Couples: Are You Cheating on your Spouse?

Yes, Are you cheating on your spouse?
Are you loving your spouse all you heart, mind and soul.

What is holding you back from loving your spouse, YES, YES, I know you love your partner. But, I am taking about truly love them. Does your work take away from your spouse? Do you make time for him or her to spent together? Do you know of something that he or she likes, and you are lazy to do it.

Let’s step through the five ways that are given to us by the Lord Jesus Himself in Mark 12:30-31 (that He combined together and quoted from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18).
And you shall love the Lord your God:

•with all your heart,
•with all your soul,
•with all you mind,
•with all your strength, …
and … love your neighbor as yourself.

When bible calls to love the Lord to love him with all our heart. ( Do you have that person in the center of your life)

Soul, Why soul... did you eve hear the words, I love you you with every breath. Breath is life source and can't live without... Can you see yourself living without your breath or your spouse?

Why God used the word mind, I think he wanted us to love him not only when we feel like loving him... see, emotions goes up and down just like waves in the sea. But, minds aren't like that.

When you love your spouse with your mind, then no matter how things between you, good or bad, you will continue to love him or her. Don't let emotions lead your love live. Let the mind to be certain of what you do.

Lastly strength...See love don't stop at heart, mind or soul... to bring all this together, you need to express it. You need to show it. When you love someone with all your strength, your will have the courage to take every step to show it. So, express love with every way, be creative and show it.

God says, do every thing as you we working for Jesus. Do you love your spouse this way? Are you honest in your feelings toward your spouse? Is there any thing holding you back from loving your spouse completely?

Colossians 3:17 & 23 "And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men." Are you complaining too much? Are you loving caring your spouse with the spirit of loving God himself? Are you putting every effort in loving your spouse?

Lastly, Jesus commanded us to love your neighbor as ourselves. If so, shouldn't we love our spouses like loving ourselves. If you love yourself, you will love your spouse. You will work harder for you and your partner to become more like one.

Philippians 2:14 Do everything without complaining or arguing. What an amazing challenge for us all, to love without complaining.

So, I chellenge you to stop cheating your spouse and give them every thing.. Give them yourselves, don't cheat them of any bit of it.

What is He saying today?

Here is a post I wrote a year ago, I found my self coming back to it in order to remove the dust off what is important in life. I also was inspired by reading this post: Living like He's there by Sarah Markley.

I needed to prepre last Sat. for the Sunday school class I am teaching. I had to watch a Nooma video # 5 called Noise by Rob Bell. It is my first Nooma video.

Here is the video to watch for yourselves.

I had to watch it three times before I actually start teaching it. The fact that it presents is so deep. Just to record one hour of total silence required 2000 hours of record time.

The fact comes to mind, we try to fill our time, our schedule our daily life with so many things. See, today I have to plan my day and before the end the day, I have to plan tomorrow and if I don’t have any thing to do, I would have to find any thing to fill my day with. We view unfilled schedule as boredom time.

If we are on the highway, we turn on the radio and we may even have the radio on while talking on the phone. If we can’t find something better to do, we watch the billboards on the highway and if there isn’t much to see, we may complain of not having any thing to look at to consume our time.

Here is reality, we don’t have the attitude of thinking of our spare time as quality time that is an opportunity that is given to us to allow God to speak.
See, we go to church once or twice a week and during that time we speak a lot (praising and worshiping) then we listen to 30 min sermon for speaker of the day. But the video wants us to wander around trying to listen to what God have to say to us.

Do you ever wonder what He wants to say to you today? Do you want him in your life, leading it and inspiring it? So why don’t you allow him to talk and allow your self to listen?

See, if you yearn to have a close relationship with someone, you have to engage with that person in conversions and allow him to speak as much as you speak as well. When we are in love with someone, we look forward to their calls and can’t wait to get home to see them. We can't wait to have them call us and speak with us just for the sake yearning to listen to their voice on the other end of the call.

I believe that while I was teaching those kids in my Sunday school class about allowing God to speak. I have learned that I need to be silent and not only that, but also have the attitude to enjoy my silent time with him, trying to listen to what He got to say in Silence.

P.S. Silent/Listen have the same letters. In order to Listen, you must be Silent. In order to be Silent, you must not talk and Listen.

Couples: Winner in the transaction.

Pastor and preachers every where speak so much about love.... however the last few days I been talking to my self about a new concept (to me ofcourse) LOVE= INITIATION.

When pastors and preaches speaks about LOVE in the concept of relationships many explains how it is about Giving and Taking. But many of them fails to explain that Giving comes first. Giving is personsal responsibility that is task oriented matter that should be taken seriously.

Love isn't about giving and talking, because if you give when the expectation is to receive or take something back, it won't be love any more. it would be like a service contract with many lines that rules the relationship to do this, and I do that.

That is why, Jesus teach so much about how we should love other, like we love ourselves.. and how we should love our enemies whom never will return love back.

few days a go, a good and long time friend post this verse on her facebook: "Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” Luke 6:38

Wow, the words are loud and clear.... when you care and love, you should not even consider what it given in return... Jesus Commend us to give, and give good, because that is how we are going to get paid back. Just like he command us to forgive because we will be forgiven according to our forgiveness to others...

God really put the responsibility on us. LOVE IS PERSONAL ACTION AND INITIATION is the key word. The words are clear, don't worry about when you are getting in return. simply give good. Love good, and give more.

My friend said "When I read that verse today, I thought we do not think about how much we gave in comparison to what we have. But we think about I did give, I did good, I'm a giving person."
So true, we don't measure how much we have, nor we think of how we give. The command is clear give good and don't even think or concern yourself of what in it for me.

Society teaches against those exact words of the bible. Society is about how much I ma getting back and how much I have to do to get it. Sometimes in our relationships we do that. We say to our partners, you do this and in return I will do that. We end up living according to the society rules and not the biblical way of love equal initiation.
Society is about measurements and who is the winner is the transaction. But in a relationship, there is not single winner and loser. the team either win or lose. The words are clear, GIVE, GOOD, PRESS, SHAKE. All verbs are telling us to do something, not to expect any thing.

So, today, take charge of your relationship destiny, work hard, give more, press forward and shake all troubles. take INITIATIONS and love into your own hands. After all Jesus took initiative in loving us and dying for us on the cross. He didn't expect much from us.

Couples: The sweetest email I ever recevied

I had to share this with the world, becuase it made me feel so good and it said so much about what is marriage is all about. I won't comment or say any thing, it speaks for it self.

From: "Joicy"
Date: Dec 1, 2009 8:08 AM
Subject: Re: FW:
To: "Moody"

"I Thank God for you cause you are my man.....even if I trip on your shibshib or leave your shoes in the family room, or the desk is full of papers or if you eat triple what I eat, or if you are too tall that I can not reach to kiss you :)"

Good article!!!" this article inspired Joicy to send me this email and go for it and read it, it will have the same effect.
From the blog Heart for Him by Sandra
http://sandrapeoples.blogspot.com/2009/11/you-marry-man.html

1 on 1 with Brooke Pt. 6

In this post, we asked Brooke about her advise in marriage and relationships. One thing I leaned so far to find the good in other couples and try to apply it in our marriage. Lets learn more from Her.

Is there any advice you would like to give to newly married couples?
Throw away the key. That’s a piece of advice we were given early in our marriage. We literally stood on a beach in North Carolina and threw a “key” into the ocean symbolizing that there is no way our marriage can be unlocked. There is no longer a key that can separate what God brought together. It’s a mental and spiritually symbolic commitment we made beyond the vows we took at our wedding.

I always say that a marriage with difficulties is a living marriage. What are your thoughts?
I whole-heartedly agree. Marriage is the joining together of two different, sinful, selfish people. There WILL be conflict. Any marriage that doesn’t show signs of conflict is, in my opinion, already dead…or at least very sick. The good news is that couples can be taught to always consider the other better than themselves and the art of healthy conflict.

How do you deal with conflict? How you can make the best out of it?
My natural, sinful, tendency is to attack. I’m a very passionate person and I usually think I’m right. Did you know that just because you have a scripture or two to back up your position you can still be wrong? Shocking, I know. It has to do with the state of the heart. Matthew 12:34 says, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” I think the first step to handling conflict well is to check your own heart. If I respond to my husband in anger, anger resides in my heart. His actions do not CAUSE me to behave in a certain way. They only bring out what already lived in my heart. This should cause me to stop and look at the state of my heart and ask the Lord to clean it up!

You make it sound so easy when you talk about submission in your real life article on the subject. Doesn't it get hard sometimes? How do you do it? Why do many women resist the idea?

I’ve learned that submission to my husband has practically nothing to do with trusting him and everything to do with trusting God. My ability to submit to my husband is a direct reflection of my heart’s response to trusting God to work through him. Even if he messes up along the way, God can still work out His plans for our marriage. And yes, accomplishing this is sometimes hard.
Women resist the idea of submission for many reasons, most notably because we’re living in a time where almost no one aspires to it as something of worth. Even our churches don’t teach it well because they’re under so much pressure to conform to the world. True submission is nothing short of a beautiful gift of the Lord. Women today don’t want to submit to anything. Again, this is a reflection of how far our hearts are from the truth.

How do you turn a relationship from just a marriage to a real friendship?
Sometimes it’s hard to laugh together. Marriage can easily become a game of one-upmanship. (“I can’t believe you want me to do that. I worked eight hours today and you got to stay home!) And when there’s a constant battle to get what you think you deserve being friends becomes less of a priority.

But the bottom line is that to get to know anyone, spouse or not, you have to spend time with them. My husband and I struggle in this area. His shift-work and lack of babysitters makes it very difficult for us to schedule nights out on a regular basis. In fact, it occurred to me a few years ago that it would be very easy for us to be totally isolated as a family. We have to work hard for everything. But that’s ok. Because the best kind of love is that which is worth working for.

One thing I’ve been very thankful for in my marriage is that my husband and I had already established a deep and lasting friendship before we got married. We waited to have sex (though there were PLENTY of temptations…he’s a hotty ya’ll) until our wedding night (funny story…I’ll tell you about it sometime). The world wants us to believe that a good, strong relationship is built on sexual compatibility or romantic love and it’s just NOT. When that newborn baby is draining every ounce of strength you have and the thought of sex is the farthest thing from your mind, you’ll be glad you married your best friend. In other words, life is full of ups and downs. Sexual passion and desire comes and goes (I know it’s hard to believe…but it does), but friendship provides a strong undergirding for a marriage. Sometimes my husband and I disagree (shock! gasp!) quite passionately about things like raising the children, spending money, scheduling events, etc. But I know that I’m arguing with my best friend and that I’m safe with him. His friendship gives me a safe place to land.

Brooke blogs daily at A Life in Need of Change. Get to know her better by subscribing to her blog and walking with her through the everyday.

You can also find her tweeting almost daily as @BrookeLMcG

Brooke, Thank you very much once again for being a guest on our blog. We learned a lot how to be humble with in our walk in marriage, we learned how to pray and put others in front of the Lord. We are so looking forward to the next time we have you over. God bless all you heart work, because it is done from the heart.

1 on 1 with Brooke Pt. 5

The importance of prayer in marriage, we wanted to learn from Brooke, how prayers work in her life and her family.

Once said "The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: I did not have time." How do you deal with time management? And how do you see this relating to marriage?
I absolutely reject the modern concept that says, “quality over quantity.” Basically, the world would have us to believe that it doesn’t matter how much time we spend with our families as long as the time we do have with them is good. I just don’t buy it. Why have a family if you never spend time with them? The people who have made the greatest impact on my life are those who have given me the gift of their time. I’ve often said of my relationships “I don’t want gifts, I want YOU.”

About a year ago my husband and I made a choice that required some sacrifice. Although I had been working part-time since the birth of our first child, we found that the amount of hours I was away from our home were still just too many. Our children were spending more time with people other than us and their hearts were being shaped by people who, while good, didn’t share the same child-rearing goals we did. So now I’m out of my home just two full days a week and work from home another few hours. It has been a step in the right direction. We now feel that we will be able to look back on these years and know that we fully experienced our children’s formative years…difficult as they may be. All human relationships require investments of time to succeed.

Decreasing my time outside of my home has given me much-needed flexibility so that I can be more attentive to my husband’s needs. I can be off when he’s off much of the time and when we can’t eat dinner together because of his work schedule, often we can eat another meal. Letting go of some of the “crazy” in this way has only benefitted out marriage.

How much do you pray with your husband? How much do you pray for him? Is it all the time? My husband spent 32 weeks in preparation for his current job while we were dating…away from home during the week. It was one of the most stressful seasons of his life. During that time we began a daily habit that has lasted through the almost eight years of our marriage. Prayer. Each day he would call me before his stressful day began and I would ask for God’s provision in his life. That was close to ten years ago now and it’s still something we do almost every day. Heads bowed we seek the Lord’s protection and covering over each other. I truly treasure this habit!

How do you see the role of prayer in your life and your husband’s life? Really how often do you pray for him?
I pray for my husband at least two times a day, but usually much more than just two. Guaranteed are the prayers before work and at night (I lay my hand on his side while he’s sleeping).

Prayer in marriage is so much more important than language. I’m learning to take my heart to the Lord. My fears, faults, anger, sadness, disappointment, happiness and joy are best carried by the Lord. He is, afterall, the One who turns hearts of stone to hearts of flesh (Ez 36:26), not I.

It is so exciting to see and read Brooke takes about prayer in such passion, It is so encourging yet put us to shame for not doing the same.
Want to read more about prayer, go read her blog. A life in need of change.
You can also find her tweeting almost daily as @BrookeLMcG

Friday will be ou last post from our interview with Brooke, so don't forget to stop by and read more about her.

1 on 1 with Brooke Pt 4

Good morning all, it is amazing how much you know about someone when you ask the right questions. just by asking a few questions, we dig deeper and deeper. Brooke is an amazing woman we can't get enough of her. So, come and join our conversion.
How do you manage to have time to do every thing in the house, yet to minister to other women and manage to have a happy marriage?
Honestly, sometimes I’m not sure I do a really good job at any of it! The Lord blessed me with a man who is a hard worker. He does as much, if not more than I do around the house at times and isn’t above doing anything. My home is not always spic and span. And while I would like for it to be perfect…something out of Southern Living to be exact…I know that for my family, right now, it’s just not going to happen. Letting my expectations slip a little in this area helps me stress less. I think there have only been a few times when I would’ve been embarrassed for someone to stop by unannounced. I spend brief, but concentrated and scheduled amounts of time on my home each week. And because my husband works shift-work, he spends time cleaning and doing laundry when he’s home. I’ve learned the hard way only to say “yes” to those things I believe the Lord has called me to and I try hard to think about how everything I do affects my husband.

I do want to be clear though, that while I love ministering to women, both in my job and through my writing, my family comes first. Writing, in particular, feeds my soul, but my priority is my family. How can I encourage other women to love their children and husbands well if I’m not doing it myself?

What are your thoughts on marriage? And how would you describe yours?
Right before I got married I went through a scary, but important season where I feared getting married would set me up to invite someone to hurt me for the rest of my life. I knew my husband wasn’t perfect and I knew that he would sin against me. I also knew that marriage would bring me closer to God, but I wondered, briefly, if the pain I might experience from letting someone get that close, was really worth it.

Marriage is hard. And it’s nothing like I thought it would be and everything I thought it would be all at the same time.

Marriage is also work. I remember a time when I mistakenly believed that real love shouldn’t require a lot of work.

I’m wife to the man I’ve had a crush on since the 3rd grade...really...I’ve been in some form of love with this man since I was a wee one...but the Lord didn't officially bring us together until I was 20 years old when our families connived behind our backs and set us up to fall in love. And fall we did! I spent almost four years dating a man who's seal was firmly upon my heart! We had a fairy tale courtship...made for each other...can't get enough of each other...soul connection kind of love. And I hang on to my memories of that love every day.

Because I’ve learned that love is NEVER enough. Marriage requires a total commitment from both parties, especially when things get hard.

My marriage is far from perfect. With a husband that works shift-work, two very young, very high energy little boys, a part-time job and plenty of stress, it’s often hard to focus on our marriage and give it the time we want to. We’re learning to be intentional with our time and to each put the other person first.

Also, kindness goes a long way in marriage. Proverbs 15:1 says, “a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” This is never more true than in marriage.

Once said "The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: I did not have time." How do you deal with time management? And how do you see this relating to marriage?

I absolutely reject the modern concept that says, “quality over quantity.” Basically, the world would have us to believe that it doesn’t matter how much time we spend with our families as long as the time we do have with them is good. I just don’t buy it. Why have a family if you never spend time with them? The people who have made the greatest impact on my life are those who have given me the gift of their time. I’ve often said of my relationships “I don’t want gifts, I want YOU.”

About a year ago my husband and I made a choice that required some sacrifice. Although I had been working part-time since the birth of our first child, we found that the amount of hours I was away from our home were still just too many. Our children were spending more time with people other than us and their hearts were being shaped by people who, while good, didn’t share the same child-rearing goals we did. So now I’m out of my home just two full days a week and work from home another few hours. It has been a step in the right direction. We now feel that we will be able to look back on these years and know that we fully experienced our children’s formative years…difficult as they may be. All human relationships require investments of time to succeed.

Decreasing my time outside of my home has given me much-needed flexibility so that I can be more attentive to my husband’s needs. I can be off when he’s off much of the time and when we can’t eat dinner together because of his work schedule, often we can eat another meal. Letting go of some of the “crazy” in this way has only benefitted out marriage.

Like I said, we can't get enough of her, So come Wednesday morning for another post with Brook.