Tag Archives: marriage

Day 10: Theology is Not Above Domestic Life

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Though the institutional arrangements of theology in modernity have often made it hard for us to see this point, theology is not a transcendent moment, some activity of the mind standing above the merely domestic life of the Christian community and submitting it to an ironic, critical gaze. Holy reason is ecclesiastical science–a knowing and inquiring which takes place within ‘the commonwealth gathered, founded, and ordered by the Word of God’, and participating in the calling and promise which God issues to that commonwealth.

John Webster, Holiness, 26

Do We Speak the Word at Home?

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The ministry of the Word is not the exclusive property of pastors and teachers, but is to be shared with the whole people of God in various capacities–one another speaking the Word to one another.

This culture of Word-speaking will not be a reality in a pastor’s congregation if it is not the reality in his own life. The question must first be, does “word-speaking” happen in my family? Does it happen outside of a formal context?

My hope is a home that is saturated with the Word. It is hung on the walls and prayed at the table and whispered in the morning when we awake from sleep and sung in the evenings before we go to bed and served in the busy monotony of regular days. I want my daughters to speak words of life to one another and I want them to love doing it. And even in my most frustrated and often sin-blinding moments, I want to break through to speak words of life to Melissa. Please, Jesus!

Do we really believe this Book? Brothers, do we believe the Book?

Do Your Pictures and Activities Look the Same Now as They Did in High School? (This is a Vouch for Marriage and Fatherhood)

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I commend marriage and fatherhood to my high school friends who currently choose to remain single. I do this for the simple reason that marriage and fatherhood is better than a life of singleness consumed with the same activities that we did in high school. Doing the same things we did 7 years ago (but now with legality) is unfulfilling, if not just freaking ridiculous. I mean, think about it.

Marriage and fatherhood is a challenge. Things change. But it is good. It’s very good. I love how Andrew Peach says it…

Yet, through the exhaustion, financial stress, screaming, and general chaos, there enters in at times, mysteriously and unexpectedly, deep contentment and gratitude. It is not the pleasure or amusement of high school or college but rather the honor and nobility of sacrifice and commitment, like that felt by a soldier. What happens to his children now happens to him; his life, though awhirl with the trivial concerns of children, is more serious than it ever was before. Everything he does, from bringing home a paycheck to painting a bedroom, has a new end and, hence, a greater significance. The joys and sorrows of his children are now his joys and sorrows; the stakes of his life have risen. And if he is faithful to his calling, he might come to find that, against nearly all prior expectations, he never wants to return to the way things used to be.

(From Justin Taylor’s featuring of Andrew Peach’s article “On the Demise of Fatherhood“)


10 Reasons Why I Really Love My Wife…

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  1. She really loves Jesus 
  2. She loves people in a deeply sincere way
  3. She is very different from me, often the realist who balances my idealism
  4. She is a terrific mom
  5. She likes sports and can throw a football really well
  6. She became a St. Louis Cardinals fan and because of her baseball became romantic for me
  7. She introduced me to George Herbert
  8. She is funny 
  9. She is beautiful 
  10. She is a Calvinist

The Wonder of Sex

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John MacArthur has some helpful things to say about the recent evangelical fascination with good sex (and by that I mean sex between a man and a woman within the covenant of marriage). 

In an effort to present the truth about the subject, I wonder if we throw the word around to turn heads and get attention in a way that desecrates its sacredness.

Don’t talk about sex in the pulpit until you’ve read Peter Kreeft investigate for us what it means. This concluding thought summarizes his point…

“This spiritual intercourse with God is the ecstasy hinted at in all earthly intercourse, physical or spiritual. It is the ultimate reason why sexual passion is so strong, so different from other passions, so heavy with suggestions of profound meanings that just elude our grasp. No mere practical needs account for it. No mere animal drive explains it. No animal falls in love, writes profound romantic poetry, or sees sex as a symbol of the ultimate meaning of life because no animal is made in the image of God. Human sexuality is that image, and human sexuality is a foretaste of that self-giving, that losing and finding the self, that oneness-in-manyness that is the heart of the life and joy of the Trinity. That is what we long for; that is why we tremble to stand outside ourselves in the other, to give our whole selves, body and soul: because we are images of God the sexual being. We love the other sex because God loves God.”

Peter Kreeft, Is There Sex in Heaven?