Video Time!
Why are you reading this when you can watch me say it!! (Well, some of it, not all of it! Please still read it, but it can be after you watch the video.) So, click HERE to watch the video. Go ahead and do so. Click now! What are you waiting for?? Click HERE or HERE or even HEREHEREHEREHERE! But I digress…
On a more serious note, Paul Tripp wrote a marriage book entitled “What Did You Expect?” back in 2010, but has updated it with new material and a new focus and therefore given it a new name: Marriage: 6 Gospel Commitments Every Couple Needs to Make. In this email I would like to provide you with his 6 gospel commitments every couple needs to make. Here you go:
1. We will give ourselves to a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness. This is the only way that a marriage grows. Regular patterns of forgiveness give us the courage to continue to confess, and regular patterns of confession allow us to experience the joy of the restoration of forgiveness.
2. We will make growth and change our daily agenda. As sinners, we have the perverse ability to be all too easily satisfied. Don’t be satisfied with anything that falls short of God’s wise and beautiful plan. But this requires a daily investment of pulling weeds and planting seeds.
3. We will work together to build a sturdy bond of trust. We simply cannot have a healthy, God-honoring, mutually satisfying marriage without trust. In a fallen world, trust allows couples to weather the discouragements that every couple faces.
4. We will commit to building a relationship of love. You may be shocked at this, but I am convinced that many Christian marriages are devoid of real love. Yes, there may be some respect and appreciation, and, yes, the couple may have learned how to avoid daily battles, but many followers of Christ don’t practically incarnate Christ’s love to their spouse.
5. We will deal with our differences with appreciation and grace. The Creator puts very different people next to each other. The striking beauty of a marriage is when this couple learns to celebrate and benefit from their differences, shielded from their weaknesses because of their spouse’s strengths.
6. We will work to protect our marriage. There are few things more dangerous to a marriage than the feeling of “arrival.” When a couple loses a healthy sense of need, they start coasting, and patterns of laziness and inattention grow. The best protection for a husband and wife is humble prayer and diligent attention.
Blessings brothers and sisters! Grace and peace to you all and I look forward to seeing you this weekend!
John
To complete the self-assessment and sign up for a discipleship group click HERE.)
Additional reading/watching:
CONTEXT MATTERS: GOD’S MERCIES ARE NEW EVERY MORNING
These “Context Matters” articles from Knowable Word are really good and helpful. In this one the writer looks at the well-known words, “God’s mercies are new every morning.” “When we learn to read the Bible as an actual book and not as a professionally-bound collection of pull-quotes, we’ll find that some of our favorite passages take on deeper and more sobering meanings.”
THE MISSING CONVERSATION IN OUR ACCOUNTABILITY
According to Ryan Griffith, “the main reason accountability fails is because of its separation from robust spiritual care.”
THE FEAR OF DEATH AND GOD’S GRIP
Jim Elliff: “The Coronavirus itself may have turned out to be more frightful in the projection than the reality of it — unless you or someone you love died from it. Like all things that bring us fear, there is truth behind that fear. The truth that choked us is that all of us will die (unless escaping at the coming of Christ). It is only a matter of time.”
