Posts Tagged ‘ Examine yourself ’
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Galatians 5:24, ESV
We like to think we know best, but God calls us to a higher standard of His perfection. We must deny our own ways and take up His.
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Psalm 2:11, ESV
We must remember that our God is holy and just, that He does not abide sin.
Yes, He has saved us through Christ, but we also work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12) and examine and test yourself to see if you are in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5).
Then we can rejoice.
Many today are commenting on Martin Luther, the other Reformers, the Reformation in general, or something along those lines.
Those are very important, and I will undoubtedly share something in the future.
You see, we met ten years ago on this day. And what she did not know that day ten years ago was that I had a list of things God and I worked out to find my future wife. (She learned of the list just a few weeks later, but she has not seen/heard the entire list … until today!)
The incredibly shortened, Readers-Digest-version of the story is this:
On the Ides of March of 2007, I ended a previous engagement. I had come to realize that we were not as compatible with each other as we could be, and there were many factors in play in that decision, including a deviation from biblical standards of relationships, if you dig.
A mere two weeks after that, I was ready to simply swear off marriage to “be as I am,” according to Paul (1 Corinthians 7:7). Instead, I was led to create a list of attributes to confirm a particular woman was my wife.
Then, ten years ago today, my life was reformed when I met my wife.
Interestingly, we half-met when I was having a civil debate with an unorthodox Jew about the anti-Semitic writings of Martin Luther … and then fully met on the way to a Campus Crusade for Christ costume party, at which we shared her costume. (Hence our dressing up in matching costumes each year.)
Anyway, without further ado, here are my 17 Theses of my Relational Reformation (first the more fleshly, then the more godly, but I will leave much of the fulfillment of these between the two of us for now!):
It literally took 17 days for her to fulfill everything on this list. Not one every day, as we did not see each other every single day, but on November 16, she only had (from my perspective) two more to meet … the last two … and that morning she met them.
It has been a great 10 years! Not always easy. Not always the best. But God brought us together and has brought us through thus far.
Now, I only pray our relationship with each other continues to bless and inspire others to seek God and godly relationships.
May His purity, light, and mercy continue to shine through us!*
(*sidenote: this sentence is a pun on her full name!)
Get a taste of wisdom over at Proverbial Thought!
Big and Newborn Bros
At my wedding 2.6 years ago
Yesterday was my little brother’s 28th birthday. I still think of him as a junior higher, perhaps 13 or 14 years old. That is now half his age! I can barely believe it!
This past Thursday, January 9, was my 14th Re-birthday. It was 14 years ago I first knelt down and declared I believed Jesus is my Savior and the Son of God. I was only a couple years older than how I still view my brother when that happened.
This all got me to thinking about something.
Some friends and I had a conversation about conversations a while back. It was all about the exclamation “Really?!”
The full context of this conversation was focused around what one of us had heard about friendly conversation and this one word. Asking this word after a friend or loved one makes a statement is the same as casting doubt on the validity of the statement.
It is one thing if the conversation goes like this:
“I just won a million dollars!”
“Wow! Really?!”
Winning a million dollars is not a typical occurrence in daily life. Shock and amazement with a little bit of doubt makes sense.
But when the conversation is more like this:
“I lost my phone today.”
“Really?”
In this context, it can said as any of the following:
And many others.
The underlying theme is that saying “Really?!” denotes disbelief or mistrust, or at worst it denotes aggression or animosity. And to be fair, most of us use the term in such a way as to say “Tell me more!”
You are probably thinking about how often you say “Really?!” to people, and, if you are like we were, you are attempting to justify your use of the term and explain that you usually mean “Tell me more!”
Let me then ask you this, Christian believer: How do you live your life?
Do go around claiming your connection to your church and as a good Christian, yet those outside the Church look at your example of love and light and think “Is this person really ‘blameless and innocent, [a child] of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16, ESV)
Put another way, do they look at your life and say “Really?! That’s a Christ follower?” And they want to stay away from God because of your example?
Or do you go around sharing the good news of Christ as you live out His commands of love and sacrifice? Do those outside the Church look at your example of love and light and think, “Really?! This kind of thing is true? Tell me more!”
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test.
2 Corinthians 13:5-6, ESV
a simple man of God 