Jim’s marriage was in trouble.  He walked into the counselor’s office hoping for some support for the way he felt.

“What brings you here today”” asked Dr. Noble.

Jim looked down, refusing eye contact with Dr. Noble, as he began to answer, “My wife has changed from when we first married–she has so many more  wrinkles on her face.”

“Jim,” Dr. Noble interrupted, “do you think your wife has always had some of these wrinkles and flaws, and maybe you are just now beginning to notice them?”

“No, it is my wife showing signs of aging.  She no longer has the smooth and perfect skin I fell in love with.”  Jim realized how this sounded to the counselor, but he felt he had to finish telling his side of the story.  ”My wife has also put on some weight.  When we first fell in love, she was thin and athletic.  Now, I look at her with disgust.  I can’t even bear to touch her anymore.”

Dr. Noble had heard this kind of thing before from other men and women who had grown tired of their marriage.  He knew this was really the beginning of the end for Jim ad his wife.

“But don’t get me wrong, the problems are not just physical.”  Jim continued before Dr. Noble could interrupt.  ”My wife has said and done some things that I just cannot forgive.  She is not the same person I married.”

“Every marriage has troubles, Jim”  Dr. Noble affirmed, “but there is a healthy way to address these problems and a destructive way.  What have you done to make things better?”

“A lot!” said Jim, feeling vindicated by how hard he has worked to fix his wife.  ”I have offered my wife money so she could get some plastic surgery and be the woman I want her to be.   I also write her notes on a regular basis that remind her of all the things she does wrong during the week and how she can make herself  a better wife.”  Jim now looked up to meet Dr. Noble’s gaze with confidence in all that he had done.  ”I have done everything I can to make my wife better, but she is too slow to change.  It is time to move on.”

“What do you mean?”  Dr. Noble asked… but he already knew the answer.

“The only think left of our marriage is a piece of paper.  All that I have left is a meaningless institution that lacks the love and passion I long for.”  Ken was now more determined than ever to finish what he started.  ”I want to leave my marriage and start over with a new and better wife.  I want a wife who will not blemish with age, who will never do anything that upsets me, and one who will always meet my needs.

I know this is God’s plan for marriage, and I refuse to settle for anything less than God’s perfect design.”

Revelation 19:7-9

“Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and His wife has made herself ready.”

And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen,
clean and bright,
for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

Then he said to me,
‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!’
“These are the true sayings of God.”

Thank you, Daddy. Thank you for sixty-one years of faithfulness to me. I am simply looking into his face now. Thank you. You were a good father. You never put me down. Discipline, yes. Spankings, yes. But you never scorned me. You never treated me with contempt. You never spoke of my future with hopelessness in your voice. You believed God’s hand was on me. You pproved of my ministry. You prayed for me. Everyday. That may be the biggest change in these new days: Daddy is no longer praying for me.

I look you in the face and promise you with all my heart: Never will I forsake your gospel. O how you believed in hell and heaven and Christ and cross and blood and righteousness and faith and salvation and the Holy Spirit and the life of holiness and love. I rededicate myself, Daddy, to serve your great and glorious Lord Jesus with all my heart and with all my strength. You have not lived in vain. Your life goes on in thousands. I am glad to be one.

I kissed him on his cold cheek and on his forehead. I love you, Daddy. Thank you.

Listen closely men… do you hear the heartbeat of Fatherhood? This is the legacy of a real Daddy and lover of their son. If my kids can speak these words over me when I die, I will have proven a worthy Dad. If my kids can tell me these things while I am still alive, I will be a happy Dad.

Today is a day of choice for every Dad. Do you work hard, but never take time to play? Do you speak words of affirmation to your kids? You may not have lots of money to leave your children or a big house to in which to shelter them from the rain, but being a Daddy is so much more…

Dads; what will you chose as your legacy?

Yes, I realize that sounds odd to suggest we celebrated our “sorrow”, but I think the oddity of those words reflect a deeper quality missing from most marriages—the quality of self-sacrifice.

Read, for example, this passage from Genesis 3:16 where God speaks words of punishment to Eve for her sin.

To the woman [God] said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

Notice first that the consequence of sin was not suffering, but an increase in the suffering for the woman.  Ever since I was a kid, this verse has struck me as odd.  God does not say he will “create” pain, but he will greatly multiply it.  It seems that the woman, even before the Fall, was always to experience some pain in childbearing. The implication here is that even in God’s perfect Garden, there was a place for pain in childbirth.  Why?  How can there be pain in paradise? Because it just may be that life can not exist without sacrifice, and I think God always wanted the husband and wife to share in both the joy and pain of creation.

Martin Luther, in his commentary on Genesis 3:16, says it well when he writes the following about the increased sorrow of Eve in childbearing.

“Moreover, the word רַב appears here; it denotes a quantity which is both extensive and varied. This means that Eve’s sorrows, which she would not have had if she had not fallen into sin, are to be great, numerous, and also of various kinds. The threat is directed particularly at birth and conception. But conception designates the entire time during which the fetus, after being conceived, is carried in the womb, a time beset with severe and sundry ailments. From the beginning of that time a woman suffers very painful headaches, dizziness, nausea, an amazing loathing of food and drink, frequent and difficult vomiting, toothache, and a stomach disorder which produces a craving, called pica, for such foods from which nature normally shrinks. Moreover, when the fetus has matured and birth is imminent, there follows the most awful distress, because only with utmost peril and almost at the cost of her life does she give birth to her offspring.
When the heathen, who have no knowledge of God and of His works, see this, it displeases them. Because of these discomforts, they maintain that a prudent man should not marry. The female sex has been greatly humbled and afflicted, and it bears a far severer and harsher punishment than the men. For what is there of such things that a man suffers on his own body? But because through marriage the husband transfers, as it were, a part of those punishments upon himself (for he cannot without grief see those things in his wife), it has come about that wicked men prefer fornication to marriage.”

Martin Luther, vol. 1, Luther’s Works, Vol. 1: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1-5, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 200-01.

Certainly we live in an age when marriage is under attack, but not from the places one might think.  As Luther says, to prefer the pleasure of sex outside the bonds of marriage, is easy for a man because he can then avoid sharing in the sufferings of the woman. To be quite frank, I think in our culture today, many a man has found a way to avoid sharing the burden of the woman even within the bond of marriage.  What a sad age for marriage.

However, to embrace Divine-marriage, is to share together in both the beauty and burden of childbearing.  Childbirth is then not something a truly “married” woman will experience alone; rather it is a shared experience where the pain is made less by a loving husband who suffers in heart, mind and soul alongside his treasured wife.

Certainly the marital sharing of sorrows goes both beyond childbearing and it goes both ways. True-marriage… Divine-marriage… Biblical-marriage… is a man and woman willing to take on the sorrow of the other, and in-so-doing, they covenant with God to increase their own burden and bring comfort to their mate.

By the time of my 18th anniversary… I pray I am a man who better shares the sorrow of my wife so that I may increase her joy for living.

For example, “Christian Music”.  Is there really such a thing?  No.

The word “Christian” is a noun that defines an individual’s relationship as a disciple of jesus Christ.  The term “Christian” Music turns the word into an adjective that modifies the noun music.  Can music be a disciple of Jesus? How silly.  The term “Christian” as it relates to music creates an easy way to market a product to a targeted demographic, but it is terrible abuse of its true meaning.

There is music that is sung by Christians.

There is music that is written to worship YHWH.

But… there is no such thing as music that has accepted Jesus as Savior and therefore no such thing as “Christian music.”

I believe the same principle about “Christian Music” applies to the term”Institutional Church”.  The latter term exposes a gross misunderstanding of the word “Church.”

There is only one Church defined as the men and women who are collectively saved by the shed blood of Jesus.  There are some churches that live out their faith in a more structured way and others in a far less structured way, but they are all still THE Church.

My biggest gripe about the myth of Institutional Church, is that the term is used to create a divide between followers of Jesus.  If a Church is deemed “Institutional” by some group then somehow, magically, it is no longer considered a valid gathering of saints.  “Institutional” becomes a pejorative, created by one group of Christians, to marginalize another group of Christians.  It is used to create an artificial divide between what some consider the “real” church from the “false” church… Does this sound familiar?

“whew.. I am glad I am no longer part of that Institutional Church and that my faith is real.”

Words have purpose and their use has consequence.  In this case, the purpose of calling some gatherings ”Institutional” has the consequence of dividing the one Church into social denominations.

Let me be clear…

Are there some practices carried out in some Churches that depersonalize our faith?  Yes.

Can we do better at living out the nature of Church in America?  Yes.  

But… using pop-culture market-driven phrases designed to sell books and that have no biblical foundation only creates division and will keep the one Church from going where we need to go.

I watched the promotional video produced by the church which outlined their biblical justification for their video-campus mission.  After watching, my first question I asked myself was this: “Which do you value as your #1 mission in ministry, innovation or intimacy?”

While these two goals are not necessarily contradictory, the one you value most will absolutely determine the goals you set and the way you live out the mission of the Gospel each and every day.

So which is your #1 calling: innovation or intimacy?

• Is “influence” based on size of congregation?
• Book sales?
• Drawing power at conferences?

I really don’t know, but I am certain it is a combination of all these things that make someone a celebrated man or woman of influence.

In contrast to Influence, I want to consider the word “Accountability.”

Influence is persuading someone to share your viewpoint, but accountability is having the relationship that insures meaningful transformation. To be certain, influence is important, but accountability is even more so.

I strive to be a leader that does not just inform the mind, (influence) but also helps to transform the life of those around me (accountability).

Certainly these two ideas are not exclusive to one another, but deciding which one is your #1 priority will determine the shape of your ministry to the church.

• If your #1 priority is Influence, you will make decisions that enhance your public profile, and limit the number of people you mentor.
• If your #1 priority is Accountability, you will limit your “Influence factor” on larger groups of people, and take more time to develop deep and meaningful relationships.

So the question is this, which do you put as your #1 priority? Influence or Accountability?