Re YouTube: Shining the Light in a Dark Culture

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A Conversation with John MacArthur

“There is a level of desperation…” “It’s pretty common among young people… to take their lives. It isn’t that they suffer from pain; they suffer from the meaninglessness of even pleasure…”

Reblog: A 10-Step Relationship Assessment (FamilyLife)

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From Family Life

It’s been a tough year on marriages.

Maybe after all this spontaneous “together time,” you’re wondering if you’re happily married after all. Or even if “happily married” is still in the cards.

Make no mistake. Happily married isn’t the same as easily married.

Because just like most of life in the real world—and contrary to prime time’s brand of effortless affection—greatness lies on the other side of overcoming natural impulses. Like irritation slouching into contempt. Self-protective grudges trumping self-sacrificing forgiveness. Prioritization of our own schedules, needs, and long-term plans over someone else’s.

In my own marriage—20 years to a man who’s hands-down my best friend—I’ve found that to be happily married, I have to work for it.

Hard.

Because the work of enduring love doesn’t mean we’re naturally compatible. (My husband and I actually aren’t!) Instead, it means each of us are willing to do the supernatural work of laying down our own lives for each other.

How can couples stay happily married?

The most happily married couples are startlingly and scientifically not the ones sheltered from hardship, financial strain, loss. It’s not even the ones that fight the least.

They’re the marriages who’ve learned to choose us in ways microscopic and monumental.

But what’s that look like in the nitty-gritty? Here’s a simple, 10-step assessment to help steer you in a happily married direction.

The relationship assessment

1. How do I respond to my spouse?

When you dial a friend, there’s only an interchange if your friend picks up the phone and talks back. And marriage isn’t that different. Do you generally receive your spouse’s “calls”—their positive behaviors and moves toward you?

Do you meet those initiations with warm response? Or are they met with disdain or no one “picking up the phone” at all?

Renowned marriage researcher John Gottman finds startling predictors of marital success in how couples respond to each other’s bids for affection—and whether couples respond to each other with contempt.

Gottman discovered those who had divorced six years after his initial study were only positively responsive to each other 33% of the time. Couples still married had responded warmly, on average, 87% of the time, meeting their spouse’s emotional needs.

And it doesn’t stop there. Negative spouses missed 50% of their partner’s positive behavior. They even perceived negative behavior … that wasn’t actually there.

This 21st century science echoes ancient truth: “In humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not look only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).

We need to respond to our spouses as God responds to us: “Let us press on to know him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn” (Hosea 6:3, NLT).

2. Where is your spouse (and marriage) on your priority list?

One study that surveyed marriage counselors found quality time—apart from the business of running a household—as one of three key factors in marital success.

Coexisting in parallel lives simply doesn’t stoke the fires of closeness. One counselor mentioned the amount of relational “touch points” in which a healthy couple connects on a given day.

Another pointed out that even in “mental time together, you are thinking about the other person and you’re including that other person in your decisions.”

In your relationship assessment, consider whether your spouse innately knows your relationship gets top-shelf status—even over kids, success at work, your cell phone.

3. How much do I respect my spouse?

Sometimes, the size of a person’s weakness and failure swell beyond our ability to see what’s valuable about them. Or simply see their humanity.

Inner negativity leaks out in contempt—one of Gottman’s “Four Horsemen” of dying relationships, along with defensiveness, criticism, and stonewalling.

When you’re tempted to marinate in your spouse’s prolific shortcomings, reroute by recalling three ways you’re thankful for them (see #8). For more help with this, see 30 Ways to Love Your Wife and In His Corner: 32 Ways to Honor Your Husband.

Find 4-10 here.

Sermon: Unfinished Business Esther Chapter 9

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This is a great series, this is 9/10 and worth another listen. I love the big picture and the connecting the dots for me… Click on the pic for a link to this sermon.

“Have you ever thought of the Bible as a family history/photo album?” Pastor Phil Grotenhuis

Victory with overwhelming odds are played out time and time again through out the history of God’s people…

Esther Chapter 9

Reblog: 3 Ways the Holy Spirit Helped Spurgeon Preach

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by Neal Thornton

Every preacher has been there, probably last Sunday. The music is playing, people are singing, and the preacher, well he’s praying. Because he’s about to stand and preach. The Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, surely did the same. He was remembered as having prayed, “I believe in the Holy Ghost” while making his weekly pulpit ascent at the 5,000-seat London Metropolitan Tabernacle.

Spurgeon prayed, and rightly so because he understood there to be a connection – between the Holy Spirit and the preaching event. That is to say, Spurgeon saw a relationship between the operation of the Spirit and the proclamation of the Word.

In his book The Forgotten Spurgeon, Iain Murray recounts:

“The true explanation of Spurgeon’s ministry, then, is to be found in the person and power of the Holy Spirit. He was himself deeply conscious of this. It was not men’s admiration he wanted, but he was jealous that they should stand in awe of God. ‘God has come unto us, not to exalt us, but to exalt Himself.’” (Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon, 38.)

The Prince of Preachers believed preaching to be a spiritual enterprise – a Holy Spirit endeavor. Spiritual assignments require spiritual attention. Therefore, the Spirit is the sine qua non of gospel preaching, the one ingredient to the preaching event that without which nothing else matters.

“The Holy Spirit is absolutely essential. Without Him our office is a mere name.”

The preaching task is made effective only by a spiritual means – the attention and anointing of the Holy Spirit. The preacher longs for the Spirit’s attendance, that the Spirit might engage and apprehend the souls of men. “Our hope of success, and our strength for continuing the service, lie in our belief that the Spirit of the Lord rest upon us.” (Lectures, 197)

The Spirit must attend. The Spirit makes the dull minds, bright. He makes the dry bones, flesh. And He makes the dead men, live. Only with the Spirit comes an otherworldly power to our otherwise weak and mortal preaching. “We cannot do it without power,” said Spurgeon. (All-Round, 29)

In terms of sermon delivery, how might the Spirit help us in our weakness? Spurgeon suggests the following:

1. Power and Freedom – The Spirit is our Live Coal

As Isaiah’s lips were touched, so must ours be. The Spirit touches our ministry in a way and in a wonder, which no human method or means can avail. Let the Word go! Preach the Word! The preacher has Bible in hand and text in heart. The Spirit works to anoint the preacher to speak with liberty and freedom to exalt the risen Christ.

“How gloriously a man speaks when his lips are blistered with the live coal from the altar –feeling the burning power of the truth, not only in his inmost soul, but on the very lips with which he is speaking!” (Lectures, 203.)

2. Control and Restraint – The Spirit is our Bit and Bridle

May God control our tongues! May we never eclipse the cross with a misspoken word or a misplaced tone. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit.” (1 Cor. 2:4) May the Spirit keep us from ourselves, that we might not sin against him.

“We need the Spirit of God to put a bit and bridle upon us to keep us from saying that which would take the minds of our hearers away from Christ and eternal realities, and set them thinking upon the groveling things of the earth.” (Lectures, 203)

Find the rest here.

 

Recovery Online Support Groups:

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Maintain your recovery during the pandemic:
The stress of COVID-19 can present many challenges to those who are in recovery. In particular, social distancing is limiting people’s ability to get support from friends, family and support groups.

Connection to others in recovery is a big part of the solution for many in recovery. Meetings make people feel supported and understood in ways nothing or no one else can. With much of the world under orders to quarantine or shelter in place, people in recovery can struggle to maintain a connection to their support groups. The good news is many recovery groups are scheduling virtual meetings, and that number is increasing each day.
Below are links to information about virtual 12-step and non-12-step meetings. These meetings take place in a variety of ways: over the phone, in online community posting forums, in social media groups and through video.
Also, if you have a sponsor, peer specialist or other special relationship, maintain that connection through text, email, phone, and FaceTime or Skype.
12-Step Programs

• Alcoholics Anonymous (AA; http://www.aa.org): For regularly scheduled virtual meetings, visit aaintergroup.org and click on Online Meetings.
• Narcotics Anonymous (NA; http://www.na.org): For regularly scheduled virtual meetings, visit
http://www.na.org/meetingsearch. In the NA Meeting Search box on the right, select “Phone” or “Web” in the Country field drop-down list.
• Al-Anon (for families and friends of alcoholics; al-anon.org): For regularly scheduled virtual meetings, visit al-anon.org/al-anon-meetings/electronic-meetings.
• Nar-Anon (for families and friends of addicts; http://www.nar-anon.org): For regularly scheduled virtual meetings, visit http://www.naranon.com/forum.

Other Programs
Some in recovery prefer non-12 step programs. Listed below are a few organizations who provide virtual support.
• SMART Recovery (for people with addictive problems; http://www.smartrecovery.org): To find online forums and meetings, visit http://www.smartrecovery.org/smart-recovery-toolbox/smart-recoveryonline.
• LifeRing (for people addicted to alcohol or drugs; http://www.lifering.org): To find online video meetings via Zoom, visit http://www.lifering.org/online-meetings.
• Women for Sobriety (for women facing issues of alcohol or drug addiction; womenforsobriety.org): For information on the online community, visit wfsonline.org.
For more information and tips, visit MagellanHealthcare.com/COVID-19.