I’m a bit late on finishing up this series. Not because of lack of interest in finishing it, nor even for lack of ideas, but actually for wanting to make sure that these last 2 tips I leave you with will benefit you and make the most difference in your life and in your marriage.

I contemplated leaving you with some other just practical do’s and don’ts or maybe just some more little things that you can do really at any time to show your wife that you love her. Like taking the kids for the day, on a Saturday so she can go to a day spa. That would be an excellent idea. A sub tip to that would be to never ever under any circumstances refer to your taking the kids as babysitting. You are a father, if you are blessed to have kids and caring for your children is not babysitting, it’s called parenting and you share the responsibility with your wife. Every time you refer to your own responsibility of the kids as babysitting, you demean the task that your wife attends to every single day. I know not many men that will take on, let alone look forward to a weekend with their children on their own. If this is you and you avoid such events, you miss a great opportunity to give your wife a break and you miss a great blessing and experience of being with your children closely for a day or two and getting to know them closer than your normal day to day life. Don’t joke about drugging them with Benadryl either, you need your wife to know that you love and cherish the children you have together and you should not refer to them as a nuisance or a burden, they are your children, a blessing from the Lord.

While all that is good and could be expounded upon to the point worthy of a post, I need to point you elsewhere for better return on your investment. For the Christian husband, there is more than just doing and serving your wife in these tangible ways. As the head, leader, covering of your wife and your family, there is something else that you can do that will allow you to love your wife in ways that are beyond this world.

What do you think that might be?

What can you do daily to love your wife well?

What will make your relationship stronger and help you understand what Love truly is?

Any guesses?

Read the Word.

For the Christian husband, there is no other source that will feed your soul like the regular reading of God’s Word. For the Husband that hopes to honor Christ greatly in the way the he lives and loves during the short time he has here on this earth, God’s Word provides a lifetime of study and example of what it is to love well. There is no greater love that what Jesus showed to us through the Cross, that while we were still ugly sinnners and undeserving of any love, He died, willingly, to love us and to free us and to make sure that we were eternally satisfied in Him, not in ourselves.

The world will tell you that to be loved is to be made much of. John Piper in Blazing Center goes to great lengths to show this is the message of the world and that the love defined in the bible is the love that goes to great lengths and great costs to oneself to ensure that someone else sees and savors that which is fully satisfying. This is done in a variety of ways.

You will not find this instruction or example anywhere else in the world, nor in many marriage or self help books that promise to improve your relationships in a number of easy steps. The instruction and example is shown most brightly in Christ and that in God’s Word through which he reveals himself to us. If you are not reading the Word of God, you are getting your definition of Love from some other source and that other source is likely faulty and less satisfying in the long run.

I admonish you to read the Word, to learn who God is, to learn about His Son and the way that He loved us before we were ever lovable and see the way that God loves first, before He gives any command, and you will see how you are to love your wife and extend grace to her, when she deserves it and when she does not… especially when she does not… because you don’t deserve the grace you have been given either.

Read His Word…

It will change you. It will change her. God will get the glory.

Til next time, Lord Willing, Tom

This will be a short one.  But important just the same.

You know the drill.  if not, go back and read tips 1-5 and catch up.  Just click above on incontinuouspursuit.com and get to the main blog and read up.  then come along…

Ok, so your wife is on travel with your four children.  For me this is getting old because I really want them to be home now, I miss them.

Today the way that you can love your wife is to make her safe, to take care of her.  HuH?  How’s that?

Make sure that she is taken care of, even if you aren’t there.  That means forethought, maybe spending a little money, maybe thinking about the future a little bit.  We have had used cars for a while.  Last year we got a newer model car, just a year old.  Before that we had a 10 year old van and of course, the ever present and dependable 1993 Honda civic steed of choice… Buster.  That’s his name, bet you didn’t know that.

Well, having the older cars, I decided we had better get some road side service just in case.  So over a year ago I signed up for the premo AAA membership.  It was a splurge, but it has paid for itself twice already this year.  We decided to keep the membership even with the new van that my wife drives.  Today I am glad that we did.

Brandi blew out a tire on the interstate going 70 miles an hour.  The van stayed under control and she was able to get off at an exit and to the top of the ramp.  Praise God.  She was not hurt, nor our children.  Praise God.

Next, she didn’t have to wonder or stress about what to do, just had to call AAA.  They were there for her, got someone there in 20 minutes and got her underway.  All that because I thought ahead about how she should be taken care of if I wasn’t there to do so.

Do you think about these types of things? How you would want your wife taken care of if you weren’t there to do it?  It might be a car issue, it might be something you do in case something happens to you or it might be the arrangements you make for her on a trip.

Start thinking today about the things that you can put in place that will show your wife that you cherish her and that you are taking care of her, even when you are not there.  If you wait until something happens, it might be too late, you will have missed the chance.

Continue to pray for her.  continue to seek out ways to serve her.  And take care of her.  Of all the things you have in the world, I hope that you treasure her the most.

It will change you, it will change her.  Love her well.

til tomorrow. tom

reading today in 1John again.  Like I was saying, there is not always a quiet place and without quiet I cannot concentrate and if I can’t concentrate then I can really skim over the same section over and over again and not know what I read.  However something did grab my attention and take me down a path of thought…

1John5:3-5For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Well, lets look at that a minute. If we love God, we keep his commandments. Ok, we’ve talked about that. Our response to the work and love of God, that He has first loved us and we love because HE first loved us naturally takes us into obedience. We are not perfect and it’s not so easy when we are sinners and we mess up, but in general, do you love God’s commandments and recognize that they are the best way to live for your own health? or do you despise them? Do you long to live rightly that God might be glorified or do you just try to hide that you sin. Then go to the next verse and see that HIS commandments are not burdensome. I believe that if you love God and you have been changed, his commands are not a burden but a delight. What is a burden is breaking them and feeling the guilt. Think about it,in Galations 5:22, we see the fruit of the spirit. and what does it say at the end of that verse? That against love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, that against these things there is no law? WHY? because they are what God has called us to. They are what God desires for us and of us. I think you would find few people that would say that any of these things are bad. They are just good living. So they are without burden. But the other things, of which there are laws about, whether of God or of the state, those things are burdensome, there is guilt and there is shame and pain and all sorts of things.

The next part is a litmus test.  You say you love God.  You say you keep his commands.  have you overcome the world.  That would be the world system and it’s ways and paths away from and against God.  If you are truly born of God, then you will overcome the world.  How do you know you have overcome the world?  hmmmmmmm.  it doesn’t mean that you have taken over.  It doesn’t mean that you have went along with it.  It means that you have followed God at His word and chose His commands (to love Him and your neighbor as yourself) flying in the face of the world’s ways which say it is all about you.  So what shows you that you have overcome the world?  your Faith.  Is your faith intact?  have you fallen away?  have you denounced your God?  if not, if you still have faith, then you have not been overcome by the world, you have persevered.

We have one more verse here to consider.  Lots of people have faith.  faith in the Lottery, faith in their jobs.  faith in their spouse.  faith in their addiction.  Whatever it is that we believe in, we can be people of faith.  And John wraps this up here, not leaving anything to chance making sure that people realize that the faith that they must have that fuels their love for God, that enables them overcome the world, that enables them to love others, this faith is in Jesus, believing that He is the son of God.  Only HE can cover your sin and remove the enmity between us and God.

Now… let us consider for a moment this faith that saves us, that enables us, that overcomes the world.  Is it of ourselves?  Is there something in us that produced this faith?  Look for a moment at Ephesians 2:8-10…

Ephesians2:8-10 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

It is not of us. It is a gift from God that we have faith. He put it there. We don’t know how. through His word, through others speaking His word to us, through reading, through the work of the Holy Spirit in conjunction with the word, we gained faith, not of our own but of God. Why? for good works. Not for our glory, but HIS. Has He put good works before us? Do we accept them and walk in them? or do we shy away? what is the work of God?

John 6:28-29 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

From Jesus mouth we see that the work we are to do is to believe in Him. All things, all glorifying work stems out of faith in Christ Jesus. He gives us faith, faith allows us to believe, believing brings love and obedience for God and His commands which allows us to overcome the world and it allows us to also touch others in all sorts of ways because of faith. taking care of a neighbor. adopting a child. loving your spouse. teaching your child about God. living righteously out of love for God. overcoming the world’s temptations to pull you away from God. All of this is possible because of faith. If we are boasting of our faith or of our works, then we have not faith, for true faith boasts in God and in His son. true faith is a gift.

I have issues with grey.  First, how is it spelled, grey or gray?  I don’t know.  I tend to go with gray and it was hard to title this post “grey” because that is not how I write it.  In fact, grey with an “e” reminds me of like, ummm, earl-grey tea or something like that.  Gray to me is the color name, but after all that, this is not what this post is about.  What this is about is a gray area.  I have issues with gray area.  I like everything to be very black and white, right or wrong, in or out, up or down, etc. etc. etc.  Life is not that way it seems and the gray areas are problematic as you try to navigate life, make decisions, choices etc.  My all this or all that approach doesn’t really work.  At least not in the area of grace.  If you are bad, you get punished, if you are good you get rewarded.  That is logical and makes sense to me, but that is not how life works when it comes down to it.  Often we see that those that are bad get rewarded and those that are good get punished, or so on this world it sometimes seems and it makes us cry out that this is wrong.

We see an example of this in Psalm 73.  Asaph explains how he felt as he watched the wicked getting ahead, living large, rolling wide.  He was tempted to believe it was better to follow them than to deal with the things he had been putting up with as a righteous man.  But he sought to understand this and went to the sanctuary of God and discerned their real end and his real gain(v16-17) Go read Psalm 73 and check it out.  I think we often deal with that temptation, to just let go and follow because it looks like the payoff is better, but our hope is in eternity and those that are satisfied here will have gotten their reward and they will give an account for their hope.

I put that out there because 1John has been difficult for me to read because it says that if you are this way then you can’t be that way.  and so if you take a verse here and a verse there you can either arm yourself against others you know to be sinning, or you can find yourself despairing because you yourself are a sinner.  Again, I point out that you cannot overlook our dependence upon God, upon Christ, to act as our intercessor, to be our mediator to whom we confess our sins and beg forgiveness, which He gives freely.   He gives it freely.

Driving into work this morning, I was listening to my ESV MP3 bible with Max Mclean (sp?).  I have been listening to Luke and now naturally have entered into the book of John.  This morning was somewhere around chapter 7 or so because it is a35 minute ride in and I got into chapter 8.  You know chapter 8, the one where Jesus forgives a woman caught in adultery.  It is an intense scene.  It is shown in Passion of the Christ.  I love this scene, it is moving and it is telling of our condition and it is telling of our feelings about grace.  For those of us bent on the binary system of black white, 0-1, right-wrong, it just messes with your mind.

The people, or rather, the scribes and pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery (obviously a wrong act and a sin) and they place her before Jesus and basically say “we got you now, Moses said to stone such a woman, what say you?”  They were not only looking to stone her, but to stone him too.  I love how Jesus returns to writing in the sand.  Oh to see what it was.  Then his response… “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Now their response… silence… then stones hitting the ground… stones meant for her (or him) dropped first by the older… then by the younger… and as they dropped them, confronted with their own sin (remember guilty of one sin, guilty of them all and condemned) they walked away til no one was left.  Then Jesus asked her, “has no one condemned you?”  “no one” she replies.  He responds… “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

I’m undone.  I have no category for this.  I know me and my nature of “this or this” and “since this, then this”.  I’m blown up.  I have to consider the forgiveness that I have been given, the forgiveness that I should give, the grace that I should show.  I have 3 children.  They drive me crazy, they need discipline AND they need grace.  If I work in my flesh and my logic, then I will not show them grace.  So I have to relearn.  I have to figure out how to incorporate the love and forgiveness of God into discipline and consequences.  I have to model forgiveness that they might learn to forgive.  I have to model grace in order that they might learn grace.  There is a harshness of God and there is a forgiveness of God that I cannot overlook and without my children seeing that grace, they might lose hope.

Back to grey, or gray, or rather gray area.  Grace to me is a gray area sometimes because in the tom logic, when you sin, you should be punished.  When you are given grace, it is sort of left undone.  Of course, I appreciate grace that is shown to me.  But when I am thinking about others, I’m not always so grace filled and the grace that I should show others is often to me considered a gray area, where something is not really done.  Or is it?  I, today, think that it does get something done.  It shows for one that revenge is not yours.  It shows that it is not about you and yours.  It shows that you can extend grace like grace has been shown to you.  It models Godliness.   Now, we have to be careful, because people, like little children in my case, can presume upon Grace and start taking advantage of you.  You may give them grace in a way that doesn’t really help them see God at all, but shows them you are a milk-toast.  So you have to connect grace to God, to Jesus and to His work.  And you can show it through these stories that blow your mind up.  Sure the sin content is not necessarily G-rated, but you can leave out the details, because kids understand doing something wrong and they know what happens when they are caught, they catch on quick.

So there is a balance here that is needed in disciplining and giving grace.  And I have very few years to figure it out.

God, thank you for your continued grace upon me.  thank you for these pictures of you through your word that are often beyond comprehension, but get us to take another look at how we live day to day.  Show me how to love and discipline my children in a way that demonstrates all of your attributes, not just the ones that make sense to me.  I need to know you and my children need to know you.  May you bring us together to a greater knowledge and greater knowing of you and your awesomeness and your greatness and your grace.  In Jesus name, our savior and mediator who forgives, AMEN.

This summer I’ve read a few books. I somehow have become a disjointed reader, maybe due to the fact that life is that way. I often find that I am reading 3 books at one time, based on my sitting location in the house. One by the bed, one by the couch, one at my desk and of course one in the bathroom. So I’ll tell you what I’ve been reading, but I won’t tell you where. you’ll have to figure that out on your own.

The first book, which I just happened to pick up on a whim from a stack of gifted books from past Christmas times, is Bryson City Tales by Walt Larimore M.D. It is the story of a doctor’s first year coming to a small town in the smoky mountains. Honestly I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It is well written, funny, serious and emotional. Having grown up straddling between immersion in city life and familiar with country life and traditions of my parents, there were several parts of this book that brought tears and understanding and longing for those times again. There was the imagery of the outdoors, the no-nonsense ways of the locals, the feeling of the outsider being slowly accepted, even initiated. Country life and struggle, hospital action, family concerns, humor and sorrow all wrapped up. I’d recommend this book as a great recreational read. It would make a great movie, but they’d ruin it, so read it instead.

My second book of interest that I am right now in the final pages of reading is The Call by Os Guinness. Yes, related to the brewer of beer. The subtitle of the book is “finding and fulfilling the central purpose of your life”. This book is hands down one of the most influential books I have read as far as practical living and spirituality. It is from a Christian worldview and it goes to great length explaining some of the trends in culture today and exposing some of the great errors in past thought and teaching that has brought us to where we are today as a society and a culture, not just America, but the west as a whole. The premise of the book, if I have discovered it is that we have lost calling as a concept and purpose that guides our lives. This is primarily due to the fact that we have gone away from and done away with God. And basically calling makes no sense, in fact is not even possible if there is no caller. Instead we have changed the search for vocation to the search for what will make us money. We no longer do things in modernity because it just should be done or do it for the value of the thing or sake of the thing itself. We only do things based on the perceived profit and benefit. I believe that this is an excellent book for any reader of any background. It poses some interesting positions and viewpoints and deals with a variety of topics and historical events as well as philosophy and religion. Those not of the Christian faith might not easily take in all that Dr. Guinness puts forth here, but no matter what background you come from it challenges you to think about life, about meaning and about what it is that you were created for.

The third book of the summer that I have been reading is a classic. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Originally transcripts from a radio show that he did, they are adaptions of the radio show worked into book form. I have always enjoyed C.S. Lewis since I first read a young child the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. This book is more like a conversation you are having with Lewis, with him doing most of the talking and him anticipating some of your remarks. The chapters and short and the topics range all over life and religion. I believe he does a great job of explaining the core of Christianity to the non-believer and believer alike. He does not get into denominational traditions or issues, but just the core of what it means to be a Christian, and he brings a great apologetic and support against relativism and the popular thought that truth is relative and right and wrong are relative. Those are great awesome points and stir up great philosophical conversations with and between people. But as Lewis points out, relative truth and relative right and wrong are great until you personally are the one being wronged, or the one lied to or affected by someone else’s truth. Then all of a sudden we discover a standard that seems to be there across all peoples. The book goes from there. I’m just about finished.

The final book of summer was “confessions of a reformission rev. - Mark Driscoll“. This was a gripping book, a history and airing mistakes, disasters and successes of a church that started in Seattle in the 90’s and is now considered a mega-church with over 4000 weekly attenders. The pain and sacrifice of bringing the Gospel to Seattle, the learning and unlearning, the building and re-building, all this documented in this book by the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church (marshillchurch.org). Mark has a great ability to tell stories and get you right in the mix, as well as just let you feel the gut wrenching pain and the soaring satisfaction of success, all the while interjecting great humor and sarcasm among the gory details of building a church such as Mars Hill. He is frank and honest about people and about himself, about where they came from, about where they are and about where they are going and how. Anyone who wants to see and understand a glimpse of what it takes to truly be on mission and attempt to stay focused on that mission and learn and suffer a long the way should read this book. Then they should look at their own life, their own church, their own pastor and understand all that is going on that they don’t see, and then they should stop complaining about all the silly things that we complain about in church and get back on mission.

Well, that’s all that I’ve read this summer aside from some various readings in books of the bible. If you pick any up based on this, let me know how you like them. Peace out.

tomb