Anniversary and More

Well folks, I confess that I shirked my blogging responsibilities--and nearly all other responsibilites yesterday--for a simple reason. Yesterday was Gayline's and my 32nd wedding anniversary. I took a prsonal day yesterday to pursue one major objective: to make sure my wife heard, saw, and sensed from me that I am one massively grateful, incredibly in love, deeply indebted husband.

32 years--and if God should will it and family patterns of life-expectancy hold true for us, we're likely to have 32 more! There's no one I'd rather do 60+ years with, and no one that could possibly be better for me; for my sanctification, my growth, my usefulness for the kingdom, and my simple, profound, everyday intoxicating joy. Thank you Gayline for being mine for life and for enduring all that it means to be wife to this man.

As for the "more" in today's title, it refers to an upcoming series of posts I'm hoping to start this coming Tuesday. I've planned a 15 part series entitled:
15 Reasons Why I Believe the Bible Is the Word of God.

Would you please pass the word regarding this friends? I'm convinced that one reason for the lukewarmness of many professed Christians and the agnosticism of many others inside and outside the church is a fundamental uncertainty about the Bible's true nature and identity. Not convinced that the Bible really is God's Word they remain uncommitted to, and unimpassioned about its message and truth.

This series will aim to set a foundation for faith and for impassioned orthodoxy (straight and true doctrine) and orthopraxy (straight and true living) in this age of unbelief. Hope you will follow along and invite others to do so as well.
Thanks.

Does Your Wife Need a New Husband? (Part 2)

In my experience, men are much more likely than women to have problems with sinful anger. Not only that, but in our flesh we tend to blame our wives for anything and everything that goes wrong in our daily lives. Who could blame our wives for wanting to change that dynamic?

Recently, I ran across some thoughts on anger in the book, The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard. Here’s part of what he has to say:

The answer to (the) question of why people embrace anger and cultivate it is one we must not miss if we are to understand the ways of the human heart. Anger indulged, instead of simply waved off, always has in it an element of self-righteousness and vanity. Find a person who has embraced anger, and you find a person with a wounded ego….

Only this element of self-righteousness can support me as I retain my anger long after the occasion of it or allow its intensity to heat to the point of totally senseless rage. To rage on I must regard myself as mistreated or as engaged in the rectification of an unbearable wrong, which I all too easily do.

Anger embraced is, accordingly, inherently disintegrative of human personality and life. It does not have to be specifically "acted out" to poison the world…. All our mental and emotional resources are marshaled to nurture and tend the anger, and our body throbs with it. Energy is dedicated to keeping the anger alive: we constantly remind ourselves of how wrongly we have been treated. And when it is allowed to govern our actions, of course, its evil is quickly multiplied in heartrending consequences and in the replication of anger and rage in the hearts and bodies of everyone it touches."

Been there? I have, and it breaks my heart to recall how often I inflicted emotional wounds on those I love as a result. I think we men are especially prone to this sin, and would want to encourage anyone reading this that there is both forgiveness and restoration if we surrender to the Spirit of God. If you realize you need help feel free to contact me or any of the pastors or care group leaders.

The part about my wife getting a new husband? Pat and I were walking and talking a while back (probably over a year ago) and reflecting on things we’d been through, including my sinful anger, when she made the comment, “I feel like I have a new husband.” Talk about amazing grace!

Know a woman who needs a new husband?

by Tim Bowditch

Does Your Wife Need a New Husband?

Strange question, you might be thinking. But I need to tell you that mine did. And according to her own observation, she got one. That kind of statement deserves an explanation.

I’m still thinking about our wives’ beauty and our responsibility to enhance it. There’s nothing I can think of that diminishes a woman’s beauty quicker than having to live with an angry husband. You can see the burden in her countenance, at least when the anger has flared up. And you can see it when she is unfairly blamed for everything that goes wrong in his world. After all, we are all sons of our father, Adam, who blamed Eve for his sin--when he wasn’t blaming God, that is!

For years, many years, I struggled with anger that was intermittently uncontrollable. I told myself it wasn’t all that bad, and most who knew me casually would have agreed. But Pat knew better, and even suggested to me at least once or twice that I get professional help, a suggestion I resisted. I could do this on my own.

I tried different things to gain mastery over the anger, including making a list of all the verses I could find in Proverbs about angry men (an exercise that I’d recommend to anyone who could use some insight in this area), and taking it to my office where I’d read it at least daily. There was some improvement over time, but the most important single factor for me did turn out to be professional help--the help of studying my anger under the guidance of David Powlison at the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. The context was a self-counseling project that was done in connection with the foundational course in CCEF’s two year certificate program in Biblical Counseling.

To say the project was helpful would be a huge understatement. One of the most helpful insights was that all my anger (and all yours, too, if you think biblically about it) was and is directed at God. For who is the one Being in all creation big enough to have ordered the details of my life differently--more to my liking? Once I was confronted by that, real progress became not only possible, but necessary. Ultimately it led to my sharing the story in a message I gave at TFC several years ago, and that in itself was a significant part of the process.

More in the next post, including the explanation of my wife’s new husband.

by Tim Bowditch

How to Make Your Wife Beautiful!

Since preaching on beauty of the Lord several weeks ago, a question has rattled around in my mind. It has to do with my role as a husband, and I’d like to pose it to readers of this blog. How do I work to beautify my wife?

I’m not thinking primarily in terms of external beauty here, although my efforts might well have an effect there. Rather, how do I help her to cultivate the inner beauty, what Peter refers to as “the hidden person of the heart--the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Peter 3:4)? After all, if I am to love in the way Christ loves the Church, would that not seem reasonable?

Recall that Paul says in Ephesians 5:25-27 that “Christ loved the church--that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (emphasis added) Splendor, holy, without blemish--sounds to me like any beauty the Church has is a result of the work of her Savior, and my love is to somehow approximate his, with a similar result.

So think with me about a few related questions:
1. How am I using the Word to cultivate that inner beauty? Am I encouraging her to read Scripture? Am I sharing with her insights the Lord has given me in my own reading? Are we reading together whenever possible? (The reading schedule developed for care groups is a natural place to start, if you aren’t already in the habit of doing this.)

2. Am I working to understand what makes her tick? This is connected, I believe, to Peter’s exhortation, “live with your wives in an understanding way” (1 Peter 3:7). Do I know what brings her heart alive? Do I pray for her heart? Am I looking for opportunities to provide her with quiet time, when she can be alone with the Lover of her soul? (This will be much more of a challenge for husbands whose wives have young children, and I wish I’d done more to provide this for my wife when ours were still young.)

3. Am I aware of her physical needs, such as rest, or relief from chronic pain for example? Or do I assume she functions the same as I do, which is not necessarily a safe assumption? (One suggestion here: ask your wife what household tasks are most demanding, and offer to help ease that load.)

4. Do I engage her in conversations that minister to her soul? Or do we rarely talk about anything other than the kids, or my/our job(s)? (Pat and I love to dream about vacations—we love going away together. But recently we have tried to talk as frequently about how we might make a greater, more significant investment in the Kingdom. There are many ways to deepen your conversations, but it will never happen unless you begin somewhere.)

5. Do I regularly express my love for her? And do I do it in a way that she knows I recognize and appreciate her inner beauty? Is she convinced that I find her captivating? (I have a “term of endearment” for Pat that works in this way… but you’ll have to think of your own!)

This could go on, but I think you get the point. As husbands, we need to make it our business to take responsibility for the beauty of our wives. It’s a “no lose” proposition!

by Tim Bowditch

Of Pageants, Purity, Marriage, and Moral Incongruities (2)

Just a follow up to my recent post with this same basic title. Since the Miss California brouhaha began some weeks ago, I'm afraid that my concerns about moral incongruities in the Christian community have been provided more (frankly unwanted) support.

This young lady has had more embarassing details emerge about her moral inconsistencies, but that is the lesser of my concerns (while this woman's moral issues are a serious matter between her and God, I feel in my bones no sense of self-righteous indignation or condemnation toward this woman. After all, I realize that any of us can become a mass and mess of spiritual inconsistencies).

What is more to my point is the ongoing confusing outrage over the abuse this woman has received from the liberal/gay world, with no corresponding outrage over the immorality of brazen immodesty and the mental and spiritual adultery it causes. My concern is mostly with the way that the Church has defined "bad sins" in terms of what others are doing (to paraphrase Jerry Bridges) rather than in terms of what God calls bad.

Somehow we have decided that homosexual marriage is really bad, while all the other ways that marriage has been wrongly defined and violated are not quite so bad. Christians scream out against gay marriage but then violate and dishonor marriage in a hundred other ways themselves. Ask yourself: Am I as opposed to other forms of unbiblical marriage as I am to gay marriage?

Let me state my thoughts in this way. As one commenter on this blog put it, rightly tweaking/improving a phrase I had used in my post, we're straining out camels while swallowing camels. Let us beware how we fight against one false view of marriage (gay marriage) while we tolerate with hardly a whisper of outrage other false views of, and attitudes toward marriage that have done far more damage to the sacred institution than gay marriage ever will do.

What is marriage? As I read various conservative family focused statements defining marriage here's the kind of phrasing I find: "Marriage is a social unit bringing together male and female." Or, marriage is "a union of one man and one woman".

Folks: that is not an adequate understanding of marriage. Marriage is not just a union of one man and one woman; it is a covenanted relationship between the same man and the same woman for life. The failure to define marriage in this fully biblical way has contributed far more to the breakdown of this sacred instituion than gay marriage has ever done or ever will do.

When the same man and the same woman do not covenant to stay emotionally, mentally, and physically faithful in impassioned, affectionate, spiritually invigorated and kingdom-committed union with each other so long as both shall live, marriage has been redefined and desecrated. The damage done by infidelity to this God-ordained marriage ideal by straight people far surpasses any damage ever done by gays.

Yet I have been around long enough to know that Christians consistently fail to live by this ideal, and seem to accept without much sorrow or criticism those who do the same, and yet rise up in indignation when they perceive that "the gays want to destroy marriage."

Think of it this way: Are we as concerned when people who have been unbiblically divorced and remarried (a social evil far more common and destructive to marriage than gay unions will ever be) receive special legal privileges (like tax breaks because they're married) as we are when gays want to be married so they can receive those same privileges and breaks? I think not.

Is my question valid? And is my assessment accurate? What am I missing?

O that we could see our glaring inconsistencies as well as the world does! May all who are married or ever hope to be, settle for nothing less than doing their part to pursue a passionate, faithful, mentally and physically pure, life-long covenanted union. Then we will at least be consistent as we have to oppose gay marriage (which we do).

One hundred Christian couples passionately committed to Christian marriage as biblically defined will do far more for the cause of marriage in our society than one thousand Christian couples who protest gay unions while simultaneously falling far short of that ideal.

At least that's my take on it for now. I'm open to input.

Fireproof

How fireproofed is your marriage?

We have just the secret to help you get that in place!

Here's a reminder that tomorrow evening at 7:00, TFC is showing the movie Fireproof.
This movie is a powerful presentation of biblical concepts of love for marriage and life.

The event is open to all couples.

Guys, I'm prepared to guarantee that your wife would cherish this experience more than the box of chocolates you gave her last week for Valentine's Day! Score big points by making sure to take her out on this date!

If there's any chance you haven't gotten your tickets yet, you can get them at the door. We're asking for a $10.00 per couple donation, but believe me when we say that if you cannot afford it we want you to come anyway. It's just that important and that good of a movie!

By the way, if you know of couples who need this event, invite them and if possible make the extra donation yourself. If you can't afford that, just invite them!

TFC's pastoral team and wives are hosting this event and can't wait to serve you.
If you need child care, we have limited options for you. Please contact the office
(732.914.8885) and we'll see if we can help.

If you haven't gotten a ticket yet but would like to come, would you please just let us know so we can have a heads-up? Thanks.