Urban Meyer: then and now

I have enjoyed Ohio State football ever since the days of Woody Hayes.  I was excited when they hired Urban Meyer to lead the Buckeyes. But I am even more impressed by the man now since I read this article.  The article chronicles his life up to the present–starting with what his life was like before he quit coaching at Florida.  That was then:

“Before you join Urban Meyer, who is walking toward the exit of the Ohio Statefootball office, there’s a scar you need to see. A few years ago in Gainesville, his middle child, Gigi, planned a celebration to formally accept a college volleyball scholarship to Florida Gulf Coast University. It was football season, so she checked her dad’s calendar, scheduling her big day around his job. As the hour approached, she waited at her high school, wanting much, expecting little. Some now-forgotten problem consumed Meyer, and he told his secretary he didn’t have time. He wasn’t going. His beautiful, athletic, earnest daughter would have to sign her letter of intent without him. Meyer’s secretary, a mother of four, insisted: “You’re going.”

Eighty or so people filed into the school cafeteria. Urban and his wife, Shelley, joined their daughter at the front table, watching as Gigi stood and spoke. She’d been nervous all day, and with a room of eyes on her, she thanked her mother for being there season after season, year after year.

Then she turned to her father.

He’d missed almost everything. You weren’t there, she told him.

Shelley Meyer winced. Her heart broke for Urban, who sat with a thin smile, crushed. Moments later, Gigi high-fived her dad without making eye contact, then hugged her coach. Urban dragged himself back to the car. Then — and this arrives at the guts of his conflict — Urban Meyer went back to work, pulled by some biological imperative. His daughter’s words ran through his mind, troubling him, and yet he returned to the shifting pixels on his television, studying for a game he’d either win or lose. The conflict slipped away. Nothing mattered but winning. Both of these people are in him — are him: the guilty father who feels regret, the obsessed coach who ignores it. He doesn’t like either one. He doesn’t like himself, which is why he wants to change.”

This is now.  Urban Meyer will be home for dinner! Keep reading and you will find some words of wisdom for dads!

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How can you pray when you are weary

Pau Tautages with some words of care to the weary in heart:

Prayer is a difficult labor to begin with, but when spiritual warfare and the unexplainable trials of life drain you of all strength it can become almost impossible. So, how do you pray at those times? For me, personally, I have found no better solution than to pray God’s words back to Him. This assures me that my words and thoughts are in line with God’s, which greatly helps in times of confusion and doubt. But it also gives voice to a heart that is tempted to go silent from weariness.

Here are two passages of Scripture that I have found helpful to pray in those times of spiritual exhaustion and the weariness of life. Both are wonderful sources of renewal when your heart wants to throw in the towel.

Psalm 61:1-4 is already written in the first person. Therefore, you can simply pray it the way it is, making David’s words your own.
Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me dwell in your tent forever! Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings!

Isaiah 40:28-31 contains wonderful statements about God’s attributes; for example, his power, strength, and readiness to help.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Take Isaiah’s truth-statements and turn them into a first-person prayer. . . .Keep reading

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Is it true Jesus never addressed same-sex marriage?

Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Theological Seminary answers this question here.  Here is a just an excerpt:

Is it truly the case that Jesus never spoke to the issue in terms of gender? The answer is a simple no. He gives His perspective on this when He addresses the issue in Matthew 19:4-6. There, speaking to the institution of marriage, Jesus is clear when He says, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” That Jesus was committed to heterosexual marriage could not be more evident. A man is to leave his parents and be joined to a woman who becomes his wife. This is heterosexual marriage. That He also was committed to the permanence and fidelity of marriage is clear as well.

So, how might we sum up the issue? First, Jesus came to deliver all people from all sin. Such sin, He was convinced, originated in and was ultimately a matter of the heart. Second, Jesus made it clear that sex is a good gift from a great God, and this good gift is to be enjoyed within heterosexual covenantal marriage. It is simply undeniable that Jesus assumed heterosexual marriage as God’s design and plan. Third, Jesus sees all sexual activity outside this covenant as sinful. Fourth, it is a very dangerous and illegitimate interpretive strategy to bracket the words of Jesus and read into them the meaning you would like to find. We must not isolate Jesus from His affirmation of the Old Testament as the Word of God nor divorce Him from His first century Jewish context. Fifth, and this is really good news, Jesus loves both the heterosexual sinner and the homosexual sinner and promises free forgiveness and complete deliverance to each and everyone who comes to Him.

More here.

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