mgpcpastor's blog

Sorry folk, if you’re looking for ideas for Valentine’s Day you need them at least the day before.
So this is not so much a retrospective as a collection of prospective material.

Kevin DeYoung offers a couple of questions each for husbands and wives that flow from reading the Song of Solomon.
Husbands.
Question 1: Do you gush over your wife?
Question 2: Do you pursue your wife?
Wives.
Question 1: Do you desire your husband’s desire?
Question 2: Does your husband know of your desire?

Andrew Lisi reminds us that ‘Without Love You Are Nothing’ reflecting on 1 Corinthians 13. Loving acts need to be motivated by love.
“The question is: Do we do these things out of some sort of pressure, whether from the media, society, or even the church or are they done out of love? Are they done out of the love we know comes from God because he first loved us (1 John 4:19)? Without love, even our greatest sacrifices of time, talents, treasures and even self are like dust.”

The Sola Panel offers us a Kel Richard’s Word Watch on the word ‘Partner’.
I too am a little too cowardly to ask folk who introduce their ‘partner’ what business they share together.
Richards tells us that the history of the word actually has embraced this contemporary usage, in a certain way. He also encourages Christians to “loudly and clearly pronounce such words as ‘wife’ or ‘husband’ as one small step towards making the Christian position clear.”

The Crossway blog is publicising Paul Tripp’s upcoming book on marriage ‘What Did You Expect?’ There is a post called ‘The Greatest Danger to a Good Marriage is a Good Marriage’ which deals with part of the book.
“But there is one thing that you need to accept: your marriage may be great, but it is not safe. No marriage this side of eternity is totally problem protected. No marriage is all that it could be. This side of heaven daily temptations are constant threats to you and your marriage. This side of heaven the spiritual war goes on. This side of heaven good marriages are good marriages because the people in those marriages are committed to doing daily the things that keep their marriages good. Things go wrong when couples think they have reached the point when they can retire from their marital work and chill out, lay back, and slide. Perhaps the greatest danger to a good marriage is a good marriage, because when things are good, we are tempted to give way to feelings of arrival and forsake the attitudes and disciplines that have, by God’s grace, made our marriage what it has become.”

Ligon Duncan has a series of posts guest-written by Dr. Glen Knecht (of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC) on ‘The Myths Of Marriage’.
1. The goal of marriage is happiness
2. Our marriage will be happy if my mate will do things my way
3. Love holds a marriage together
4. Personal Space.
5. If each of us make a few small changes we will have a good marriage.
6. It takes work to make a good marriage
7. The Goal of Marriage is the individual’s fulfillment

Finally, Justin Taylor links to a free online mini-booklet by Jayne Clarke entitled ‘Single And Lonely: Finding the Intimacy You Desire’ (CCEF/New Growth).’
Taylor identifies Clarke’s main point: “Whether we are single or married, we will experience loneliness in this fallen world. But God wants to enter into our loneliness and transform it. He unites us to himself and each other in Jesus as we submit our lives to him; and he calls us to enter into the loneliness of those around us.”