WalkerFamilyLife Blog

Documenting what we already knew about Hollywood’s agenda to promote the “normalcy” of homosexuality. We must be in the fight for the Biblical definition of marriage and not let our thinking be influenced by the world’s agenda!

Hollywood now opening arms to gay characters, families – USATODAY.com.

Not Even a Hint: Guarding Your Heart Against Lust by Joshua Harris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the best book I’ve read on dealing with lust and sexual sin. I highly recommend it.

Josh Harris, author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, deals transparently with the roots of lust and the real issues behind it. Then he equips the reader with the tools needed to fight it.

The biggest problem we have in the fight for moral purity is that we’ve let the lies of the world influence our thinking. Josh helps us see where we’ve gone astray and realign with God.

One other key point about this is that it is not just for men, but for women as well. We all battle it in different ways and Josh deals with it evenhandedly.

Read it!

View all my reviews

This article from CNN’s web site on the continued attack on the definition of marriage:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/12/equally.wed/index.html

Does it strike anyone else as revealing that most of the time there’s one masculine and one feminine partner, even in same-sex relationships? If homosexuality was so natural, wouldn’t that be less common?

NBC and the Today show once again showed the media’s agenda to portray homosexuality in a sympathetic and positive light by deciding to allow gay couples in their annual wedding contest. Never mind the statistics. Never mind the law. Never mind the Bible. Folks, the fight for the family is raging – make sure you are fully engaged!

‘Today’ show decision to open wedding contest to gay couples spurs heated debate | Show Tracker | Los Angeles Times.

Adulterer dating site AshleyMadison.com offers $25M to buy rights to new Giants-Jets Meadowlands stadium – The Huddle: Football News from the NFL – USATODAY.com.

In Jeremiah chapter 12, the prophet voices an often considered question: “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” A story like this raises that question again for me. ashleymadison.com is a dating site for married people seeking to have an adulterous relationship. They are actively promoting and profiting from the breakup of the family. The fact that they can offer $25 million for naming rights to a football stadium while organizations like FamilyLife who are seeking to give families help and hope are scrimping and saving to make an impact with less $$ than that as an annual budget is maddening.

We know that our God is a God of justice and there will be a high price for those who cause others to stumble. I pray for those who are tearing apart families like the folks at ashleymadison.com that they will come to understand God’s love for them, repent and submit to Christ’s lordship in their lives, but in the meantime let me challenge you consider which side of the battle for the family are you investing in? We invite you to join with us in our battle to see Every Home a Godly Home!

Continuing the theme from Chapter 3 of how marriage illustrates the fact that Christ’s relationship with his bride is built on a basis of grace, Chapter 4 speaks about two forms which that grace must take. Colossians 3:12-13 tells us

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

(Colossians 3:12-13 ESV, emphasis added)

If you are quick to anger, instead of being long-suffering, the root is probably lack of mercy and lack of lowliness. In other words, being chosen, holy, and loved has not broken your heart and brought you down from self-centeredness and pride.

Paul recognizes that both forgiving and forbearing are crucial for life together – whether in church or marriage. Forgiveness says: I will not treat you badly because of your sins against me or your annoying habits. And forbearance acknowledges (usually to itself): Those sins against me and those annoying habits really bother me or hurt me! If there were nothing in the other person that really bothered us or hurt us, there would be no need for saying “endure one another.”

Al, Tipper Gore split puts focus on late-stage divorces – USATODAY.com.

This USA Today article about the recent news that Al and Tipper Gore are divorcing highlights the trend that in the “me generation” among baby-boomers, even those who are well settled into the empty nest are looking for greener pastures. It is a sad commentary, not only on the trends away from marital commitment, but on the lack of understanding that our world has about the purpose of marriage. As I’ve been discussing as I’m blogging through This Momentary Marriage by John Piper, marriage is a pointer to something far greater.

It should also serve as a warning to married couples of all ages to never stop investing in their marriage, regardless of how long they’ve been together. When we stop working toward serving one another and devolve into selfishness, we create an environment where the enemy of all marriages can gain a foothold.

What do you think of the Gore’s split and what it means? How have you had to battle the drift toward selfishness?

When asked what she wanted John Piper to say at this point, his wife Noel said “You cannot say too often that marriage is a model of Christ and the church.” Piper gives three reasons:

This lifts marriage out of the sordid sitcom images and gives it the magnificent meaning God meant it to have

This gives marriage a solid basis in grace, since Christ obtained and sustains his bride by grace alone, and

This shows that the husband’s headship and the wife’s submission are crucial and crucified.

Chapters 1 and 2 discussed the first reason. Chapters 3-5 will deal with reason #2 – how the grace of God should impact our marriages as they become showcases of new-covenant grace. Piper says we do this by “resting in the experience of God’s grace and bending it out from a vertical experience with God into a horizontal experience with (our) spouse.” This is the basis on which we can be naked and not ashamed in spite of the fact that we have much to be ashamed of.

In order to really hold this in perspective, it is critical that we hold close the memory of the wrath of God that we deserve. “Without a biblical view of God’s wrath, you will be tempted to think that your wrath – your anger – against your spouse is simply too big to overcome, because you have never really tasted what it is like to see an infinitely greater wrath overcome by grace, namely, God’s wrath against you.” Our sins were nailed to the cross, but not only our own but those of our spouse as well, if we are married to a believer. Piper says, “Husbands and wives cannot believe this too strongly. It is essential to our fulfilling the design of marriage.”

But the gospel goes beyond mere forgiveness, amazing as that is. It not only wipes away our debt but it credits us with the perfect righteousness of Christ himself! So not only can we bend outward the grace of God in forgiveness but also the justification that makes us righteous. Piper says, “As the Lord counts you righteous in Christ, though you are not righteous in actual behavior and attitude, so count your spouse righteous in Christ, though he or she is not righteous. Of course, this doesn’t remove the need for repentance and forgiveness, but grounded in the words of Col 3:12-13 it gives us a basis for forgiving and forbearing with our spouses.

In the next chapter, we will explore Forgiving and Forbearing.

Continuing the series blogging through John Piper’s excellent book This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence we come to Chapter 2: Naked and Not Ashamed. After establishing the covenant of marriage in Gen 2:24, Gen 2:25 tells us that “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” So what is the point of this verse?

Piper postulates that there are two possible reasons why they would not be ashamed. First, it could be because the effects of sin had not yet blemished them and so they had perfect bodies. “In other words, their freedom from shame was because they had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Is that the main point” (p 32)? Piper argues no for three reasons:

1. No matter how perfect your spouse is, if you’re selfish and unkind you can make comments that shame them.
2. Verses 24-25 are intended to be relevant after the fall, not just for these two pre-fall individuals
3. Verse 24 (covenant one-flesh union) creates the relationship where verse 25 (naked and unashamed) can happen.

So instead Piper opts for the second possibility, that they are free from shame because they have no fear of being shamed by their spouse. Because each of their spouses was sinless, they would not fear the other doing anything to shame them.

So what relevance does this have for us. Notice that there is much more power for living without shame in the second reason than in the first. We might think that if I were sinless and perfect I could live shame free, but that is both untrue (I am sinful and imperfect) and insufficient (my spouse could probably still shame me). Instead the hope for living without shame is found in a covenant love that does not fear being disapproved by the other, in spite of my imperfections.

Marriage was designed from the beginning to display the new covenant between Christ and the church. We have seen this in Ephesians 5:31-32. The very essence of this new covenant is that Christ passes over the sins of his bride. His bride is free from shame not because she is perfect, but because she has not fear that her lover will condemn her or shame her because of her sin. (pp 33-34 emphasis added)

But when they sinned, each instinctively new that the other had chosen independence from God and was now selfish at heart and no longer trustworthy. They also knew they had done that and that things were no longer as they should be. Their nakedness was the first effect of their sin (Gen 3:5-7). They felt both vulnerable to shame from their spouse and defiled and unworthy because of the loss of fellowship with God. They clothed themselves with fig leaves in an attempt to deny that shame, but God foreshadowed his redemption by killing a sacrifice and using the skins to make them new clothing.

A couple of questions for thought and comment below:

• Have you ever thought about the two possible sources for shame?
• How have you been guilty of putting shame on your spouse because of your own sinfulness?
• If “the very essence of new covenant love is that Christ passes over the sins of his bride”, are you willing to reflect Christ in this way?

Continuing the series blogging through John Piper’s excellent book This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence we come to the first chapter entitled “Staying Married is Not Mainly about Staying in Love.” Here Piper first really makes the case that marriage is about something infinitely more than two people in love wanting to live their lives together. Our culture simply does not understand this, and neither did Jesus’ culture (Matt 19:10-12) or any human culture. Our sin and selfishness blind us to the wonder of God’s purpose for marriage.

Foundationally, marriage is God’s doing. Piper illustrates this in four ways:

1. It is God’s design. He saw the solitude of the man and knew that he needed a helper suited to him (Gen 2:18). When Adam realized none of the animals would do, God created another creature in His image for Adam (Gen 1:27)
2. God gave away the first bride. I’ve never seen this before but, as the Father of the bride, God “brought her to the man.” (Gen 2:22)
3. God spoke the design of marriage into existence by saying “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24)
4. God performs the one-flesh union. The preacher doesn’t make the couple one flesh and it doesn’t happen at the consummation. God joins them together and it is not in man’s power or prerogative to destroy (Mark 10:8-9).

But ultimately, Piper argues, this marriage that God has created is designed for God’s glory. That this holding fast and one flesh union is a sacred covenant is implicit in Genesis but becomes explicit in Ephesians 5.

Christ thought of himself as a bridegroom coming for his bride, the true people of God (Matt 9:15; 25:1ff; John 3:29). … Christ knew he would have to pay for his bride with his own blood. He called this relationship the new covenant … This is what Paul is referring to when he says that marriage is a great mystery: “I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Christ obtained the church by his blood and formed a new covenant with her, an unbreakable “marriage.”

The ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it exists for God’s glory. That is, it exists to display God. Now we see how: Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream.

Staying married, therefore, is not mainly about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant…Therefore what makes divorce and remarriage so horrific in God’s eyes is not merely that it involves covenant-breaking to the spouse, but that it involves misrepresenting Christ and his covenant. Christ will never leave his wife. Ever. There may be times of painful distance and tragic backsliding on our part. But Christ keeps his covenant forever. Marriage is a display of that! (pp 24-25)

So the most important thing about marriage is showing in real life the glory of the gospel. Let me share a couple of questions for reflection and comment below:

• How does the idea of marriage as a display of Christ’s covenant keeping love change the way you think about your own marriage?
• Does this mean that it is not important whether you stay in love? If not, what role should your feelings play in your marriage?