Have you ever been constipated? How did you get there?
I learned something about the human body that I thought was very cool. You know that feeling you get when you have to go #2. What happens is water goes into your stool and you get that feeling. Usually if you listen to that urge right away, it all comes out so nicely and how refreshing it feels to get rid of all that waste.
What happens if you ignore that feeling? Some of you have that special gift to go anytime but most of us who are not as in tune with our bowel movement signals, if we miss that moment, it is very hard to get it back and feel that sensation again.
Why? Well when the water moves into your stool and you ignore the signal, the water that gave you the URGE is reabsorbed into your body and the signal is compromised, aka diminished. The more you ignore that signal, the more desensitized you get to the signal to go. The more we listen to the urging immediately we learn to recognize the signals. It almost seems stronger and clearer.
The people who have missed the window of the urge/feeling/sensation/signal are more likely to get constipated and if you have ever been very badly constipated it is awful. In severe cases it can cause tremendous pain.
As we have been going through our series on the Holy Spirit, this is the perfect illustration of hearing His voice. There are times when we hear a sermon, read the Bible, are praying or are fellowshipping and we get a signal, hear a still small voice, get the urge, feel the sensation, to do something. We hear Him.
When His voice is ignored or that moment passes and we do not obey, it is harder to hear Him again. The urging is diminished. Some of us who have been trained in righteousness can sometimes push ourselves to do what we need to, but others of us just can’t get ourselves to do it. If we keep ignoring the feeling of water flushing out the junk then we get backed up and it becomes hard and it gets harder and harder to sense what to do and when to do it.
Obey right away because Delayed Obedience is Disobedience.
Partial Obedience is Disobedience.
Obedience is Immediate every time …so if you feel that urging – get up and do your business right away.
This urging is God’s grace!
-Written by Wonmin
This sounds so simple. In principle it is. But in practice we sinners are wired to trust in means, not God. Over and over I devise plans, and then find my initial enthusiasm rise or fall as the plan seems smart or not. This is trust in plans, not trust in God. There is no doubt God wants us to use means to get his work done. But just as clearly he wants us not to trust in these means. “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD” (Proverbs 21:31). Therefore, our confidence should not be in the horse, but in the Lord. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7).
George Mueller’s life was devoted to vindicating this truth. He explained once how it relates to our vocation. We should work to earn a living and supply our needs, but we should not trust in our work but in God. Otherwise we will be ever anxious that our needs will not be met if we can’t work. But if we are trusting God, not our work, then if God ordains that we lose our job, we can be confident he will meet our needs, and so we do not need to be anxious. Here is the way he put it.
“Why do I carry on this business, or why am I engaged in this trade or profession?” In most instances, so far as my experience goes, which I have gathered in my service among the saints during the last fifty-one years and a half, I believe the answer would be: “I am engaged in my earthly calling, that I may earn the means of obtaining the necessaries of life for myself and family.” Here is the chief error from which almost all the rest of the errors, which are entertained by children of God, relative to their calling, spring. It is no right and Scriptural motive, to be engaged in a trade, or business, or profession, merely in order to earn the means for the obtaining of the necessaries of life for ourselves and family; but we should work, because it is the Lord’s will concerning us. This is plain from the following passages; 1 Thess. 4:11-12; 2 Thess. 3:10-12; Eph. 4:28.
It is quite true that, in general, the Lord provides the necessaries of life by means of our ordinary calling; but that that is not THE REASON why we should work, is plain enough from the consideration, that if our possessing the necessaries of life depended upon our ability of working, we could never have freedom from anxiety, for we should always have to say to ourselves, and what shall I do when I am too old to work? or when by reason of sickness I am unable to earn my bread? But if on the other hand, we are engaged in our earthly calling, because it is the will of the Lord concerning us that we should work, and that thus laboring we may provide for our families and also be able to support the weak, the sick, the aged, and the needy, then we have good and scriptural reason to say to ourselves: should it please the Lord to lay me on a bed of sickness, or keep me otherwise by reason of infirmity or old age, or want of employment, from earning my bread by means of the labor of my hands, or my business, or my profession, He will yet provide for me. (A Narrative of Some of the Lord’s Dealing with George Muller, Written by Himself, Jehovah Magnified. Addresses by George Muller Complete and Unabridged, Vol. 1, [Muskegon, Mich.: Dust and Ashes Publications, 2003], p. 393)
This truth applies not only to our vocation but to all areas of life. Moment by moment we use means to keep us alive and accomplish the purposes of God (food, houses, phones, cars, medicines, doctors, builders, advisers, etc). The lesson we need to learn is not to trust in these things when we use them, but to trust wholly in God. This applies also to planning for our church. We plan. We budget. We teach and preach and counsel. The temptation continually is to trust in these things and not in God to work in and through and without these things. So as we dream toward ministry and missions and a permanent North Campus, let us use means, but let us trust God. His promises are the only sure thing. All our means are fallible.
Mueller summed up the principle like this: “This is one of the great secrets in connection with successful service for the Lord; to work as if everything depended upon our diligence, and yet not to rest in the least upon our exertions, but upon the blessing of the Lord.” (Narrative, vol. 2, p. 290). Or, as the Bible more carefully says it: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). Even more to the point, Paul says: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
May the Lord grant us freedom from all anxiety as we trust him not means,
Pastor John
(Source: desiringgod.org)
An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. – Proverbs 31:10
I often believe my husband has not found an excellent wife. When he tells me I have been short with him lately, overreacting and snapping unnecessarily, I am discouraged at my lack of excellence. Impatience and disrespect have brought embarrassment to him on several occasions.
My task-oriented, performance-driven heart attempts to fix itself by making a list: An excellent wife cooks with organic food (not Velveeta), sews her own clothing (or at least irons her husbands shirts!), speaks only words dripping with grace (and not sarcasm) and reads her Bible for hours on end (okay, minutes?!).
The list brings more condemnation; concrete evidence that I cannot be an excellent wife on my own.
While all of these things can be signs of excellence, they are definitely not requirements. Turning to Scripture for comfort and conviction, I am reminded: An excellent wife is not found but forged. No man goes out and finds a woman who is pure wife perfection and marries her. Neither of them truly know what that even looks like yet!
“It is the character of God, and not our husbands, that can be fully and firmly trusted. Our core identity must be anchored in Christ alone.
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A godly woman becomes an excellent wife as she understands she is made in the image of God, re-made in the image of Christ, and formed over a lifetime of repentance and redemption. Excellence is not measured by a to-do list; it is manifested in the life of a wife who knows Jesus intimately.
An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones. – Proverbs 12:4
When I humbly and honestly assess the times I bring my husband shame, I am sobered by its destruction. To bring rottenness to his bones means mine are already disintegrating with unbelief and bitterness. We bring shame as wives when we:
The wife who brings shame to her husband is the daughter who does not truly know and trust her heavenly Father.
If the wife’s identity is centered around her man, she will certainly deliver shame when he disappoints – as he will inevitably do. It is the character of God, and not our husbands, that can be fully and firmly trusted. Our core identity must be anchored in Christ alone.
We are made precious by Jesus. This heart transformation is the basis for any preciousness that our husbands experience in us. It is not about what we do but what our precious Savior has done for us that graces us with the power to be excellent wives. We are helpless on our own.
“Excellence is not measured by a to-do list; it is manifested in the life of a wife who knows Jesus intimately.
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A godly wife understands that she is nothing outside of the saving grace of Jesus Christ and has no excellence apart from him. Christ’s grace and love are precious to her. Fueled by his riches, she will become a glorious crown to her husband as she helps, nurtures, and loves him from the depths of Christ’s righteousness in her.
It takes a 10-minute ceremony to become a wife. It takes a lifetime to become an excellent wife – one who understands that Christ’s shed blood on the cross is needed to offer excellence to our husbands.
i think this arictle: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/23/health/living-well/demise-of-guys/index.html by CNN is probably why all these articles about this is popping up now…
John Piper writes about a conversation with his wife, Noël, when he was preaching a series on marriage a few years ago. After a couple sermons on the foundation and ultimate meaning of marriage he asked for her feedback. “You cannot say too often that marriage is a model of Christ and the church,” she replied.
And she is positively right. Marriage as a picture of Jesus and the church is “Marriage 101” for most Christians and yet, we cannot underline the truth enough.
We’ve heard it helpfully said of the gospel that it’s not just the thing that gets you into the Christian life, but also that which empowers your everyday Christian living. There’s a parallel here in how we talk about marriage as a model of Jesus and the church.
This reality isn’t just for our entry into marriage, as if it’s a thing to check off during pre-marital counseling. Marriage as a picture of Jesus and his church roots our day in, day out experiences with our spouse. It “gives marriage a solid basis in grace,” Piper writes, “since Christ obtained and sustains his bride by his grace alone” (This Momentary Marriage, 42).
Continually remembering that marriage is about Jesus and his church drives us to considerwhat Jesus has done for his church. And when we bask in our vertical experience of God’s mercy it overflows horizontally to transforms our relationships.
Pastor John writes,
In Colossians 2:13–14, Paul writes one of the most wonderful things imaginable:
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him [Christ], having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
Those last words are the most crucial. “This — this record of debt that stood against us — God set aside, nailing it to the cross.” When did that happen? Two thousand years ago. It did not happen inside of us, and it did not happen with any help from us. God did it for us and outside of us before we were ever born. This is the great objectivity of our salvation.
Be sure you see this most wonderful and astonishing of all truths: God took the record of all your sins that made you a debtor to wrath (sins are offenses against God that bring down his wrath), and instead of holding them up in front of your face and using them as the warrant to send you to hell, God put them in the palm of his Son’s hand and drove a spike through them into the cross. It is a bold and graphic statement: He canceled the record of our debt … nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:14).
Whose sins were nailed to the cross? Answer: My sins. And Noël’s sins. My wife’s sins and my sins. The sins of all who despair of saving themselves and who trust in Christ alone. Whose hands were nailed to the cross? Jesus’ were. There is a beautiful name for this. It’s called a substitution. God condemned my sin in Christ’s flesh. “Sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Husbands and wives cannot believe this too strongly. It is essential to our fulfilling the design of marriage. (45)
This is the grace upon which our lives depend — and the grace that fuels a husband’s sacrificial love and a wife’s glad submission. Pastor John sums it up, “Let the measure of God’s grace to you in the cross of Christ be the measure of your grace to your spouse” (46).
John 3:16 - The Story of Love” came from the movie Most (The Bridge), a beautiful Oscar-nominated movie and winner of many prestigios film festivals that tells the story of the close relationship between a bridge operator and his young son and the fateful day when both try to head off an impending rail disaster.
A steam train full of hundreds of passengers are unaware of the danger as they head towards an open drawbridge. When a desperate young woman witnesses an act of virtue beyond imagination, her life is forever changed.
This video is narrated by Reggie Dabbs through his sermon at Planetshakers Conference 2007. The message was inspirational that we decided to match it to the movie itself. Although throughout Reggie Dabbs sermon it appears that he’s making reference to the video, we were absent from the conference and made our best effort to combine the sermon to the movie.
Jesus says He gives us peace, not the kind that the world gives, but a peace that surpasses all understanding and leaves us in a state of full confidence that He is indeed for us…and therefore nothing can separate us from His love.
