Conversations in My Head

God’s been telling me to write about grace lately.

Me: Uh God, I’m a rules girl. I would rather tell them how to be the perfect wife.
God: No, I think they need to hear about grace. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:6
Me: But grace is so wishy-washy, so happy-dappy. I think rules make me sound more intelligent and they are more helpful. I’m not sure grace is enough.
God: Really, you don’t think grace is enough. Is that what you really think?
Me: Lyrics: My God’s not dead
He’s surely alive
He’s living on the inside
Roaring like a lion
Let Heaven roar
And fire fall
Come shake the ground
With the sound of revival…
Lyrics from eLyrics.net

okay I’m really wrong, grace is enough. You’re powerful, I get it.
Me (again): But I’m not very good at it, it’s going to suck.
God: you’ll get better and maybe you need it more than them.

So I’m going to write about grace and I need to warn you sometimes it comes out sounding like me complaining about a bad day, but I’m really trying to show how it was God and not me, but everyone misunderstands and just sympathizes with me. I should also tell you I’m not even able to follow all these rules I give you. I haven’t even figured skinny out yet and that’s the most important one for being a good wife. But for some unknown reason my husband still seems to like me. So here’s some grace for you. God seems to think we need it.
God loves you deeply
You are valuable
You are forgiven
God has a plan
God is in control
Nothing you do can mess up God’s plan
He promises to work all things for good
He will protect you
He will care for ALL your needs
You don’t have to do anything right and God will still take care of you
Trust Him, He’s NEVER let me down. Never.

(Disclaimer: I never actually heard God say anything out loud, these are just my thoughts)

Gentle, Attractive, and Offensive Lights

If your marriage does not have the same goals, it is destined for failure. The husband and the wife need to have the same purpose in life or they are going two different directions. If you are Christians, your purpose is going to dramatically different from that of most of our culture. So if you have a difficult marriage and you are a Christian, it is most likely because you have different purposes.

A Godly man who complains about a contemptuous wife who does not have sex with him has his focus on the wrong things. If she is a contemptuous wife, she is proud. If she is not having sex, she is not serving and loving. The first thing I would assume, is “she is not following Christ”. She may say she’s a Christian, she may go to church regularly; but a Christian forgives, a Christian serves, a Christian does not look out for their own good. So I would say to the man, your goal isn’t to get your wife to have sex with you, your goal is to get her to choose Christ, to choose life, and God will take care of the rest in His time.

A Godly woman who complains that her husband ignores her or chooses pornography over her. Her goal isn’t to make her husband desire her more, her goal is to get him to follow Christ. Until both partners have the same purpose, the marriage won’t work. If you are a woman, you are to stay with him and keep a gentle and quiet spirit. You don’t follow him into sin, but you choose Christ and you walk with Christ. This will cause conflict, that’s why you have to be gentle, respectful and have a quiet spirit. Just the fact that you are choosing good, shines a light on his sin. It feels uncomfortable for him, so you be as attractive and kind as possible and pray that he chooses life also.

I can see clearly when I am choosing good and when I’m choosing evil. Now I slip often and fall into sin, but my direction is generally towards goodness, towards order, towards selflessness, towards servanthood, towards humility, towards Christ. When I mess up and fail, I fall forward towards Christ. I try to keep my eyes on Him, sometimes I just get lost, other times I willfully get lost.

Sometimes my direction is wrong. I looked for fun and excitement, I focused on my personal goals of success, I wanted money or beauty or worldly things, or maybe I’m just lazy and selfish. I still want those, who am I kidding? But gently Christ reminds me that the gospel and that saving people is more important than all those things. God is first or the other things become idols. And we need to be gentle with each other because learning how to follow Christ is a process and it takes a lifetime to learn and we are all in different places, so we encourage each other to continue to choose good.

Now I say all that and I still give you marriage tips to help your marriage work better. The advice I give is towards order. God guides us towards order in our lives, He is a God of order and He has a specific order in marriage that works best. Also I guide you towards humility, gentleness, and loving and respecting your spouse. And finally I try to point you towards self-discipline. That’s the advice, nothing God wouldn’t point you towards Himself. But before any of these things, the gospel has to come, your spouse’s salvation is first on the list. The point of these things isn’t to get you more attention, it’s to show your spouse Christ so they will be saved. It would be pretty easy to go watch porn with your husband, it would make him happy and it might be kind of exciting for you too. It might give you a very happy marriage and an enthusiastic husband who loves you, but that is not our goal. Your goal is to be a gentle, kind, respectful, attractive and offensive light. Your goal is to get him to love Christ more than it is to get him to love you.

She Resents His Inattention and Lack of Affection Tips for this problem using gentleness and respect instead of direct confrontation

The Gospel in 6 Minutes

The Man Who Said No To Sex

I wrote about Ruth and Boaz a while ago, and I mainly focused on Ruth, on how she was an excellent example of submission for women, how she completely trusted God to take care of her.  Just yesterday, I was reading a blog about a single guy and what he wanted in a girl and he wrote down submissive, he also wrote a virgin, and it made me think of Ruth, the ultimate submissive girl.  Ruth went and laid at the feet of Boaz offering herself to him and do you know what Boaz did?  He told her not to fear, that he would take care of her, then he gave her bags of wheat to help her trust him and he told her to go home and wait for him.  They spent the night together, her lying at his feet and in the dark hours of the morning he helped her sneak away so no one would see.  Do you know what this story shouts to me and every other woman out there?  He did not sleep with her, he even refused to cover her with his blanket because that would be too dishonorable; instead he waited till morning and went to the marketplace and arranged to marry her.  There was this business transaction he had to go through because she would belong to another man  before she could belong to him because the other man was more closely related to her and had first chance at her land.  Ruth wasn’t even a virgin, she was a widow, he could have easily slept with her and thrown her away in the morning.  She took a huge risk, but she trusted in the idea that he was a man of God and therefore a man of integrity.  He protected her when she was most vulnerable; women NEED, CRAVE, WANT protection.

What Boaz did is amazing,  a man who believes his woman is so valuable that he wouldn’t want to dishonor her by sleeping with her when she submissively offers herself to him is rare.  I am not going to teach my daughters to be submissive, I am going to teach them how to protect themselves; and pray that after they get married, somehow God will teach them how to be submissive.  Boaz passed the ultimate fitness test,  he’s won his wife’s trust for life with this single act.

Our culture has dating backwards, I wish we could teach our women to be submissive and our men to be men of honor and integrity who value women enough not to sleep with them before marriage.  Men blame women for being sluts, but maybe that’s what submissive means.  It means not saying no, but trusting him to protect and be honorable.  I know that in our marriage, the years we spent dating and me fending him off (being a good Christian girl) and him getting constantly rejected because I “needed to stay a virgin” really hurt us in the long run, it was a difficult transition to go from protecting myself to submitting to him, especially because I had to fight so hard for it.  It effected my trust in him and when a wife doesn’t trust her husband completely, he is disrespected.  I’m not sure we did the right thing, but God used it for good anyway.

I’d also like to add, that since I have actively chosen submission with my husband, he has not failed me, he has proven his trustworthiness in this area over and over again.

More On Living In Weakness and Submission

Elegance

Dress nicer!  Respect is important, dress to earn respect not love.  This will benefit both you and your husband.  A woman who looks sloppy and shows cleavage in public immediately says “I am easy to get and I’m not worth much”.  Men love cleavage, but they respect elegance.  Men who see you looking elegantly alongside your husband, will respect him because you appear worthy of respect.  A woman is a man’s glory, an easy woman indicates a man not worthy of respect either.  Your husband may want you to show cleavage when you go out, but it ultimately dishonors him through his peers’ opinions.  When he receives respect, you will become more valuable to him.  Along with the elegance, don’t choose a snobby attitude; be kind, friendly, smiling, and generous.  You will appear more intimidating; therefore, you will have to make the first move more often with other people.

Some common traits of elegance

1.  Neatness

2.  Simplicity

3.  Finished hair and make-up

4.  No Cleavage!

A Ladylike Life

Photo Credits: Quote,  Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3,

Living With Contempt

I’ve been thinking about contempt, John Gottman says contempt is one of the biggest marriage killers out there. If a wife reacts with contempt (eye rolling, mean sarcasm, disrespect) when her husband talks, their marriage probably won’t last longer than four more years. Men treat women with contempt also, and I think that the spouse eventually realizes how little their spouse likes them and gives up hope.
If you are not a Christian, one of the best things you can do is to stop trying to please them and to actually do something worthy of earning their respect. Lose the weight, get a better job, dress nicer, respect yourself and your spouse’s respect will follow eventually. This is one of the reasons MMSL works so well. It gets to the heart of the biggest issue and teaches self-respect. Respect is huge in a marriage.

As a Christian, the advice is a little different. Instead of finding your self-worth in what you do and how you look, I would recommend going through Christ to find your value. God calls you his child, He gives you a purpose, he says you are worthy regardless of your actions or past. He says He can use even your past failures and mistakes for good. Once Christ is in you, He will fill you with strength and blessings, He will guide you to lower yourself before your spouse out of love for Christ, to serve them, and at the same time He will point you towards good. Towards order and self-control, towards things worthy of respect. So you get to the same place as a non-Christian, but your strength is coming from a different place. God fills you, you fill your spouse. God guides you towards humility, contempt rolls off your back because your worth is found in what Christ believes.

Lowering yourself, becoming humble, with a spouse without the self-worth Christ gives, kills your self-respect, your spirit. Living with a spouse who disrespects you and cruelly puts you down, kills without Christ because all you have is their opinion. Eventually you would have to shut them off or block them just to survive.

Note: I will only be including colleagues in marriage ministry to my blogroll, so if I take you off, please don’t be offended. Also I am going to continue with the blog Delightful Oak as a personal blog, and I will have my friends and other blogs I admire over there.

Needing a Change of Pace

Hello friends,
I need a break, I need a change, maybe I just need a new beginning. Anyway, I’m starting over here….if you want to come along. I have no idea what it’s going to be about. I’m just going to try again.

Delightful Oak

Love you guys!

A Little Drop of Poison

A Little Drop of Poison by Tom Waits

If you’re too submissive, there won’t be any sexual tension and that’s no fun. Find yourself, don’t get lost in him, be passionate, be confident, be sexy….let him lead, but you get to choose the dance.