Anything worth having in this world takes work. We work to get better at our careers so we can make a living; to keep our bodies in shape to stay healthy; to fulfill our own desires and interests through our hobbies. We work around the house to keep it clean and presentable. We even work at our play, to compete in whatever sport we choose at a higher level than yesterday. Our work is planned, strategic, purposeful. We wish for a desired outcome and, if we choose not to be lazy, we stay at it … [Read more...]
The Marriage Hills We Die On
In May 1969, US Command ordered the frontal assault of a heavily fortified hill in Vietnam. They eventually took it, but at a heavy cost – 72 Americans died and 372 were wounded, all to take a hill of little or no strategic value. The fact that they purposely gave the hill up soon thereafter led to nothing short of a public relations disaster, and the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. Choosing which "hills" are worth dying on isn’t just the realm of top military brass, it’s something we … [Read more...]
How To Pick The Woman of Your Dreams
We spend our lives making choices. We choose what foods to eat, what products to purchase, what jobs to do. Most of the choices we make don’t really matter in the long-run. They are neutral – the difference between spaghetti and lasagna for dinner one evening, or what to wear to church tomorrow. Others, however, need to be approached with much more care. Who to marry is just such a choice. Choose correctly, and you are in for a lifetime of love with the person of your dreams. (Please don’t … [Read more...]
The Amazing Power of Grace (in marriage)
To those of us who are Christians, grace is truly an amazing thing. It is the favor that God gives us, apart from anything we do, that allows us to experience fellowship with the God who created us. Despite the fact that we are sinful creatures, utterly and completely depraved and devoid of any goodness whatsoever, Christ reaches down into the miry clay-filled pit, the pit wherein we would otherwise prefer to wallow, and pulls us out, cleans us up, and places us at the right hand of … [Read more...]
Those Everyday Days
From the monumental day we say our wedding vows in front of God and all the people in our lives, our journeys together are generally marked by the big things – anniversaries, births, vacation trips, and even the tragic events that inevitably come our way. If each marriage had a road map of its own, they are the towns that lay along the road from the beginning to the time that death do us part. But, in between all those, between those landmark events, the ‘towns’ along our marriage path, lie … [Read more...]