Sacred Marriage

This weekend, my wife and I had the priviledge of attending a seminar by Gary Thomas, author of Sacred Marriage. What an incredible time of teaching and reflection!

In Sacred Marriage, Thomas expounds the idea that God designed marriage as a means of sanctification. Within our normally imperfect marriage, and due to the fact that we are both sinners (James 3:2a), we have our selfishness, our pride, and our focus on ourselves exposed to the light. It is in God's purpose within marriage that we become holy, as He is holy. And this process comes about by our learning to love our spouse, as God really intended. It is not a Hollywood romanticism, but a God-centered, self-sacrificing love for the other person.

One of the many principles that impacted me was the knowledge that my wife is God's child. My wife is the daughter of the King of kings! So God is my Father....in law! And knowing that, I should be very aware of how I treat the King's daughter, because He is very aware of it! So I should love my wife, in reverence to the Lord!

2 Corinthians 7:1 "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves of every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God."

Change Me

This morning, as I was praying, I asked God to help me to change. Immediately the Lord rebuked me in my spirit! That prayer showed my lack of faith! Help me change?!

Lord, forgive me of my lack of faith in you. It is not that you help me to change. You change me.

So I changed, and began praying anew. This time my prayer is, "Change my heart! Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me!"

The Two "Certain" Things

Most of us have heard that there are two things that are certain, death and taxes.

But it occurred to me, as I was contemplating my huge tax bill, that for Christians, death isn't as certain. What is certain is that Jesus Christ is coming again. Some Christians will be alive when He comes, and those of us who are alive and remain, 1 Thess 4:17 says, will be caught up together with the dead who are resurrected when Jesus comes.

So, there are still two things that are certain. Not death and taxes, but instead, Jesus is coming again,....and taxes.

Jesus, the Cross, our Call to Die

Here are some more excerpts from Bonhoeffer:

If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.

This notion has ceased to be intelligible to a Christianity which no longer sees any difference between an ordinary human life and a life committed to Christ.

Every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life.

Discipleship

I'm reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "The Cost of Discipleship," and am reminded that discipleship is more than my volunteering to follow Christ. It is more than the knowledge of my salvation through faith, and then living my life as I please. It is a surrendered following, that forsakes all else. This excerpt really resonated deep in my heart.

"Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship. An abstract Christology, a doctrinal system, a general religious knowledge on the subject of grace or on the forgiveness of sins, render discipleship superfluous, and in fact they positively exclude any idea of discipleship whatever, and are essentially inimical to the whole conception of following Christ. With an abstract idea it is possible to enter into a relation of formal knowledge, to become enthusiastic about it, and perhaps even to put it into practice; but it can never by followed in personal obedience. Christianity without living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth which has a place for the Fatherhood of God, but omits Christ as the living Son. And a Christianity of that kind is nothing more or less than the end of discipleship. In such a religion there is trust in God, but no following of Christ. Because the Son of God became Man, because he is the Mediator, for that reason alone the only true relation we can have with him is to follow him. Discipleship is bound to Christ as the Mediator, and where it is properly understood, it necessarily implies faith in the Son of God as the Mediator. Only the Mediator, the God-Man, can call men to follow him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Simon and Shuster, 1995, p 59.