No closer "neighbor" than that! We learn to love them by paying attention to how we take care of ourselves, and then applying that same care to them.

What if you loved your wife AS YOURSELF?

What if you cared for and nourished and cherished her as much as you do your own body?

What if you wanted to nourish her emotionally and spiritually with as much desire as you have for your physical appetites to be satisfied?

What if you cherished her and sought her well-being as much as you cherish your well-being and comfort? 

What if you were as jealous for her to have time to rest and read and pray as much as you want time to relax?

When you see a desire for your own good, God is teaching us to connect the dots for the sake of love!

Are you loving your wife as your own body?

What if it was as AUTOMATIC as it is for your own body?

Wouldn't your marriage begin to tell a different story? 

It would be a living parable of The Greatest Love Story.

You'll need serious grace for this. God knows that. So, the gospel is not only the pattern for Christian marriage. It's also the power. This kind of humble, loving, sacrificial, servant heart will only grow in you as you keep your eyes on Jesus (again, remember that commendation of sustained meditation on Ephesians 5:22-33?!). How has he loved and served you? We dare not lose sight of it!

The man in Russell Moore's illustration isn't a hero. It doesn't take any grace to take care of yourself. But it does take a ton of grace to love your wife as Christ loved the church; to love her as your own body. Praise God, grace is available by the megaton! 

There is a Hero Husband, and it's not you. Jesus loved you with a totally undeserved, even-when-you-were-running-the-other-way, to-the-utmost, almost-too-good-to-be-true, never-say-die sort of love. Get your eyes on that Hero Husband, and his grace will enable you to love your wife in truly heroic, sacrificial, steady, sweet, strong, sensitive, non-self-pitying, free-from-score-keeping, gospel-adorning ways.

Refuse Stick Figure Virtue

We love to use our personality type and other versions of our natural "wiring" as an excuse.

"I'm an introvert."

In other words, I can't come out of my shell and love people like that.

"I'm an extrovert."

In other words, I don't like to sit alone and still for very long with the Lord, and I don't really like to read or think deeply.

Of course we're all going to have our strengths and weaknesses, but don't we want to grow and become more like Jesus?

How about this:

Enough of accepting static, reductionistic, one-sided personhood. We know it is God's will that we be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). And he most certainly wasn't one-sided. The grace of God is stronger than our excuses. There's no reason for us to remain stick figure humans, when well-rounded, multi-faceted, Christlike humanity is ours for the taking.

So, let's push back on our weaknesses and un-Christlike inclinations of soul. Let’s go deep like introverts and move toward people like extroverts for the sake of love...to become more and more like Jesus. 

He loved people proactively and he retreated to be alone with his Father and pray.
He was tough and tender.
He was lion-hearted and meek.
He was thick-skinned and soft-hearted.
He loved in word and deed.

Let’s not sell the grace of God short! 

Do we have to choose tenderness or toughness? NO! 

People or tasks? No!
Compassion or courage? No! 

Enough either/or.

Let’s go for both, in Jesus' name.

Intro to 1 Corinthians & Getting Hungry For Sunday

We start our study through 1 Corinthians this Sunday. We'll be considering the whole of chapter 1.

Any time you spend familiarizing yourself with the book as a whole will help keep you from "losing the forest for the trees." A good study Bible (like the ESV Study Bible) can provide this kind of introduction and overview.

The Bible Project videos are another great way to gain an introduction and overview of any Bible book. Here's the one for 1 Corinthians:



In addition, I would encourage you each week to read over the upcoming sermon text several times before Sunday. Try to get a grasp on what it's all about. Write down any questions that pop up and see if repeated reading and thinking will yield answers. Take some time to pray over the passage and ask God to prepare your heart for it and pour out his blessing on our church as we meet together.

The Puritans used to talk about Sunday's as "the market day for the soul." We don't have "market days" anymore, but you can easily picture the old village "market day." All the farmers and artisans peddled their wares such that there was a rich supply of provisions to stock up on for the week. Sunday should be like that. A rich feast of grace and truth for the soul to stock up on for the week ahead. Pray that it would happen.

Speaking Truth to the Power of Temptation

C.S. Lewis:

“The great discovery for me was that the attack does not last forever. It is the devil's lie that the only escape from the temptation is through yielding. After prolonged resistance it will go away: what seemed yesterday impossible to turn one's mind from will today be utterly unenchanted, insipid, tedious.” 

--Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 3:920; from a 1958 letter to 'Mr. Pitman'--emphasis original

1 Corinthians 10:13

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

James 4:7-8

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. ...

10 Things You Should Know about Abortion by Scott Klusendorf

Scott Klusendorf is a powerful advocate for the Pro-Life position. He is the president of Life Training Institute and an author of several books. He wrote a post for the Crossway blog entitled, "10 Things You Should Know about Abortion." It's a short and very helpful primer for the pro-life position.

Here are a few of the "10 Things" he wants us to know:

1. Pro-life advocates present a formal case for their position.

• It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. 
• Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. 
• Therefore, abortion is wrong.

3. That abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being is conceded by many who perform and defend the practice. 

• Feminist Camille Paglia frankly admits, "abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue." 

9. Abortion-victim photography changes the narrative.

• "When someone holds up a model of a six-month-old fetus and a pair of surgical scissors, we say 'choice' and we lose," writes feminist Naomi Wolf.

10. The remedy for post-abortion guilt is not avoidance. It's forgiveness.

• Post-abortion men and women do not need an excuse. They need an exchange: Christ's righteousness for their sinfulness. Like all forgiven sinners, post-abortion men and women can live each day assured God accepts them on the basis of Christ's righteousness, not their own.

 Read the whole thing here.

Spiritual Adolescence and The Humble Gratitude of Heaven

Children are usually blissfully oblivious to the sacrifices and cost their parents pay to care for them. Financial burdens, emotional tolls, heavy investments of time and energy.

Sometimes a child surprises you with unsolicited recognition and appreciation for costly investment, but most of it goes unnoticed and unappreciated. As parents, we don’t even require that they realize it all. “He’ll never know….” It's the glory of parental love. 

As the child gets older, we do resist the roots of dishonor and entitlement that entangle our teenage soul. Sometimes we resist righteously. Sometimes (read: more often) we rant and rave. Neither strategy can seem to be all that effective. Teenagers are not typically paragons of gratitude and appreciation. 

But if it's happened once, it's happened a thousand times. The take-it-for-granted, frequently disappointed or complainy teenager grows up and becomes a parent. And then so much of the sacrificial love and generosity of their parents come into clearer focus. They begin to see it, and appreciate it. 

This post is not about parents commiserating or rejoicing over these phenomena. Instead, it's an opportunity to see ourselves for the "clueless teens" we are. And then to look ahead to the day when we will finally grow up. One of these days, we’re going to really appreciate all that God has done for us through Christ and by his Spirit!

1 Corinthians 13:12 

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Until then, we absolutely need to awaken to the megatons of mercy and grace God lavishes us with every day. We most certainly need to cultivate a humble, grateful heart.

Even so, we're still pretty clueless.

But on the Day when we know fully, our newfound and deep experiential knowledge of the Father's love will not be met with chiding and sarcastic parental retorts. "Oh, really! It's about time! Took you long enough!" Oh, no. There will only be a bright smile on the fatherly Face of faces, and there will well up within us deeper joy and humbler gratitude and happier praise than we ever thought possible.

No Fine Print With Jesus

Good leaders are up front about the costs, as well as the benefits, of following them.
Bad leaders love to inflate the benefits, while hiding or minimizing the costs. 

Jesus is a good leader.

Satan is a bad leader.

Matthew Henry, “Satan shows the best, but hides the worst, because his best will not [counterbalance] his worst; but Christ’s will abundantly.”

Jesus,

"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it." (Mark 8:34-35)

Satan,

"But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" (Genesis 3:4-5)

There's no fine print with Jesus.

John Piper On Inauguration Day

I'm wrestling deeply with the reality and implications of Donald Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States. Perhaps you are wrestling, too. I appreciated John Piper's post entitled, "How to Live Under an Unqualified President." I encourage you to read it.

He begins like this:

Today we will inaugurate a man to the presidency of the United States who is morally unqualified to be there. This is important to say just now because not to see it and feel it will add to the collapsing vision of leadership that enabled him to be nominated and elected.

He explains why he is unqualified, and then goes on to talk about what leadership is and why it's so important. Here are a few of the reasons he gives:

A leader should lead. That is, he should set the pace, define the path, embody the vision, and inspire emulation. He himself should be what he is calling others to be. That is what it means to lead. Donald Trump is not such an embodiment of what we want the citizens of America to be. In important ways, he is the opposite. 

A leader should be a good example for our young people in matters of character and moral uprightness and civility. Few parents would say to their young people: strive to be like Donald Trump. That is a great sadness. 

A leader should not model the success of immoral behavior, and thus further destigmatize and normalize evils which, if spread, will bring discredit and ruin to our nation. To reward Donald Trump’s immoral behavior with the presidency does just that — it says to our children, and to the world, that these evils are not that bad, and can be embraced with no great negative consequences.

Again, read the whole thing to see how he then gives some helpful historical perspective to remind us that we are not the first Christians to live under unqualified leadership. In fact, for many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world, and throughout history, their situation has been much, much worse. There is grace and wisdom for this. So he closes with 7 suggestions for how we should then live under President Trump.

Psalm 16 - A Brief Fighter Verse Meditation

Psalm 16:2

I say to Yahweh, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you." 

Augustine: 

The sum of our goods, and our perfect good, is God. We must not fall short of this, nor seek anything beyond it; the first is dangerous, the other impossible.

Psalm 16:5, 8, 9

Yahweh is my chosen portion and my cup.... I have set Yahweh always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.

C.S. Lewis (They Stand Together, Walter Hooper, ed., (New York, 1979), page 465. Italics original.):

I think one may be quite rid of the old haunting suspicion — which raises its head in every temptation — that there is something else than God, some other country into which he forbids us to trespass, some kind of delight which he ‘doesn’t appreciate’ or just chooses to forbid, but which would be real delight if only we were allowed to get it. The thing just isn’t there. Whatever we desire is either what God is trying to give us as quickly as he can, or else a false picture of what he is trying to give us, a false picture which would not attract us for a moment if we saw the real thing. . . . He knows what we want, even in our vilest acts. He is longing to give it to us. . . . The truth is that evil is not a real thing at all, like God. It is simply good spoiled. . . . You know what the biologists mean by a parasite — an animal that lives on another animal. Evil is a parasite. It is there only because good is there for it to spoil and confuse.

Psalm 16:11

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Gratitude: What's In It For Me?

I was struck recently by an NPR article entitled, "Feeling Less Grateful? Some People Are Just Wired That Way."

The article asks whether gratitude is really as beneficial as so many claim.

Wait a minute. Stop and think about that.

Is there something in gratitude for me? If so, great. I'll cultivate some thanksgiving. If not, then I shouldn't beat myself up if I don't value or practice it that much.

A few sound bites:

...not everyone experiences gratitude as a positive force in their life. ... 

Does that mean that people who experience gratitude as negative should push through it anyway in pursuit of some benefit? "That's a big 'I don't know,'" says [Anthony] Ahrens [professor of psychology at American University]. "We will need data to answer that." ... 

Gratitude is clearly associated with physical and mental well-being. It's linked to better sleep. People who are more grateful seem to have more energy, less depression and possibly even a lower risk of heart disease. Those positive associations hold for both the trait of gratitude — that is, being a generally grateful person — and the state of gratitude — a temporary behavior or feeling, says Philip Watkins, a professor of psychology at Eastern Washington University. But, some of the broader claims about the benefits of gratitude aren't backed up by science, says Watkins.

Basically, the article is saying we need more data to better assess the real value of gratitude. It seems beneficial. Some studies seem to make that clear. But if it turns out that the claims are inflated, then by all means let's stop blowing so much hot air about how important gratitude is to our well-being.

So, the question seems to be, "What is the real street value of gratitude?"

Leave it to our narcissistic, neuropsychology-is-king generation to come up with this crazy utilitarian approach to gratitude.

Then again, if there is no God-from-whom-all-blessings-flow, whether you give thanks or not is really a matter of what's in it for you.

Just don't let the irony escape you.