Happy Birthday, Carly!

Today is my fiancee’s 23rd birthday.  Here are 23 reasons why I’m thankful for her.

1. She loves Jesus.
2. She wants to be a mother of a lot of kids, and wants to adopt international children.
3. She quiet and gentle, which is pretty much the opposite of me.
4. She trusts me (and wants me) to lead our family well and be a courageous husband and father.
5. She likes to cuddle and watch movies.
6. She works hard every day at a job that could be quite intimidating.
7. She is absolutely, physically gorgeous.
8. She laughs at my jokes even if they aren’t funny just to make me feel good about myself.
9. She was confident enough to say yes to dating me even though I was leaving for Africa.
10. She said yes to marrying me even though I was leaving for Africa.
11. She is continually patient and gracious with me when I am hard to love and don’t deserve it.
12. She has been amazing in planning our wedding while I’ve been gone.
13. She wants me to follow the Lord’s call to the pastorate, trusting him despite the trials it may bring.
14. She’s more concerned about helping me become a godly man than hurting my feelings.
15. She isn’t concerned with a six-digit income, a large house, an expensive car, fame, or status.
16. She puts up with my long monologues because I’m too verbose to say something in less than 5 minutes.
17. She is not satisfied with mediocrity.
18. She is very laid back and likes when I take charge and make decisions.
19. She loves summer and hates winter…but loves Christmas, which is awesome.
20. She doesn’t blog or Twitter like I do.  (I couldn’t imagine two social networking junkies in one house.)
21. She has traveled internationally and knows about and loves other cultures.
22. She loves missions and wants to give money for the sake of the gospel.
23. She loves me and wants to be my wife.

I love you, Carly!

Powlison on Marital Intimacy

CCEF has provided video interviews with biblical counselor David Powlison on questions about marital intimacy:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Happy 26th anniversary, Mom and Dad!  This is better than the Silver Anniversary.  Why?  It’s the next one.  The next one is always better than the previous one.  (Perhaps I could say, “Happy first anniversary of the second 25″?)

Thanks for being an example of the Trinity — very much one, yet very different.  Thanks for being an example of Christ and the Church — lovingly sacrificing, humbly submitting, and leading your children to love God.  Thanks for teaching me what kind of man to be, and what kind of woman to marry.

It’s been a blessing to see you model the covenant-love that Solomon writes about:

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealously is fierce as the grave.  Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD.  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.  If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised (Songs 8:6-7).

I love you both!

How Important is Physical Attraction?

A comment of mine from another blog about the importance of this in a relationship:

I agree that physical beauty fades. Proverbs 31 tells us that. Nevertheless, if you cannot be honestly attracted to your wife (or husband for the ladies), then you are doing a disservice to her by not being appreciative of the way God made them physically (because after all, we do have bodies and God made us to have that sort of attraction for a reason). Furthermore, I think that as a couple ages together and that if both the husband and wife do what they are designed to do (according to Ephesians 5:22-33), they will both grow in holiness. A couple that truly loves Jesus and does this will be more attracted to each other in every sense even if the skin is dry and wrinkly and gravity rears its ugly head.

Long, Overseas Engagements Will Give Sweet Victory

A lot of you know that I’m engaged while living here in South Africa.  Carly lives in Nebraska, and will finish up her degree at UNL  in three weeks.  I wouldn’t recommend long engagements to anyone, especially Christians, however when you are separated by God’s call to minister the gospel and 10,000 miles of ocean, you fight through it and endure.

St. Augustine offers a wonderful comfort for why longsuffering and pain usually always result in sweet victory.  He says:

The victorious general marches home in triumph, but there would have been no victory if he had not fought, and the greater the danger in the battle, the greater the joy of the triumph…There is no pleasure in eating and drinking unless it is preceded by the discomfort of hunger and thirst…It is customary, too, for girls who are engaged to be married to delay the wedding for fear that a husband who has not suffered the trials of a long courtship may think his bride too cheaply won (Confessions, p. 162).

Well, it wasn’t Carly’s decision to delay our wedding to make me suffer, but she did willingly and joyfully join me on this adventure knowing that would be our road to travel.  It has been hard and wonderful.  And I’m thankful that in God’s great wisdom and insight, he thought it good for both of us to endure this time apart to make sure that our life together would not be a cheap victory.

That Guy Might Be a Father Someday

While walking on the University of Johannesburg campus today, I saw a male student wearing a t-shirt that said:

I’m Sotally Tober.

In case you missed the joke, it’s supposed to be a quote from a drunk guy saying, “I’m totally sober.”

I couldn’t help but say, “That guy is going to be a dad someday.  He might even be one already.   How sad.”  That’s what men in our society — not just American society — are like.  I’m in South Africa.  I’m talking the world’s society.

Most men are simply “males,” not real men.  They are typically good at getting drunk, looking at porn, avoiding hard work, and macking on women.  That’s sad.  And do you know what type of guy a person who wears a shirt like that becomes (unless God’s grace saves him)?

They become the guy at the rugby game I saw last week.  This guy is at the game with his wife and 6- or 7-year old son.  The “Bulls Babes” cheerleading team comes right in front of us (we are in row 7).  This guy stands his kid up on the seat and gives him a camera and tells him to take a picture of the cheerleaders (who weren’t dressed for the weather, if you follow me).

That was bad enough.  But it was magnified even more because his wife — the boy’s mom — was sitting right next to him.  I wanted to go up and grab his collar, get into his face, and say, “Why don’t you just punch your wife in the stomach?  Why don’t you spit in her face?  Why don’t you just mock her and say, ‘You aren’t pretty enough!  Why can’t you be a cheerleader?”

It was abuse in its most subtle form.  It was disgusting and disgraceful

And non-Christians say that men who love Jesus support the oppression of women.  Give me a break.

Men, Grab Your Cup…You’ll Need It

Most men don’t know how to be men.  Honestly, most men are boys and they treat women like garbage.  Mark Driscoll preaches on 1 Peter 3:7 and talks about 8 different kinds of men he has observed.  It is particularly intense.  May God spur all of us men to be more conformed to the image of the ultimate Man — Jesus Christ.

I highly encourage you listening to this sermon.

And by the way, grab your cup.  You’re going to need it.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Carly Anne

Carly and I get to spend our first Valentine’s Day 10,000 miles apart.  I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day, but I do like celebrations and if you love Jesus, then everything is a celebration.  So, here’s 14 things (among thousands) I celebrate about you, Carly, my best friend, my love, and my bride-to-be.

You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of our necklace.
- Song of Solomon 4:9

Happy Valentine’s Day, darling.

I love you!
james michael

1. You love Jesus with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and want others to love him too.
2. Your desire to love, respect, and follow me is incredible.  I couldn’t ask for a better helper and (soon-to-be) life-partner.
3. You are a constant encouragement to me in life, ministry, and everything.
4. You want to have a big family and work at home with our (probably crazy) kids.
5. You are excited about Papa John’s pizza and a rental movie for a romantic date night.
6. You tend to laugh (or roll your eyes) at everything humorous I say even if no one else does.
7. You read Spurgeon and Piper and listen to Driscoll sermons.
8. You get embarrassed when I compliment you, and then you are even cuter than what you did before to make me compliment you in the first place.
9. You are super-talented at music.
10. You are a wonderful writer and are just as gifted with words as you say I am.
11. Your personality and communication techniques are so opposite from mine, yet I have learned (and continue to learn) to enjoy our diversity.
12. You love my family despite their (our) quirks and eccentricities.
13. You know and love the Bible and believe in its power, authority, and centrality.
14. You are absolutely gorgeous, and I couldn’t imagine waking up next to anyone else for the rest of my life.

So it’s cool to be engaged…I recommend it

I just wanted to put a link to this wonderful wedding site that my beautiful bride-to-be Carly created.  She wrote our story in full and did an amazing job (she’s a darn good story teller!).  Perhaps some of you would like to get to know us better…this would be a good place to do that.

Distinguishing Between Love and Lust

Augustine of Hippo, the great Christian theologian of the 4th Century, struggled mightily with sexual addiction before his conversion to Jesus.  In his autobiography, Confessions, he writes about his problem between figuring out what was love and what was lust in his early life:

Bodily desire, like morass, and adolescent sex welling up within me exuded mists which clouded over and obscured my heart, so that I could not distinguish the clear light of true love from the murk of lust.

I doubt that this is uncommon for most people — especially for nonbelievers, but for Christians as well.  So often we “feel” with our bodies and seldom understand what true love is.

In Proverbs, Solomon says to his son, “For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.  Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it” (5:3-6).  Obviously, this “love” is really love.  It’s lust.  It’s deceptive.  It’s adulterous (7:19).  This “love” gets you place in line to hell.  This “love” will lead to death, not an abundant life.  It seeks to steal, kill, and destroy true happiness.

I’m not a counselor, or a doctor, or a pastor  yet.  But I know that true romantic love is rooted in the gospel of Christ.  It is reflective of Ephesians 5:22-33.  True love is about service and sacrifice and joy and delight and rejoicing in Christ, not the person.  C.S. Lewis talked about gifts from the Lord being “the sunbeam” and God himself as the sun.  The beam from the sun is not to be delighted in, the sun is.  In the same way, God’s gifts are like sunbeams.  They lead us to the greater glory of God himself.  That is what true love should do.  Lust only distracts us from God and causes us to be idolaters.

Seek your satisfaction in Jesus above all things, and soon the murky fog of distinguishing between love and lust will clear into a bright summer day filled with heavenly delight and joy, not guilt and shame.