I have been reading "The Secret of God’s Love" by Andrew Murray and some of these passages just flew off the page for me...I hope you will be as blessed by them as I have been. Shanda, thanks for the inspiration for this post - your post the other day really was a blessing!

 

 

Thoughts of thanksgiving today for…

 

71.    sunlight shining through autumn leaves

72.    being able to take a walk outside again

73.    vegan “egg mayonnaise” sandwiches

74.    my children who for now still live at home

75.    angels who watch over us

76.    my forever friends

77.    fresh tomatoes from my garden

78.    clear cool water when I am thirsty

79.    answered prayers

80.    being able to capture some of the beauty God surrounds us with

Each day offers us the gift of being a special occasion if we can simply learn that as well as giving, it is blessed to receive with grace and a grateful heart. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach ~

 

 

You may be the only sermon many may ever hear.

 

                                           You preach every day of your life.

 

            

  At work, at school, at the gym, at the grocery store, in your recreation, wherever

              you are…you preach always.

                                                               What kind of sermon do you preach?

 

Jesus preached the gospel –  the good news of a God that loves, a God of grace and kindness, a God who sees the sparrow fall.

 

                                 Will you allow that to be the sermon you preach?

For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 2 Corinthians 2:15

 

                            As I pondered this the words of this song came to mind….

 

 

Will You Love Jesus More

I feel quite sure if I did my best
I could maybe impress you
With tender words and a harmony
A clever rhyme or two

But if all I've done in the time we've shared
Is turn your eyes on me
Then I've failed at what I've been called to do
There's someone else I want you to see

Will you love Jesus more
When we go our different ways
When this moment is a memory
Will you remember His face
Will you look back and realize
You sensed His love more than you did before
I'd pray for nothing less
Than for you to love Jesus more

I'd like to keep these memories
In frames of gold and silver
And reminisce a year from now
About the smiles we've shared
But above all else I hope you will come
To know the Father's love
When you see the Lord face to face
You'll hear Him say "well done"

 

Will you love Jesus more
When we go our different ways
When this moment is a memory
Will you remember His face
Will you look back and realize
You sensed His love more than you did before
I'd pray for nothing less
Than for you to love Jesus more

 

Will people love Jesus more because they have spent time with you?

Tell me about someone you have met that has inspired you to love Jesus more.

 

This morning I woke to the sound of the rain gently falling on the leaves outside my window…and my heart was filled with gratitude…

 

 

59.    for the blessings of God that fall like rain in our lives

 

60.    breathtakingly beautiful reflections in raindrops

 

61.    cleansing for my heart

 

62.    the fragrance of warm vanilla soap

 

63.    renewal

 

64.    growth

 

65.    new days full of new opportunities

 

66.    the value of small steps

 

67.    for what God is doing in the lives of those around me

 

68.    radiant smiles

 

69.    connection with others

 

70.    twenty-four special hours of worship & fellowship with God

 

What is filling your heart with joy today?

 

 

 

I have been pondering the subject of gratitude and it seems to me that we become complacent sometimes and take our blessings for granted.   We have not cultivated an attitude of gratitude and we settle for a mediocre existence rather than a life lived with thanksgiving and joy.  As I have struggled to adjust to a new life in a new country,  I have just been letting life slip by and I think I have been missing out on really living…so I guess it is time for change...my last post on the topic of 1000 Endless gifts was over a year ago in August last year and it is time to continue this journey.

 

His gifts to me are endless and I am thankful for…

 

49.    God who relentlessly persues me and who will love me forever

 

50.    Lunch out with the amazing man I am married to and who delights in spoiling me

 

51.    Technology that enables us to speak to loved ones miles away

 

52.    Yellow sunflowers in the vase on our woodstove

 

53.    The gorgeous reds, oranges and yellows of autumn leaves

 

54.    Beautiful music that soothes the senses

 

55.    The sacred hours of Sabbath rest

 

56.    Country living

 

57.    Hydrotherapy treatments

 

58.    The healing touch of God in our lives

 

 

In everything give thanks:  for this is the will of God concerning you. 1 Thess 5:18

Won't you share with me how you have purposefully cultivated an attitude of gratitude?

Rest yourself wholly in the hands of Jesus. Contemplate His great love, and while you meditate upon His self-denial, His infinite sacrifice made in our behalf in order that we should believe in Him, your heart will be filled with holy joy, calm peace, and indescribable love. As we talk of Jesus, as we call upon Him in prayer, our confidence that He is our personal, loving Saviour will strengthen, and His character will appear more and more lovely. . . . We may enjoy rich feasts of love, and as we fully believe that we are His by adoption, we may have a foretaste of heaven. Wait upon the Lord in faith. The Lord draws out the soul in prayer, and gives us to feel His precious love. We have a nearness to Him, and can hold sweet communion with Him. We obtain distinct views of His tenderness and compassion, and our hearts are broken and melted with contemplation of the love that is given to us. We feel indeed an abiding Christ in the soul. . . . Our peace is like a river, wave after wave of glory rolls into the heart, and indeed we sup with Jesus and He with us. We have a realizing sense of the love of God, and we rest in His love. No language can describe it, it is beyond knowledge. We are one with Christ, our life is hid with Christ in God. We have the assurance that when He who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory. With strong confidence, we can call God our Father. Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. His Spirit makes us like Jesus Christ in temper, and disposition, and we represent Christ to others. When Christ is abiding in the soul the fact cannot be hid; for He is like a well of water springing up into everlasting life. We can but represent the likeness of Christ in our character, and our words, our deportment, produces in others a deep, abiding, increasing love for Jesus, and we make manifest . . . that we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

There is an eloquence far more powerful than the eloquence of words in the quiet, consistent life of a pure, true Christian. What a man is has more influence than what he says.

  

It is our own character and experience that determine our influence upon others. In order to convince others of the power of Christ's grace, we must know its power in our own hearts and lives. The gospel we present for the saving of souls must be the gospel by which our own souls are saved. Only through a living faith in Christ as a personal Saviour is it possible to make our influence felt in a skeptical world. If we would draw sinners out of the swift-running current, our own feet must be firmly set upon the Rock, Christ Jesus.

 

The badge of Christianity is not an outward sign, not the wearing of a cross or a crown, but it is that which reveals the union of man with God. By the power of His grace manifested in the transformation of character the world is to be convinced that God has sent His Son as its Redeemer. No other influence that can surround the human soul has such power as the influence of an unselfish life. The strongest argument in favor of the gospel is a loving and lovable Christian.

 

Saving Grace...Unmerited, Undeserved, Essential. 

How much God wants us to choose to extend to others the grace He bestows on us daily...to extend grace to others in not only our marriages, but in all of our relationships.  May this article bless you as much as it has me.

Saving Grace
Unmerited. Undeserved. Essential.
Michael Sytsma

Monday, April 6, 2009

Have you ever noticed the uncanny ability your spouse has to spot all the unholy aspects of who you are?

Before I was married, God said, "Mike, you have some rough edges. To help you become more Christ-like, I'm giving you Karen. That should do the trick." 

So he brought Karen, whom I love dearly, into my life to identify all my shortcomings. My first response when she points out my flaws? Not gratitude!

I don't want to acknowledge that there may possibly be ugly things within me, so instead I strike back: "How dare you point out those things? What's your problem?"

Then I have the choice of either denying my failings or owning them and maturing. And Karen can either harbor anger and resentment or offer grace and forgiveness.

Imagine a marriage filled with grace. A spouse who extends joy, pleasure, sweetness, kind speech, unmerited favor.

My wife does that. I'm still working on it. Most of the time I don't deserve mercy. And yet, Karen can look at me with love and extend unmerited favor. I don't deserve grace for the times I mess up again, or leave a cup in the sink one more time. 

But she chooses to clean up the sink and put the cup in the dishwasher and never say a word. That's grace.

Why do we extend grace—especially over and over—to our spouse?

 

First, because God is a God of grace; he freely extends it to us, and "it is by grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:8).

Second, because it's a healing and restorative force. As God extends his grace to us and as we in turn extend grace to our spouses, we become better friends and lovers and can even experience deep and renewed levels of trust.

Third, we extend grace because it's the only way to have a great marriage that lasts. Our spouses aren't perfect. And neither are we. Grace allows us to have a great marriage anyway. And learning to extend that grace (which is neither ignoring faults nor demanding change) will make you a better, more Christlike person.

 

If you need to practice expressing grace to your spouse, here are four ways to start. 

1. Focus on the positive.

In Matthew, Jesus tells the parable of the weeds: "A man … sowed good seed in his field. But … his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. … The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn'" (Matthew 13:24-30). In other words, "Don't mess with those weeds. You'll do too much damage if you try. Leave them alone and let God sort it out in the end."

We often don't do that in marriage. We go, "I really like who you are, but this one little thing, I'm going to pull that weed out of you." And we begin to focus more on the negative—trying to pull up those weeds in our spouse's life—and lose sight of the positive.

One of the things I love about my wife is that she's persistent. If she gets something in mind, she makes it happen. One of the things that irritates me about her is her stubbornness. What's the difference between persistence and stubbornness? When she pushes her persistence too far. Or from my perspective, whether I agree or disagree with what she's doing!

I can't love stubborn people. If Karen's vacuuming the floor, and I step in front of her to get a hug, if I'm not careful, I'll get sucked up in the vacuum. She's completely on task.

If I see that as stubbornness—the negative characteristic—it becomes difficult for me to love her. If I can focus on the persistence—the positive side—and remember that this is part of what I love in her, not only do I nurture and grow what's positive in her, but I nurture and grow my character too.

How do we best do that? The apostle Paul tells us: "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things" (Philippians 4:8-9). We need to concentrate on things that are the best, not the worst.

For example, if your spouse is disorganized, how could you see the strength in that? Could it be spontaneity? Creativity? Flexibility?

List some things that irritate you about your spouse, and then go through each and try to find the strengths.

For the disorganized spouse, what if instead of saying, "You always forget your keys!" you step back and think, Okay, that's irritating, but I love that you care about bigger things in life than keys. Now you're no longer focusing on the behavior; you're focusing on something you like and on who she is.

 
 

2. See the person God created.

Too often we see things that irritate us and we vilify our spouses.

There was an example of a  husband who told me, "My wife doesn't clean the house well, and it drives me nuts." 

"Why doesn't she?" I asked.

"She just won't do it, because she knows I want it to be done a certain way."

When we write off our spouse's character as bad, we go beyond believing that she hasn't learned how to do something to considering her incapable of learning how. We say, "This isn't possible for you to do, and I cannot tolerate that in our relationship."

Scripture is filled with examples of how Christ believed the best of people. In the story of the woman caught in adultery who'd been brought to Jesus to be stoned (John 8:3-11), many people assumed that she was a bad person. They refused to see any beauty in who she was.

How did Christ approach this, though? He said, "I don't condemn you. Go and stop doing what you're doing."

Did he say that what was unhealthy in her was tolerable? No. Sometimes what's going on in your spouse isn't tolerable, and extending grace doesn't excuse sin. But our job isn't to weed out what's not healthy in our spouses. God looks at me and says, "Love her." Sometimes that's difficult; the way I can love her is by seeing the best of who she is. 

Not that it excuses what's not healthy. Jesus didn't say, "Your sin wasn't a big deal. It's not worth stoning you over. Go on your way." He said, "I'm not going to condemn you. Stop sinning." What do you think he saw looking into the eyes of this woman? I think he saw somebody wounded and hurt by sin and he saw the vision of who God had created her to be, of who she could become. 

What would my marriage be like if I always looked at my wife with that same vision? Not stuck on who she isn't yet, or on her brokenness and humanness, but believing the best in who she is. Seeing the vision of who she could be that maybe she hasn't even caught yet. And believing in her capability.

Kathy's husband, Rick, is a highly focused individual. He's slightly ADHD, passionate in his work, and he rarely gets home on time for dinner. 

"He knows dinnertime is important to me," she told me bitterly. "If he truly loved me, he'd make it happen." 

I said, "So you see him as a mean, withholding, angry individual?"

She sat for a minute, stunned, because that's who she'd just described.

"Is that who you're married to?" I asked. "Is that his character, really?"

You could see the wheels spinning as she tried to process my question.

"Are you the kind of person who would marry a mean-spirited, punishing individual?"

"No," she finally admitted. 

"Then how can we focus on the goodness of his heart?" I challenged her. "How can we see him for who he is and not use the behaviors that irritate you to label him as bad? Do you really believe you'd marry somebody who'd intentionally do the damage you're attributing to him? Or is this an expression of his personality that, granted, may really need to be reined in?"

When I presented Rick in this light, Kathy was able to understand his behaviors weren't really about her, and she was able to distinguish between the irritating behavior and the good person God created.

 

3. Celebrate who your spouse is.

Too many people spend their entire marriages trying to conform their spouses into their image rather than allowing God to conform their spouses into his image. 

We focus on, This is the way I see it; you need to see it this way as well. For instance, the house needs to be cleaned to my standard, not cleaned to your standard, because my standard is the right one. In essence we say, "If you don't see this issue my way, then you are wrong. And I need to help you to be right, which is the way I see it." 

And what if you're not right? Or what if you are, but there's a different way—your spouse's way—to get there? Can you step back and celebrate him being him?

How much better for our marriages if we'd say, "Okay, that thing irritates me. Wonder what God's trying to do there? What character issues is God helping to define in you?" And then we allowed God to work without getting in his way.

If I choose to express love, acceptance, and forgiveness, then the spirit of God can come in with conviction and condemnation. He can prick her heart in ways that I can't begin to. He can point out far deeper issues than I can. If I believe the best in her, focus on her strengths, care for her, and allow her to be who God is creating her to be, then God shows up with his power and conviction and can really grow her up. If I step back and allow him to. 

Bill and his wife, Annie, came to see me for counseling. When Annie looked at Bill, she clearly adored him. She was an attractive woman in a plain kind of a way.

Bill told me, "I was the captain of the football team." That was important to him. I heard it several times. "I could date anybody in school I wanted. And I always dated the glamorous girls. The person I'm married to is not that. I know she loves me. She's a great mom and partner, but I'm having a hard time loving her. I've gotten her makeovers, and she looks stunning. But she hates it. I've gotten her beautiful outfits, and she doesn't like them. I'm learning that I need a princess and my wife is not."

I was so sad because his wife had a lot of beauty. It wasn't about her not taking care of herself; it was the style and the way she did it. 

In his book The Heart of Commitment, Scott Stanley writes that there comes a point where we have to grieve the loss of who our spouse is not. That part of celebrating them being them is grieving who they are not.

I spent time with Bill, helping him grieve the loss of a princess in his life. He would never be married to somebody who loved being gussied up. That part of his life had to die for him to move into celebrating who Annie really was. To appreciate the beauty he couldn't even see.  

 

4. Express ongoing forgiveness. 

When I don't believe the best in my spouse, when I don't accept and celebrate her for who she is, I develop an ongoing irritation that becomes infectious. And I begin to associate her with everything that's painful and unhealthy.

Instead I need to nurture ongoing forgiveness that allows me to continually love and accept her, while letting go of her humanness and what isn't developed or matured yet.

I know my wife will do things, because of who she is, that irritate me. She's not trying to annoy me. I'm just sensitive in those areas. 

It's not about her. It's about me. So I need to acknowledge I'm intolerant of those things and forgive her.

Most issues couples struggle with are not sin-based. They're differences in personality, in behavior, in style.

I know you're going to tell me to turn left when I've turned left here a million times. And that's okay because that's who you are. You're not doing it because you think I'm a horrible driver or I'm incompetent. So I forgive you before you even do it. 

That allows me to smile and say, "Okay dear," then turn. That's the spirit of preemptive forgiveness, and it's an ongoing extension of grace.

Many years ago I watched journalist John Stossel do a tv segment called "Love, Lust, and Marriage." He interviewed a couple who'd been married more than 50 years and asked them about their relationship and what it takes to have a long-lasting marriage. 

The wife said, "Well, you know, I learned that I need everything to be spotless."

The husband said, "And I'm a spotter."

They both just had to get used to it.

I thought, That's it. That's the core of grace in marriage.

What did each of them have to go through to understand that? First, they both had to accept who they are. She had to accept that she required things to be spotless. He had to accept that he makes messes.

She had to learn, "He's not coming behind me making messes everywhere because he doesn't love or respect me." She couldn't vilify him. He's a spotter. That's what he does.

He had to learn, "She's not coming behind me cleaning up all the time because she hates me. She comes behind me cleaning up all the time because she requires life to be spotless. That's just who she is." 

And how wonderful when they could get to the point of her saying, "You're spotting again." And his reply: "Yeah. You're gonna need to clean them up again, aren't you?" 

 

In my marriage I've worked for 23 years on my issues, and they're not any better. And my wife keeps extending grace, and God keeps extending grace and convicting. And I keep working. But I couldn't—or wouldn't—work on them as intentionally if my wife didn't treat me as though she believed that I could succeed and grow. 

Spend time asking God if you exhibit this grace and forgiveness toward your spouse. Ask him to help you exhibit those qualities in your life and marriage, remembering that God loved us so much, that even before we were born, and while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God carried a strong preemptive grace and forgiveness toward us. Should we not offer the same to our spouses?