Words of Affirmation

Women really don’t understand the power they have over men.  You would have thought we would have learned from people like Samson, but we didn’t.  We men have to know that the women in our lives support us and affirm us. 

Example #1 – James Braddock’s wife does not want him to fight and had he gone into the ring, his brain would have been pummeled to mush.  But she goes into the locker room and he comes out of there a new man.

Then there is this Rocky classic.  He is about to go into the ring with Apollo Creed with a gut on him my size.  But all it takes is Adrian telling him “WIN”, then the usual montage of Rocky willing himself into the best shape of his career.

Ok, so that is the movies and this is real life.  Yes, it is but it happens outside of Hollywood too.  My wife and I have this thing where when I am on my way home, I let her know via text message and these are the types of response she gives me (used with permission).

Dan – Leaving now, home in 30
Deb – My heart swelleth in loove for you.
Dan – Home in 30
Deb – The sun shines brighter just knowing that.
Dan – Home in 30
Deb – Rejoicing in holy matrimony!
Dan – Home in 30
Deb – Oh how sweet that sounds.
Dan – Home in 25 (was on my way then)
Deb – Oh shivers of marital joy
Dan – Home shortly
Deb – My day is now completely full of joy

Now I know that sounds completely hokey, but it doesn’t matter what has happened that day.  These words affirm me, they build me up.  I know it’s coming and I know it’s corny but I love it.  When we mentor young couples, we remind them how much they need to know the love language of the other.  My wife knows for me it is words of affirmation.  She builds me up.  It may not have the Hollywood flair, but it works.

Remembering Rwanda

In 2005, I visited Rwanda as part of a team from World Vision.  The little video montage I put together captured the essence of the trip.  It was a life changing trip for me.  Rwanda is a small country the size of Maryland with about 9 million residents.  Rwanda went through a horrendous genocide in 1994 when between 700,000 and 1 million Rwandans were systematically slaughtered mostly in a one month killing season.  So imagine about 10% of the country being killed.  Neighbor slaughtered neighbor, friends slaughtered friends, and even family member slaughtered family member.  The distinction over who lived and who died was whether they were Tutsi, a somewhat arbitrary ethnic determination originally started by the Belgians when they were in charge of the country. 

I have read most every book on Rwanda I can find.  The common theme is that those that took life depersonalized their neighbor, their friend, their family member.  The interviews revealed the lie that the taking of life was part of a mission almost a job.  The killers would go out systematically and slaughter and then come back for a little party at the end of the day.  They did not see a person, they saw a task.  Those that survived commented that they could see a lifeless person in their attacker.  Also interestingly, the church was no refuge.  In several instances, people were urged to go to a church as a safe haven only to have priests turn on them and be slaughtered.

Can this thing happen today?  Absolutely!  Rwanda was essentially a “Christian country”.  Do we realize it is the presence of the Holy Spirit today that keeps us from this happening anywhere today?  The Holy Spirit is what moves and causes us to see people as they are in God’s image.  If the Holy Spirit were not here as will happen in the end times, that people will have no restraint.  Satan will have a field day as there will be no restraining element at all.  Do we realize that we are so utterly depraved that rampant killing could easily occur any time at any place?  People left to their own devices are incredibly evil. 

Thankfully that is not the end of the story.  Rwanda has experienced rebirth.  It started with the supernatural power of forgiveness.  People had to have a special dose of the Holy Spirit to forgive their attackers.  And they did.  The Holy Spirit gives incredible power to forgive and rebuild relationships.   We visited Rwanda again in 2009 and again saw the power of forgiveness.  Rwanda could be have completely disintegrated, but it did not.  It is an example of renewal by the Holy Spirit.

What Makes a Marriage Work?

This past week, Deb and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary.  Seems like just yesterday we were married.  This is what we looked like then.

Ahh, so happy, so in love!  Except that is not the truth.  Our first ten years or so of marriage were brutal.  We are pre-marital mentors at our church Christ Community Chapel and the first thing we tell our candidate couples is that the euphoria of marriage wears off very quickly.  I remember on our honeymoon thinking I married the wrong person.  

A turning point occurred around year 10 when we both attended a conference entitled “Management and Marriage” sponsored by Fellowship of Companies for Christ and it caused both of us to look inwardly and instead of trying to change the other person, we asked God to change us.  And God indeed changed us.  And in the process of changing us, He fitted us together more and more as a couple.  The process caused us to appreciate more and more what each other had as strengths rather than perceived weaknesses.  When we honor God’s covenant of marriage and commit to holy living, He changes us.  So a successful marriage is supernatural.  That is what we tell our couples.

So what makes a marriage work?  Here are some tips from the Dan and Debbie school of hard knocks.

1. A commitment to the covenant of marriage.  You pledged “till death do us part” in front of witnesses and God.
2. Pray that you will be conformed to who God wants you to be for your spouse and don’t try to change your spouse.
3. Don’t expect your spouse to change, but don’t be surprised if they do (see #2).
4. Communicate even when it hurts. 
5. Don’t use rule #4 as an excuse to hurt your spouse – see rule #6.
6. Pick your battles – Lord knows my wife has.
7. Be upfront on practical issues, especially money.
8. Never put your spouse down in front of others including your children.  Watch “prayer requests” about your spouse with others.
9. Praise your spouse often, especially in front of others.  Works great with guys especially coming from their wife.
10. Do stuff together – Deb has acquired a taste for baseball as an example and I just enjoy going on trips with her.
11. Eat meals together – we ate many meals together as a family and it was foundational. 
12. Laugh a lot – we do.  Someone has said a marriage makes life twice as much fun and lessens half the stress.  No doubt about it.
13. Be committed to God’s word in your family. 
14. Be committed to personal holiness.  The difference in my life especially in the past few years is that commitment. 
15. Place your spouse above all else behind your Lord and Saviour.

My wife is more lovely to me by far today than when we got married.  She is my best friend on this earth.  God has woven us together over the past 27 years and I am blessed for it.  Here is what we look like now. 

This picture is taken on one of our many adventures to the Taj Mahal (we never actually went in but that is another story).  While the body sags and hair turns gray, the marriage journey becomes even more special and even more rewarding.  There is a reason it is the picture that Christ uses with his church.  I pray that you will find the same joy in your marriage.  God can heal any marriage just as He did ours.

Mom's Day 2012

Today is Mother's Day. I am reminded that I am blessed to have three great mothers and each in their own way is special to me. My birth mom currently lives in Peru. My relationship with my mom has sometimes been rocky as many men have with their moms. But my mom has been very supportive of me, especially as I have gotten older. She is a very gregarious individual who loves to be with people. She has been a very successful businesswoman. In her retirement years, she is very comfortable living in a foreign country, playing bridge with ambassador's wives, and learnign a new culture. With my mom, you know exactly what you get - she is very forthright individual which I have grown to appreciate. She is no nonsense and she let's you know where she is coming from even if you don't agree with it.

My mother-in-law lives in Wheaton, IL and i have known her for 28 years. She has a real gift of hospitality and service. There are so many times I remember people in her home and she always made her home a warm, inviting place. She welcomed me into their home as a new believer in Christ and encouraged me in my young faith. I know people who have a poor relationship with their in-laws, but I love my in-laws and am so thankful for them. They have been very encouraging of our marriage also and what marriage needs to have stress.

Finally, there is my stepmother Linda who lives with my Dad in Tucson, AZ. My Dad and Linda have been married somewhere around 21 years and she treats us just like the family. I love her low key, and dry sense of humor. You have to be a special woman to put up with my Dad.

It has been great to see my kids all call their mother today. That I think is the most rewarding part is see my wife receive the recognition from her kids that she deserves because she is a great mom. She is not my mom, but my partner in raising three great kids so I have had a front row seat on how she has interacted with our kids. There have been times where she has had to take the lion's share of the parenting because I have been working too much, traveling, or just plain neglectful. But she has done so with a wonderful, supportive heart.

So Happy Mothers Day!

Anger is but a Moment Away

Our dog, Maxwell is the nicest, most social animal on the face of the earth.  He is a big dog and from outside appearances could be viewed as threatening.  But this dog wouldn’t harm a fly.  Even in situations where he is being threatened by another dog, he is very calm, very social.  But Max is 11 years old and twice in the past month or so, I have seen evidence that Max is not quite the same Max.

Over Easter we were over at my in-laws and we had family over.  We had just finished our meal on Good Friday and during the meal Max was relegated to the basement.  This was just cause of the nuisance factor.  But we were done now so we invited Max up not thinking anything of it.  Max was grazing under the table looking for any scraps which we don’t like but it is what dogs do.  The youngest boy of my wife’s cousin was calmly petting the dog.  AND THEN IT HAPPENED!  In a fraction of a moment, the dog turned and bit the little boy.  Never, ever seen it happen.  And this was not just a little attention getter – he broke skin.

Then a few weeks ago, I caught Max in the middle of licking our nice wood floor which drives Deb and I nuts.  He retreats to his cage when caught in something like this but I wouldn’t let him get away in his retreat.  I grabbed him with the intention of showing him his sin of licking our floor.  While I was grabbing him, he yelped and nipped at me.  So twice in one month what had never happened before.  Could Max be turning the page to cranky old doggyness?  Something to keep in mind when we have people over. 

I am reminded that anger is a bitter brew that is just waiting to come out.  For some of us, it is right at the surface.  For others of us it is deep down and when it blows, it really blows.  I tend to fall into the latter category, but I really have a major league temper when it blows.  James 3 talks about how much damage a tongue can wreck.  It can set a forest in fire, it can defile a body.  It is full of poison, it is untamable.  Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talks about the anger of man being an insidious, internal sin that can just pop out at a moment.  How many of us can just blow up and we wonder where that venomous wrath comes from.  I can remember something just setting me off with my children.  It was not them – it was me.  Usually it was a result of frustration, the frustration of a sinful heart.  Not all anger is sin mind you but most is.  Anger against sin is natural, but that is probably a small fraction of the sin that comes out of us.  Most of our anger comes from our self-centeredness. 

What can tame the tongue?  James 3 goes on to say that there is a gentleness in wisdom that comes from above.  In other words, bitterness and rage is natural, gentleness is supernatural.  We need God to change us from the inside out..  We need the presence of the Holy Spirit molding us, changing us, transforming us into His image.  We need Romans 12:2 transformation. 

Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Imagine a Life Without Touch

I am not one of these guys that is especially huggy.  I know a few of those guys who are the huggy kind – they hug everybody and anybody.  That seems especially true of the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.  Did you notice that he hugged every single draft pick (at least as long as I watched)?  I heard Greg Brinda on WKNR comment that he set a record hug of nearly 11 seconds.  Is that wrong for a guy?  Was he whispering sweet nothings into the guys ear? 

One thing that causes people to not hug or touch is the fear of infectious diseases.  I made the mistake of watching the movie Contagion.  Talk about a freaky kind of a movie.  Made you definitely think twice about making any physical contact with anybody.  Here is the trailer.

Contagion Trailer

Despite the movie, I can’t imagine life without some form of physical contact.  God did not wire us that way.  We were wired for relationship and relationship involves touch.  In looking in my bible concordance I was struck by the various uses of hands:

• Laying on of hands is a symbol of identification
• Touch not the unclean thing as a warning to stay away from that which corrupts
• Cleansing our hands as a symbol of purity
• Lifting of of holy hands in worship
• Touching Jesus to be healed
• Jesus healing with a touch

My favorite illustration of touch is in the story of the prodigal son.  On the son’s return, the father sees his son from a distance and runs to him and embraces him (Luke 15:20).  That word conveys the idea of gripping strongly without letting go.  It is sometimes used to mean “fall upon” with difficulty to separate.  We have all felt a warm embrace that is not surface level.  My friend Vince embraces like that – it conveys an unmistakable love.  It is the same word used of the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:37 who embraced Paul when they thought they would never see him again. 

The absence of touch would much more affect us than the presence of some sickness.  We as human beings must have that physical touch.  We hear sad stories of Romanian orphans who are so numerous that they never feel the presence of physical touch and are literally starving for it.  We are wired for it.  It is part of our human expression. 

The Approachable God

As I think about the impact of Easter, it is all about the God of the universe becoming more vulnerable. The God of the universe displaying His heart. How was God able to perfectly come to man in love.

I try to read through the Bible systematically each year and it sometimes is a struggle to get through some of the tedious passages such as in Leviticus and Numbers. God puts them in there for lots of reasons, but nowhere more than to demonstrate the contrast of the unapproachable God against the approachable God. The Israelite could not take the name of God upon his lips. We have trouble visualizing what that means because we approach God so flippantly. The tabernacle was not that way. Just consider just the ark of the covenant.

The ark was made of wood representing man. It is surrounded by gold representing kingship and deity. Gold and wood are together, but never mixed. In between is the mercy-seat. Christ is the perfect intermediary. It cannot be a mercy seat without the priest shedding blood over it. That is what makes it a mercy seat. Everything revolves around the mercy seat, which is made of infallible pure gold. The perfect Christ has blood shed over it so that we can approach God on the basis of the mercy seat. There are two cherubim that cannot look up, but must look towards the mercy seat.

There are objects contained inside the mercy seat. Don't miss this symbolism. If the mercy seat truly is everything, then the objects have to be contained inside it. In the ark is the manna which demonstrates the sustenance of life. Christ is the bread of life. Also in the ark is Aaron's rod that budded. This speaks of resurrection. Before God's involvement, it was a dead stick. Only by God's direct involvement did it bud. You were a dead stick but when you came to mercy by Christ's resurrection, you were budded. You could not bud on your own - you had to have God's direct intermediation to be budded. We are raised with Christ on the basis of His mercy and God's direct involvement. Finally there was the book of the law, the commandments which are inside. The commandments can only be a basis of mercy if they are covered by mercy. If the commandments were outside the ark, you would not be judged on the basis of mercy.

I pray you will see that you can only come to God through the mercy seat. In this Easter season, take the path to mercy.