Enough to spare

 

“ …[and] that you do so even more and more abundantly …” – Paul

Paul uses that phrase twice in this part of 1 Thess 4.  Once in the first verse:  more and more, and then again in verse ten:  more and more.  In both cases he’s referring to abundant love.  I’m guessing it’s pretty important and that’s why he repeated it, so I wanted to dig a little deeper, and I found out what he was getting at!

Our love is to be:

• beyond measure
• superabundant in quantity
• superior in quality
• excelling
• exceeding
• increasing

But as I was reading the definitions from the Greek, this – this one is the one that jumped out at me:

•  enough and to spare

Ok, what is spare – what does it look like?  How do we see, enough and to spare?

Good grief, God shows me spare and I sit waiting for some terrific revelation and all I can think of is a Jeep; how super spiritual of me.

What do tires have to do with love?

Hmmmm, just can’t shake the image of a Jeep.  But then I realize what’s on the back of the Jeep? … A spare!  -and finally … the dots connect!

That spare is so important, it has to be there for when you need it otherwise you’re stuck.  We drive on four tires but when trouble comes and a tire change is needed; it’s the spare tire that really counts.  The spare tire is pulled out in crisis.  When one of the other tires fail, the spare picks up the slack!

It’s easy to let love spill onto nice easy going people; it‘s almost expected – where‘s the crisis when it‘s all good?  People that never say or do the wrong thing to you – they never slight, hurt or offend.  So if you are surrounded by ’yes’ people you never need that love that is enough and to spare because you’ll never find yourself dealing with conflict.

Marriage is a vehicle to carry you where you need to go grow. 

Sometimes on this journey we run into crisis and we’re forced to the side of the road.  At times it’s in the way of a small tear or a large rip and occasionally it’s an absolute blow-out.

It doesn’t matter the size or how it happened, you’ll still find yourself stranded on the side of the road.  Whose got the spare and will set it in place so the journey will continue … who’s got the love … enough and to spare?

Tire failures happen in all relationships, but the most painful blow-outs occur in marriage ~ are you carrying your spare?  Or will you just leave the vehicle abandoned on the side of the road.

If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost. -Zig Ziglar

Flesh Versus Spirit (Part 2) The heat – Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego

In Part 1,  I talked about discovering that whenever I got that feeling of wanting my own way and not willing to yield to a different direction, then in fact I was entering the pressure of temptation and about to feel some heat from the ensuing battle between my flesh and spirit.  Ending Part 1, I mentioned about the two types of rewards:  Flesh or Spirit.

 The reward of the flesh

You know you are getting the reward of the flesh as you feel a rise of vindication within yourself, and a sense of ‘knowing better’ how to choose.  It’s similar to the sweet smugness that drips into your veins when someone, ‘gets what’s coming to them.’  There is no sense of struggle or burning heat when this path is chosen – just the satisfaction of getting your own way.

The reward of the spirit

This reward is completely different.  There is a struggle inside; and it hurts.  Sometimes the friction of the conflict between my flesh and spirit is so thick and heavy I can feel a physical manifestation of heat.  I am clearly able to see the transition from flesh to spirit begin to happen as the external strife between me and my husband lessens and it becomes one that is between me and God – which leads to true peace – the peace that Jesus gave us:    Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you.  Not as the world gives do I give you.   (The reward of the flesh) Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.  [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.] –John 14:27, interjection added

And as much as I wanted to have my own way AND spiritual maturity; it just doesn’t happen that way.  God has designed it to be one way or the other and temptation helps us to see which one we’ve chosen.

No one has to ‘tempt’ you to pull your hand away from a hot fire, it happens naturally.  But to purposely put your hand into the heat of the fire, now that’s a different story.  There is just nothing natural about that.

I believe that the physical pain of the burn from this fire doesn’t come close to the internal pain from the struggle of the flesh being cut away from the spirit (Heb 4:12; Gal 5:17), when we are being tempted in conflict to not go our own way.  We find power to yield to another by going into the heat of temptation, not by turning away from it.  Just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn’t find the supernatural power of God outside the heat of the fire – but inside the oven. (Daniel 3:25)  The power and rescue came because they pushed in to the heat of the fire.

Can you imagine?  They knew what was going to happen to them – they were going to die.   They stood patiently as each of them was tied and looked on as the fire was stoked seven times hotter! (vs 19-20)   Imagine the internal strength it took for them to stand there and not fight for their lives but instead let themselves be bound because of their hope in God.

Isn’t this what happens during temptation in marriage?  The more we deny our flesh as it reasons with our spirit for it to choose self rather than become obedient to the spirit, the more enraged our flesh grows.  Just like King Nebuchadnezzar, the flesh becomes full of fury as it demands to have its way (vs 13), and it threatens us with fear of the unknown and mocks us for looking like a fool as we choose the spirit and yield to our husbands.

Each one of those men had to wrestle with the same question of flesh against spirit.  They had to choose to exchange the desire of the flesh – to live, for the desire to obey the spirit; with obedience bringing the consequence of being burned to death.

If you’ve been married for any length of time, you know the desire I’m talking about.  Things are just not right, again.  Trapped with the scorching heat of temptation from conflicts in your marriage.  This is when the finger that bears your wedding band suddenly becomes so swollen from the heat and your flesh itches and begs you to take it off, and leave it off — seek freedom for yourself through divorce.

At the end of the day, just like the three who went into the oven, I had to ask the hard questions:  What is this temptation revealing to me about myself?  Trust in self (way of the flesh) or trust in Him (way of the spirit).  Do I have the faith to conquer my flesh?  Will I press into the temptation of a heat that is seven times hotter in order to find my Redeemer – or will I run?

I encourage you – Step into the oven, you will find Jesus there!

 

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists

 

Flesh Versus Spirit (Part 1) Temptations

Places of temptation and trials are not easy or fun!  And right away, as I read those words:  trials, temptations – my flesh starts to quiver with uneasiness.  Conversely, we don’t need to be tempted to stay somewhere that’s easy – where there is no pressue, no conflict - no temptation.

I don’t need to be tempted to stay in a fun place, whether sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows or receiving flowers on valentines, or going to a movie that we both want to see.  These easy places of living are not – under a trial.  There is no temptation.  But an easy place with no pressure can quickly turn into a trial of temptation.  How about a win fall of cash?  (who doesn’t love THAT surprise).  But before you’ve even received the funds; there’s been a slight shift in the invisible world and each of you are going to enter your own trial.

No more easy.

You want to renovate your kitchen (which is in desperate need) and your husband wants to renovate the basement (also in desperate need).    Heat from the pressure of each person wanting their own way begins to enter the marriage in the form of temptation – the temptation to push against the other person.

What will be done with the cash?  Explaining to each other, again, why it should be the kitchen/basement, and finally, after much more ’reasoning’ with each other … he yields.  Yay!!  You have won your way; you are going to have a brand new kitchen!  He will see it will be so much better for both of us in the long run.

But did you really win?  Yes, you may have won your own way in the natural, for the life you have in the here and now.  But in the big picture, who yielded and brought the conflict to an end and kept the unity?  Who was patient under trial and stood up under the temptation to want to seek their own way?

Blessed (happy, to be envied) is the man who is patient under trial and stands up under temptation, for when he has stood the test and been approved, he will receive [the victor’s] crown of life which God has promised to those who love Him. -Jam 1:12, emphasis added

It’s the one who went into the fire to wrestle against the temptation to choose their own way (way of the flesh) to instead, choose the way of the spirit (the other person’s way).

Who gets the eternal reward of defeating temptation - the one who chooses flesh or the one who chooses spiritual maturity?

 

Next post – Flesh Versus Spirit (Part 2) – The heat, David, and Jesus

 

Floatation devices

 

We wear life preservers when we’re in boats to keep us afloat when things get crazy and a crisis lands us in the lake.  We don’t put our life jacket on as we are falling into the drink, it goes on before.  It’s a preventative measure.  It’s difficult to think clearly when you are scrambling just to keep your head above water to breath.

Having a fight with a spouse is like a crisis that knock us both over-board.  You usually don’t see it coming and are caught “off guard.”  I’ve learned that it’s better to be wearing some kind of floatation device ahead of time so that negative emotions of fear and anger don’t take over and cause panic.

Some of my floatation devices for marriage:

•  I keep copies of my marriage license in various places throughout my home.  (Preferably those places I go when I’m mad)
• Writing out my own wedding vows on a regular basis.
• I look at my wedding album pictures (or video if that’s what you have).
• I have various mixed selections of music that are special to us.  Or you could also have a series of songs that were played at your wedding.
• I have a list (actually, various lists) of love for God offerings (buy a coffee card from his favourite coffee house, fill his car with gas, make one of his favourite dinners, make his favourite cookies).  If you are stumped, try starting here .

We are told to conquer evil with good, these marriage floatation devices can keep your head above water when all you want to do is strike back in retaliation.

 Never return evil for evil or insult for insult

(scolding, tongue-lashing, berating)

But on the contrary blessing

[praying for their welfare, happiness, and protection,

And truly pitying and loving them].

 (1 Peter 3)

If your son and daughter were going to go white water rafting together, I’m sure you would want them to wear their life jackets.  I think God wants the same thing for us, His own sons and daughters.  When we start to ‘shoot the rapids’ in the boat of our marriage.

What is the first thing you do after a fight?  Do you have a ‘floatation device’ in place for your marriage when you ‘shoot the rapids?’

 

Pulling down strongholds

　Artist – Shannon Christensen

We wives have the most intimate view of our husband’s weaknesses; their strongholds.  We are the ones with the power to help or to hobble them.  Husbands know this; and they know we know it.  This knowledge is what gives us power.  But if I hobble instead of help, this will just reinforce the stronghold making the power work against the both of us.

Do the actions in my marriage help my man to pull down his strongholds; or do they just pull him down?

A Wife Who Hobbles

• Holds grudges from mentally keeping score of wrongs
• Focuses on all the differences between them
• See’s herself as the only victim
• Has no humility, which is demonstrated in lack of love, the need to be right and self vindication

A Wife Who Helps

• Accepts him as a man and doesn’t try to change him
• Strives for unity and focuses on things that are common (things they agree on)
• Seeks peace and is not easily offended
• Focuses on her own weaknesses and not his

For further reading on hobbling or helping click here.

 

 You don’t marry one person; you marry three:

the person you think they are; the person they are;

and the person they are going to become as a result of being married to you.

~ Richard Needham ~

 

 

How would my husband describe me?

 

I married the “wrong” person

Over at Marriage Gems, Lori has been writing an interesting series that started with her post, We all Married the Wrong Person.  I am really enjoying reading her perspective on this subject.

I touched briefly on this subject back in July in my post titled, Did I Marry the Wrong Guy.

Lori’s most recent posts got me to thinking about focus and phraseology, and the lament of those seeking to be free of ‘unhappy’ marriages — I married the wrong person.

Why is it phrased that the other person is the … wrong person.  Is it, perhaps because it shows the perspective of where the blame is sought to be directed.  This is a small observation and somewhat quizzical; yet, very telling.

I’ll use my own marriage as the example.  If Darrell and I are hitting that sweet spot in our marriage less and less as the years go by, I could naturally conclude, “I think I married the wrong person.”   By process of elimination that makes me the right person.

Merely semantics?   I’m not so sure.  Isn’t the spouse that is seeking to exit the marriage the one that finds the other spouse to be, the wrong one?  If a wife is so sure that her marriage isn’t working because her husband is the wrong one, (the one at fault) doesn’t that mean that her scrutiny finds him to be the one with the problems (aka – all the sin)?  While simultaneously viewing herself as problemless (aka – no sin, or very little).

I’m sure Captain Hook from Peter Pan would even find this to be, bad form.

And Hook is right.  It’s an unbalanced assessment.  It is because of a wife’s strength in an area that she can see the weakness of her husband.  What she’s actually doing is comparing weakness to strength.  In order for it to be fair, about whether a person is the wrong one or not, we need to compare weakness with weakness and strength to strength.  Then we will be able to see things a little more clearly; more fairly.

Equal comparison will force me to take my high powered precision focus and center it back where it belongs, on my own weaknesses.  This will help change the negative question that seeks to destroy my marriage, to a positive affirmation of empowerment:

From:  Did I marry the wrong person?

To:  Lord, help me to be the right person.

We must learn to regard people

less in light of what they do or omit to do;

and more in the light of what they suffer.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer ~

corrected vision

I’ll be honest, when I first met Sarah I thought she was mindless and weak.  Sarah obeyed her husband, Abraham, and called him her master …  And you are now her true daughters if … I didn’t want to be her daughter; I liked being a daughter of the feminist movement and much preferred the mantra, “I am woman hear me roar!”  I thought this made me powerful and strong; I didn’t know that these very attributes had already been infused into the core of who I was as a woman, and that I was feeding them fuel, from the world … and not God.

Sarah embodied the opposite of everything I was, and knew about being a wife.  There appeared to be an uncrossable chasm between us and when I read verses like the one above, the chasm widened as my inner woman squirmed, “he’s not the boss of me … he can run his 50% and I’ll run my 50%.”  Now that’s equality in marriage.

And so began God’s battle with me, to straighten me out and show me that the 50/50 split was not His view of marriage … it was the world’s.  He slipped a little burr in the middle of my back.  This burr had a name:  it was called marriage.  It also had a face:  it was Darrell’s.  This burr stuck to my skin and as I wrestled and fought with God, for 14 years, it rubbed my back raw.

All my crying out to God seemed to fall on deaf ears.  I wanted Darrell to listen to me.  I wanted to do things my way; it seemed that he made most, if not all, of the decisions.  I had ideas and solutions about how to run our family; but it was always so conflicted between us whenever we tried to talk about things or solve problems; and it just kept getting worse.

Weeks turned into months and then into years, and every passing day I became more and more contentious about NOT seeing any circumstances or solutions …  Darrell’s way

…and the burr just kept slicing away.

I had created a war zone in our home, and a hardened-heart within myself.

Finally, in a woman-child pout, I screamed at God, “fine, I just won’t have an opinion about anything; is that what YOU want?”  God responded with silence.  A deafening silence.  I had been in our kitchen doing dishes and slamming cupboards and the silence stopped me dead when I realized what I had said through gritted teeth, and Who I had said it to.  I fell to my knees, not so much in repentance of my somewhat calloused heart, or  adoration of God, but in a slump of emotional fatigue and confusion and started to cry.  “Why did You give me a brain if You didn’t want me to use it?  There will be nothing left of me,” I sobbed to my Father.  Then I heard God’s voice, “Yes, there will be nothing left of you, and that is the point.”  He paused (I think, to let that sink in a bit) then continued, “My Spirit can’t work in you, with you in the way.”

That was the beginning of the end of me.  It was that day on my kitchen floor with a tear stained face and a badly bruised pride, that I saw the first glimmer of understanding and freedom that comes with the death of self.  God showed me that because I had been so focused on getting my own way, what I thought I deserved, and my own “rights” that I had clouded the insight and change of what He wanted to do in me.  It wasn’t about obeying Darrell because he was always right or me not using my mind; it was about God using my husband through our marriage to shape me into who He had created me to be.  I had been so focused on the natural, the earthly situations, that I couldn‘t see the bigger picture of what I needed to learn and what was important … the supernatural.  I had turned our marriage into a “he/she“ issue and pitted myself against my husband and was living in the fruit of what a 50/50 marriage really was.

I was reaping what I had sown.

Marriage cannot work this way.  A home divided against itself will not stand. (Mk 3:25).  I had to be 100% for the marriage; not fighting for my 50% of the marriage.

This is what I hadn’t liked about Sarah.  She was 100% for her marriage.  Looking at her through my 50/50 vision, her way seemed totally wimpy and unacceptable to me.  But as I began to view her through God’s lenses, I saw a whole different view of marriage; and a brand new part of God’s personality started to emerge for me!

If anyone would have asked me if I was 100% for my marriage; I believed and would have answered, yes.  But clearly my words and actions didn’t connect.

Something to think about

Does what you say reflect what you believe … in your relationship with your husband?

Does what you do reflect what you say … towards your husband?

Or is there a disconnect like I found that I had.