Loving and Yiefding

'Observe again that Paul has exhorted husbands and wives to reciprocity. . . To love therefore, is the husband's part, to yield pertains to the other side. If, then, each one contributes his own part, all stand firm. From being loved, the wife too becomes loving; and from her being submissive, the husband learns to yield.'

St. John Chrysostom (HT:Holy Fathers)

Heaven Taking Over

“We are not just ordinary. Nothing is just ordinary. ‘The whole earth is full of his glory.’ We keep trying to fill it with monuments to our own glory — kingdoms, businesses, hit songs, athletic victories, and other mechanisms of self-salvation. But the truth is better than all that. Created reality is a continuous explosion of the glory of God. And history is the drama of his grace awakening in us dead sinners eyes to see and taste to enjoy and courage to obey.

“Do you realize that it is God’s will to make this earth into an extension of his throne room in Heaven? Do you realize that it is God’s will for his kingdom of glory to come into your life and for his will to be done in you as it is done in Heaven? Heaven is expanding, spreading in your direction.

“That is the meaning of existence, if you will accept it and enter in.

“Heaven is taking over. Yield.”

– Ray Ortlund, Jr., Isaiah: God Saves Sinners (Preaching the Word Commentary: Crossway, 2005).

HT: Jared Wilson

Inside the Boundries

HT: Paul Tripp

Headship Never Means Abuse

J. Lee Grady hits another one out of the park: "The Dark Side of Wives Submitting to Husbands:

Christian teaching on male headship is often used as a weapon against women. This abuse must be confronted....

..Truly Christian marriages, according to the apostle Paul, involve a tender, servant-hearted and unselfish husband who (1) loves his wife "just as Christ also loved the church"; (2) loves her as his own body; and (3) loves her as himself (see Eph. 5:25, 28 and 33). He stands alongside his wife in faithfulness, and she joyfully respects her husband because he can be trusted. And the two become one.

Read it all at the link. I believe in biblical submission, and in complementarian marriage, but have nothing but contempt for any man who misuses those principles to physically or emotionally abuse his wife. The Bible puts a heavier responsibility on husbands than on wives: To love them as Christ loves us. Church leaders need to preach that, and confront men who turn authority into abusive domination.

A God We Can Use?

"We have turned to a God we can use rather than a God we must obey; we have turned to a God who will fulfill our need rather than a God before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves. He is a God for us, for our satisfaction-- not because we have learned to think of him in this way through Christ but because we have learned to think of him this way through the marketplace. Everything is for us, for our pleasure, for our satisfaction, and we have come to assume that it must be so in the church as well."

          - David Wells, God in the Wasteland


HT: Vitamin Z

Wednesday Link List

Some harvests from my interweb meanderings:

Has the Pro-Life Cause Reached a Tipping Point?

10 Things Submission is Not 

Is Technology Bringing Down the Church?

The Sad Views of Stephen Hawking

 Albert Mohler on The Terrorist and His Porn Stash

Christianizing the Social Network - A review of Tim Chailles' new book

Where to Find the Best Prices for Books