How Do I Love My Wife Well?

Ben Stuart:

“How do I love my wife well?” Young husbands frequently ask me this question, and it is a great one to ask. They are often faced with a laundry list of good tips: prioritize date nights, lead family prayer times, organize evening devotionals, take walks together, buy her flowers, write poetry, help around the house, etc.

I have found that these lists can be extremely helpful examples or extremely tyrannizing laws. If you anxiously try to accomplish them all, the stress could steal the joy of your marriage. 

So what do we do? Is there one guiding principal that can help us navigate marriage well? I believe so. I believe we see it clearly in Genesis.

Read the rest.  

3 Practical Ways to Encourage Your Wife About Physical Beauty

Nicole Whitacre:

So what can you do? 

First, start by asking your wife or daughter about the beauty pressures they face. Granted, some women may be more affected than others, but beauty issues touch us all. 

Second, study Scripture. Labor to read good resources on this topic so that you can encourage, cherish, and lead your wife and daughter. 

Third, encourage true beauty. Lavish your wife with affection and adoration. Be your daughter’s biggest fan. 

Men who take the time to understand—or at least try to understand—the pressures women face will be able to help them resist the lies from our culture and pursue a biblical vision of beauty. Even if you don’t feel like you get it, I guarantee the effort will be greatly appreciated. 

We know you may not want to be caught dead reading a book with a girly cover called True Beauty, and we respect you for that, but learning about true beauty in order to serve your woman is one of the most masculine things you can do.

Read the rest.  

Gospel-Centered Sex

Wow.  One of the best articles I've read on sex in marriage from a Christian perspective.

Marci Preheim:

When Christians talk about sex and marriage they usually jump right to the requirements. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. Wives submit to your husbands—and on goes the sermon about how this plays out in ACTION. The wall of division between the sexes seems to grow, rather than fall, when these passages are preached. Neither side leaves content that the preacher has explained the duties of their spouse thoroughly enough. We head home with an extra measure of shame for ourselves and guilt for our spouse.

This is the point where the gospel steps in and detonates a nuclear bomb on all of our misconceptions of marriage. The gospel doesn’t just apply to marriage. Marriage is the ultimate illustration of what the gospel is. Christ is the second husband! Ephesians 5:31-32 says this: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh (and by “one flesh” he means the sexual union and all that entails). This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Let that profound mystery sink in for a minute. Two people becoming one flesh is an illustration of Christ and His church!

We miss the real pleasure of the marriage bed because we miss the profound mystery of Christ and His bride. He doesn’t command us to get over ourselves, take off our clothes and be vulnerable with each other in a merely physical act. He has removed our shame so that we can! When shame is removed, the result is an eagerness for this kind of vulnerability. When selfishness is removed, it becomes safe, and therefore pleasurable for both parties. It is only through His grace, we get glimpses of the Garden of Eden. He has taken our shame on Himself and given us His righteousness as our covering.

Our measly little marriages are only a shadow of the true marriage that is to come. When our marriages here disappoint us, it causes us to yearn for our eternal marriage that will never disappoint. The Lord does not shy away from the subject of sex. In fact it is front and center as an illustration of the intimacy of Himself and His bride. Here’s where it gets good.

Read the rest.

How to be a Man at Home

Good thoughts here from Brian Howard.

5 Questions To Ask Your Spouse Every Week

Mike Mobley:

1. How Did You Feel Loved This Past Week?
2. What Does Your Upcoming Week Look Like?
3. How Can I Pray For You This Week?
4. How Would You Feel Loved & Encouraged This Week?
5. How Would You Feel Pursued In Sex & Intimacy This Week?

Click over to read his explanations.  

A Word For Busy Moms

A great word here from John Piper.

How Then Shall We Date?

Marshall Segal has a great article on how to approach dating the right way.  Here are his eight points.  It's long but worth it.  Read the whole thing and pass it along to any singles that you know.

1. It really is as simple as they say.
2. Know what makes a marriage worth having.
3. Look for clarity more than intimacy.
4. Find a fiancé on the frontlines.
5. Don’t let your mind marry him before the rest of you can.
6. Boundaries make for the best of friends.
7. Consistently include your community.
8. Let all your dating be missionary dating.

Along similar lines, I would recommend this book.  

If Your Complementarian Culture Boarding on Crazy?

Trevin Wax offers some diagnostic questions.

• a reticence or hesitance to affirm and celebrate women’s contributions in local church ministry, particularly contributions that are more up-front and visible.= 

• a warped vision of manhood that focuses on calloused hands and physical labor and ignores other kinds of work. 

• the assumption that marriage is always better than singleness, so that singles feel like their identity is wrapped up in not having a spouse. 

• unwillingness to celebrate any evidence of gospel ministry or fruit among those with a more egalitarian viewpoint. 

• an unexpressed expectation that the godliest women have quiet and introverted personality types, and cannot be assertive and outgoing. 

• a competitive tendency that leads to unhealthy individual comparisons and rushed judgments, rather than extending grace to one another. 

• a spectrum of “holy” and “holier” choices with regard to a child’s education (from public school all the way to homeschooling).

Read the rest of his post that touched on some larger issues.  


Books by Trevin Wax:

• Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope
• Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals
• Gospel-Centered Teaching: Showing Christ in All the Scripture

A Deeper Beauty

Owen Strachan:

Let me put this very clearly: if, however unwittingly and unintentionally, I ever give my little girl the impression that her worth is found in her looks, beauty, and hotness, tie a millstone around my neck. I can’t ever teach my son the American myth that he’s valuable only if he’s a three-sport, twelve-letter athlete who doesn’t stagger after a concussion, and I can’t ever teach my daughter that she’s valuable only if men covet her and lust after her.

Perhaps I am revving at high RPMs here, but really, I can’t think of much else that I could do that would more harm my little girl, or children who are under my ministry.

We dads love our little girls. They are unspeakably precious to us. God has saved us from Satan’s deception regarding women. We cannot value them, as lost men just like us do, because of their figure and their prettiness. We’re not blind to beauty, and as they grow up we likely won’t teach our little girls some sort of “paper-bag” version of their body. We don’t at all want girls to feel any shame about being distinctly womanly. It was God’s mind, not Hugh Hefner’s, that came up with manly and womanly attractiveness. We’re not ashamed about that; we’re not prudes; we should carefully but honestly help our daughters see their womanliness as a gift of God, not anything else. If they grow up to be attractive, we’ll help them appropriately handle that, and we’ll even train them to see their own beauty as reflective of the One who is beauty.

His beauty, though visually stunning, is of course preeminently spiritual. It is the beauty of holiness, the apex of beauty.

In all this teaching, we guard our little girls. We show them that though a sinful world claws at them to define themselves physically, we will never do so. We cannot do so. Their worth is in their embodiment of God’s image. Their worth is, hopefully, in their union with Jesus Christ. We love them dearly, and we fathers will walk through fire and rain to help our little girls, but their worth is not actually found in us. It’s in God, and his good work in them.

That, my friends, is language worth repeating, over and over and over again.

Read the rest.

"When the prevailing thinking is boys will be boys — girls will be garbage."

Power post here from Ann Voskamp.

Toledo's Ben Pike ends football career to assist ill fiancee

[25] Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

(Ephesians 5:25 ESV)

Cleveland.com writes:

When faced with deciding between the two loves of his life, for Ben Pike, it wasn't even close. Football would not win this time.

That's how you know his love is true and strong.

When Pike's fiancee, Ashlee Barrett, learned in April 2012 she was battling leukemia, Pike began to prepare for the end of his football career at the University of Toledo. Barrett, a former Toledo basketball player, already had graduated and was back in her hometown of St. Louis, teaching second grade. Pike wanted to be with her as she navigated the long road of chemotherapy and recovery.

When Barrett, 23, learned Jan. 25 that the leukemia had returned, that the short respite of remission was over, the decision was solidified.

Pike, a Mentor High School product, has one more year of eligibility left at Toledo, one more season he could build upon what had been the best of his career as a defensive lineman in 2012. But the 22-year-old will graduate in May and take his education degree with him to St. Louis. He still plans to marry the love of his life June 15, and will be by Barrett's side each day through a bone marrow transplant and recovery from leukemia.

"I know in some people's terms, he's giving up things," said Becky Pike, Ben's mother. "But he's really not giving up. He's not giving up anything. He's really fighting for life. And he's just turned his forces to he's going to win a battle for life instead of winning on the football field."

After all, Pike and Barrett already have a love story made for a fairy tale.

Read the rest.

Quote of the Day

Lea Palmer:

Sex is not morally wrong; however, what is morally wrong is the separating sex from the love that it ought to express, and thereby exploiting and cheapening it. The more promiscuous women are, the more men will see women as sexual objects and use them only for sex. Although this idea of sexual liberation was supposed to equalize men and women, it in fact makes women even less equal than before and continues to paint them as these things to be objectified.

Read the rest.  

Husbands: Get a Second Job

Erik Raymond:

With a title like this there is little room for dilly-dallying along the way to the answer. So without much introduction, here is the tip that could save your marriage: Get a part-time job.

There. That’s it. Husbands, if you want to save or strengthen your marriage, get a part-time job.

I should say right off the bat that I am not talking about a literal job that will pull you away from the home for more hours. Instead I’m arguing for the husband to approach his time at home with his family with the same thoughtful intentionality and engagement that he would if he were to go to work.

Far too many marriages are suffering because the husband comes home mentally, physically and emotionally zapped from his work day. He has done well as the provider for the home and now he is going to come home and collapse into a lazy-boy (aptly named) or in front of a computer or some other process of decompression and relaxation from a tough day at work. This type of thing may be ok occasionally but if practiced regularly it will lead to major problems.

Read the rest.  

Fall Issue of JBMW

Denny Burk:

The Fall 2012 issue of JBMW has some fantastic resources in it, and it is available now for free from the CBMW website.

Looks like some really good topics.  Click over to take a look.  

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith

Jeremy Walker:

"Brutally honest" may be an overused phrase in book reviewing, but I think it applies here. This book begins with its then 36 year old author enjoying her role as a high-achieving lesbian doyenne of Queer Theory, a "tenured radical" in the liberal arts at a large research university in New York. From there, it charts her exposure to gospel truth, the comprehensive chaos that followed as Christ called her to be his disciple, and the sweeping sanctification and sincere service that followed that. Writing about and wrestling with things as only an English professor with a predilection for the Romantic can, with a strong capacity for self-analysis and a transparency that is bracing, Mrs Butterfield records this journey from the perspective of a felt outsider suddenly drawn into the kingdom and eventually (as the wife of a church planting pastor in the Reformed Presbyterian Church) on the frontline of its battles. That she does so honestly but not pruriently is one of the strengths of this book: she is clear and blunt without ever being coarse. There are points at which Mrs Butterfield wields her vorpal sword to slay whole herds of sacred cattle simultaneously, and I responded with a hearty "Amen!" far more often than with a stifled "Aargh!", enjoying her boldness even when wishing to push back against her conclusions. Too often Christians seek to win to Christ people who are just like them, who fit their notions of what churchgoers ought to be. Rosaria Butterfield prompts us to think more humbly about what it means to be an effective witness in an increasingly Corinthian society, with real insights into the world (not just the homosexual culture) and the church from both sides. This is a genuinely refreshing read by a woman who, it seems, states and sacrificially acts on her thoughtful and deeply-held convictions with characteristic boldness. I should love to debate with her about all kind of things, but I hope I have also learned from this sobering, provocative and joyful testimony. (I am sure that a homeschooling English professor like the author is disappointed by a significant number of errors in the text that will, I hope, be corrected in future printings.)

 Get the book here.

Don't Believe The Caricatures Concerning Headship and Submission

"The caricature of headship is that of a bossy man demanding food and sex when and where he wants it. The caricature of submission is that of a mousy wife acting the role of a compliant doormat. But the real model for headship is Jesus Christ . . . Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ love the church, [and] He gave Himself up for her. This means that husbands are summoned to a life of sacrifice. Jesus showed His authority among His disciples -- and it was true authority -- by washing their feet. This is the kingdom ethic. Does anyone want to be great in the kingdom? Then he must be the servant of all. It is no different in the home"

- Doug Wilson, 5 Paths

10 Questions to Ask Your Wife … If You’re MAN enough!

Stepping Up blog:

• What could I do to make you feel more loved? 
• What could I do to make you feel more respected? 
• What could I do to make you feel more understood? 
• What could I do to make you more secure? 
• What could I do to make you feel more confident in our future direction? 
• What attribute would you like me to develop? 
• What attribute would you like me to help you develop? 
• What achievement in my life would bring you the greatest joy? 
• What would indicate to you that I really desire to be more Christlike? 
• What mutual goal would you like to see us accomplish?

(HT: Shaun Groves)

How Important is Complementarianism? A Response to Carl Trueman

Interesting post here from Denny Burk.

The Kindergarten of Biblical Headship

“The example the husband sets has eternal consequences. This means headship is more about controlling one’s character than controlling one’s wife. The man who is more concerned with how his wife should obey him than with how he should obey God fails the kindergarten of biblical headship.”

~Bryan Chappell, Each for the Other, p. 78

A Better Conversation about Sexuality

From this article in Christianity Today:

Hill is learning to struggle well as a celibate gay man because of his embeddedness in “the true story of what God has done in Jesus Christ.” That story, which gives context to the particulars of his own life, promises the forgiveness of sins, reminds him that all Christians undergo a painful and yet glorious transformation of their affections, proclaims that our bodies do not belong to ourselves but to God and the church, and commends “long-suffering endurance as a participation in the sufferings of Christ.” Where others might regard his abstinence as “choosing to prudishly, pitiably shelter [himself] from the only life worth living,” Hill celebrates the yes of the gospel story over the yes of sexual fulfillment: “Imitating Jesus; conforming my thoughts, beliefs, desires, and hopes to his; sharing his life; embracing his gospel’s no to homosexual practice—I become more fully alive, not less. According to the Christian story, true Christlike holiness is the same thing as true humanness. To renounce homosexual behavior is to say yes to full, rich, abundant life.” If “Jesus is the model of the fulfilled human being,” as biblical scholar Walter Moberly writes, then the absence of sex in our Savior’s life means an absence in ours is not an impoverished existence—far from it. On the contrary, “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” are blessed, even when it’s painful and lonely to bear up under that burden in our fallen condition (Matt. 19:12).

Read the rest.