So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his own wife loves himself;  

for no one ever hated his own flesh,

but nourishes and cherishes it,

just as Christ also does the church,

Ephesians 5:28-29

 

Marriages are designed by God to make us better. Husbands are to sacrifice just as Christ for his wife and the wife will respond when she understands his love for her is genuine. The wife is a reflection of her husband’s love for her. (Precepts for Life)

Yesterday was my birthday. My man came home from work with a card and with my favorite candy (Twizzlers) and he sat down in front of me as I read the card and he said, “You have been married to me your entire adult life. You entered this marriage as a mere child.”

I didn’t just enter this marriage as “a mere child”, but also as a damaged girl, a girl who considered herself damaged. I had a wall up around my heart higher and wider than the one that encircled Jericho. I loved my husband, but I know now that for a long time I didn’t really believe that he could love me.

Then on my husband’s side… he also was a man with his own hurts and his own walls.

So you had two people who came together in marriage but we shouted at each other over and through our walls. Walls that we hid behind for our own self-protection. Walls that kept us from truly becoming one with each other in all things. Walls that kept us from really trusting each other to defend and protect and provide and share and rely and unite.

Two years into our marriage I surrendered my life to my Heavenly Bridegroom. As my Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to move in with me and prepare me for my great wedding day to Him, His Spirit began to weaken my Jericho wall.

As my Jesus circled my walled heart in His sovereign silence I watched in wonder. I watched as He marched around and around my walls. I watched in horror and fear. I watched with caution and concern. I watched because at the same time I could not turn away. I watched as terror gripped my throat in my thought of a life without these walls…

I would never be safe…

How badly could I be hurt…

I will be completely destroyed…

I can’t handle anymore plunders…

There were times that I stood at the top of my wall, as my Jesus marched around in silence, that I considered the best option would be to just jump off the top of the wall and be done before the unknown came upon me… but I never could get my feet to leave the safety of my wall. So I paced my wall, and I peered over my wall at the walled city next to me and wondered if my wall fell would that city destroy me. So I paced, and wondered, and feared, and wrung my hands, and watched my Jesus march…

Then one day my Jesus shouted a great shout and my wall shook under my feet. My great Jericho wall crumbled underneath me and I slid with stumbling feet grasping for something to hold onto but my arms just flailed wildly as the broken crumbling wall carried me and slammed me with unmeasurable force into the walled city beside me… my wall had crumbled and my Jesus had just used the destruction of my wall to slam me into the walls of my husband that needed destroyed until I came to a sliding, scratching, skiding halt into the wall of the heart of my man.

It shall besiege you in all your towns

until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted

come down throughout your land…

Deuteronomy 28:52 

I feared destruction…

But instead my man lifted me up and set me within the safety of his wall. Inside this wall of my husband I was able to see him in a new light… I was able to get a glimpse, an understanding as to why he had his walls. We now, no longer had to shout at each other over and through our walls… and my husband began to see the things that my walls were hiding from him before.

Its much easier to talk with each other and really get to know one another when you don’t have to shout over walls.

Many times I would begin construction on a new wall inside his walls and many times he would begin to try and rebuild his own torn down walls… but that Jesus of ours would find a way in every time and sabotage every dividing wall and again and again they would crumble down around us.

My Jesus wanted me to know and understand that I was safe within my husbands walls. My husbands walls would protect me and provide for me. My husband had always wanted me in his wall, I just didn’t have the assurance to leave the safety of my own and I believe my husband probably feared that I would destroy his last standing wall instead of resting securely within it.

As I have gone from a “mere child” in this marriage to a maturing woman, I can honestly say that I am better today than I was the day I married my husband. In the same way, I look at my husband and I can honestly say he is a better man today than he was the day I married him. God has used our marriage to make us better.

The hard part of becoming better is that sometimes in order to make something better you have to first tear it down and break it apart. Usually it has to be deconstructed in order to be reconstructed.

Kay  Arthur shared in her lesson on Ephesians that “a woman is a responder“… and that is so very true. Love begets love and when a man chooses to love his wife as Christ loved the church, as he chooses to make genuine sacrifices for her, it will eventually show in her response to him. Kay also shared that “when you look at the way a man treats his wife you’re looking at what he thinks  of himself if you’re looking at it biblically.”

So wife… how does your husband treat you?

How is knowing that the way he treats you is really how he deep down feels about himself change your response to his treatment? How does it change the way you in turn treat him.

And husband since your wife is a reflection of your treatment and love toward her… take a long look at her… what does her reflection say about the way you are loving her? Do you know that you are supposed to be her savior? Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her? In manifested and practical and real ways… in deed not just in words.

A couple of weeks ago our youngest daughter and myself were sick. Our daughter came into our room about 1am with a stomach ache and so we both ended up downstairs on the couch during the night… we stayed down stairs so as not to wake my husband who had to be at work at 6am. My husband came in from work that night after a 12 hour shift on the railroad and that night, knowing that our sick daughter wanted to stay close to her mother during the night, he sent us both upstairs to our bed and he slept on the couch. The couch that he openly hates to sleep on because it is a foot shorter than him.

He made this practical sacrifice out of love for me… putting my needs before his.

He at that moment loved me as Christ loved the church… and gave Himself up for her. He didn’t have to stop a speeding a bullet with his teeth to prove his manhood and love for me… he just had to sleep on the couch… and this simple act rocked my world and caused me to love even more.

He couldn’t do these things when I lived behind my own wall trying to protect myself.

I am so glad that my Jesus would not allow me to trust in my walls. I am so thankful that He marched around the walls of my heart and shouted a great shout and sent my walls crumbling around my feet and caused me to crash into the walls of my man…

He needed me and I so needed him.

I need his walls around me and he needs my heart around him…

This marriage thing is designed by God to represent His image to the world, His love to the world, and His love to us… and within this marriage we learn to love as Christ loves. Within this holy covenant… this life commitment… this promise of “I do”… we can mature and become better when we choose to trust the Word of God and put our faith and love into action.

We now work on one wall together, this one wall that protects our city, our marriage.

So we built the wall and the whole wall was joined together…

Nehemiah 4:6

 

God has laid a proven path out before us in His Word… and when a man and woman come together in marriage with their lives built on the foundation of Christ and both surrender to the destructing and reconstructing hand of the Potter… choosing to obey the Word and walk according to the Spirit… the only walls that will fall will be the ones that separate, not the ones that protect.

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain,

and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem,

coming down out of heaven from God, 

having the glory of God.

Her brilliance was like a very costly stone,

as a stone of crystal-clear jasper. 

It had a great and high wall…

Revelation 21:10-12

 

Today is 12-12-12 and it’s also my 36th birthday… It’s amazing what you can learn in 36 years. I have made a lot of mistakes… I mean a lot. I have said and done things that I wish I would have never done. I have so many things I would go back and change if I could… but I never can. Once a choice is made it is made.

How thankful I am that I am loved by a Redeeming God.

The past can’t be changed.

But the past can be redeemed.

 He has redeemed my soul from going to the pit,

And my life shall see the light.

Job 33:28

But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob,

And He who formed you, O Israel,

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name; you are Mine!

Isaiah 43:1

When I think of all He has redeemed me of and from and when I think of the life He has given me… this life He has allowed me… this humble opportunity to attempt to bring Him glory with this crazy red-headed Spirit-filled body of mine that wars with flesh and hormones and emotions but desires with all my heart to walk in obedience to His Word and spread the gospel of Christ and the amazing grace that saved a wretch like me… I can’t help but be filled with praise and thanksgiving and this strange combination of undeserved righteousness and unworthy godliness that brings me to my knees as I think upon my sinful flesh but yanks my head up and lifts my eyes up on the beauty of His cross that causes me to stand to my feet and stand clothed not in shame but in His holiness…

This thing I’ve got going on with my Jesus… it’s amazing.

I know that I will never see another 12/12/12 and I will never turn 36 again… but the truth is I am not promised that I will see the clock strike 12:12 again either. So I must choose to walk as a wise woman, making the most of my time. Living each day like there is no tomorrow… because today I am alive.

Today I have an amazing husband that I grow more in love with each day.

Today I have beautiful daughters that I am so grateful to call mine.

Today I have a family, a huge extended family, that loves the LORD and loves me.

Today I have a church that I am beyond blessed to be allowed to serve.

I don’t deserve any of this…

Be of sober spirit, be on the alert.

Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion,

seeking someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:8

Last night I was lying on the couch with my man watching the National Geographic channel… it’s sometime of cat week and my husband explained to me that if you are a man and you are flipping through the channels and see lion chasing down to kill… you just have to stop and see what happens. So therefore he watched and I peeked through my fingers while gagging and “awww-ing”.

There was one part of the show that struck a huge cord of truth.

God is very clear with us that we have an adversary. Our adversary’s name is the devil, the serpent of old, Satan. He comes to kill, steal, and destroy. He comes to lie, deceive, and distort. The sad thing is so many believers are so weak in the Word of God and choose to walk by their own understanding instead of God’s… that that stinking adversary wins many battles… or at the very least manages a many crippling wounds.

As we were watching the lion vs cheetah’s in the below clip, we saw it as the two men were trying to figure out the why’s that the narrator in the clip uses. What the two men saw was four cheetah’s. Three of the cheetah’s were brothers. They had grew up together never separating after they were weaned. These three brothers saw this one female. This one female was in heat… so these three brothers begin the chase after her.

These three brothers are so consumed with fighting over this object of their desire they have no clue that the lion is creeping up on them. All they can see is what they want and they are willing to fight each other to the death until they get it. So the three brothers are fighting over the  one female and the female is trying to fight off all three brothers… and they are all consumed with lust and mere survival.

The lion finally rushes in on the fighting four and the three cheetah brothers flee the bush as the lion steps out with the female cheetah between his teeth, crushing her skull.

And here’s the sad part…

The three brothers have just survived a lion attack, but they are so consumed with lust that they are still fighting over the now dead female. The lion is standing there with a dead sister cheetah in his teeth and they continue to fight with each other instead of fleeing the scene.

The lion then rushes them again… and they still FIGHT WITH EACH OTHER!

Finally the lion brings in a reinforcement and they kill another brother cheetah… this one having been wounded by his brother cheetahs in the fight with each other.

Oh precious one do you see the picture?

Our adversary the devil is out…

Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 

and do not give the devil an opportunity.

Ephesians 4:26-27

How many times in the church, I mean the whole church, the body of Christ, and our individual community church… how many times are we so consumed with fighting with each other to get what we want that we are completely oblivious to the creeping roaring attack of Satan. He can come up on us roaring because we are so stinking loud and crazed with having our own way that we are not watching our own backs much less the backs of the brother or sister in Christ we are fighting with…

Flee immorality.

Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body,

but the immoral man sins against his own body.

1 Corin 6:18

How many times have we seen a brother or sister in Christ with their head between the teeth of Satan while he crushes their skull because they were caught in the snare of immorality, sexual sin, whether it be fornication, adultery, homosexuality, pornography… whatever… we see them dead in his teeth. Caught. Destroyed. Damaged. Broken. Yet we stand there and are so consumed with our own lust… with getting the object of our desire… that we don’t flee our own immorality. 

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

1 Corin 10:14

How many times do we see our brothers and sisters crushed under the weight of the world because they chose to put their trust in someone or something besides the One True Living God and instead of running to God ourselves, instead of stopping and examining our lives for idolatry… instead of fleeing we stay in our sin. Choosing to trust in our jobs, our money, our health, our minds. Choosing to worship at the football field, at the Lazyboy, at the Sealy, instead of the altar of our Creator God

But flee from these things, you man of God,

and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love,

perseverance and gentleness.

1 Timothy 6:11

Oh church, beautiful bride of Christ, let us flee these things!

Let us stop fighting with each other and instead stand ready, firm, watchful, keeping vigilant as we prepare to fight the attack of our enemy. Let us be ready to pick up and defend a wounded brother not leave him to be destroyed… and for the love of Christ let us not be the ones who wounded because we were so consumed with our lust and desires that we didn’t care who we hurt in the process. Let us number our days and be mindful that our adversary is out and about seeking whom he may devour.

We are supposed to be fighting FOR each other not WITH each other.

How many attacks of the adversary would never be accomplished if we were not consumed with fighting with each other but with praying for each other?

 

What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? 

Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 

You lust and do not have; so you commit murder.

You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have because you do not ask. 

You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives,

so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? 

Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 

Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose:

“He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? 

But He gives a greater grace.

Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 

Submit therefore to God. 

Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

James 4:1-7

 

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, 

by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 

Let all bitterness and wrath

and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you,

along with all malice. 

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted,

forgiving each other, 

just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

Ephesians 4:30-32

I’ve been watching Kay Arthur in the mornings… I have been sick for over a week and it usually takes me a good thirty minutes to get enough snot blowed out of my head to be able to think straight… so the past couple of weeks I have chosen to come down the stairs and grab my coffee and my Bible and pile back up on the couch under a blanket and be spoon fed the Word.

Now over a week into this routine… I think God allowed this sickness so that I could be fed for a while.

For the first time in a long while I feel almost refreshed… renewed… revived… yes, renewed and revived.

I realized today that I had been going a while in my own strength and grit. I had poured out almost all that I had and the gas hand was at the warning light… but just like in my car… I ignored it and figured I could get just a little farther on… but God said nope, honey, sickness is visiting to put you down where I can talk to you and you listen. You can’t pour into others what you don’t have… and if you are pouring something that is of you and not of Me then you are not helping anyone nor are you serving Me.

So I am in a time of renewal… and I am thankful.

I am thankful for my God and I am thankful for His grace and I am thankful for His teachers and I am thankful for His Word.

As I watched Kay this morning she took me into the book of Ephesians… I love Ephesians.

I suppose its the fact that the stomach flu has been running rampant through our church or the fact that I am sick myself or just because it was such an accurate picture… but what Kay shared with me this morning really struck a cord in my desire to learn to respond rather than react.

As we dug into Ephesians 4 Kay broke down the Greek translations of bitterness, wrath, and anger and she spoke of clamor and slander and malice… all hitting cords with me as she spoke and I realized how many times I have gotten sucked into reacting to the emotional turmoil of another person instead of responding to God in obedience to His Spirit within me.

As she moved on to talk about what it means to be tender-hearted she spoke of it in response to the anger of another… I had never really considered it in this way. She shared how when someone comes at us or just speaks with us in anger, slander, clamor, or with bitterness or if we are the one’s speaking with it, it’s like vomiting.

When we spew out our anger all over someone we are vomiting up our ickness on them…

I have cleaned up a lot of vomit in my day… When my children or any one else’s children have been sick and have vomited all over themselves or all in the floor… I have grabbed them up and tended to their need, cleaned them up, and then gotten down on the floor and cleaned up their mess. I have done it with tenderness and with concern for the health of the one who was vomiting… I did not respond to their vomit with vomit of my own… because well, if I did it would have just left me to clean up my own vomit along with theirs… or it would have caused another person to be a part of the whole mess.

God commands us in Ephesians to be tender-hearted.

This is the way we are to respond when someone vomits up their anger… it’s like a heart flu.

Bitterness, wrath, anger, slander, clamor, and malice are like a nasty virus that gets inside of us and the only thing we can do is kill it with medicine or spew it out or it will only grow worse within us… and if we are not careful we will spread them to others who come in contact with us… they are terribly contagious.

If we recognize the symptoms quick enough we can kill it with the Balm of Gilead from the Great Physician… but if we ignore the symptoms eventually we will spew them out on someone… the lady blocking the isle at Wal-Mart, the guy who pulled out in front of you at the Red Light, your husband who said the wrong thing, your kids that left their shoes in the floor and you tripped over them, etc. When you vomit your heart flu germs all over them… sadly many times, they in turn vomit all over someone else…

Yes, this heart flu is indeed nasty stuff.

I want to be better about recognizing the symptoms of this mess so that I can head straight to the One who can administer healing to me immediately so that I am not a part of the spreading of this heart flu. And I want to get better about how I respond when someone else vomits up their bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, or malice up on me. I want to choose to put on my Jesus and His armor of grace and clean it up for them instead of taking a big wiff of their mess and then vomiting myself. I want to reach down deep, take a deep breath of mercy, pray for God’s strength, and lay myself on the altar of obedience. I want to be tender-hearted.

This is my resolution… my own desire.

One person’s vomit is nasty enough… but when it sets off a chain reaction… ugh… yeh… let us not go there.

*Here’s one of Kay’s lessons from Ephesians 4…

Walk in Love, Even as Christ Walked in Love

 

This Thanksgiving morning in the Year of our Lord 2012 I am in the Psalms. It’s where I usually begin every morning. I highly recommend it. God is always able to get my attitude adjusted and my eyes cleared and my mind right and my heart cleansed here in these beautiful psalms of praise and thanksgiving and hardcore truth. This morning I began in Psalm 144 and the Lord began to speak to my heart with the first verse….

Blessed be the LORD, my rock,

who trains my hands for war,

and my fingers for battle…

Psalm 144:1

I, as a believer, as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, am at war. I battle against the spiritual forces of darkness and the powers and principalities of wickedness (Eph 6:12). There is only One who can train me for this war… that is my LORD. The Lord trains us up before He sends us out to battle. He gives us each a weapon that is designed just for us… we cannot win in battle using a borrowed weapon. It has to be the one fit and measured perfectly for us. David could not wear Sauls armor. Attempting to do so would have sent him out to the slaughter. God had trained David to battle with a slingshot and a stone…

The weapon of warfare that God has trained me in…

well, since I was a child I wrote and since I was three yrs old I gravitated to caring for little ones.

I remember when I was around nine or ten years old my aunt and uncle had a cat who had kittens. These kittens were wild as all get out. They could not be caught and they had no desire to be held or petted. They were afraid of everyone.

Now I just was not having it.

I remember every time I went to my aunt and uncle’s my desire was to catch that cat. I spent hours just being still. I would take food. I would walk up to “Paper” as I had named him as easy as I could so as not to scare him. Each day he would come closer and closer and closer and closer. Someday’s he would not at all and some days he would run but I never gave up… and finally one day he came close enough to me that I was able to swoop him up in my hands and my fingers ran through his soft white and gray fur… and he purred. I was ecstatic!

God had satisfied my desire to show that cat that I loved him and would never hurt him.

And also I can recall when I was around this same age of nine or ten at my own house there was a wild rabbit that would come up in our yard… my desire was to get that rabbit to come to me. Once again I took carrots out to the yard when I would see him. I would walk slow and easy and stand perfectly still for what seemed like hours to me… and each day the rabbit would come closer and closer… and one day the rabbit took the carrot right out of my hand! I was ecstatic!

God had satisfied my desire to show that rabbit that I loved him and would never hurt him.

I look back on my life and I can see over and over again how God has been training me for this spiritual battle against the forces of darkness. Absolutely nothing in life is without purpose with a sovereign God. When David stood before Saul, ready to take down Goliath with just a slingshot and a stone, he stood there confident in his God because God had been training him up for this moment… God had already showed him how to take down a bear and a lion and who knows what else. Therefore, David could face Goliath with confidence in the weapon that he knew as well as his own hand.

David wrapped his hand around his slingshot and his fingers around the stone and with them and his confidence and boldness in the promises of his God… well Goliath went down. David’s weapon of training defeated the enemy that God allowed to come before him… David’s desire was to bring the loud mouthed Philistine down with the weapon that David knew, so that all Israel would see that God loved him, and them, and they could and should trust their God.

Now as for me… if I tried to stand before Goliath with a slingshot and stone or even wearing Saul’s armor… well I would be setting myself up for the slaughter. God has not trained me in those weapons and He is not training me to fight that enemy with those weapons.

My hands have been trained with patience for the hurting and fearful of the human touch… my hands have been trained to wait for hours and days and maybe even years and offer small bits of nurture and commitment and stability to the little ones, both in faith and age (1 John 2:12), so that they might see that I love them and would never hurt them so that they might see that God loves them… My hands have been trained to stay and to come back for more even when I am hurt, ignored, or mistaken.

My hands have been trained to want that one…

       yes, that one whose eyes are filled with doubt…

that one whose hands reach out timidly and with uncertainty…

   that one whose frustration is evident and whose hurt runs deep…

yes, my desire is for them to see that I love them and would never hurt them.

So whether it is “Paper” who would scratch and claw and hiss and bite at the coming hand that just wants to hold them and comfort them and love them… or whether its the “rabbit” that just is unsure and shy and timid…

My desire is that they would know that I love them and would never hurt them… and most importantly, that they would know that God loves them and they can indeed trust Him.

  You open Your hand
And satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Psalm 145:16

My hands have been trained for war in the trenches of fear and doubt and uncertainty and my fingers have been trained for this keyboard… God knew that my desire was for missions… I fight with my hands on the front-lines and with my fingers around the world.

So today, this Thanksgiving in the Year of our Lord 2012, I am thankful for satisfied desires.

I will extol You, my God, O King,
And I will bless Your name forever and ever.
Every day I will bless You,
And I will praise Your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised,
And His greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall praise Your works to another,
And shall declare Your mighty acts.
On the glorious splendor of Your majesty
And on Your wonderful works, I will meditate.
Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts,
And I will tell of Your greatness.
They shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness
And will shout joyfully of Your righteousness.