Gospel.com Blog

Does God have a particular person chosen to be your spouse?

This idea has been used for years to comfort despondent Christians who worry that they’ll never find Mr. or Mrs. Right, and given that we believe God to be all-knowing and all-powerful, there’s a certain sense in thinking that He’s got somebody picked out for us all.

But if you think about that idea for a while, some questions and problems present themselves. If God has somebody “picked out” for you, should you actively search for said person, or trust that God will bring them into your life? How do you know if somebody is “the one”? And what about the gift of singleness?

Here’s how Nehemiah Ministries answers the question:

[In 1 Corinthians,] Paul stops short of guaranteeing that God will provide a spouse to anyone who wants one. Neither here nor anywhere else does Paul—or any biblical writer—lock God into a required response to any human need. There is always the possibility that God will choose not to meet a need directly but to give the grace to live contentedly with unfulfilled desires, a point Paul stresses in his second letter to this church (2 Cor 12:7-10).

Still Paul puts the accent on hope in his teaching on marriage, and throughout his writings urges us toward faith in a God who provides all of our needs in Jesus Christ (Phil 4:19). If you want to be married, you certainly have reason to stay hopeful that God will provide someone to meet that need unless he changes your desire or in some clear way shuts the door.

Again, it is important as you maintain this hope to keep your expectations within reasonable bounds. If you’re thinking, “God has one ideal choice for me,” you may be setting your standards for that person impossibly high. When we consider the perspective on God’s role which was in Paul’s mind as he wrote 1 Corinthians 7, it seems to be not “God has one ideal person for you to marry”—but “God will help you find a suitable partner.” This is usually a more edifying thought to dwell on. The person whom he gives you to marry will have imperfections and failings, just as you do. Still that person will complement you in a way that will work for your greater happiness and a more fruitful life together for Christ.

Read the rest of “Is God a Matchmaker?” at Nehemiah Ministries.

What do you think? Is God a matchmaker? Does this idea fit with, or go against, your own experience?

What do you think?

Have you ever witnessed, or experienced firsthand, “church discipline” administered by your church community? If the point of church discipline is to correct, not just to punish, what elements must be present in the act of discipline to ensure that it’s not just punitive?

Here’s how Lifetime Guarantee Ministries approaches this question:

Although they may both feel the same, there’s a huge difference between punishment and discipline. A punisher is angry at the punishee and takes out his hostility on him. The result is either fear-motivated conformity to the punisher’s will or rebellion. A discipliner, on the other hand, is not angry. He metes out the discipline despite the fact that it hurts him to do so. The one who is disciplined is motivated to change because of his love for the one who disciplines. Although both the punishee and the disciplinee may receive “three licks with the paddle,” the result will be vastly different.

Nowhere after the cross does the Greek text support the idea of God’s punishing new creations in Christ. The word is chasten, or discipline.

Read more at the Lifetime Guarantee website.

This is something I’ve thought and talked about quite a bit lately in the context of parenting. Our two-year-old daughter is entering a (temporary…. right?!?) phase in which her behavior is sometimes less than angelic. Some form of discipline becomes necessary at points, but how does one administer discipline in such a way that it encourages correction of behavior, rather than simple punishment for behavior? It gets especially tricky when the act of discipline—say, mandatory “quiet time”—looks the same whether it’s administered in love or anger.

All parents have wrestled with this question at some point. But this is also an important issue in the church, where believers are called to correct brothers and sisters who have strayed. Sometimes this correction takes the form of discipline (removal from a leadership position or even temporary removal from community worship) that might be seen as a punishment.

What acts of church discipline have you witnessed or experienced? What was present in the discipline that communicated love rather than anger?

What do you think?

What does forgiveness look like in everyday life?

Forgiveness is easy enough to talk about in the abstract—for Christians in particular, this is a topic we hear about quite a bit. We talk about Jesus’ forgiveness of our sins and the Christian imperative to forgive others when they wrong us. But what does that mean, exactly? Does it mean forgetting about the offense? Pretending it didn’t happen? Refusing to be angry at the offender?

In a recent article for Winning at Home, Shirley Valk explores the idea of forgiveness by citing the dramatic real-life case of a man who endured 11 years of prison for the crime of rape—a crime he hadn’t committed. After his eventual exoneration, he extended the hand of forgiveness to his accuser, and we can learn from his example:

Forgiveness is difficult for many of us to comprehend. How can a man spend 11 years in prison after being wrongly convicted and not be angry but forgiving? Forgiveness is not saying that what was done was okay. It is not letting the person who hurt you off the hook of the responsibility for what they did. It is not making it okay for the other person; it is making your life okay. Forgiveness is freeing your spirit, heart and mind. Forgiveness is taking care of you and restoring your relationship with God to wholeness.

Read the whole thing. And take a look at the many other regularly-posted articles at Winning at Home—they’re a great source of help and ideas for strengthening your family and navigating relationship challenges.

If you moved to a new country and found yourself faced with unfamiliar customs, religions, and politics, where would you turn for information? Would you turn to local media (TV, movies, newspapers) for help understanding day-to-day life in your new home? Where would you begin?

That’s a challenge faced by millions of Muslims in America, many of whom have moved to the United States without a clear understanding of Christianity and without anyone to help them get connected to local culture. Many have never interacted meaningfully with Christians, just as many Christians have never done so with Muslims.

Mission Network News reports on The Crescent project, which is devoted to building bridges between Muslims and Christians in the West:

Misunderstanding and misinformation. These are the problems affecting relationships between Muslims and Christians. One organization is trying to change that, while equipping Christians to help Muslims better understand Jesus.

President and CEO of Crescent Project Fouad Masri says, “Our goal is to equip and enable Christians to reach out to the millions of Muslims in America with the claims of Jesus and give them a chance to respond.”

Masri says there’s a reason he started the ministry. “I discovered that a lot of Muslims moving to the West do not have any Christian friends. The majority of Muslims today have never been to a Christian’s home. So they come to America, and their view of our values and our religion is what they see on television and in movies. Muslims are not hearing the claims of Christ.”

Read the rest of the article or visit The Crescent Project’s homepage.

A lot of Valentine’s Day material focuses on the early stages of a romantic relationship: initial courtship or dating, with some discussion of engagement or marriage. But for millions of people, the focus of Valentine’s Day isn’t a first date or schoolyard crush, but an everyday marriage relationship that has seen its ups and downs over months, years, or decades of married life.

To help husbands and wives think through their marriage relationship this Valentine’s Day, I can’t think of a better resource that ACTS International’s collection of essays about marriage and family relationships. Here are a few highlights:

• The Art of Staying in Love: is there hope for a marriage relationship after the “honeymoon wears off” and the intensity of romantic love starts to fade? Richard Innes describes what true love looks like in your marriage—love doesn’t begin and end with that butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling.
• Living Again After Divorce: it might seem wrong to talk about divorce on Valentine’s Day, but it’s a reality for countless people. If Valentine’s Day brings with it bitter memories about a divorce or broken relationship, this essay can help you gain perspective.
• Building a Healthy Marriage hits on some similar themes, encouraging husbands and wives to work on growing in love rather than just falling in love. See also Seven Secrets for a Successful Marriage, which has lots of practical advice.

As trivial as it might seem compared to “real” holidays like Christmas and Easter, Valentine’s Day can be alternately exciting and terrifying. Although several years of marriage have given me a new perspective on relationships and this particular holiday, I remember well the weirdness of being single on Valentine’s Day: if you’re in a relationship, it prompts all sorts of deep and difficult questions about love and commitment; and if you’re not in a romantic relationship, Valentine’s Day is at best an annoyance to be skipped past and forgotten as quickly as possible.

But whether you’re enjoying your 40th year of marriage or are planning to stay home and watch the NBA Dunk Contest by yourself this Saturday, it’s still worth taking a few minutes to consider the Bible’s teachings about love and relationships. One of the most thoughtful Christian writers I know on this topic is Blaine Smith of Nehemiah Ministries. Here are two essays that will get you thinking this Valentine’s Day:

• Is God a Matchmaker? Written with singles in mind, this essay tackles an oft-repeated but somewhat dubious claim: that God has picked out one perfect person for you to marry. So are you supposed to sit back and wait for God to bring that person into your life—and how would you even recognize the “right” person? Blaine finds the message behind this idea a bit troubling, and has some good suggestions for singles intimidated by the prospect of finding Mr. or Mrs. Right.
• The Compassion Factor: what does real love look like? It doesn’t always bear much resemblance to the love on display in books, movies, and popular culture. If our expectations about love are unrealistic, we risk failing to recognize it when it appears.

Both of these essays are from Blaine’s book Should I Get Married?, which despite the title is not just for couples considering marriage; it’s a good all-around book about Biblical relationships and romantic love. Enjoy—and have a good Valentine’s Day!

Many theological issues and questions within Christianity have sparked debate and argument over the centuries, but few bits of theology have as much of a practical, everyday effect on our relationships as the Bible’s teaching on the respective social roles of men and women. At the Been Thinking About blog, Mart De Haan has posted his reflections on what the Bible tells us about gender roles. Does the Bible dictate that women should submit to male authority? Mart notes that “the Bible has slowly developed a reputation for being on the side of men who want to treat women as sexual property and assistants rather than as equals”:

As in the case of so many political and social issues, there are scholars, and studied opinions on both sides. Some believe that the most important statement the Bible makes about gender is found in the words of the Apostle Paul when he writes that, in Christ, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

Others argue just as emphatically that the same Apostle Paul encouraged wives to learn quietly in church (1Cor 14:34), and at home, to be submissive to their husbands, as unto the Lord (Eph 5:22). In another letter Paul adds, “I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (1Cor 11:2).

The post generated quite a bit of reader discussion, so De Haan followed up with second post reflecting further on the topic. If the famous Bible passage about submission to one’s husband has you wondering about the Bible’s teachings on gender roles, these posts and the discussions offer a lot of good food for thought.

One can draw great satisfaction from a busy life. It’s comforting being able to go to sleep every night knowing that you spent your day doing lots of stuff. But what happens when that busyness transitions into something unhealthy? What happens when working diligently turns into workaholism?

What happens when you stop taking time to love people because that would take too much time from your work?

An article by Acts-International titled Beware of the Barrenness of a Busy Life explores why people flock to busyness, and what affect that mindset can have on our spiritual and emotional lives:

Whatever the cause, if the over-active person sits still for long, his or her inner pain of not feeling okay begins to rise to consciousness. He or she then feels empty, bored, lonely, tired, depressed, or restless. To quieten this pain, he or she just keeps busy, busy, busy.

One escapes his or her pain by becoming an alcoholic. Another, a workaholic. In God’s sight there’s no difference.

One of the most important lessons in life for every individual to learn and teach his or her children is this: One’s worth as a person is never dependent on his or her performance—good or bad. Every person is worthwhile because he or she has been created by God in his image, and loved fully and unconditionally by him.

The rest of the article is at the ACTS International site.

[photo by flickr user freebird4]

Do you feel like your relationship with your kids is defined by continual conflict and clashes of will? In a recent article at the Al Menconi Ministries website, Al uses a lighthearted illustration from his own life to demonstrate that parents sometimes need to ‘choose their battles’ with their kids—while expecting obedience from your children is obviously important, choosing to make a mountain over an issue that should be a molehill can do more harm than good.

That’s just one of several articles about parent-child communication that Al’s written over the last several weeks. If you feel like there’s a disconnect between you and your kids, these essays might help:

• Are you nagging or communicating? There’s a fine (but important) line between healthy communication and plain old nagging.
• Are you just the chore-giver? Are you a loving, communicative parent, or just the person who assigns chores around the house?
• A quick fix or a real solution? If you’re like most parents, you’ve found that your kids sometimes make entertainment choices that frustrate or upset you. When this happens, do you go for the “quick fix” or do you take the time to really understand your child’s behavior?

There are hundreds more articles at the AMM website covering topics ranging from parenting to video games to music. Take some time to explore what AMM has to say about raising a healthy family!

Ever felt stressed? Like the whole world was asking you to do something for them? Like the very things that you call good in your life are the things that are most stifling?

Well, here’s an article I ran across from the Narramore Christian Foundation’s Psychology for Living site called, “Say No to Burnout” that you should read.

Here’s a few insights from it:

When I discovered that burning out was not God’s will for my life, one of my biggest problems was, “How do I say no?” I quickly learned that I could not wait for people to approve of my saying no. I couldn’t wait for their permission or for someone else to do the task in my place. I simply had to say no, whether or not anyone but God Himself understood.

And:

I have found that friends who are committed to burnout will, of course, urge me to burn out with them! They may even try to make me feel guilty if I don’t become involved in activities which in themselves are good, but which may add too great a burden to my already overextended schedule. In the process I’ve discovered that the advice of even godly friends is only as valid as their own perspective on burnout.