Marriage and God's Love
By Holly Moran
I’m not going to sit here, type an awe-inspiring blog, and act like I am some expert on marriage. I’m just not. My husband Scott and I have been married for just over 2 and a half years. I feel like I’ve learned some good stuff, but really the foundation of what I know about marriage comes from the Bible.
When I was a little girl, I always knew (or at least I thought I knew) that I would get married someday. My best friend and I did the whole pretend-wedding thing where we put on our mothers’ wedding dresses and smooched stuffed animals who were supposed to be the most amazing husbands ever. I guess you could say we had unrealistic expectations about what marriage would look like. But we were just kids, right? Personally, I think most of us have pretty unrealistic expectations of marriage up until the day we say “I do.” How could we not? We watch all these romantic movies and read romantic novels that fill our brains with fluff.
Even in Christian culture, this can happen. You may be familiar with the classic wedding verse 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. It goes like this (cue a harp playing in the background), “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Beautiful. Isn’t it? But let’s just zoom out here for a second and look at the context of this passage. The apostle Paul is writing a letter to a church in Corinth, a Roman Colony, around 50 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. These people were struggling with things like selfishness, sexual immorality, idolatry…you know, the little stuff. Let’s just say they weren’t getting it, so Paul sent this letter with the intent of calling out their sin and pointing them back toward Christ.
I’m not saying this passage can’t be applied to marriage. It most certainly can. But we need to look at it in the right context. Paul is not describing love as an ooey-gooey feeling that we have toward someone we are attracted to. He is talking about the action we should take toward others. So if we pull this back to marriage that would mean being patient with our spouse. Being kind to our spouse. Not envying what our spouse has. Not being rude to our spouse. Because if we think about it, this is how God treats us. He is patient with us. He is kind to us. He IS love. God endures all things. God never ends.
You can’t expect your spouse to always love like Paul tells the Corinthians to love in his letter. You know why? Because humans aren’t perfect. You are not perfect, so how can you expect your spouse to be? There is not a single human being on this earth who can love in the perfect way that God can. Now I’m not saying that you and your spouse shouldn’t try to love each other like this. It just seems that as humans, our tendency is to try and fix the other person. Just the other day, I couldn’t find my headphones. I automatically assumed that Scott borrowed and lost them. I assumed this because he did this in the past with a pair of my scissors and maybe a few other things. In that moment of judgment, I wanted to fix him and make him more responsible…make him a better spouse. I wasn’t examining myself. I should have asked myself, “How can I love Scott in this situation? How can I work on not being resentful?” It turns out, I was the one who misplaced the headphones.
So ask yourself: are you trying to be the kind of lover God calls you to be? The one who practices patience and kindness and puts others’ needs before his or her own. Try focusing on your qualities rather than on your spouse’s. And remember: we cannot love our spouse or others without God’s love. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” Dwell in God’s love. Try to understand it. Pray that you can love like God did when He sent His son Jesus to die for us. Then hopefully, your marriage will begin to look more like you had always expected it would.
Three Ways That Newness Is Good For Us
By Jonathan Groves
Where’s the grocery store? This place looked closer on GPS. I have no idea where that is. What’s your name again? Newness can be annoying and even frustrating. Sometimes it goes even deeper: do I belong here? What’s the plan? Is there a plan? What was I thinking?!?!
Fortunately, newness isn’t new, at least not to the Creator of all things. Crazy transitions didn’t happen for the first time when you moved away from home or changed your major or took some seemingly illogical step of faith. In fact, newness is something God has been using to shape His people and unfold His plan for a long time.
In Genesis 12, newness takes center stage with a guy named Abram. When I struggle with newness, it helps me to reflect on just how crazy this whole thing was. God shows up and dumps all this on him like a bucket of cold water. He says, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.” Basically, God tells Abram to uproot his family, pack up, and start going to a destination he doesn’t even know yet. That’s newness on a whole other level.
But God is at work in the newness. He’s doing a bunch of things. He’s teaching Abram about his own lack of faith, and He’s showing him just who he can trust. It’s a lesson Abram needs to learn over and over again—and one that I do, too. Newness is hard, but it’s good. What does God do in newness?
God uses newness to show us Himself. The most comfortable thing about familiarity is that it is manageable. Even if it’s not good, it works. But when God injects newness, we’re reminded of just how powerless we are and how wonderfully powerful He is. If Abram had stayed where he had always been, he would not have seen God as the powerful provider that He is.
God uses newness to reveal His plan. God tells Abram he’s going to make him “a great nation…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God’s talking about the family line of this guy who is currently wandering for a home, a line that will eventually lead down to Jesus. God is setting a rescue plan in motion for the world through this newness in Abram’s life. This transition will have ripples that God uses to literally change the world.
God uses newness to make us more like Him. If you keep reading his story, you see that Abram goes from a guy who is willing to pawn off his wife to save his skin to a man willing to sacrifice the thing most precious to him for God. When God led Abram on this journey, He was working on his heart. Newness works on our hearts, shaking out the unimportant stuff we’ve held onto for too long. It helps us focus us on what’s really important and leads us to a deeper and more glorious dependence on Him.
Newness isn’t easy, but it is good. Praise God that He pushes us out of the familiar and into something far better.
Bible Before Netflix
By Craig Bannister
The start of every New Year serves as an opportunity to get a fresh start on some personal goals and habits. Whether it’s losing weight, ditching social media, or something different altogether, January is the starting line.
As January was approaching, my wife Brilyn and I were facing a problem. Every day, we had every intention of doing a devotional together or reading scripture together, and almost every day we somehow found a way to be too busy to get it done. Midnight would always roll around and we would both agree it was too late and that we should get some sleep. I think it became a motivation problem for us. We had no problem spending a couple hours watching our favorite Netflix shows, but reading together for 15 minutes always seemed like a daunting task. We realized it wasn’t a busy problem so much as it was an “us” problem. If we took away Netflix, we had a huge window of time to read together. Stick with me here. I’m not saying your New Year’s resolution should be giving up Netflix. I’m just putting forward the idea that maybe we aren’t as busy as we think.
As a kid, when my parents wanted me to do a chore, they would withhold a reward until I completed it. For example, I couldn’t play video games until I got my homework done. Brilyn and I decided to implement the same kind of idea on ourselves. We haven’t stopped watching Netflix. We have just delayed watching it until we get our daily reading done. We’ve made it a habit to sit down and read together before we turn on Netflix.
I was recently at an event where a church was giving away free Bibles. They had Bibles for people of all ages free for the taking. As I looked over the table, I noticed a one-year Bible in chronological order. It struck me because I began a one-year Bible challenge in high school, and chose to read it in chronological order but failed to complete the challenge. I grabbed two copies and decided this is what Bryan and I would read each day. We started reading together soon after I picked them up sometime in late October, and we stuck with it. If the structure of an assigned reading everyday would help you, there are plans on the Bible App and all over the Internet. I personally enjoyed having a physical Bible with the plan built in.
The New Year has officially come, and though it’s not an official resolution, we have continued to hold each other accountable with our reading. In the beginning, it was all about getting our reading done so we could watch our favorite shows. Now, it’s turned into more of a discussion each night. We have questions and comments about things we are studying so it’s more than knocking a chore out of the way to get to something we want. We look forward to it now. It was never about dreading reading our Bibles in the first place. We read when we could, but it wasn’t consistent. However, this simple idea has helped us create a habit that we plan to carry through 2017 and beyond.
If you aren’t hopelessly addicted to Netflix like us but struggle reading your Bible daily, maybe something similar could help you stay consistent. It could even be as simple as setting a certain time every day to read or reading before a meal. It’s whatever works best for you. In our crazy busy lives, when we are deliberate, we can still set aside time and dig into our Bibles daily.
Margo the Cat
By Micha Kandal
I’ve always liked cats. And who doesn’t love kittens? I grew up with them so I am very aware of how they operate, which is on their own terms.
Being an independent 22-year-old, I decided that it was time to be a cat owner. Why not? A Facebook opportunity brought me into being an official cat owner. My good friend Kirsten was tagged in a post that was filled with 8 furry creatures. I liked the post. I asked my roommates. Two days later, I drove with Kirsten two hours north to get this new commitment.
The car ride back was great. As I befriended this orange and white animal (making sure she didn’t trap herself underneath the seats or die prematurely 25 minutes away from home), it set in. “It” being the heavy weight of this new responsibility. Knowing I am responsible for keeping this cat alive for the next 10-13 years.
I don’t think I’m ready for this.
I’ve had Margo for 5 months. She’s still alive and well, enough to eat the tape I’ve placed on the counters to keep her off of them. To say that getting her was the best possible choice I could have made wouldn’t necessarily be true. We’ve had our good moments, and there are times I’ve thought about throwing her into Kirsten’s living room and then running away…like when she eats the tape.
This story of Margo, though, mirrors my expectation versus reality.
I think that as humans, we’re so good about building up situations, scenarios, and even opportunities in our minds. I think we like to operate on the 0-100 spectrum. Our reactions range from not caring or being invested to EVERYTHING IS ABSOLUTELY THIS WAY OR ELSE. At least, this is my very natural tendency. It’s gonna be awesome, 100. And, if it’s not, we’re disappointed and all motivation is gone. I don’t care. I’m done. Back to zero.
This is a lot like my walk with Jesus.
I get so lost in my head about big life things and changes. I overthink and overanalyze. A new project. A new friendship. Any change, expected or unexpected. I build these up, more often than not, ridiculously high and unrealistic. And then it (life, the date, the conversation, the plan) doesn’t even remotely go the way I wanted. I get disappointed and frustrated and all of the other emotions in between. This emotional gamut gets aimed directly at Jesus. I play the blame game, and then I have an argument with the Creator about why he’s unfair and why my way was better. What-ifs and maybe-when’s are my favorite words to bargain with when I talk with God.
Reading these words back to myself sounds RIDICULOUS. Why am I arguing with God? Why am I expecting Him to cave and say “Oh, yeah, good call Micha.”
But I do. I doubt, twist, overthink, manipulate, and allow all of these dark things to take residence in my mind. And as long as I let them stay, they grow. I take matters into my own hands, and I complain that I can’t hold onto any of the blessings or freedoms-from-heartaches God is trying to give me. Daily.
Discovering that I do this has been so humbling. It’s a hard truth, but it’s so refreshing to know there’s a change that needs to happen and that I know the answer. This answer can often feel kind of intimidating though. Sometimes it’s easier to stand in the dark just because it’s familiar.
Putting it into practice is where the struggle lives. At the same time, I can feel Jesus pulling me nearer and nearer. I can hear him telling me more often than not, “I’m proud of you” and “You’re getting it!” God also gets my attention by speaking directly through the people in my community. So cool. So convicting.
Learning the new normal of letting go of expectation and control has been hard. It has been harder than keeping Margo off of the counters (and maybe equally as frustrating).
Learning how to choose God, to choose the life of living in an active stillness, and abiding in Him is such a big commitment. It’s intimidating and sometimes I’m fearful it won’t bring me the feeling of contentment or being made whole. Yet, this daily practice of surrendering all of my expectations has caused me to grow more in these past 3 months than I could have ever imagined. It’s still the most difficult thing I do some days.
But the complete and total peace that comes from this new thought altering lifestyle is so refreshing. My joy is becoming as real as the warmth you feel from the sun in the middle of June. It makes the freedom worth fighting for and the blessings so much greater.
My encouragement to you as an amateur cat owner and a person who gets obsessed with expectations and improbable realities is to open your hands. Literally, emotionally, spiritually. Drop the things that weigh you down, even for just 5 minutes. Ask for freedom. Declare rest. I promise that things WILL start to change. It might be the longest 5 minutes of your day, but it’ll also be the most life giving.
Take heart & take back your freedom friends. You won’t regret it.
Brand New
By Brittany Kent
New - not existing before: made, introduced, or discovered recently or now for the first time
New year, new resolutions, new goals, new you.
I think in lyrics, so for all you Ben Rector fans...
I feel like for the first time in a long time I am not afraid,
I feel like a kid, I never thought I'd feel like this again.
When I close my eyes and don't even care if anyone sees me dancing.
Like I can fly and I don't even think of touching the ground.
It's the way that I feel when I'm with you
BRAND NEW
2 Corinthians 5:17
"Therefore if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation the old has passed away behold the new has come."
As a believer, this verse should bring so much hope! We are made new! The old is no more. Our sin is gone. Our shame is removed. Our identity is changed. We were once not a people, but now we are God’s people! Everyday is a new opportunity to grow closer to our Holy and Loving Dad!
However, if you're like me, you don't necessarily live in this freedom everyday. Lies from my past, fear of the future (or the unknown), and doubt in my identity are kept neatly shoved in a corner. Meanwhile, busyness and social media become my rhythm of life. I turn on autopilot, and I do the same things over and over again to avoid confrontation with the hope that I can live in comfortable “peace.”
Thankfully, God is loving, and His plans are better than mine. However, the truth is this monotony will continue to be reality apart from Christ. I can try to make changes. I can try to pull myself up by my bootstraps, but I will never be satisfied. I will never arrive. The beauty of the gospel though is that in spite of sin (our missing the mark), God stepped into the picture through His Son Jesus. Jesus lived the perfect life, died the death we deserve, and rose to life. It is through Jesus' resurrection power that every believer has new life. (Ephesians 2, 1 Peter 1:3) God gives the official restart and offers it to everyone who would trust in His work and not their own.
I have learned a lot in the past year. I have moved back and forth between two states (8 months in Indiana and 4 in Alabama), transitioned into different ministry roles, switched jobs, traveled to new places, and made new friends. With anything new, it has not existed before. It is made or introduced. Last year, I remember sharing how much I hate change because I can’t control it, but this year is different. I have learned that change brings fresh perspective and a renewed sense of hope.
2 Corinthians 5:17 is a promise that is not dependent on our ability to make ourselves new. The verse says, “if anyone is in Christ, they are.” Not “they will be.” They are a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. God made me new and is still making me new. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t change. Change is hard. It requires work, and it takes consistency. However, Christ in me provides everything. Every day, God not only provides the opportunity to live out my new living identity, but He also gives me the strength to live in this identity.
Some days I feel like God is doing CPR, and other days I feel like He’s training me for a marathon, but the good news is the breath still comes from Him. God gives His Holy Spirit to those who believe in Him, and “ruah,” the Hebrew word for Spirit literally means breath.
Adopted into a New Family
By Ted Bourke
Well, here we are. In a flash, 2016 has come and gone like so many others and now we start afresh with 2017. With the start of a new year comes the desire for newness in a multitude of avenues. Resolutions about diets, exercising, reading, and other personal goals are set and attempted. The phrase "New year, new me" becomes a frequent mantra for people. People use the new year as a chance to start over, to make a change, to become new.
So how does this concept of newness coincide with our relationship with Christ? The answer is relatively straightforward. Ephesians 4:23-24 promises us that, in Christ, “ you (will) be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”
We are made new in Him. He changes us, molds us, transforms us. The old is out, the new is in. Is it easy? Of course not - change is hard in whatever form it takes. But making a change and becoming new in Christ? It is so worth it. And we should never think that this only applies to young Christians who are newly on their journey with Christ. Everyone, no matter where they are, can find newness in Him - we should constantly be looking for ways to change and freshen our walk with Him.
Another way I look at this concept of newness is that when we commit ourselves to Christ, we are adopted into the great big family of God, thus beginning a new relationship with Him and with the people who have chosen to follow Him. Adoption is something very personal to my family - all four of my siblings are adopted from China. With each adoption, there came a sense of newness - new family, new environment, new life. There is this incredible feeling as I watched each one of my siblings experience that newness - a curiosity of what this new family would be like, an excitement over the possibilities, an apprehension of the unexpected. There was a chance to be made new with a new family, a family who loved and cared for them, a family who was ready to make that change alongside of them and be made new together as one.
This is how we are when we become new in Christ. We experience the same feelings as my siblings did - curiosity, excitement, apprehension. In my mind, God experiences the same incredible feelings I did each time I met my siblings whenever we give ourselves over to him and ask to be made new. It is so refreshing to know that He is in the business of second chances, of desiring us to make changes in our lives. Yes, it is exciting and, yes, it can fill us with apprehension. But, much the way my siblings had to rely on their new family to take care of them, we should find comfort in the fact that we have a God who will always be there for us
May this year be one of newness for all of us in whatever way you find it. I, for one, am excited about the the change happening for our church family. With our new building, we can reach and bring in so many more people. I firmly believe that, with the ground work that has already been laid, we can bring about a whole wave of newness in 2017 in this city.
Mercy Ministry: "Maria"
By Sydney Gautier
I met Maria the summer of 2015. I was trudging around downtown Indy with a backpack full of water bottles and peanut butter sandwiches ready to give out to people living on the streets. If it hadn't been for the jar of change sitting in front of Maria, I would never have guessed she was homeless. She didn't look much older than me. She had pretty blonde hair and bright blue eyes. As I approached her, she gave me a smile and gladly took the food I offered. I sat down, and we began to talk. That day started a wonderful friendship. Over the past year and a half, I've seen Maria off and on. She can be hard to find on the streets, but when I do find her it's always a joyful reunion. She never wants help, but she always wants prayer. The last time I saw Maria was different though, and it has stuck with me ever since.
Instead of being greeted with a hug and smile, she buried her face in her hands and began to cry. Her bright blue eyes looked distant and tired, and her hair was thinning. She told me she had just gotten out of jail and had stayed away from drugs while she was there, but living back out on the streets had quickly thrown her into her old habits. I invited her to New Circle, and she expressed interest. She told me how she used to be a Christian and still considered herself one, but she didn't want to go back to church until she had her life together—that she just couldn't go like this. That is what has stuck with me for so long. Since then, I have had this unexplainable desire to tell people how loved they are—not just tell them, but scream it at them so loud they can't ignore it. To tell them how their creator is constantly pursuing them, how there's grace upon grace upon grace. How even in light of all of our sins and bruises and brokenness God looks at us and still fiercely loves us and wants us. How it's not what we do that earns his love, but instead what he did for us. His love is perfect. Even when we waiver and trip and fall and screw up time after time, His love and grace stay completely consistent. How God wants us just as we are, not once we have our lives together or once we feel "good enough" to step back into a church.
Whenever I think of this, I think of Ephesians 1. This is a passage I read almost daily. Just like Maria, we've all felt less than, unimportant, not good enough. But that's just the enemy speaking. In Ephesians, Paul tells us that, as children of God, we are chosen and seen as holy and blameless in his sight, that we have been adopted in sonship through Christ. He calls us forgiven and redeemed through the blood of Christ, and he calls us included in Christ when we heard the message of truth. Even through our struggles and even when we just can't seem to get our lives together he calls us Chosen, Loved, Forgiven, Wanted, Redeemed, and gives us hope in him. It doesn't make sense, but this is grace.
And as I stood there praying with Maria, tears welled up in my eyes. I wanted so badly for her to see that there is so much grace and that she is so loved. That there is so much hope in Christ and that God doesn't want her to wait, but wants her just as she is. That Christ died so she could live, that’s a lot of love, more than we could possibly imagine.
You are so loved.
Advent - Charity Suffereth Long
By Jacob Butts
For us, Advent is a time of remembering. It is a time of waiting in expectation, or a word I'd like to think has more weight: hope. It is a reminder to us that waiting is a part of life, and while it can seem frustrating, the pain, suffering, and injustice that comes along with it ultimately will never last. Its evil reign will end. For God is good in ways we cannot comprehend. He will have complete justice.
If anyone has gotten to know me in the past year you would have heard me complain about something. For some closer to me, you heard something new every week. For that I greatly apologize. This was one of the worst years of my life. I dealt with physical, mental, and emotional pain, and this is all an understatement.
I don’t say this to be prideful but to point out a fundamental truth: suffering is real and it really sucks. By extension, suffering in waiting is also real and painful.
Therefore, if God is good and He is just, and if He has proven Himself as good and just time and again, then I must trust He will still be good and just when things go wrong. When I call out to Him in suffering and He doesn’t answer immediately, then He has either called me to something and I have disobeyed and He waits until I obey.
Or the answer is no or not yet... wait.
I believe my frustrations stem from both, but chiefly the latter: "wait". For if I know I was called to Indy (a long story I'd be glad to tell anyone) and if I know God is good, then my present suffering is the in-between, and it cannot be the resolution. No, He will not leave us here. Even if we pass away He will still bring us back. Nothing will separate us from Him.
There are a couple verses in 1 Corinthinans 13 that are usually associated with marriage, but in fact, it was Paul's response to a church in Corinth who were disobeying the teachings of Jesus. Paul listed these attributes to say, "be like Jesus in this way:" The NIV translation goes like this:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
What should be noted is the last and often forgotten attribute of Jesus: always perseveres (or endures). I recently discovered the King James translation of that attribute, "Charity suffereth long.” I personally find this translation to be more accurate. Charity was a word in our English language we once used to describe a person's (or God's) unconditional and generous love. Charity is not just patient, kind, and generous, but it suffers long. It knows waiting and suffering can be one and the same. Sometimes I wonder if the question is not why am I suffering, but can I suffer well? Can I suffereth long?
Then how do we suffer well? I believe the answer is in the advent: Hope.
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! Godʼs dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Revelation 21:3-5 NIV
God is good. He is coming again to make all things new. Take hope in that, brothers and sisters.