Blakeyblog

We’re back! Last night we returned from a six day vacation to Lake Tahoe. I forgot how long California is, until it took us ten hours to drive from Orange County to the cabin in Truckee. Despite Tyler getting sick half way through the week we enjoyed spending time with our good friends Ty, Lucas and Heather.

A few times on this trip I was wondering what in the world a vacation is supposed to be. I think I’ve seen too many TV commercials showing families snorkeling or at a spa in the mountains. I usually think of vacations as restful, relaxing, good food, enjoying time together and time to read and blog. Only half of those were true for this particular vacation with poor sick little Tyler to take care of I only slept a few hours at nights and then tried redeem the day time by reading, but kept falling asleep!

I managed to make some progress in J.C. Ryle’s Holiness and also started a new book, Faithful Feelings by Matthew A. Elliot. Most of all I was thankful for time to really meditate on God’s Word. My husband is the high school youth pastor at our church and our group is reading through the Psalms together over at the Godsongmusic site. During the week in Tahoe we hit Psalm 100 and I just keep going back to it, it is so encouraging!

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
Come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;
Give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
His faithfulness continues through all generations.

I really like the one word commands the Psalmist gives us to respond to God–shout, worship, come, know, enter, give. Each command is so specific too.

Shout for joy.
Worship with gladness.
Come with joy.
Know that He is God, and our Creator, we are subject to Him.
Enter with thanksgiving and praise.
Give thanks because the Lord is good and His love and faithfulness are forever.

What an awesome call to focus on God and doesn’t this Psalm make it sound like it should be a celebration? This was one thing that reminded me have joy in our trip despite the few obstacles…But I sure am glad to be home!

Click here to see more pictures from out Trip to Tahoe!

Yesterday I finished reading John MacArthur’s The Fulfilled Family a helpful little book (only 126 pages) on the roles inside the family. Even though this book is brief and more of an overview, MacArthur brought the same Biblical clarity that he always does in helping us understand and follow God’s divine plan for family life.

In five chapters MacArthur addresses, from Ephesians 5–family, wife, husband, children and parents. The common thread in the each chapter is mutual submission from Ephesians 5:21,

“…submitting to one another in the fear of God.”

In order to have a family that pleases God we need to be surrendered to Him through salvation and committed to living out in obedience what He says in His Word.

This book is deep, convicting and practical and would be great for a husband and wife to read together or as a family. It is so short that you could do so in one sitting or for sure a couple of days. I was encouraged by the reminder of what my role is in our family–as a wife and mother–and I was thankful for what I learned from all the chapters, here are some highlights:

“The Wife’s Role: Submission, Not Slavery”

Peter said, women fist of all need to cultivate inner beauty. They should be primarily concerned with “the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God” (1 Peter 3:4). It’s hard to imagine anything Peter might have said that would be more out of step with twenty-first-century notions of political correctness! He was saying that women ought to be gentle and quiet and submissive, not loud boisterous and pushy. They ought to be concerned with their own character, and not with the world’s fashion. (p. 37)

“The Husband’s Duty: Love”

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” (Ephesians 5:25) Biblical love is a willful commitment to self-sacrifice, and it is not at all based on how we might “feel” at any point about the object of our love…What we choose to love invariably becomes extremely attractive to us. A heart determined to love sees only beauty. So authentic love naturally results in the passions of desire and attraction we often associate with love. (p.62-63)

“The Children’s Duty: Obedience”

It’s notable that the fifth commandment itself doesn’t use the word obey. “Honor” is a broader concept that certainly includes the idea of obedience–but at the same time it condemns attitudes of resentment, anger, reluctance, or other forms of defiance that mechanical external obedience often masks. Obedience without honor is hypocrisy. Scripture is calling for obedience from the heart. (p.97)

“The Parent’s Duty: Nurture and Admonition”

Children have a heart problem. They are constitutionally sinful, like their parents. What they need most are regenerate hearts. This is the most fundamental issue in parenting. It’s not ultimately about behavior; it’s about the child’s heart…it’s not enough to correct wrong behavior and teach good manners. Proper parenting is not about behavioral control, or even merely teaching kids to be obedient. To bring up our children in “the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4) is to direct them to Christ. Parents cannot guarantee their kids’ salvation..but parents must be evangelists to point the way to Christ. (p. 114-116)

Sin permeates every aspect of man’s behavior including marriage. God provides forgiveness of sin through the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, man can be forgiven by God and can live in harmony with other men. (This includes husbands and wives!) Christians should graciously accept the forgiveness that they have in Christ and graciously bestow forgiveness upon their spouses “…forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32)

(The Excellent Wife, p.23)

Uh-oh, a blog about sin…if you are thinking of skipping this post, I understand why, but I hope you’ll stick it out anyway! When I came to chapter three of Martha Peace’s The Excellent Wife I saw the title and groaned–”A Wife’s Understanding of Sin.” I knew it was going to be convicting but I also knew that I needed to hear it so I kept reading. And as she has so far this book, she nailed me yet again on a weakness of mine…forgiving others sins. The good thing about Peace is that she doesn’t just bulldoze you and leave you lying there, she also gives practical helps to take the steps of obedience that God has prepared for us to do.

I really appreciate how candid Peace writes…sin is a reality, a fact. It is present every day and we can see it in our attitudes, thoughts, words and if we’re willing to see the truth, in our marriages. We cannot ignore it. Romans spells it out for us in chapter 3 verse 23

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

None of us are exceptions to this problem of sin. But in His mercy God saw fit to provide a solution to this worldwide, history long epidemic of sin…He gave us Jesus Christ! Easter is coming up and maybe like me you are taking some time to reflect over the weighty reality of what Christ had to endure to take your and my place before God. We deserved death for being sinners, but He died for us so we could be forgiven. That is amazing!

As Christians, we are now forgiven by God because of our faith in Christ. We accept that forgiveness from Him a little flippantly sometimes. We can become casual about our sin not remembering the weight of what happened to forgive us from it. In my own life it is all too easy to justify wrong attitudes by blaming them on being tired or because I’m having a bad day. If I considered the magnitude of what took place so I could be forgiven I don’t think I’d be so hasty to defend myself and my sin.

I love how Peace makes us think through the cycle of forgiveness by taking us to Ephesians 4:32. God has forgiven us, in turn we must forgive others. I sure don’t want to act like the servant in Matthew 18:21-35. Remember the parable of the merciful master and the unmerciful servant? It’s worth a refresher…

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

”Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Jesus takes forgiveness very seriously. His death made our forgiveness possible and He requires that we do the same to everyone and anyone who wrongs us. How sad that in this story we are the servant who was forgiven a huge amount (all our sin was forgiven by God) and yet we go around choking our husbands over pennies (by comparison). We wives need to humble ourselves, consider the forgiveness we have received and from the heart, with patience, forgive our husbands any and every offense. We know that every day we still sin and yet God is graciously bestowing mercy and forgiveness on us. Who are we to not graciously bestow forgiveness on our husbands?

Wow, April is already here! Where is the year going? It is so beautiful around where we live because all the flowers are starting to bloom. The trees throughout our condo community have just been bare sticks and branches up till last week and now they are covered with these beautiful white blossoms.

This weekend I felt sad as I looked back on this week and saw four out of seven days I was not disciplined in my quiet time with the Lord. It is frustrating to see the hours of the day ticking by and not be doing what I should in sitting down to read and talk with the Lord. When we allow ourselves to “get busy” we allow ourselves to make excuses don’t we? I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir because most people I know who don’t make daily time with the Lord a priority know that they suffer for it, as I saw in my life this week.

The first day that I don’t spend time still before the Lord to read and pray I feel sad and keep trying to make it “fit in” somewhere (when I really should be making everything else fit in around that time–shame on me…). The second day I was undisciplined. I hit the snooze button four times and then as I saw my bad attitude I was frustrated and fought for the time, but obviously not hard enough. That was a bad day. The third day I was still making excuses for being “so busy.” That day I felt a tiny bit justified that I really didn’t have time, even though as my good friend so accurately says of people, “We do what we really want to do.” My heart was not in the right place and I had lost my focus.

There are so many things that I can get caught up in, in this world rather than being caught up in Him. Many times I don’t consider the gravity of life without God. The last two weekends Bobby has taught the Gospel from 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 and Acts 2:37-41 and this has been a huge wakeup call for me about the horrible reality experiencing physical death apart from Christ and also the deep seriousness of life apart from Christ. Someone who has been redeemed should never act like they aren’t. We shouldn’t say that we don’t have time each day to spend quietly with God to study, pray and meditate on His Word.

People place so much importance on getting all there is out of life and then they fear death. But really we should be fearing meeting God after death if we are not right with Him through Christ. Each person dies and goes before the judgment seat of Christ to be either welcomed in to heaven or cast from God’s presence forever. I decided today that I need to daily ask myself: How am I living today that brings glory to God’s name and proclaims the gospel? How are my hours, my hands and feet, energy, will, mind, and desires being surrendered for His use during my stay on earth? Is it for my own gain, pursuit of happiness and about pleasing others? We only have one opportunity in this life, one stay on this earth. A common phrase is, “If I could go back, or do it over…” But the truth is that we can’t. We live each day after another and time does not turn back, it only goes forward. Either I am going to put aside my excuses and surrender myself to the work of God’s glorious name or I am going to waste my life searching for fulfillment and meaning that does not exist outside of Him.

Will you be resolved with me to give all your days this week to God specifically by setting aside part of each day as a special time to sit still before Him in His Word and in prayer?