Love Your Wife?

Paul said in Ephesians 5 that a husband should love his wife as Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church?

He sacrificed his very life for her! He was willing to die for her best--for the need she had the most--salvation. Husband, are you willing to do whatever it takes so your wife can grow in her relationship with Christ? So she can be presented spotless, without sin, before the Lord when He returns?

He also lived for her! Jesus lived His life on earth for the best of others. He wanted the best for them, even above His own interests and needs. He was a model of how to live a life for God. Husband, do you live your life before your wife (and others) as a model of how to live a life for God? Are you a model to your children, to your wife, to your friends and even unbelievers of what Christ's life would look like if it were lived on earth today. As one song years ago said, "You're the only Jesus that some will ever see." How does Jesus in you show forth the "real Jesus" to those watching you, living beside you and with you?

Would your wife say you always consider her needs in making decisions? Would she say you always look to God for decisions you make? Would she say you sacrifice for her and point her to God? Would she say you love her in the same way Christ loved the church?

I have a long way to go in doing this. What about you?

VISION

My vision is so often too small. As I have read from Neil Cole, Organic Church, and other missional thinkers, we need to think bigger when we think of how the gospel spreads. Instead of praying for one person to come to know Christ (a very good prayer), why not think of whole households coming to know Christ (and praying that way as well).

Sometimes we look at an acorn and see it as one nut. God looks at the acorns and sees many trees produced from that one acorn, as it grows, matures, and bears fruit.

We should also look at our vision that way. Don't look just for our church to grow, but look for God to use us to birth many churches that will reach others we are not and probably will not reach otherwise.

Pray bigger prayers--God is a very big God!

Only You

Nobody else in the world does what you do like you do! That is God's plan for making each of us unique--one of a kind--His creation.

While reading Stephen Covey's, 8th Habit, recently, I came across these statements from Jim Collins book, Good to Great:

1) What are you really good at--maybe even, what can you be best in the world at?

2) What are you deeply passionate about?

3) What will people pay for--what are human needs and wants being met that would drive your economic engine.

4) Covey then says, "What does your conscience counsel?" (Covey, 8th Habit, Fig. 11.3, p. 221)

So often, we do not peg into who we are and who we were created to be. We just settle for what will pay the bills. What if a person centered in on his/her passions, on his/her interests, on the ways we are wired? How would life be different if we did this?

I'm trying to grow and become who I was made to be. Are you?

Life is experiences. I have noticed that when I don't have much to say to my wife or to others, it is because I don't have new experiences to share. When my mother was alive, she would say at times, "I don't really get out so I don't really have much interesting happening to talk about now."

One reason for the success of Henry Blackaby's, Experiencing God, was probably the fact that we want to not just hear about God, but actually to "experience" Him for ourselves. That seems to be much of our culture's need today--to experience life, not just to hear about it.

One neat thing is that we can experience God even when we can't gain a new experience in life by a trip or work or a new peak experience. God can always be experienced everywhere we are.

I went to a church recently which had a coffee shop as atmosphere in part of their building. They were trying to create the "coffeehouse" atmosphere, where people love to "hang out" and "chill" with their friends. They wanted to make their church a place for experiences of fellowship and closeness.

Experiences--that seems to be why we travel (vacation), read, talk to others, seek outside ourselves--a way of growing, learning, thinking.

When we seek nothing new, we're ready to die. At that point there is no meaning left for us in life--only in death, and for the believer in Christ, only in heaven and life beyond the grave.

Life is experiences--I want more here, and later, there.

What do you think? Is life a series of experiences?