I Married the Wrong Person

How do you know you married the wrong person? Because we all do. We can't not marry the wrong person--at least, according to the Hollywood ideal. Great stuff here from Tyler McKenzie. Here's how he begins:

Today my wife Lindsay and I celebrate our two year anniversary. Two years ago, we tied the knot and took the plunge. Two years ago, the cutest girl in Indiana was taken off the market! Two years ago, we launched the beginning of the rest of our lives. Two years ago…

And after two years, there’s no hiding behind the dinner-and-a-movie façade of dating life any longer. I can’t buy enough flowers to conceal it. I can’t open enough doors. I can’t say enough “I love you’s.” She knows (and painfully, so do I) that she married the wrong person. 

Allow me to humbly explain (before she reads this). For quite some time now, there has been a myth floating around our idealistic individualistic society. A myth that claims that marriage will only work when you find your “smoking-hot, high-class, filthy rich, love-at-first-sight, sexually compatible, accept-me-as-I-am, Titanic-Notebook-Sweet-Home-Alabama-Twilight-esque, soul mate.”

Don’t believe me? Look at the message Hollywood communicates; look at the empirical evidence pointing to later and fewer marriages; research studies suggest this is a primary factor that holds men and women back from marital commitment – they just haven’t found their soul mate. They believe in their heart of hearts that their match-made-in-heaven is still out there, somewhere.

Much could be said about where this mindset came from, but let’s just leave it at this – Singles today (and most married couples too) are searching for super-spouses that simply don’t exist. People expect far too much from their spouse in all the wrong areas.

That’s why I know beyond doubt, at least by society’s standards, that Lindsay married the wrong person.  I’ll never be quite as smart as a New York Times Best Seller. I’ll never make a six digit paycheck. I’ll never electrify the bedroom in the way our pornographic media culture broadcasts as the norm. I’ll never understand her quite as well as we both wish I would. I’ll continue to make mistakes. I’ll get angry over silly stuff. I’ll forget to do the dishes. I’ll raise my voice when I shouldn’t. I’ll let pride get the best of me. And I’ll probably think of myself far more often than I should… Oh yeah, and my younger days as a part-time body-builder, part-time male-model, full-time Matthew McConaughey stunt double are over. I retired this January. (Are you drowning in my self-pity yet? I am.)  Look, I’m not an astrophysicist. I’m not a movie star. I’m not a billionaire. I’m just Tyler.

HT: Matt Ballard

The Great Antithesis of Galatians 3

	Our Natural Intuitions	The Gospel of  Grace
Activity:	works  (3:2, 5, 10)	faith  (3:2-9, 22-25)
Source:	law  (3:2, 5, 10-13, 17-24)	promise  (3:17-19, 22, 29)
Power:	flesh  (3:3)	Holy Spirit  (3:2, 3, 5, 14)
Key OT figure:	Moses  (3:15-22)	Abraham  (3:6-9, 14, 16-18)
Identity:	slaves  (3:22-29)	sons  (3:7, 26-29)
Verdict:	condemnation	justification (3:6, 8, 11, 24)
Recipients:	insiders only	anyone  (3:7-9, 14, 26-29)
Eternal result:	curse  (3:10-13)	blessing  (3:8-9, 14)
Social result:	disunity  (3:28–29)	unity  (3:28–29)

Defeated by Life?

There are only two ways to cope. Every one of us, at every point of adversity, goes in one direction or the other. Look to yourself, or look outside yourself. Either 'take control, raise your hands, get ride of it' or 'take it to the King.' The way of strife and misery or the way of relief and sanity. Our choice.

Jerry Root on C. S. Lewis

HT @TonyReinke

From the Man Who Preached 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God'

They that find Christ [discover that] though he be so glorious and excellent a person, yet they find him ready to receive such poor, worthless, hateful creatures as they are, which was unexpected to 'em. They are surprised with it.

They did not imagine that Christ was such a kind of person, a person of such grace. They heard he was an holy Savior and hated sin, and they did not imagine he would be so ready to receive such vile, wicked creatures as they. They thought he surely would never be willing to accept such provoking sinners, such guilty wretches, those that had such abominable hearts.

But behold, he is not a whit the more backward to receive 'em for that. They unexpectedly find him with open arms to embrace them, ready forever to forget all their sins as though they had never been. They find that he as it were runs to meet them, and makes 'em most welcome, and admits 'em not only to be his servants but his friends [Luke 15:11-24]. He lifts 'em out of the dust and sets 'em on his throne; he makes them the children of God; he speaks peace to them; he cheers and refreshes their hearts; he admits 'em unto strict union with himself, and gives the most joyful entertainment, and binds himself to them to be their friend forever.

So are they surprised with their entertainment. They never imagined to find Christ a person of such kind of love and grace as this. 'Tis beyond all imagination or conception.

--Jonathan Edwards, 'Seeking After Christ,' in Works, Yale ed., 22:290

Immanuel Theology Group 2013-14 (Nashville)