Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll

Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship & Life Together was an interesting read. I hadn't heard too many favorable reviews by some of my colleagues so I was a bit skeptical. However, I found it surprisingly good. I was impressed by the openness of Mark and Grace's relationship. You can tell they are still working on things. I don't 100% buy into everything they shared, especially the manly approach to leading a marriage that Mark is very open about, but I agree there has to be someone stepping up and saying this is wrong or this is what we need to do. Our culture of manly leadership is very authoritative and not very servant like. Marriage is a special relationship that has been established by God between a man and a woman to best relate to our Creator. Our God humbled Himself to serve the least of these and likewise we should be willing to do the same for our spouses whether we are the husband or the wife.

I was blown away by the diversity of marriage and sexual counseling that Mark and Grace have encountered. I've been doing premarital counseling for years and haven't even come close to their experiences. It truly demonstrates the secular culture and ministry environment they are dealing with in the Seattle area.

I was most impressed however in the thoroughness of research and honesty concerning contraceptives. This is something I don't often approach with couples, but found myself convicted to share truths behind them. I know for myself even though my wife and I have been around the medical profession for years we hadn't even thought of some of the things highlighted. We've had three miscarriages in our seventeen years of marriage. We have come to believe as a result of the type of  birth control we were using it help cause the baby to not be viable in the womb. I've come to realize more and more there is so much we don't understand that we are doing to our bodies simply because people have told us it is okay to do. I wonder what people use to tell each other back in the '30 or '40's concerning smoking? Many of the people who are telling us it is okay to use certain types of birth control are ones we should be able to trust such as doctors, friends, parents, and even pastors. This is an area of marriage where many couples must become better informed.

Because of this opportunity to review this book for Book Sneeze from Thomas Nelson Publishing, I feel like there is one more pastor who has been corrected and better informed. Real marriages are hard work! It is so much easier to just walk out and move onto another relationship. Yet the most satisfying marriages are real ones! They understand it is more than about "me". It is all about "us"! Mark and Grace, I believe, come to that point at the end of this book as they highlight the most important day of your marriage as the last day not the first. As they say, we need to reverse-engineer our lives and marriages. "The big idea is to anticipate life forward and live it backward (208)." This insight will revolutionize so many marriages if it really sinks in. Nobody ever seeks out to get a divorce on their wedding day. Yet for many it still happens. Examining our marriages from the last day till the present will cause you and me to make the adjustments necessary to get the outcome we desire no matter the situations or heartaches which will happen along the way. You are in this marriage together with your spouse. Consequently, you must work at it together!

Soul Print by Mark Batterson

Soul Print: Discovering Your Divine Destiny by Mark Batterson was an excellent read. I found it helpful in reflection and study for a few messages I was doing on the life of David. Mark is one of my favorite contemporary pastors/ authors. I found his take on the life of David to be refreshing and insightful. His perspective on each of us having a dual destiny was quite encouraging. Most Christian books would rather simplistically encourage us to make our ultimate destiny to be Christ-like, which he calls our universal destiny and acknowledges is our ultimate purpose in life. But he goes further by identifying our other destiny is unique to each of us: to be unlike anyone who has ever lived. God created us to be someone unique and to do what only we could do. Mark terms you and me as being "incalculably unique". I like that.

God is at work around us to help us become all He longs for us to be but are we willing to trust Him with everything? David did and so can you! Don't quickly read this book. Allow each chapter to soak in and to be absorbed. If you only get one thing from this book absorb this truth, "God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go. So take a deep breath, and enjoy the journey (28)."

"Fearless" Book Trailer by Eric Blehm // Story of SEAL Team SIX Operator...

5 Reasons Pastors Are More Vulnerable to Sexual Temptation

By Jeff Fisher
Let me start off by saying no one is immune to sexual temptation.  It doesn’t matter what your job is, how old you are, or how much time you spend with Jesus each day.  We all have the potential to fall sexually.
Even ministers…and maybe especially ministers.

Ministers have jobs that automatically put them in a pressure cooker.
It’s not unusual to have a stressful job, but there are five unique aspects of a ministry position that make him more vulnerable to opening the door to sexual temptation.

1.  A pastorate is a place of power

Whether the minister is using it or not, he has great influence over others.
The pastor is an authority, he is looked up to, he is on stage, and he is usually highly regarded.  Broken people with damaged lives come regularly to talk with the minister, many of them desperate for a word or attention.

It is not hard for a minister to sway others with their words or personality.  The minister probably doesn’t realize the power he has over others.

2.  Ministers are often isolated and unaccountable for their actions

Ministers spend large amounts of time alone.  Many don’t have a set schedule or a structured day.  They don’t have to clock in and out of work and don’t usually have church leaders asking them accountability questions.

This is especially true for the small church minister who is often the only staff member.  Isolation and lack of accountability are seedbeds for disaster.

3.  Protection and policies around ministers can be lax

Churches rarely have policies requiring accountability software on their computer or mobile phone.  Few or no precautions are taken when the minister is counseling someone of the opposite sex.  And ministers often go on visitation to homes by themselves.
Policies don’t cure bad behavior or a wayward congregant, but they provide an extra boundary that may be a difference maker in a tempting situation.

4.  Ministers have few people they can share their deepest struggles with

It’s hard for a minister to be transparent.  His closest relationships are usually church people, and he doesn’t want to share deeply with parishioners.

Neither does he share his personal or sexual struggles or sexual struggles with other ministers for fear he might lose his job.

5.  Ministers frequently feed off the approval of others

Ministers can be approval addicts.  Their identities can revolve around the attention and comments of others.
A minister’s well-being, if it is unhealthy, rises and falls with every “Good sermon” or “Sister Jones is mad at you.”  Not only are broken church members looking for attention, but so are broken ministers.

Sexual tension in a minister/parishioner relationship is powerful and deadly.  It pushes the button of an approval addict and the needy church member and can quickly lead to disaster.

START THE CONVERSATION, HAVE COURAGE
Unfortunately, we must initiate these conversations with our staff and church leaders.  It’s doubtful a lay leader or denominational leader will get the ball rolling until there is a moral failure.

It takes courage to talk about potential holes in our ministry.  It takes a higher motivation for integrity and sexual purity to draw boundaries, write policies, and set up accountability.

These are points of vulnerability.  They have been fault lines for many ministers before us who have fallen sexually.  We ministers have a high responsibility and are accountable for the souls of many.
We mustn’t be lax in dealing with areas of sexual vulnerability or questioning our staff about them.

Jeff Fisher is a minister, blogger and podcaster from Raleigh, NC. He is a graduate of Southwestern Seminary in Ft. Worth and pastored churches in Texas and New York. Deep recovery began for Jeff when his pornography addiction caused him to lose his ministry position. For the first time, he began discovering the sexual health that God intended for him and for his marriage.

Insights for Sermons

by J. Ellsworth Kalas   
If you’re a preacher and you get your sermons from the internet or some similar agency, you need read no further. But if you depend heavily on your own creative instincts and what you hope is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I want as your colleague to confer with you for a moment.

Let me say first what you already know, that working with the Holy Spirit and your creativity is a perilous business. The Holy Spirit is dependable, but seems to cooperate only to the degree that we allow. If we are in a receptive mood (which is not the same as a desperate mood), God’s Spirit speaks easily, in a generally bright and inspiring voice. But if your mood is distracted, presumptuous or just plain dull, the Spirit may seem elusive. I can’t solve this problem for you. I’ve struggled with the problem often enough to know some of the answers, but the issue relates so closely to the particular state of one’s own soul that it isn’t fair for me to generalize from my experience.

But let me talk with you about a closely related matter, something reinforced for me by my reading of The New York Times obituary of the poet, Ruth Stone. Ms. Stone was a fine poet, winning the National Book Award in 2002. She was 87 years old at the time, which indicates that you need never stop growing and creating.

The preacher’s point of interest in Ms. Stone comes in this quote from her experience: “I was hanging laundry out and I saw all these ants crawling along the clothes line. Well, I just dropped whatever I was hanging and ran upstairs in the house to get a book and write it down. Never keep a poem waiting; it might be a really good one, and if you don’t get it down, it’s lost.”

The stuff that goes into sermons is like that, too. Sometimes it’s a full sentence; I urge you to grab tight hold of it before it flees from you. Sometimes it doesn’t yet have the shape of a sentence. No matter; take it and hold it close to your soul until the embryo takes more hopeful shape.

Insights are hard to come by. That’s why most sermons have so few of them and why preachers settle instead for irrelevant stories that don’t illustrate and for jokes that distract.  But insights fire up the soul of the preacher, and in turn light a fire in the souls of the hearers.  The Holy Spirit is really quite generous with insights. Our problem is that we don’t stay close enough to God’s Spirit to hear, and that when we hear we sometimes keep hanging out the laundry when we should be running to our iPad, our recorder, or some good old pen and paper.

Take it from our spiritual ancestor, Charles Wesley. He was known at times to leap from his horse at some Methodist home and before saying, “Hello,” or “God bless you,” to shout, “Pen and ink! Pen and ink!” Then, after writing half a dozen verses of a hymn that had come to him along the way, he would greet his waiting friends. If it weren’t for Charles’s sense of urgency, who knows what, might have happened to “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” or “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”?

Maxwell: What Does Your Daily Agenda Say About You?

by John Maxwell

How would you describe your life? Are you achieving what you desire? Are you accomplishing the things that are important to you? Do you consider yourself a success? How do your prospects look for the future?
If I could come to your house and spend just one day with you, I would be able to tell whether or not you will be successful. You could pick the day. If I got up with you in the morning and went through the day with you, watching you for 24 hours, I could tell in what direction your life is headed.
When I tell this to people at conferences, there’s always a strong reaction. Some people are surprised. Some get defensive because they think I would be making a snap judgment about them.

A few get ticked off because they think my claim sounds arrogant. Others are intrigued and desire to know why I make such a statement.
Here is why: I believe that the secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda. If you make a few key decisions and then manage them well in your daily agenda, you will succeed.
You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. You see, success, doesn’t just suddenly occur one day in someone’s life. For that matter, neither does failure. Each is a process. Every day of your life is merely preparation for the next. What you become is the result of what you do today.
In other words…

You are preparing for something.
The question is, What are you preparing for? Are you grooming yourself for success or failure?
As my father used to tell me when I was growing up, “You can pay now, and play later, or you can play now and pay later. But either way, you are going to pay.”
The idea was that you can play and take it easy and do what you want today, but if you do, your life will be harder later. However, if you work hard now, on the front end, then you will reap rewards in the future.
Think about it: What are you preparing for today? Success or failure?
Does your daily agenda indicate that you make a habit of paying before you play? Answering these questions is a good predictor of what you will become tomorrow and in the future.