The danger of a good marriage

“Your marriage may be good. It may even be great. You may have grown together in appreciation, respect, unity, understanding, and love. You may have learned where problems typically exist for you as a couple, and you may have learned how to solve them together. You may have identified places where you and your marriage need to mature. You may have created a lifestyle of honest communication and efficient problem solving. You may have forged a solid and enjoyable friendship between you. You may be able to look back and be thankful because you recognize what you once were compared to what you are now.

But there is one thing that you need to accept: your marriage may be great, but it is not safe. No marriage this side of eternity is totally problem protected. No marriage is all that it could be. This side of heaven daily temptations are constant threats to you and your marriage. This side of heaven the spiritual war goes on. This side of heaven good marriages are good marriages because the people in those marriages are committed to doing daily the things that keep their marriages good. Things go wrong when couples think they have reached the point when they can retire from their marital work and chill out, lay back, and slide. Perhaps the greatest danger to a good marriage is a good marriage, because when things are good, we are tempted to give way to feelings of arrival and forsake the attitudes and disciplines that have, by God’s grace, made our marriage what it has become. (my emphasis)

- Paul Tripp, What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage, 237, 238 (HT:  Z)

What are you worried about?

What’s worrying you?  How can you achieve victory over anxiety?  Here are some biblical arguments and specific verses that Justin Taylor posted to help us fight and conquer anxiety in our life

1. God is near me to help me.

Philippians 4:5-6: “The Lord is at hand; [therefore] do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

2. God cares for me.

1 Peter 5:7: “. . . casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

3. My Father in heaven  knows all my needs and will supply all my needs.

Matthew 6:31-33: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

4. God values me more than birds and grass, which he richly provides for and adorns; how much more will he provide for all my needs!

Matthew 6:26-30: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

5. What can man do to me?

Matthew 6:25: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” [I.e., you still have eternal life even if you have no food; you will still have a resurrection body even if you are physically deprived.]

Luke 12:4: “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do.”

Luke 21:16, 18: “Some of you they will put to death. . . . But not a hair of your head will perish.”

Romans 8:31-32, 35, 38-39: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? . . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

6. Anxiety is pointless.

Matthew 6:27: “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” [Answer: no one.]

7. Anxiety is worldly.

Matthew 6:31-32: “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things. . . .”

James 4:4: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

8. Tomorrow doesn’t need my anxiety.

Matthew 6:34: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Lamentations 3:23: “[God's mercies] are new every morning.”

In my opinion, the most biblically practical of all of John Piper’s books may be one of his least known: Battling Unbelief: Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure.

He defines “anxiety” as “the loss of confident security in God owing to feelings of uneasiness or foreboding that something harmful is going to happen.”

Here’s an outline of verses that can be used as weapons to combat the lies and false promises of the Evil One in contrast to believing the great promises of God:

Battling Anxiety in General

Lamentations 3:22-23; 1 Corinthians 10:13; Deuteronomy 33:25; Psalm 56:3; 1 Peter 5:7; Philippians 4:6-7

Battling Anxiety About Being Useless

1 Corinthians 15:58; Isaiah 55:9-11

Battling Anxiety about Feeling Weak

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Battling Anxiety about Difficult Decisions

Psalm 32:8; Psalm 25:8-9

Battling Anxiety about Opponents

Romans 8:31

Battling Anxiety about Afflictions

Psalm 34:19; Romans 5:3-5

Battling Anxiety about Aging

Isaiah 46:3-4

Battling Anxiety about Not Persevering to the End in Faith

Philippians 1:6; Hebrews 7:25; Jeremiah 32:40

Battling Anxiety about Death

Romans 14:7-9

Who gets you up in the morning?

“Do you ever feel unmotivated to open your Bible and read?  At times do you feel apathetic about your life of prayer?  The problem is not so much a lack of obedience as it is a waning set of motives for carrying out your spiritual disciplines.

In his diary, Robert Murray M’Cheyne offers a succinct motive for the devotional life:

Rose early to seek God and found Him whom my soul loveth.  Who would not rise early to meet such company?”

–Terry Enns, Words of Grace

Post Super Bowl thoughts

Apart from the game itself, here are few musings on events surrounding the Super Bowl:

On the Tebow Ad:  To borrow Shakespeare, “Much Ado about Nothing” or  whoever said it, “A tempest in a teapot!”  I thought the ad was harmless. I think it made those who demanded that it not be shown look very foolish. And if you didn’t know a thing about all the hullaboo about the ad, I don’t think it would have made any impact on you whatever.  It was almost too tame, although hopefully it will send a lot of traffic to Focus on the Family’s website. Remains to be seen.

I posted a couple of weeks ago about Erwin McManus’ church which  spent a lot of money and time producing an ad for Doritos. I had seen the ad and thought it was lame as well.  I agree with Gene Veith’s analysis who asks at the end of his article,

So is this a ministry activity or a triviality? Yes, if the church wins a million dollars, it will help its ministry, but is this worthy of a church?

What if churches or denominations put on actual commercials that communicated its actual message? What might be a good commercial that a church might run without looking stupid or demeaning itself? Or had churches better just stick to preaching, teaching, and worshipping?

Finally, I’m mulling over Ray Ortlund’s announcement that this is his last Super Bowl:

“The Super Bowl is not just another NFL game.  It has become an intensified concentration of vulgarity and ego, with enough athletics in the game and cleverness in the commercials to trick me into watching.  It’s simply not what I’m living for.

That was my last Super Bowl.”

Question of the day 02.09.10

What is one thing you could do to improve your prayer life this year?  –Don Whitney

N.T. Wright trying to explain Genesis 1-3

This video shows you what happens when you don’t take Genesis 1-3 at face value. N.T Wright gets it wrong

Take wisdom to your work

Here are some excellent application questions for us regarding our work ethic and practices from Curtis Thomas:

1.    Do I regularly thank God for my job – whether it is a president of a Fortune 500 company or a garbage collector?

2.    Do I properly respect those at work in authority over me, even those whose religious, political or moral convictions are different from mine?

3.    Do I work heartily in whatever vocation I am placed – knowing that my service is to the Lord?

4.    Do I work hard even when the boss is not watching?

5.    Do I strive to have as good a reputation with my coworkers as I have with my fellow church members?

6.    Do I work as efficiently as possible as to make my company profitable?

7.    Do I refrain from cutting any moral corners on the job?

8.    Do I make suggestions on how to improve job performance and morale?

1.    Do I refrain from conversations in which the boss or supervisor is criticized?

2.    Do I refrain from taking small items from my employee – paper clips, copy paper, pencils, etc. – even though “everyone else does it?”

3.    Do I make personal copies on the company copier?

4.    Do I use the company Internet connection for my personal use?

5.    Do I fudge on my expense account or time card?

6.    Am I the same person on the job as I am when away from the job?

7.    Do I encourage employer respect, rather than helping create employee dissatisfaction?

8.    Are my work habits sloppy, or do I attempt to always produce work of excellence?

9.    Am I on time, or am I often tardy at work?

10. Do I misuse sick leave or personal leave days?

11. Do I abuse workers’ compensation benefits?

12. Do I use company time to witness to my lost co-workers, or do I wait until break time or lunch time?

13. Do I remind myself regularly that my job performance and general attitude can bring either glory, or dishonor, to my Lord?

Curtis C. Thomas

Life in the Body of Christ, Founders Press, 2006, p. 47-48, www.founders.org.

Question of the day 02.08.10

How do you define success in your work?  How does God define success in your work?

[For more about what God thinks of work, click here and scroll down to the February 7, 2010 link.]

Some depressing news about depression medicine

Newsweek magazine: studies suggest that the popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo. In fact, they may be worse.

Worth reading if you are taking, are considering taking, or know someone who is on medicine for depression.

For some biblical counsel on this issue, also read “Hope for the depressed” or watch Ed Welch share some thoughts on depression.

What did you expect? Cultivate your marriage

“There is no doubt about it: too many of us are trying to have hundred dollar conversations in dime moments.  Too many of us have left little time in our schedules for meaningful conversations, tender connection, and focused problem solving.  Too many of us have little time for relational reflection and introspection in our marriages.  Too many of us are doing marriage on the fly.  Marriage, too often, is what we do in between all the other things we are doing that really determine the content and pace of our schedules.  But marriage doesn’t function very well as an in-between thing, and marriages surely don’t tend to thrive when we leave them alone and ask them to grow on their own.  A marriage that is going to grow, change, and become increasingly healthy needs cultivation.  Like a garden, it doesn’t do well when it is being neglected.”

Paul Tripp in his upcoming book on marriage entitled “What Did You Expect?”

Are you taking time to cultivate your marriage? Are you trying to squeeze in $100 conversations in dime moments?  What did you expect?

HT: ChrisBrauns)