Marriage

Quotes and Notes from Ch. 8 Marriage of Desiring God, John Piper

The reason there is so much misery in marriage is not that husbands and wives seek their own pleasure, but they do not seek it in the pleasure of their spouses. The biblical mandate to husbands and wives is to seek your own joy in the joy of your spouse.

Selfishness seeks its own private happiness at the expense of other. Love seeks its happiness in the happiness of the beloved. It will even suffer and die for the beloved in order that its joy might be full in the life and purity of the beloved.

The pursuit of our own joy in the joy of the beloved.

If you live for your private pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against yourself and destroying your joy. But if you devote yourself with all your heart to the holy joy of your spouse, you will also be living for your joy and making marriage after the image of Christ and His church.

Desiring God, John Piper, pg. 205-221

Eph 5:25-31 (NIV) Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- 30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."

Husbands taking the role as a spiritual leader.

Servant-leadership

Mutual submission

Pursuing our joy in the joy of another.

Walking w/ God

Quotes from Finding God, Larry Crabb. Ch. 2

Seeking God
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord. Jer 29:13-14

Walking w/ God
Gen 5:22 - Enoch walked with God 300 years. How is "walking w/ God" distinct from "living out" your allotted years? Am I merely living, or am I walking w/ God?

Our agenda is to fix the world until it can properly take care of us. God's agenda is to bring all things together in Christ until every knee is before him.

We treat personal discomfort (self-hatred, low self-esteem, insomnia, money pressures, loneliness) as the central evil from which we need to be saved. When we blend the pursuit of comfort w/ Christianity, Jesus becomes a divine masseur whose demands we heed only after we are properly relaxed.

But this is not the Christianity of the Bible. Christ offers hope, not relief, in the middle of suffering, and he commands us to pursue him hotly even when we'd rather stop and look after our own well-being.

Whenever we place a higher priority on solving our problems than on pursuing God, we are immoral.

I must surrender my fascination with myself to a more worthy preoccupation w/ the character and purposes of God. I am not the point. He is. I exist for him. He does not exist for me.

The question me must ask is this: Are we merely living, or are we walking w/ God?

Finding God, Larry Crabb. pg. 29-42

Seek First

Sometimes I think its too easy to get caught up in the busyness of the world --- working 10-12 hours a day, kids, activities such as rowing, working out, and just doing "stuff" --- that we lose sight of what's most important.

UT President-to-be, Powers, tells a story:
A professor fills a vat with rocks, then asks his students whether it is full. Of course, they say. Then the professor pours pebbles into the vat and asks whether it is now full. Yes, the students say. He adds fine sand, poses the same question and gets the same answer. Finally, he adds water.

What, asks the professor, is the moral of the story? There's always room to add something, the students reply. Wrong, the professor says. The moral is if you want to get the big rocks in, you've got to put them in first.

Put the big rocks in first. Sometimes our hands are so full of fine sand, that we can't hold the big rocks.

But what are the big rocks? What is the fine sand?

For me, the past several weeks have been "busy". Work, family, and planning for the future take up so much time. However, the spiritual side - the things of God - have fallen by the wayside.

Jesus tells a story of a busy person in Luke:
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." Luke 10:38-42 (NIV)

While Martha was busy, albiet with good intentions, Mary has chosen to focus on Jesus. Jesus' response is: Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.

What are our priorities? What are God's priorities? Are the rocks we are focusing on big rocks or fine sand in God's eyes?

God's purpose is to build a spirtual kingdom. Our physical needs are inconsequential to our spiritual needs.

We don't want to trade the things that are eternal for the things that are passing.