Love & Affection

Now that you all have most likely grown gray hair and had 10 more grandkids since my last post, I feel it is time to splash a little more thoughtfulness around.

For a long time, I have been observing people who are married. The purpose of this observation has been mostly curiosity and making notes on what I want my marriage to look like. I have seen quite the broad spectrum of couples - affectionate, serious, happy, wise, kind, thoughtful, abusive, complaining, arguing, satisfied, in love, no longer in love, and so on. I have observed both newlyweds and couples who look like they may go 6 feet under together at any moment. Here are some of my thoughts.

- In many churches I have been a part of, married couples often sit together. This is a good thing (hopefully). However, they also often sit/stand/interact like co-habitating rocks. This does not make me excited about marriage. Occasionally, I see them hold hands or maybe even rub each others' backs. But the latter seems very infrequent. If the couple in question is in pastoral leadership, then they are often not sitting together and sometimes only get to share a few words throughout the service. The situation is even worse if the couple is in leadership AND has young children. This usually results in a couple of shouted words or plans from a distance of 15 feet or more. As you can imagine, this *ahem* wonderful showcase of marital love in church could easily make people (read: me) think that marriage is no fun and feelings for your spouse must be hidden while in public.

- However, in the last couple of years, I have seen a growing trend in the churches I've gone to (or maybe just my home church). I see couples actually showing affection for each other openly. Now, let me be clear about what I mean by "affection." I'm not talking about taking any clothes off or hands inside of clothing. That sort of thing should probably stay at home for the sake of younger or unmarried minds. I'm referring to holding each other, kissing, rubbing (mostly non-sensitive areas), caressing, whispering, gazing into each others' eyes, and those sorts of things. And I am DEFINITELY only referring here to those things expressed in the context of a marriage relationship. To cover my views outside of marriage would require a whole other post.

When I see a husband and wife showing affection for each other, I get really happy inside because God places such an extreme priority on marriage! In the lives of many couples, love and time together takes a back seat to work, ministry, kids, friends, education, etc. This, I believe, is tragic. If I am a married man, nothing should come between me and my wife connection-wise and nothing should come before the needs of my wife. Example: I've seen many husbands put up with lousy jobs that sap their energy and make them emotionally and physically dead to their wives in the name of keeping food on the table. I don't want to seem callous to the situations of these people, but in my opinion, a job is a means to an end - not the end itself. For me, a job allows me to spend more money on my wife and gives me more colorful and creative ways to pour out love on her. If the job starts to hinder my relationship with my wife, the job must yield because it is no longer functioning as an enhancer of love between me and my wife. If the job does not yield, I have just set a dangerous precedent in place for the course of our marriage. Once I've made the decision to put up with the loss of energy/time/love/relationship, it is much easier for me to make the same decision again later on in a different situation. This creates a pattern which, over time, can cause a couple to fall out of love with each other. Some signs of this are:

- Snapping at each other more frequently

- Not wanting to go the extra mile for the other person

- Viewing the needs of the other as a burden on you

- Wanting more and more time either by yourself or with "the guys"/"my girlfriends" apart from your spouse (not sure about the girls, but I've found that needing "guy time" away from my spouse is unnecessary - especially if she is my best friend.)

- Being 'out of sync' with each other (which leads to more of #1)

- Forgetting your spouse's likes/dislikes/priorities/dreams

- Loss of joy between the two of you

...To name a few. So husbands and wives, take my words to heart:

- Never be embarrassed to show affection, whether in private or in public - be proud of your spouse!

- Your children REALLY like to see you and your spouse loving each other. It creates a good, solid, loving atmosphere in your home and your kids will respond to it.

- Don't let religious systems or cultural expectations get in the way of your love. Religion (when Christianity loses relationship and becomes a set of rules and protocols) will always look down its nose at love because it is not 'proper' and makes couples who aren't in love anymore uncomfortable.

John

Are You Worth It?

One of the things that I've been learning about lately is my worth. Specifically, people going out of their way to help me.

What usually happens when someone offers to help us out? We usually apologize profusely and desperately look for any possible reason to politely refuse their assistance. "It's ok, I'll be all right." or "Oh you don't have to do that!" or "But I don't want to be any trouble for you..." or even the stronger "No! I can't let you do that for me! I'll be fine!"

Think about it. Why do we say these sorts of things when we know that if the situation was reversed, we would absolutely love to go out of our way for them? Well, it seems like we don't love ourselves very much. Much of our lives, we are taught by the church to always put other peoples' needs above our own. This is good (in moderation), but we often slip into this mindset that our needs are not important and should not be assisted by anyone because it might be a burden to them. This can not only make your life much more difficult, but can also deprive others of the blessings they would receive by helping you.

But what is the foundation that we must have in our hearts for this? I am important. What a shock! How often are we taught this? Not enough! If you don't really think you are important, think of it this way: If God Himself would take a bullet for your well-being, then you sound pretty important to me!

So here is the punch line: You are worth it. He made you worth it!

Now we don't go around being a pain in the neck to others of course, but when we balance this out, we get:

My needs are important, and so are yours! This is a healthy view of life and relationship. I want to help you out and you want to help me out. Rememer, the second greatest commandment of all time? Love your neighbor as yourself. You can't love another person properly if you don't love yourself! When you find yourself questioning why anyone would want to help you out, remind yourself that...

YOU ARE WORTH IT!!!

John H.

My Story Part 4

Ever since I had arrived here in Redding, I had heard some of the pastors refer to God as "Papa". I wondered why, since the Bible only uses the term "Father". Either way, it didn't make much difference to me because both titles were just what you call God. It had never occured to me why the Bible uses this parental distinction for God. But when I started hearing people use "Papa", I started to think a little more about it. Why would they do that? There had to be some good reason for it. So I kept wondering in the back of my head...

And then it hit me.

I don't even know how it it hit me, but I think it was an "Oh that's it!" moment. I realized that God wants to be personal with us. That's why Romans 8 uses the word "Abba" in conjunction with "Father". It was a very personal word - the only reason I'd missed it all this time was that I never called my parents "Father" and "Mother". Those terms sounded so cold and formal [and British :)] to me. In my family, it was always "Dad" and "Mom".

So once I realized the purpose of calling God "Father" and "Papa", I decided to try calling Him "Dad" and "Daddy". This took a bit of effort, since it was against everything I'd been taught about how to relate to God. Each time I called Him that, however, I could feel my heart opening more and more to Him. I began to trust Him more and was able to feel His peace all over me like a warm blanket when I talked with Him. I began to feel safer and more secure in everyday life, so I could try new things because I knew that He would be there to comfort and hold me if things went wrong.

Then I started thinking even more. If God seems to have a big interest in being a Dad to me, then I guess I should relate to Him like one, right (some differences, of course, but same idea)? I realized that when you are away from your dad, usually one of the first things he asks you when you reunite is...

"How was your day?"

So I started to tell Him all about my days! It may sound silly because He already knows everything, but for some reason He just loves to hear it from us! As I did this more and more, I realized that this is at least part of what Matthew 7:23 was talking about (depart from me, I never knew you) - we talk about knowing God a whole lot, but I haven't heard too many sermons about God knowing us. We often just assume that He knows us if we do the right stuff and obey His directions.

That's not what relationship is all about. Relationship is about two people who know each other inside and out; who spend life together - good or bad, thick or thin, ups or downs, happy or sad. Two people who are completely dedicated to each other and who make themselves known to their companion. The level to which they do this determines the depth of their relationship.

That's what relationship is all about. So, how well does your Daddy know you?

John H.

My Story Part 2

So after I heard Chad speak, I was duly convinced that God could (and would) use me to heal people. At that time, though, I thought that I should only pray for people that God specifically told me to pray for. While this is a good idea, we have already been told to pray for just about everybody (Matthew 10:1-8). Anyway, at that time I was having a lot of trouble hearing God's active voice (Greek word "rhema" as opposed to "logos" in the NT, refers to a conversational sort of word). At that time I was hearing about three different voices in my head/heart: one from my thoughts, one from the enemy, and one from God. My problem was figuring out which voice was which. My solution up 'til that time was to ignore all the voices. But after Chad spoke, I went forward to receive prayer from one of the ministry team members there. As he was praying, he felt like he heard God say to command the evil spirit of confusion to stop messing with me. He did, and as soon as I got back to my seat, I clearly heard God speak to my heart:

"I love you."

Just three words, but they felt like a million bucks to me right then. That was the first time that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that He really does love me. You can say all you want about believing what the Bible says, but there's something about actually experiencing what it talks about. It's pretty hard to argue with an actually experience - what I will also refer to as a God encounter. Of course we don't put our experiences on the same level as Scripture, but when they agree, head knowledge becomes a lifestyle for us.

That's part of the goal of this blog - to show you my journey from head knowledge to lifestyle in the past and as it continues to happen today. Perhaps it will give you the courage to move further in that process yourself :).

John H.