A Third Simple Secret to a Healthy Marriage

 

When I married Linda I had some debt. I had student loans to cover tuition and housing for my freshman and sophomore years

I spent the money. I also flunked out of college at the end of my sophomore year. 

I eventually got back in college. But I had to pay off the wasted student loan. 

When I married Linda, we both understood that we were now "one flesh." We were a team. We did not believe that she had her money, and I had my money. Instead, all that we had, collectively, was God's, with us as the stewards of what we have.

And of what we owed. My loan indebtedness was now Linda's as well.

For us, it goes like this. If I make a dollar a week, and Linda makes $1000 a week, together we make $1001. And it all belongs to God. We are then called to be good stewards of what God has given us.

A huge part of this stewardship was, and still is, keeping a budget. That we both look at together, and both agree on.

This means we agree on how the money is to be spent. In addition to a mortgage, car payment, utilities, food, clothing, insurance, and other essentials (the loan!), we sometimes had extra money. We did not spend this extra money without talking together about it. Early in our marriage, we both agreed that neither of us would make a purchase over $50 without asking the other if this seemed right to them.

We continue this to this day. This has served us well in our fifty-one years of marriage!

The key principles are:

1) Everything we have belongs to God.

2) We are the stewards of what God has given us.

3) We have a monthly budget.

4) We communicate about finances.

SEE ALSO..

One Simple Secret to a Healthy Marriage

Another Simple Secret to a Healthy Marriage

O Holy Night - Acapella Arrangement!

This is always worth another view.

Put your cell phone down.

Remove distractions.

Listen to this rendition of the greatest worship song ever written.

To Love Deeply Is to Suffer Deeply

(Linda and I in Green Lake, Wisconsin. How many years ago?)

The one who loves much suffers much.

To surrender to love is to risk. It is to be vulnerable. It is to be open. Because eventually, there will be loss.

For example, our family loved our dog So-fee. When she became so sick that we had to put her down it was painful. It made me think that I never want another dog, because I never want to go through that again.

Suffering can cause one to stop loving, since loving entails suffering, a hurting-with (com-passion) the beloved. When we open ourselves to transparency and vulnerability we invite the real possibility of suffering.

Will Hernandez writes: 

“It is equally accurate to say that only one who has known the experience of deep suffering can freely love and give love with true abandon. If suffering happens to be the consequence of true love, then that same love also becomes the fruit of real suffering.” (Hernandez, Henri Nouwen and Spiritual Polarities: A Life of Tension, K231)

Henri Nouwen has written: 

“Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear” (IVL:60; cited in Hernandez, K240).

To immerse yourself in the sufferings of others is to grow in your capacity to love others, one’s own self, and God. “Love and suffering are bound to change anyone radically.” (Hernandez, K240)

Bayes' Theorum Explained Intuitively

 

I talked with someone recently about Bayes' Theorum. In my logic classes I resisted trying to explain Bayes' Theorum to students. I don't have enough actual experience using it to claim to significantly understand it. Yet certain philosophers and theologians and Christian apologists use it to argue for certain probabilistic outcomes.

So...  I discovered this today, as a result of reading Francis Spufford's Unapologetic, which linked me here, from where I traveled here - "An Intuitive explanation of Bayes' Theorum," by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Very good!

How to Know the Will of God

 

                                                             (Frost on my car window)

For years I have used, in my praying times, Dallas Willard's Hearing God Through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional.

Here's today's entry.

EXPECTANT AND ALERT

Happy is the one who listens to me,

watching daily at my gates,

waiting beside my doors.

For whoever finds me finds life

and obtains favor from the LORD. 

Proverbs 8:34-35 NRSV 

James Dobson has given some of the best practical advice I have heard on how someone who wants the will of God and who has a basically correct understanding of it should proceed. On a radio broadcast he once described how he does it himself: “I get down on my knees and say, ‘Lord, I need to know what you want me to do, and I am listening. Please speak to me through my friends, books, magazines I pick up and read, and through circumstances.’” Such waiting is not empty, but expectant and alert. 

The simplicity of this should not mislead us. When we are in a proper, well-functioning relationship with God, this is exactly what we are to do. And then we are, as Dobson says, to listen. This means that we should pay a special kind of attention both to what is going on within us and to our surrounding circumstances.

The Logical Argument Against Abortion (Another Version)

 

 

                                                              (Eldoret, Kenya)

1. Every human life has inherent dignity and value.

2. The conceptus is human life.

3. Therefore, the conceptus has inherent dignity and value.

I Highly Recommend This Book

 

I think the key to living an abundant Christian life is this: Abide in Christ.

I have written several blog posts about the abiding life, and injected it into my books on praying and discipleship.

Now my friend Bob Myers has written a beautiful book on the abiding life: A Life that Matters: Learning to Abide in Christ.

This is a tremendous supplement to my teachings on abiding in Christ. Thoughtful, prayerful, helpful, encouraging, devotional, and more.

I highly recommend it!

Transitioning to a Presence-Driven Church: Step One

 

(Grand Haven, Michigan)

When I do a "Presence-Driven Church conference or retreat, some ask the question, "What do we do now?" Here is how I see this.

Step One in transitioning to a Presence-Driven Church is this: the pastors/leaders  must engage in the ongoing abiding life. 

Do not view these teachings as tools for ministry. Rather, see yourself as instruments of righteousness being formed by the Father's hands. This is all about relationship with God, not programming the church. You need to spend time alone with God, otherwise you will not really understand, and you will not be credible.

Seek God, spend much time with God, for the sake of your own restoration and transformation. Begin to live in constant, abiding renewal.

Along the way, share stories of what God is doing, transformationally, in you. 

It is crucial that you not try to program this, or strive to make things happen. This is a slow-cooker, not a microwave.

In my experience, many Westernized pastors do not do this. And, among those who attend my classes and seminars, most do not continue in this. They fall back into the rut of, "I don't have enough time to pray."

For many pastors the praying life will be a revolutionary change. There will be resistance. Therefore, begin today, not tomorrow. Carve out relational time with God. This "step" is to continue and grow and increase until the day you stand fully in God's presence.

Remember how God spoke to you at the conference? Remember how restoring and renewing your solitary times with God were? It can be the same today. God did not remain at the conference center. He, Immanuel, is with you, presently. Trust and abide in him.

Don't force the issue with your people. Do not try to make things happen. Of course you want to share your experience with your people. But I suggest deepening the experience in yourself first. Pray, today, like you did at the conference. Do not bypass this step. (Refer to my book Praying about this.)

Slow-cook in God's presence, for weeks. Re-familiarize yourself with your God. "Forget about yourself, concentrate on Him, and worship Him." Tend the fire within.

With greater, growing familiarity, comes increasing discernment. Discernment is in direct proportion to familiarity. God will show you what to do, and when to do it.

Lead by being led. The Lord is your shepherd. You will not be wanting. And, you will bear much fruit.

Find another (or more) pastor-leader, and share together your experiences with God.

Then, along the way, discernment increases. God will lead you to lead your people into the abiding life, into God's beautiful, empowering presence.

When God says "Now!" preach, and teach, out of John chapters 14 & 15. 

***

My leadership book is Leading the Presence-Driven Church.

My Christmas Book (Chapters)

 

My Christmas book came out a few days ago. The Great Invasion: Thirty-one Days of Christmas.

E-book.  

Paperback.

The book's thesis is: To study and learn more about Jesus shapes and deepens our understanding of and experience of Christmas.

Day 1 is December 1.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 

#1    ​​Jesus Is the Agent of Creation 

#2     ​​Jesus Was Born of a Virgin  

#3​​    Jesus Descended into Greatness 

#4​​    Jesus Existed

 #5​​    Jesus Grew Up in Galilee 

#6​    Jesus Was a Jew Who Wore Torah on His Sleeve 

#7​​    Jesus Is "Immanuel." 

#8​​    Jesus is God and Man  

#9​​    Jesus is God  

#10​    Jesus is True Humanity 

#11​    Jesus Was Baptized by John the Baptist

#12    ​Jesus Taught About the Kingdom of God  

#13    ​Jesus is King 

#14     ​The Method of Jesus

#15​    Jesus Mentored 12 Disciples  

#16​    Miracles Were Performed Through Jesus 

#17 ​    Jesus Cast Out Demons  

#18​    Jesus Is After the Human Heart 

#19​    Jesus Had a Preferential Option for "the Least of These" 

 #20​    Jesus Restored Purity Outside the Sacrificial System 

#21​    Jesus Reinterpreted the Jewish Festivals in Terms of Himself 

#22​    Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath  

#23     ​Uncovering Jesus at Christmas

#24​    Violent Night (An Alternative Christmas Story)  

#25​    Christmas Day - Jesus Comes to Save Us from Our Distress  

#26​    Easter Week - Jesus Takes the Second Cup  

#27​    Jesus Bore Our Horror on a Cross  

#28    Jesus Screams in the Absolute Darkness  

#29​    Jesus Was Raised from the Dead 

#30​    Jesus Will Return to Restore Heaven and Earth  

#31​    Jesus Instructed His Followers to Abide in Him  

APPENDIX 1​    Jesus Was a Minimalist 

 

Horizontal Church vs. Vertical Church (The Presence-Driven Church)

 

(Preaching at Faith Bible Church in New York City (Flushing))

The Vertical Church is a people group of Jesus-followers who desire nothing more than God's earth-shattering presence, and who experience that presence whenever and wherever they gather. The presence of God is the glue that holds them together. This is the meaning of Jesus' words about "whenever two or more gather, there I am in their midst." That's all that's needed: Jesus in our midst.

The Horizontal Church needs more than "Jesus in our midst," even to the exclusion of Jesus, leaving only us and "our midst." Here people have been seduced by the god of relevancy. Many are good people who have been mis-discipled. They have been taught - by culture - to rely on their own natural charisma to attract consumer-seekers. 

Much energy and money is spent on catering to the prevailing cultural ethos and its chronos-mentality; hence, there are temporally choreographed services because people (it is assumed) will pull out their cell phones if the earth-shattering presence of God hovers among them for more than an hour. The Horizontal Church unwittingly adds to Scripture, and has Jesus saying, "whenever two or more gather, with a fair trade coffee bar and stage lighting and short services and apps and creative add-ons, there I am in their midst, if only for an hour."

Horizontal churches burn people out in striving to measure up to the ever-shifting bar of cultural coolness. Even name changes and stage lighting cannot rescue these sinking vessels. (Vertical Church is not essentially about external makeovers, not that serving coffee or tight blue jeans are evil.)

James McDonald has written: 

"Eventually everyone vacates church where God is not obviously present and working. Getting people back to church is pointless unless God comes back first— that’s what Vertical Church is all about!

Ritual church, tradition church, felt-need church, emotional-hype church, rules church, Bible-boredom church, relevant church, and many other iterations are all horizontal substitutes for God come down, we all get rocked and radically altered, Vertical Church.

The problem is you can’t fake glory. You can’t manufacture it, or manipulate it, or manifest it at will. Only God Himself can bring glory into a church, and when He does, communities get shaken and lives get changed, and the fame of Jesus Christ curls continuously upon the shore of human hearts like a Hawaii 5-0 wave. Church is supposed to be a tsunami of glory every Sunday, and that is what we gather for." (MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be, Kindle Locations 104-105)

McDonald says, "In Vertical Church God shows up, and that changes everything."

***
I know McDonald has had his problems. But he is correct about vertical and horizontal churches.

***

For more, see my book Leading the Presence-Driven Church.