Study from God’s Word… Lev 19: 9-10, 23: 22; Deut 24: 19-22, 24-25; Lev 25: 35-38; Deut 5: 16; Lev 19: 3a; Ex 21: 17; Lev 20: 9; Ex 21: 17; Lev 20: 9; Deut 21: 18-21; Lev 19: 32; Ex 22: 22-24; Ex 22: 21, 23: 9; Lev 19: 33-34; Lev 24: 22; Lev 19: 14; Lev 19: 16-18; Ex 23: 4-5; Deut 22: 1-4; Deut 5: 21; Deut 25: 4; Deut 22: 6-7; Deut 20: 1-20; Deut 23: 9-14; Deut 24: 5; Deut 21: 10-14; … Passage for Reflection: Deuteronomy 22: 6 – 7 … NIV 6 If you come across a bird's nest beside the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother with the young. 7 You may take the young, but be sure to let the mother go, so that it may go well with you and you may have a long life.
My Journal for Today: Today’s study was a review of the Old Testament social welfare laws and principles God passed on to His people to aid them interacting with one another and promoting compassion, which is the focus virtue highlighted in today’s study verses. And when you, as I did, read these verses, you might have a tendency to say, “Well, … how quaint!” And we see that God cares even for His little birds; and then we extract the argument from the lesser to the greater … that if God so cares for birds the way He does, how much more does He care for you and me? And wow, in the Person of Christ we certainly see the answer to that one, don’t we?
In today’s study we see that structure, laws, and social principles were set in motion to provide for the poor, to help the handicapped, to honor the elderly (especially our parents), and even to take in foreigners when they were in need of accommodations. And F. LaGard Smith, in raising these issues, asks a couple of very pointed questions of his readers, “Can you even begin to imagine a world without daily acts of compassion? Indeed, what would you and I be like if we were devoid of compassion?”
And it was just yesterday, while I was going through my physical therapy in rehab after my shoulder surgery, the TV was on in the PT clinic; and I saw a segment from the Dr. Phil show (wow, such enlightenment!] where a Pediatrician had sexually abused over 100 little girls by taking advantage of them while he was examining them in his clinic; and there was another segment where three security guards in a shopping mall watched – and did nothing – to aid a young girl who was being pummeled by four other girls. And the question “Dr. Phil” was posing with his show was, “How can people act like this?” And there you and I have the answer to Dr. Smith’s question above. If the world was compassionless, anarchy would rule; and we’d see that the man with the biggest stick would rule.
And if we let – as a culture – the family degenerate into a structure God did not intend; or … we – as a people – are unwilling to take care of the Samaritan who is lying on the road, beaten down by the world [Luke 10: 25-37 - linked], we will become what I was viewing yesterday on that Dr. Phil show – a world devoid of compassion; and that my friends, would be sad, beyond measure, and personally intolerable. But that, my dear ones, is where we’re headed as mankind begins to live out what Paul wrote about in Romans 1: 18-32; and if we’re unwilling to live with compassion and promote caring love in our laws and culture, we will become an unlivable world.
So, as Dr. Smith asks today, ”Whose life might be uplifted today because of some compassion I might show?” A good question to move us to become what Christ would have us become … like Himself.
My Prayer for Today: Lord, Help me to live beyond self and to act like You toward my fellow man. Amen
Showing posts with label love and respect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love and respect. Show all posts
Friday, March 05, 2010
Monday, August 17, 2009
2009 – Day 228.Aug 17 – Complete Acceptance
Passage of the Day: Job 2: 9 – 10 … Then [Job’s] wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” But [Job] said to [his wife], “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
My Journal for Today: Well, yesterday, influenced by the seminar my wife and I had attended this past weekend with Emerson, and his wife, Sara, Eggerich teaching on the marriage implications from <u>Ephesians 5: 33, I took Chuck Swindoll’s devotional study in a different direction than he had taught. I wrote, with some criticism yesterday of Job’s communication to his wife in Job 2: 10, indicating that I thought he reacted somewhat harshly with his choice of terms, calling her “foolish.” As it turns out, I should have read ahead one more day; because that’s the exact point that Dr. Swindoll makes in his devotional for this date; and so let me expound on it one more day, helping to imbed the material my wife, Elly, and I learned this past weekend.
In the materials Emerson Eggerich and his wife use in their seminars, they teach about what they call “the crazy cycle,” which is the downward spiral of communication which can result when a wife ignores her husband’s need for respect and/or a husband ignores his wife’s need for love. In other words, when a wife communicates (either by her choice of words or his misperception) that she disrespects her husband, as may have been the case with Job’s wife in Job 2: 9, his perception of being disrespected can, and often does, cause him to recoil with an unloving response. And when she perceives, by his silence or his harsh, reactive words, that he is being unloving, the wife will react with words or actions which are perceived as disrespectful by the husband. And, as we learned this weekend, a wife won’t give respect to a husband when she FEELS unloved; and a husband won’t be loving to his wife when he FEELS disrespected. And so goes “the crazy cycle” of damaging communication downward which flows against God’s commands in Ephesians 5: 33.
What Job and his wife communicated to one another by words and feelings in today’s highlight passage is an illustration that “crazy cycle” communication in a marriage has been going on for over 3000 years. And that’s why the Apostles addressed this matter so pointedly, Paul in Ephesians 5 and 1st Corinthians 7, and Peter in 1st Peter 3. But as the teaching, more specifically in Eph. 5: 33 teaches, we can avoid the crazy cycle and move into what the Eggerich calls the “energizing cycle,” by one or the other of a couple CHOOSING to go against nature and communicate what God commands us to speak into our spouse.
And here is how that goes. When a wife FEELS loved by her husband’s communication, she will have a tendency to treat him with respect. And visa versa, when a husband feels respected by his wife, he can – and often does, respond by giving her the love she needs. Therefore, when a husband feels disrespected, he will have to consciously and intentionally break through his feelings of disrespect and communicate love to his wife. OR … when a wife feels unloved, she needs to break through the crazy cycle by consciously communicating respect to her husband. And when this happens, by God’s grace being doled out through their love choices, the spouse who has been mature enough to give his/her spouse what they need, will note that this spouse will respond with what initiator desires from their mate, love for the wife or respect for the husband.
Elly and I came away from the “Love and Respect” Conference this past weekend feeling that it would have been so good for us to know these marital dynamics 45 years ago when we got married. We could have avoided many situations where either of us caused the other to feel unloved or disrespected; and our crazy cycles of communication could have been broken and we could have energized one or the other in our marriage by choosing to go against what comes natural by giving the other needed to energize our marriage as God has commanded in Eph. 5: 33.
And as we can read in today’s marital interchange, even Godly Job and his wife needed to learn this lesson as well. So, as I wrote yesterday, if you’re reading this perhaps you should go to the Eggerich, Love and Respect, website [link provided] and purchase one of their books to help you learn how to break the crazy cycles of communication in a marriage and getting the benefits of the energizing and rewarding effects of going against what is natural by communicating messages which give your spouse what he/she needs in your marriage.
My Prayer for Today: Lord, give me the enabling grace to speak love to my wife because she needs it from me; and help her to overcome what I probably deserve by giving me, with grace, what I need in the honor she shows to me. Holy Spirit, energize our marriage with Your grace. Amen
My Journal for Today: Well, yesterday, influenced by the seminar my wife and I had attended this past weekend with Emerson, and his wife, Sara, Eggerich teaching on the marriage implications from <u>Ephesians 5: 33, I took Chuck Swindoll’s devotional study in a different direction than he had taught. I wrote, with some criticism yesterday of Job’s communication to his wife in Job 2: 10, indicating that I thought he reacted somewhat harshly with his choice of terms, calling her “foolish.” As it turns out, I should have read ahead one more day; because that’s the exact point that Dr. Swindoll makes in his devotional for this date; and so let me expound on it one more day, helping to imbed the material my wife, Elly, and I learned this past weekend.
In the materials Emerson Eggerich and his wife use in their seminars, they teach about what they call “the crazy cycle,” which is the downward spiral of communication which can result when a wife ignores her husband’s need for respect and/or a husband ignores his wife’s need for love. In other words, when a wife communicates (either by her choice of words or his misperception) that she disrespects her husband, as may have been the case with Job’s wife in Job 2: 9, his perception of being disrespected can, and often does, cause him to recoil with an unloving response. And when she perceives, by his silence or his harsh, reactive words, that he is being unloving, the wife will react with words or actions which are perceived as disrespectful by the husband. And, as we learned this weekend, a wife won’t give respect to a husband when she FEELS unloved; and a husband won’t be loving to his wife when he FEELS disrespected. And so goes “the crazy cycle” of damaging communication downward which flows against God’s commands in Ephesians 5: 33.
What Job and his wife communicated to one another by words and feelings in today’s highlight passage is an illustration that “crazy cycle” communication in a marriage has been going on for over 3000 years. And that’s why the Apostles addressed this matter so pointedly, Paul in Ephesians 5 and 1st Corinthians 7, and Peter in 1st Peter 3. But as the teaching, more specifically in Eph. 5: 33 teaches, we can avoid the crazy cycle and move into what the Eggerich calls the “energizing cycle,” by one or the other of a couple CHOOSING to go against nature and communicate what God commands us to speak into our spouse.
And here is how that goes. When a wife FEELS loved by her husband’s communication, she will have a tendency to treat him with respect. And visa versa, when a husband feels respected by his wife, he can – and often does, respond by giving her the love she needs. Therefore, when a husband feels disrespected, he will have to consciously and intentionally break through his feelings of disrespect and communicate love to his wife. OR … when a wife feels unloved, she needs to break through the crazy cycle by consciously communicating respect to her husband. And when this happens, by God’s grace being doled out through their love choices, the spouse who has been mature enough to give his/her spouse what they need, will note that this spouse will respond with what initiator desires from their mate, love for the wife or respect for the husband.
Elly and I came away from the “Love and Respect” Conference this past weekend feeling that it would have been so good for us to know these marital dynamics 45 years ago when we got married. We could have avoided many situations where either of us caused the other to feel unloved or disrespected; and our crazy cycles of communication could have been broken and we could have energized one or the other in our marriage by choosing to go against what comes natural by giving the other needed to energize our marriage as God has commanded in Eph. 5: 33.
And as we can read in today’s marital interchange, even Godly Job and his wife needed to learn this lesson as well. So, as I wrote yesterday, if you’re reading this perhaps you should go to the Eggerich, Love and Respect, website [link provided] and purchase one of their books to help you learn how to break the crazy cycles of communication in a marriage and getting the benefits of the energizing and rewarding effects of going against what is natural by communicating messages which give your spouse what he/she needs in your marriage.
My Prayer for Today: Lord, give me the enabling grace to speak love to my wife because she needs it from me; and help her to overcome what I probably deserve by giving me, with grace, what I need in the honor she shows to me. Holy Spirit, energize our marriage with Your grace. Amen
Sunday, August 16, 2009
2009 – Day 227.Aug 16 – Truth Spoken In Love
Passage of the Day: Job 2: 10 … But [Job] said to [his wife], “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
My Journal for Today: When you consider how Job heard what his wife had to say (in verse 9 of Job 2), where she had spoken in horror for her husband to curse God and die, Chuck Swindoll posits that Job spoke the truth back to his wife in love. But I don’t think I agree with Pastor Swindoll completely here.
I do agree that Job rightfully and correctly confronted his wife with the truth as he saw it; but don’t you think he could have shown here a bit more consideration in avoiding labeling his wife as a “foolish woman?” Actually, I love scripture for many reasons; but one of them is the way it doesn’t hide human weakness; and here was a man who was covered in painful boils, a man who had just lost his 10 kids; and his wife blurts out that he should commit suicide and end it all.
Yes, Job listened to his wife; and he appears to have considered her input. However, when he responded to her, I think he could have done a better job of showing that he loved his wife with his response. Wives need to hear love from their husbands. My wife and I just returned from a Christian marriage seminar conducted by Emerson and Sara Eggerich, which was based on the truth about marriage found in Ephesians 5:33. You may know the verse, where the Apostle Paul tells married believers, “…let each one of you [husbands] in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
Personally, I think Job’s wife could have shown her husband a little more respect by saying something like, “Oh, my dear, you are such a Godly man; and I can’t stand seeing you suffer like this. Let’s just end it all right here together.” And maybe Job could have said something like, “Dear one, I can understand what you say; and I know you love me; but it’s foolish to think that God doesn’t love us just because of the bad things which have happened to us.”
But I will say that Job and his wife at least confronted what was happening … head on; and they did not hide their feelings. And that is something that many married couples are unwilling to do. How often in a marriage do we leave the truth unsaid or try to avoid confrontation in love? Most of us tend to stuff our feelings and leave the truth unspoken. But this couple at least brought their feelings out into the open. I’m just saying that I think they could have done it with a bit more love (on his part) and respect (on her part).
What my wife and I learned yesterday at the Eggerich seminar, was the power of speaking love to a wife from a husband and respect from a wife to a husband, which has everything to do with how marital relationships will transpire. If a wife doesn’t feel loved in what a husband says or does, she will react with disrespect. If a husband senses or perceives disrespect from his wife, he will recoil and reactively avoid showing love to his wife. And it all leads to what Dr. Eggerich calls “the crazy cycle,” where communications go reactively negative and the wife becomes unwilling to communicate respect for her husband and the husband is unwilling to communicate love to his wife. However, when one of the couple is willing to break this cycle by showing the other what that one needs, the cycle can turn around and become positive and affirming where the wife feels loved and the husband respected.
Here’s where Job and his wife could, I believe, have done a better service to each other, even though they both, under great stress, were willing to share their real feelings. … Perhaps I’m being a bit presumptuous by criticizing this God-fearing couple in the midst of their horrible circumstances; but we all can learn from the reality of scripture, especially when we consider other parallel passages in God’s word about related matters; and this is what I’m trying to do by bringing Ephesians 5 to bear into our look at this highlight passage from the book of Job. We, who are married, can - and must - learn how to communicate openly and honestly. But we must do it with love and compassion for the needs of the other when we share our feelings in our relationships. And when we do, we can move forward, in love, knowing that we’ve honored God with our expressions while we consider the needs of our spouses as we share together.
PS: Any married readers of what I have shared here today may want to go to the website at this link [link provided] and learn more about the “Love and Respect” approach to marriage communications. It could change the way you view your spouse and bring your marriage into the focus of God’s instructions in Ephesians 5.
My Prayer for Today: Thank you, Lord, for a wife who respects me and one whom I love so dearly. Amen
My Journal for Today: When you consider how Job heard what his wife had to say (in verse 9 of Job 2), where she had spoken in horror for her husband to curse God and die, Chuck Swindoll posits that Job spoke the truth back to his wife in love. But I don’t think I agree with Pastor Swindoll completely here.
I do agree that Job rightfully and correctly confronted his wife with the truth as he saw it; but don’t you think he could have shown here a bit more consideration in avoiding labeling his wife as a “foolish woman?” Actually, I love scripture for many reasons; but one of them is the way it doesn’t hide human weakness; and here was a man who was covered in painful boils, a man who had just lost his 10 kids; and his wife blurts out that he should commit suicide and end it all.
Yes, Job listened to his wife; and he appears to have considered her input. However, when he responded to her, I think he could have done a better job of showing that he loved his wife with his response. Wives need to hear love from their husbands. My wife and I just returned from a Christian marriage seminar conducted by Emerson and Sara Eggerich, which was based on the truth about marriage found in Ephesians 5:33. You may know the verse, where the Apostle Paul tells married believers, “…let each one of you [husbands] in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
Personally, I think Job’s wife could have shown her husband a little more respect by saying something like, “Oh, my dear, you are such a Godly man; and I can’t stand seeing you suffer like this. Let’s just end it all right here together.” And maybe Job could have said something like, “Dear one, I can understand what you say; and I know you love me; but it’s foolish to think that God doesn’t love us just because of the bad things which have happened to us.”
But I will say that Job and his wife at least confronted what was happening … head on; and they did not hide their feelings. And that is something that many married couples are unwilling to do. How often in a marriage do we leave the truth unsaid or try to avoid confrontation in love? Most of us tend to stuff our feelings and leave the truth unspoken. But this couple at least brought their feelings out into the open. I’m just saying that I think they could have done it with a bit more love (on his part) and respect (on her part).
What my wife and I learned yesterday at the Eggerich seminar, was the power of speaking love to a wife from a husband and respect from a wife to a husband, which has everything to do with how marital relationships will transpire. If a wife doesn’t feel loved in what a husband says or does, she will react with disrespect. If a husband senses or perceives disrespect from his wife, he will recoil and reactively avoid showing love to his wife. And it all leads to what Dr. Eggerich calls “the crazy cycle,” where communications go reactively negative and the wife becomes unwilling to communicate respect for her husband and the husband is unwilling to communicate love to his wife. However, when one of the couple is willing to break this cycle by showing the other what that one needs, the cycle can turn around and become positive and affirming where the wife feels loved and the husband respected.
Here’s where Job and his wife could, I believe, have done a better service to each other, even though they both, under great stress, were willing to share their real feelings. … Perhaps I’m being a bit presumptuous by criticizing this God-fearing couple in the midst of their horrible circumstances; but we all can learn from the reality of scripture, especially when we consider other parallel passages in God’s word about related matters; and this is what I’m trying to do by bringing Ephesians 5 to bear into our look at this highlight passage from the book of Job. We, who are married, can - and must - learn how to communicate openly and honestly. But we must do it with love and compassion for the needs of the other when we share our feelings in our relationships. And when we do, we can move forward, in love, knowing that we’ve honored God with our expressions while we consider the needs of our spouses as we share together.
PS: Any married readers of what I have shared here today may want to go to the website at this link [link provided] and learn more about the “Love and Respect” approach to marriage communications. It could change the way you view your spouse and bring your marriage into the focus of God’s instructions in Ephesians 5.
My Prayer for Today: Thank you, Lord, for a wife who respects me and one whom I love so dearly. Amen
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