Pray For Your Husband: 31 Day Challenge–Day Seventeen

Mike Leake

Day Seventeen: That he would know the deep love of Jesus

And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. -Luke 15:21-24

It’s so easy to forget that this is how our Father in heaven loves us. We tend to start feeling this sense of ‘doom and gloom’ when we think of repentance and forgiveness.  We forget that our Father is peering over the horizon, anxious to see us coming, and ready to embrace us and celebrate the fact that we have come home once again.

“Lord, I pray today that my husband would know this kind of love. I pray that he would not fall for the lie that he has messed up too much and therefore hesitate to run back home to you. I pray he would experience the joy of repentance…and see that there truly is a celebration awaiting him. That because of the life and death of your son, Jesus…you take great delight in him! I pray the pressures and demands of his day would not cause him to forget that you there, awaiting his return…but that they would be reminders of his desperate need to stay close to you.”

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Kimberley is the wife to Mark, who is an investigator for the Minneapolis Police Department. He also serves as a pastor at Redeemer Bible Church in Minnetonka, MN. They have 5 children.  She loves writing about the gospel and how grace affects every area of our lives, including marriage and parenting. She blogs at kimberleysuchta.com.

Pray For Your Husband: 31 Day Challenge–Day Sixteen

Mike Leake

Day Sixteen: That he would rest in Jesus’ accomplishments for him

“Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” 2 Corinthians 3:4-6

Paul here woos the Corinthians back to loyalty to himself as their father in the faith, and the true gospel. False teachers had crept into the church and pulled the people away from the freedom and joy of the new covenant. These “false apostles” (11:13) were full of human credentials, boasting and legalistic rules. They had turned Church life into a joyless competition of works. The same thing happens to our husbands when they are weighed down with guilt over what they should do for Jesus, instead of resting in what Jesus has done for them. Let’s pray that our husbands would remember that their competence as leaders comes from Christ, and for the joy of the Holy Spirit that gives life.

Lord please help my husband to rest secure in “the righteousness that comes by faith” (Romans 4:13). Please mold him into the man you are calling him to be, rather than the man I often pressure him to be. Help him to continue discovering the joy of being my hero. I know that you call Pauls and Barnabases and Johns and Peters—each with their own strengths and gifts. Lord draw my husband to believe and rejoice in the competence that comes from you. In your name I pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.

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Marci Preheim is wife to Arnie, mother of two teenagers, and women’s Bible Study teacher at Community Bible Church in Nashville, TN. She is the author of Grace is Free: One Woman’s Journey From Fundamentalism to Failure to Faith, and A Study in James: But He Gives Us More Grace. You can read more of her writing at www.marcipreheim.com.

Christ Is All (YWS Week 32)

Nick Horton 1 Comment

richardsibbessmallWelcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.

If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.

Summary/Engagement

In all the cold expanse of space, the shining stars of a million galaxies, out amongst the swirling gasses of nebula in silent and frigid splendor; in the very depths of unknown veins of gold in Earth’s mountains, the seas teaming with life and color and beauty; out amongst the lofty heights of towering Sequoia trees, in all of known creation near and far; if you owned all that is, the pearl of great price that is Christ is worth yet more. The fullness of all that is cannot compare to the surpassing worth of Jesus Christ.

If Christ could be bought, he is worth all that you have. Can you imagine selling everything you have, and I do mean everything, and buying a field where treasure is buried, or a pearl? If you buy this field you own no equipment to farm it and have no home on it to live in. What can you do with a pearl that you already sold everything to buy? Christ is such a treasure that he is worth all we have.

He is not a business transaction, an investment, or a piece of artwork. He is not a get of hell free card. Jesus is not a sports team you root for or a country club with many locations to relax and be entertained at. He is not a genie who gets you out of tight spots or a great moral teacher who merely informs your decisions. He’s not a third wheel on your life, a wingman, or your co-pilot.

Jesus Christ is creator of all things, the incarnate Son of God, the one who makes atonement for sin.

Application / Further Discussion

Friends, is Christ all to you? We can moralize, and spiritualize, and strategize, and debate a great many things in the Bible. We are excellent at excusing our failings. All that accomplishes is paving the road to hell with the bricks of our sins.

“And the best worldling sells Christ for a very thing of nought, a toy, a pleasure of sin, or a little profit.”

Would you sell the Lord of Glory for a little sin, some cash, fleeting pleasures? Don’t we do this every time we sin?

Jesus Christ is of such surpassing worth and beauty that my language fails to plumb the depths and riches of that fact. When loved ones cling to life in the throes of illness, or sorrow crashes like waves on the beaches of our souls with unceasing violence, when we come to the end of ourselves and stare at the deep chasm and see nothing of value, it is then that we know something of the savor of Christ. In the depths of suffering and pain we begin to know the surpassing worth of our pearl, Christ. Timothy Keller said it well; “You don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”

My fear is the noise of our sheltered and comfortable lives distract us from the only thing of worth in all that is or ever will be. I cannot say strongly enough that all that we have and desire are worthless compared to Christ. Don’t read this and merely agree with it. Explore your life. Take an honest and critical view of your relationship with Christ. Is he the center of your being or merely exists on the end of your tongue, given great lip-service but no heart-felt worship.

Jesus is not your genie, your butler, or your home boy. He is your Lord and your God. Stop treating him like a spare tire. Get down on your knees and renounce all worldly respects in the face of your Creator and Savior. Look to Christ. Behold his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father. Weep in gratitude for his suffering in your place.

“Saved by the Lord, happy art thou! In less temptations as afflictions, or death, that king of terrors, if that should seize on us, consider, What do we lose? Nothing but that which we must one day leave of necessity.”

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Last week, we read The Church’s Blackness.

Next week, we read The Knot of Prayer Loosed.

Pray For Your Husband: 31 Day Challenge–Day Fifteen

Mike Leake

Day Fifteen: That he would be satisfied in the wife of his youth

Let your fountain be blessed,
 and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. 
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Proverbs 5:18-19

It may seem like a selfish prayer, but I pray this often for my husband…that he would find delight in only me. God loves answering this prayer. Because he loves marriage. He made marriage and he made sex to be a wonderful thing to keep a husband and a wife closely knit. And he knows what heart break and turmoil it brings when that bond is broken.

So Lord, I pray today that you would protect my husband from all of the outside influences he is bombarded with in our culture. I pray that I alone would be his standard of beauty. I pray he would find great delight in me and that you would use this part of our marriage to bring us even closer together for the glory of your name. I pray that you would heal the things in our hearts that aren’t allowing us to have the freedom in intimacy that you desire for us to have. Give us lots of grace and forgiveness with each other. Help us not to take each other too seriously as we grow old. Thank you for this safe place you have given us to express our love for each other.

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Kimberley is the wife to Mark, who is an investigator for the Minneapolis Police Department. He also serves as a pastor at Redeemer Bible Church in Minnetonka, MN. They have 5 children.  She loves writing about the gospel and how grace affects every area of our lives, including marriage and parenting. She blogs at kimberleysuchta.com.