Mentoring Minutes

King Arthur is credited with saying, “In serving each other we become free.” This is not only one of the core principles of Camelot; it is the truth for every disciple of Christ and in every marriage, family, and relationship as we build the currency of His Kingdom.

As I’ve mentioned throughout these posts and messages, serving and loving others is an overflow of our relationship with Christ and all in line with His Covenant Order.  We are blessed as we live this out in the priorities as they are reflected in all our relationships and decisions about life and family.  It begins in our discipleship relationship with Christ.  From there it is to be evident in our marriages and families to build stronger churches in fellowship with one another in Him.  Then we are able to show a lost and dying world what His love is really all about.

I learned this early in our marriage and the simple lesson has impacted many others.  Ami came from a divorced family and, as is very common, there are deeper issues of trust and distrust.  We discussed this often and prayed and worked diligently to both be aware of the issues and circumstances that would trigger thoughts of distrust as well as those that would build trust. 

About three years into our marriage, she called one evening as I was in my office late.  I could hear the pain in her voice.  You see my job was athletic director and head basketball coach with a small private Christian school that owned none of the fields, gyms, or facilities that we used to practice and compete.  At any moment we could lose use of a facility and the schedule would need to be reworked. That meant making calls to the schools we were competing against, referees, and parents.

Most of the time I was given enough lead time to make the changes, but I would fairly often need to work late to have the schedule set for the next day. 

That brings us back to Ami’s call.  She explained what we’d talked about many times before, that whenever I didn’t show up at or near the appointed time, distrust would rear its ugly head.  This happened too many times as I got caught up in getting things in order and failed to give her a call and let her know. 

She said, “If you would just give me a call and let me know what’s going on and reassure me that all is well, it would help me a lot.” 

Now, as I’ve shared this with many men and couples, the typical response in our pride as a man is, “She’s just checking up on me and I don’t need another Momma!  She just needs to trust me.”  I have to admit that knowing I was doing nothing wrong or worthy of distrust, I entertained the same thoughts and response.

However, before I said anything to her, I said a quick prayer and in that moment The Holy Spirit simply prompted me to think, “Pride (Proverbs 16:18-19) or humility (Proverbs 15:33; 18:12; Matthew 23:12; Philippians 2:3; James 4:6, 10)?  Your choice.”  (Also see Proverbs 11:2; 29:23)

I asked Ami what she needed and she said, “If you’d just call once or twice a day, especially if something happens and you know your schedule is going to change, that would help me so much.”

Simple, right?  I either bow my back and tell her to get over it and trust me, or I do something to help her build more trust in me.  The Holy Spirit’s prompting came to me again and it really was simple.  Pride puts the burden on her and would continue to lead to distrust.  Humility put the burden on me to do all I could to show her that she could trust me.

I began the next day and have not missed a day of calling or texting her in the 25-plus years since.  Distrust faded and trust became her default as God directed me to think of her above myself and I obeyed instead of giving into my pride.  With that trust came an ever-growing peace in our marriage and family.  Totally worth it!

Seems like a ‘no-brainer’ to me, but as the Holy Spirit said to me, “it’s your choice.”

Give online as The Lord leads – https://give.cornerstone.cc/loveandlordship.

You can find videos, articles and podcasts at www.loveandlorship.com. 

Make it a great day and God bless in Christ!

Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – The greatest way to overcome pride is to recognize the reason for our selfish thoughts and instead think of and respond to others before self.  How are my actions helping me and hurting others or how are they helping others?  The answer and corresponding actions to this question reveals that we are either prideful or humble.

Love and Lordship…Action Item(s) – 1) When someone asks something of you or you recognize their need, ask yourself if your response is in your best interest or theirs? 2) Look for situations where you have been intentionally or unintentionally prideful and ask The Lord to help you change in this/these area(s); 3) Ask God to forgive you for your pride and selfishness and be more aware of and willing to respond to others in humility; 4) Ask and look for ways to humbly and intentionally respond and do what’s in the best interest for others.

As you look back over previous posts, videos and podcasts, there is something that I have held off until this point.  I did so deliberately to emphasize the importance of building relationships in line with God’s Word.

As discussed in the previous section, God has given us this very clear blueprint on how we are to build relationships with and in Him.  There is a priority order made possible only because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Before we move ahead any further please understand that if you don’t get anything else from this book…don’t miss this.  It will literally change your life and every relationship for the better if you will follow through with this understanding in line with His Word. 

In giving the greatest commands (Matthew 22:37-39; Mark 12:29-31) Jesus was not giving them in priority simply because God is most important.  That is true, but there is something else in the original language that makes all the difference in us understanding who we are and how we can most fully and freely live out our lives and relationships. 

We cannot live out these commands in relationships in any other order.  No matter how desperately we try we cannot love others until we have learned to love ourselves.  And we cannot love ourselves and others until we first love God with all we are and allow Him to show us who we are recreated to be in Christ.  Remember this is a lifelong process of maturing as Christ’s disciple.

With this new or renewed understanding, here are the three commands and keys to building agape Kingdom relationships, especially marriage, according to His Word.  In building agape Kingdom marriages we then form loving families and can then build the loving relationships that make up Christ’s Church. (Note how these principles all flow from our discipleship relationship with Him).

1. Worship God alone and love Him with all you are! (Deuteronomy 6:4-6; Mark 12:29-30) If we do not spend time to get to know, worship and love Him, we will struggle in every other relationship, including marriage. 

Key – Submission is the key found in what we are called to do in honoring one another in relationships and particularly in marriage.  Ephesians 5:21-28: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  

We must learn to first love God and, out of honor for Christ, we are called to submit to one another.  Wives are commanded to submit to their husbands.  This is not a command to the husband to make his wife submit.  This is a command to the wife to willingly choose to submit to her husband because she has already submitted to Christ and learned to love God with all she is. 

Husbands are called to submit in love and servant-leadership, literally to submit or surrender his life for his wife just as Christ did for His Bride, The Church.  Again, wives, this is not a command to you to make your husband love you.  It is a command to husbands to be obedient to Christ in daily choosing to love our wife because we have first submitted to Christ and learned to love God with all we are.  This is more than just being willing to give our life for them it is that we should be living our life for them as we have done first for Christ.

Our first love has to be our love for God.  It is from His love for us, and our growing in our love for Him, that we can love all others, including ourselves, which leads to our second command and key to more fully understand this teaching.  

2. Love Who You Are in Christ! (Matthew 22:39: Mark 12:31) What is true in every other relationship is even more impactful in marriage.  As we mature in our love for God, loving Him with our whole life, He is able to reveal more and more to us who we are created, and recreated in Christ, to be.  Only then can we learn to truly love who we are.  Remember this is the essence of our second key:

Key – Humility.  Philippians 2:3-8 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.  In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himselfby becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Bold mind and added)

First of all, as we allow God to reveal who we are in Christ then we begin to form Christ’s Mind in us.  The whole description of Christ shows a character of humility; and remember that humility is knowing and being confident and content of who we are in Christ so we can place others above ourselves.

Imagine what our marriages and all relationships would look like as we practice humility in Christ!

This applies to all of us, but husbands I don’t want to leave you hanging any longer.  Now that we’ve read through what Christ did for His Bride we can understand and apply Paul’s teaching from Ephesians more fully when it comes to “laying down our life for our wife” as mentioned in the first key. 

Taking a bullet is easy, okay maybe not easy, especially if we know The Lord because we know we’re going to end up with Him.  However, Christ did more than just give up His physical life.  The passage above describes in detail that the first thingJesus gave up was His lifestyle—all the glorious life He had with The Father in heaven. 

Think about it.  When Paul writes that we are to lay down our lives just as Christ did for His Bride, he fully understood that for marriages to be blessed and to reflect all that God intended, we husbands would need to lay down our lifestyles and place the needs and desires of our wife above our own.  This has to hold true because had Jesus not surrendered His lifestyle in heaven first, then He could not have become fully God and fully man and His death on The Cross (what we always equate with “giving up our life for our wife”) would have meant nothing. 

In order for Jesus’ life and death on earth to accomplish anything He first had to give up His lifestyle in heaven.

I know it’s not easy, but it’s good because it is what He has called us to and He did nothing less than model it for us! 

Now we are beginning to grasp what love truly is and how we can love our wife, family, and all others, which is our third command and key.  

3. Love Others As You Love Yourself!  (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31) Are you beginning to see God’s design for loving relationships?  As shared earlier, we cannot fully love others unless we have first begun to grow in our love for God and for ourselves. This should be paramount in how we make disciples.  Teach and train first to love God, and love who they are in Christ so we can then love others and show them His love.  As we submit to Christ and others, humble ourselves, and place others before self, we are developing the same attitude and heart as Christ, allowing us to love others with the third key:

Key – Servant’s Heart – we see this when Jesus washes His disciples’ feet and then instructs them to do the same for others in John 13:12-17. “When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his robe and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Remember from our earlier teaching on this text in John 13 that this is the culmination where love (v.1), humility (v.3), serving (vv.4-5), authority (v.13) and now discipleship (vv. 14-17) come together.  This is what Kingdom relationships are to look like…and the highest of those is Marriage.

Christ’s idea is that we serve Him by being the servants of other men…He says that in His Kingdom he that is greatest shall be the servant of all. The real test of the saint is not preaching the gospel, but washing disciples’ feet, that is, doing the things that do not count in the actual estimate of men but count everything in the estimate of God.  (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest)

Imagine once again what our marriages, families and churches would look like if we made disciples that loved God with all we are and above everything else, loved who we are in Christ, so we could love one another as Christ loved us.  Our marriage and family should be integral as His Church, not just going to Church!

This is Christ in us and through us, as we love others in His Covenant Order: Marriage–>Spouse–>Children and Family–>His Church–>The World

May He find us faithful as His disciples to love as He loved us and as He instructed us to love Him and others–this is how the world can see Who He is through us and come to know Him.  May it begin in your marriage (and in mine) and may our families and churches be blessed as we live and love in His Truth!

Contact L&L to let us know what you’re thinking and how we can help.

Give online as The Lord leads – https://give.cornerstone.cc/loveandlordship.

You can find videos, articles and podcasts at www.loveandlorship.com. 

Make it a great day and God bless in Christ!

Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – We can’t love apart from God.  Our best efforts are rooted in self, flesh and emotions (because that’s all we know apart for God’s Spirit received in Christ) and those are always selfish.  Only as we learn to recognize and know The Source of Love can we truly love.

Love and Lordship…Action Item(s) – 1) Take time each day as you search God’s Word and pray to ask Him to show you His love; 2) Find ways each day to show God your love for Him; 3) Find practical ways each day to know and love who you are in Christ; 4) Be intentional with tangible ways of loving others as God has loved you.

Most Bible scholars would agree that Hebrews is one of the two deepest theological letters, along with Romans, in all of Scripture.  I find it very interesting that near the end of this profound text on Christ completely fulfilling the Old Covenant in the New Covenant, we find this verse, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.”  Hebrews 13:4

Let’s see—all means all, right?  So The Holy Spirit is not just saying that all those who are married, have been married, or are planning on getting married, should honor marriage.  All means all! 

Why is this important?  Simple.  God had a perfect design from the beginning and the only way we can honor it is if we are willing to walk according to His design for relationships, sexuality, marriage, and family. 

This doesn’t mean that everyone has to get married but it does mean that everyone is to honor marriage in his or her relationships and sexuality.  Simply put, sex is reserved for marriage…period.  All other sexual activity is sin or porneia (sexual immorality).  Romans 1 speaks to this…

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹ because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. ²¹ For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. ²² Professing to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. ²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. ²⁵ For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. ²⁶ For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, ²⁷ and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. ²⁸ And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, ²⁹ being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, ³¹ without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; ³² and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Romans 1:18-32

This includes promiscuity or fornication (sex before/outside of marriage), cohabitation (seldom if ever done sans sexual activity) adultery, pornography (from the root word “porneia” – all sexual immorality even in the mind according to Jesus)…lust (Matthew 5:27-28), polygamy, homosexuality, transgenderism, bestiality, and pedophilia (think of the new Netflix movie, Cuties, and the direction it takes…clearly sexualizing young girls making them even more vulnerable to be used or abused as tools for the pleasure of others) to name a few among the ever-increasing depravity of our sexual culture. We have justified and excused sexual immorality (porneia) in the name of “love” leading to our culture of licentiousness (sin and degradation) disguised as liberty or freedom!

There are grave consequences personally, relationally, socially, and even eternally as the writer of Hebrews points out in God’s judgment of the sexually immoral and as evident in our pornified culture today. 

But there is also grace and forgiveness.  As with any other sin, forgiveness is free in Christ but it is not to be abused and mocked.

Honoring marriage begins long before you say, “I do,” and extends throughout marriage and beyond.  God’s truth about honoring marriage is about honoring His creation in relationships, sexuality, marriage, and family and that is not for His sake, it is for ours!

Our Creator God began everything in time and history with a relationship of love known as marriage.  This is the closest we can come in human experience to His agape love and it must be done in covenant commitment.  Relationships are His design for living out His love in His image in covenant marriage between one man and one woman, through family and friends, and even loving our enemies. It’s all in line with His sacrificial, selfless kind of love—AGAPE!

Remember, porniea is the exact opposite of AGAPE.  Porneia comes from pursuing and fulfilling our own selfish desires and pleasures for our own sake…even if others may temporarily enjoy it.  AGAPE is always rooted in selfless, sacrificial giving of our self with no expectation of anything in return!

Allow me to tie all of this together as we move from Lordship, discipleship, and relationship to unpack all that God has packed into Marriage. 

First and foremost, we must understand that the perfect model for marriage is Christ and His Bride, The Church.  Ephesians 5:25-57, 31-32 make this clear,

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for herto make her holy, cleansingher by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless… ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”

One side note with more later:  Husbands, vv. 25-27 place a great responsibility on us presenting our wives holy before God in the way that we live our lives and love them.  We would be wise to take this responsibility with all the weight that He intends for it to have in His design and purpose for marriage. 

The goal of every relationship is to imitate Christ.  The only way we can do this is if He is our Lord.  That makes discipleship the key to every good relationship and especially the most important earthly one—marriage.

Are you content to place other worldly relationships ahead of your marriage?  Or are you making it the priority as God sees it?  You will be blessed if you do.

God has shown us how much He values marriage in His design and highest desire for its sanctity, His command that all should honor it, and its reflection of His image and our relationship with Him.  With this in mind let’s connect the dots with regard to His Lordship, our discipleship relationship with Him, and all loving relationships, finding the highest expression in the marriage relationship.

When we willing and lovingly obey His commands regarding life, love and relationships, He blesses and fulfills us in our marriages, families and all relationships, and strengthens His Church so we can shine the light of His Truth and Love to a world that desperately needs to know Him!

Contact L&L to let us know what you’re thinking and how we can help.

Give online as The Lord leads – https://give.cornerstone.cc/loveandlordship.

You can find videos, articles and podcasts at www.loveandlorship.com. 

Make it a great day and God bless in Christ!

Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – Marriage is the first, highest and most important of human relationships.  Marriage reflects God and His people, Israel in a Covenant relationship of agape.  Marriage reflects Christ and His Bride, The Church in the agape Covenant relationship of His blood shed for us on The Cross.  Is it any wonder that God plainly states, “Marriage should be honored by all?”

Love and Lordship…Action Item(s) – 1) Spend time with The Lord and seek His Word and wisdom for your life and relationships; 2) Remain pure (abstinent and chaste) in your sexual relationships outside of marriage; 3) If single, consult The Lord about any and every potential partner before pursuing deeper relationships in courtship and beyond leading toward marriage; 4) If married, continue to ask The Lord to strengthen you to honor your marriage and spouse with purity, integrity and holiness in Christ to reflect the relationship of Him with His Bride, The Church.