Love is Forgiving

I read a blog post this morning that was an excerpt from a message our Youth Pastor in Texas gave over the weekend.  It was one of the sermons that hit me at the exact moment I needed to hear it.  The link to the post is below.  Have a great week!

Love is Forgiving, by Dan Gould

Submission in Marriage

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:22)

In recent weeks God has spent a lot of time working on the concept of submission in marriage in my thoughts.  I’ve read some really good books and a couple of them discussed the idea of submission in a way I had never thought about before.

My idea of marriage has been shaped by a lot of things.  Naturally, my own parents marriage, but also marriages of friends and mentors.  My concept of marriage has also been shaped by the teachings of my churches and the thoughts of society.  I think that many in our society today have struggled with the concept of submission in marriage or have marginalized it as an arcane concept that worked many years ago, but is not relevant in today’s marriages.

Growing up I was surrounded by marriages that involved strong, self confident, and well educated women, many of whom who were married to equally well educated men.  However, if I had to describe many of the men I observed growing up, including my own father, it would be that of a servant leader.  They have a heart for supporting and serving others – even ministering to others – but no desire to lead or control their environments.

Yet, my Mother was the first-born child in her family.   She was a strong, self confident and well-educated woman to which leadership, expression of ideas and opinions and making decisions came naturally.  So from an external view – that of a child – my mother’s decisions and actions determined much of our family’s direction.

So as a young adult, entering in to my own marriage, I didn’t think much about the relevance of submission to my new husband.  I didn’t really have much of a model for it in any marriage that I had seen.   I also think I had the concept defined a bit wrong.  At the time, submission meant any of the following:  1.  to be a doormat; 2. to do exactly what that person says without having the right to express my thoughts or opinions; 3. to be a slave.

But the definition is really very different:

Submit means to yield to governance or authority.  (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Don’t ask me about the original Greek.  I don’t even think I have the expertise to go there!

What made me think a bit differently about this was a book written by Lisa Whelchel entitled, “The Facts of Life and Other Lessons My Father Taught Me.”  In this book she talks about meeting her husband, Steve, who was a support pastor to Jack Hayford at Church on the Way.  Lisa’s upbringing, which she details in the book, gave her the character traits of the strong, self-confident, leadership driven woman, traits that she carried into her marriage as a wife (just like my own mother).  Lisa describes Steve’s gifting as that of supporting and serving others rather than one who had a desire to lead or control.

All of these experiences and reading left me with a myriad of questions.  Is submission really relevant?  In today’s culture, where women are as strong, as educated and as competent as men (and sometimes in more natural positions as leaders), is submission even required?  Wouldn’t it just be easier for our families to have co-leaders?

But Ephesians 5 continues on:

For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:23-24)

I think all of us would be the first to say that God gave us the husband that we have.  (If not, you can jump to 1 Peter 3:1-2 for guidance).  But how and why submission when I, as a woman, have more (or at least the same) natural leadership abilities?

I was really struggling with this concept this past summer when we were presented with a job opportunity that would move our family to Florida.  Craig, my husband, (who is a very strong natural leader) was leaning on me hard regarding my thoughts on whether or not the family should move from Texas to Florida.   I knew he was struggling with it himself, looking for God’s direction in our lives and he wanted my input.

I was empty.  Did I want to leave my close friends and our comfortable life in Texas, where we had raised our kids for the last 10 years?  No.

Did I want to go where God was calling us to go to follow His Will for our lives? Absolutely!

But clinging to the concrete is a lot easier than stepping out on faith.

At the time I was reading “Tender Warrior,” by Stu Webber.  Chapter 2 is a powerful chapter that describes how God uniquely equipped men and women differently for our roles in life.

“What makes a man?  First and foremost and above all else, it is vision.  A vision for something larger than himself.  (p.27)

“Its not that men are genetically farsighted while women are nearsighted.  It has more to do with the God-given tendency of a man to look up and out and discern objects in the hazy distance and the tendency of a woman to read the fine print of relationships.  A woman is simply a better reader.  She has better focus on people and situations near at hand.  She can read right away what’s happening in the spirit, in a tone of voice in a facial expression….[a man] gets so far “out there” in his provisional role that he often fails to see things under his very nose.  Women place more emphasis on details and security.” [p. 30]

Throughout the chapter, Weber argues that God gives men the natural ability to see the big picture and to have a vision for where their families should be headed.  Just as he gives us, as women, a natural ability for nurture and care.

But what happens when our men are not natural leaders?  I think it is submission that gets us there.

In her book, Whelchel describes that it took some work for her husband to take on the mantle of leadership in her family, but first she had to get out of the way.

Since leadership came so naturally to her, she had found herself naturally making many of the family decisions.  It got to the point where Steve, had very few decisions that he needed to make.  Because she was a strong and natural leader, he would yield to her leadership.

So one day, Lisa decided that she would take a 30-day fast from expressing her opinion.  Where the family went to eat, whether the kids left the house in matching outfits or not, etc. would not be important for 30 days. You can read additional details in her book, but the result was that Steve took a greater leadership role in their family.

I find myself often needing to do the same thing.  While I have a husband who is a strong leader, I was raised in a household with a model of female leadership and my natural tendency is to do the same.

But if God has uniquely created my husband to be the head of his wife and the leader of our family, then maybe I need to take a look a my role in the family and make sure I am empowering him to be exactly that.  And that, I believe even in modern day society, requires submission.

Love…

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies.

The passage above is 1 Corinthians 13:3-8 in the Message translation of the Bible.  Thank you, Matt Boone for posting the entire chapter from this translation.  This has always been a very meaningful chapter in my life.

Ruth: Love, Loss and Legacy — by Kelly Minter

I just finished this Bible Study and it was an awesome one!  There were a few quotes that I had saved on my computer to blog about, but I never got to them.  But I didn’t want to lose these thoughts, so I share them below as thoughts for your morning.

Obedience to God is often wrought with a slew of obstacles that persuade us to change our minds.  I used to think that my choice to obey in any given situation was a one-time decision, but now I realize that obedience might mean having to make that same choice several times a week, a month or a year.   – Kelly Minter, Ruth, p. 24

I don’t think that Ruth’s or Joseph’s determined obedience had much to do with will power at all, and to think so only encourages us to live by our own strength and self-righteousness.

(In these stories] we simply cannot miss the fact that …obedience stems from their commitment to God.  This is an enormous truth that will sustain us through times of temptation and trial that urge us to forsake the path that we are on.  We won’t be able to last if our motivation is based on anything but our relationship with God.  …only a love for Christ will sustain a long term commitment to obedience.  Kelly Minter, Ruth, p.25

For more information on this Bible Study as well as Kelly’s other works, please visit her website.  (http://www.kellyminter.com)

Giving our lives

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. Luke 9:24

I’m deep into Kelly Minter’s new Bible Study of Ruth.  Kelly does a wonderful job of comparing Boaz and his sacrifice for Ruth to God and his sacrifice for us.  On page 132 of her the Bible Study book, Ruth: Loss, Love and Legacy, she shares this thought.

You may be laying your life down for your children or maybe for your husband. Perhaps you’re about to get married or enter an altogether new level of self-sacrifice.  Or maybe you’re single and you’re giving your life to friendships, family and ministries.  Maybe you’ve been asked to take care of your parents, or you’ve taken in a family member or you’ve adopted a child.  All I know is that laying down our lives for others, for the sake of Jesus, is never wasted.  No matter how quiet, how humble, how thankless, God is making a name for you — one that will last an eternity.

Prayer, Father today may we be more concerned with pleasing you than pleasing ourselves or others around us.  May we focus on your small still voice instead of the other voices that tend to be screaming for our attention and affection.  May we lay it all down, for the heart of Heaven!  (from “More of Him, Less of Me,” a blog posting by Dan Gould)

Dealing with Grief in the New Year

One of the things that I have been blessed by in Florida is a few close friends that God has given me through my Wednesday Morning Women’s Bible Study.  The blessing is a little bit of a surprise to me in several ways.  Over my life, my friends have tended to come from work or school, but now that I am no longer working or going to school, I expected friendships would take longer to develop.

Second, when I do make friends, they tend to be casual/social friends that I enjoy being with, but I never really let get too close to me.  I can probably count on two hands the number of friends in my life that I have let get really close to my heart, friends with whom I could share anything.  They were rich friendships with human beings who God put in my life, but they have also been the relationships with the greatest heartbreak.  When you open your life up to someone, it is a lot harder when a confidence is broken or when a close friend, often by relocation or death, just disappears.  Subconsciously, I think that the loss of close friendships has made it much more difficult for me to open my heart to new ones.

But here I am in Florida and I feel God is pushing me in that direction – to trust Him and not be afraid to open up and share my life with my new found friends.  I also think that God is trying to teach me to depend on Him above all else for the close emotional intimacy that I need in my life.

One of my new close friends whom God has blessed me with is Shellie.  I can’t even begin to describe the richness that Shellie and several others here in Florida have brought to my life.  Shellie owns one of the local magazines here in Parkland that focuses on community and family life and she asked me to write an article for the January edition.  The article focuses on dealing with grief in the New Year and you can find it on page 5 (Its All About Community) of the following link.  I thought I would share it here as well.

Spectator Magazine — January 2010

Krispy Kreme Christians

Most of our pastors were on vacation this weekend (after conducting 11 Christmas services for 9,400 folks).  So Don Davis came in to serve as our guest speaker and preached a sermon called Krispy Kreme Christians to start our new year.  The sermon was pretty convicting, so I thought I would share it with all of you.

You can also find this sermon on the Church by the Glades website under “Podcasts” and if you are lucky you can get the video version of the sermon under “Watch Online,” but as of this posting, the video version had not been posted.  Happy New Year!

2009 is a year that I will remember….

… for a long time to come.

It has been a big year of transition for us as we moved from Texas to Florida, but personally it has been a year of lessons learned about the workings of God in my life and how He uses each of us (through all of our faults) to make a difference in His work on this earth.

A lot of my lessons learned in 2009 have also helped me shape some goals for 2010.  The good thing about writing them down is that they also hold me accountable.  So here goes….

In 2010, I want to be:

• Less judgmental of others both in my words and in my thoughts.  Even though I was raised knowing and understanding verses such as “Judge not, or you will be judged (Matthew 7:1) and “Let him who has no sin cast the first stone.” (John 8:7), I also live in a society where judging and condemning others is way too acceptable.  The older I get and the more mistakes I make in life, I realize that if these verses are the standard by which I live, then I need to focus my thoughts on giving grace and forgiveness to others rather than judging others or their deeds.

• More affectionate with my family. My girls are both in middle school this year, and next year one of them moves on to high school.  I am blessed in that they are still very affectionate girls.  They love to snuggle on the couch with their Daddy and watch NCIS or run into his arms when he comes home at night.  As they have grown older some of the snuggly love has gone away, but not totally.  I know someday it will.  For now I need to make sure that my other priorities don’t get in the way of spending time with my family and letting them know that I really love them.

• More focused on discovering how God wants to use my life. This year more than others, I realize that my prayers have been for specific actions that I feel I need, or want, God to take.  “Lord, please help our house sell or please let the kids find friends in their new school or please heal a sick friend.”  But as I’ve studied the characters in the Old Testament, Moses (and Sarah), Ruth and Boaz (and Naomi), Joseph (an his brothers) and David, one thing pops out about every story to me.  God had a big picture plan for each of their lives that changed the world.  He used each of them (even through the speed bumps of their sinful actions) to make a heavenly impact on earth.  And each of their individual stories has an abundance of personal blessings as a result.

This year I want my prayers to be more focused on finding God’s direction for my life than satisfying my immediate needs and desires.  I do believe that God cares deeply about my day-to-day needs (and desires), but I have to wonder if He is just waiting for my faith to grow enough so I will move beyond my day to day worries and will trust Him to take care of them as a part of the “big picture” Will He has for my life.

In a Twitter post this morning, Kay Warren shared: “Renewal is rooted in faith, not in resolutions.  I cannot make a new me or a new you, but Christ can make you new and me new.  – Frank Harrington

While 2009 has been a year of personal challenges for me, in the end, it is a year for which I am very thankful.  I have moved from working 50 to 60 hours a week to serving as a stay at home mom.  While I still hate housework, I love the time I have to spend time with God everyday and to get a decent level of exercise.  I’ve lost about 20 lbs. since I’ve left Texas and am just about down to my pre-baby weight!  I usually get a 5-mile walk in each day.  I also try to spend a few days a week with Jillian Michaels.  I’m still working on having positive thoughts about those experiences.

Wherever your New Year finds you, I pray that you know that you have a God that loves you unconditionally, separate and apart from what you feel about yourself or how others see you.  And for each and every one of us, God has a big picture plan of how He’d like to use both you and me for His heavenly purpose on earth.  If we just have the faith to let Him.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve…

It’s Christmas Eve.  The Maccubbin’s are in Virginia with our extended family.  Tonight we will have 9 children and 7 adults (and 2 dogs) all-camping out in a 2000 square foot house so that we can be together on Christmas morning.  I think we should start taking bets on what time the kids will wake up on Christmas morning!

I wonder if this is what Bethlehem was like on Christmas Eve.  The no-room-in-the-inn story is taking on a whole new meaning here tonight.  At least none of us have to deliver a baby tonight!

And while its cold here, we got to experience the warmth of a traditional candlelight service and enjoy dinner with a portion of the extended family that we will be spending the next week or so with.  This year this family is especially thankful for what we have.

Christmas, maybe more than any other holiday, makes us aware of the passing of time.  Those we have lost during the year are more notably missed as we step through the yearly traditions without them.

But Christmas is also a reminder of the gift that God gave us.  A gift that will never leave us or let us down, as those we love on earth inevitably do.  Every Christmas, as long as we are here on earth, we can celebrate Jesus Christ, who cared enough about having a personal relationship with each of us that he came to earth to live just as we do, so that for the rest of our lives we can have an intimate relationship with Him.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Shopping Ideas

Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.  – 1 Timothy 4:12

One of the great blessings I have had in life is meeting some really cool kids of all ages in both my churches and my neighborhoods. Their ages span from as young as 3 to some who are in their early 20s, but there is one thing the all have in common — they care more about serving others than they do themselves.

As I think about Christmas and shopping, I have to admit that I dread the thought of how materialistic it has become.  I met a young lady at church today named Meredith (she is a senior in high school, helping out with the three year old preschool class at church).  Meredith reminded me a lot of Noah, a 7-year old who lived in one of my neighborhoods in Frisco.

Both of these kids are passionate about a cause that helps meet the needs of people who live worlds away from them.  So I thought since we are all in the mood of sharing for Christmas.  I would share their passions with you.

Meredith’s Cause – TOMS

Meredith is a campus representative for at her high school for TOMS.  The video below tells their story and you can do your shopping at:   TOMS Shoes

Noah’s Cause – Noah’s Mugs

Noah has taken the cause of providing clean water to those who need it into his own hands.  With the help of his parents (who are both pretty passionate about helping others, too), Noah has used his artistic talents and entrepreneurial spirit to create Noah’s Mugs, a small company that sells coffee mugs which are decorated with Noah’s artwork.  All of the proceeds from Noah’s Mugs go to help support charities that provide clean water to those who might not otherwise have access to it.

You can see more about Noah’s production facility below: