Being a House Husband

It's 10:25 at night and we've had a big day of preparation. Preparing for the big holiday of Thanksgiving tomorrow. We've baked apple cakes, prepared the big family breakfast in advance for tomorrow, and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned! But in the midst of all the housework and cooking and everything else a family has to do, we fell a tad short of our goals. My wife is incredible in everything she does and she did so much for me today and our family. And since we have company coming over at 8 am, we can't put it off to finish another time. So, I'm taking the late shift, brewing up a stout cup of tea, and finishing the work load myself. (Well, I took a short break to blog)

I actually was excited to do this tonight. Not so much that I'd get a couple minutes to do some writing or even a moment of independent thought from the hectic day, but that I've begun to notice God is incredibly attracted to doing lovely things for others. He really likes it. And anyways, this all goes back to years ago. So years ago, I made the connection between good character traits, like selfless acts, pursuing someone, loving without expecting anything back with my love affair with Jesus and my love affair with my wife very quickly after we first met. My wife was attracted to me because of these spiritual traits she saw in me, and that's exactly what God is attracted to in us. Here was a question I pondered for awhile: If we are living in a love affair with God, then why is so much of the Bible (especially the New Testament) about bettering our hearts to be more like Christ? Why an 1100 page tome with only 1 book gushing about God's utter desire for intimacy with us (Song of Songs) and a lot of the rest about making our hearts like his Son's? Why not an 1100 page romantic thriller? The reason we have not figured it out is the same reason this guy below is carrying a murse (man-purse) to make himself more attractive to some poor woman out there (at least I hope that's why he's carrying it. lol):



The reason we miss the point with God in beautifying our hearts and our character traits is the reason why these guys miss the point. Women aren't attracted to men the same way men are attracted to women. In fact, improving your physical appearance is not the #1 thing a dateless dude can do to find his true love. It has a lot more to do with your heart than how much you bathed in Axe body spray this morning (again, at least let's hope that's true. There might be hope for this world then after all! lol) The heart of a Godly woman is attracted to the same thing the heart of God is attracted to. What is that? It's the fruit of the Spirit, it's 1 Corinthians 13 (remember the whole discourse on love and faithfulness). That's why the beatitudes in Matthew 5 and everything else Jesus talked about when he gave us the ethics of his Kingdom are so important. It's what he is attracted to, what he desires in us. How wonderful in relationships is bountiful knowledge in ecclectic topics like "Not Worrying About Tomorrow" (Matthew 6 :25-34) and "Judging Others" (Matthew 7:1-6) and "Pursuing The One You Love" (Matthew 7:7-8). This is good stuff! And then, when we are perfected when we are brought home to him and those attributes are fully in us, then true, true intimacy can occur with him. That's when we will finally be married to him.

“In that day,” declares the LORD,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master.' Hosea 2:16 (NIV)

God desires to be one with us. A oneness and tenderness and passion far surpassing any intimacy on earth. This is where we are going with our lives, with everything we are, our bodies, our souls, our minds. We are going to be enraptured into a diving romance where our Lover never stops blowing us kisses or quits adoring us body and soul, always whispering in our ears how much he loves and desires us. Us loving him with everything we are (fulfilling the first great commandment-worshiping our God with all our soul, mind, and strength). The Spirit chose the loveliness of the intimacy of a bridegroom and bride to describe the joy and intimacy and oneness with our Spouse when we are brought home to him to be his forever. And when we see him, we will only be able to exclaim, 'How beautiful you are, my Darling! Oh, how beautiful!' (Song of Songs 4:1)


And we will live happily ever after in his adoring arms :)

Thoughts on Friendship/Thanksgiving with the Holy Spirit/Translations

We recently went to our good friends' wedding; well, not just 'went to', my wife was the matron-of-honor. So we had our own part to play in it all. It was a beautiful wedding. The couple are both very much in love with God and are wonderful together and are two of the most Godly people we know. Rewinding 24 hours to the rehearsal dinner, we come into the theater where the dinner is being held and I immediately get a huge huge from the groom. [Insert huge guy] Where he picks me up into the air and starts shaking me. He being ~7 feet tall (his arm width twice the size of my neck; yeah, pretty sure he's done some bench presses in his lifetime) and me being ~5 foot 6 meant that I was hugging a kodiak bear. At the same time my wife immediately got caught in the torrent of bridesmaids and associated womenfolk and two seconds later I was left alone. But then I turned around to find the Christian brothers (Godly brothers, that is!) of the groom waiting to welcome me to their group discussion. They were all from Alabama and to make convo I told them how long it took me to drive from Oklahoma to Florida-it was all I could think of as I had to drive through Alabama to get to Florida. But, even after some awkward convo, it ended up being the first time in a long time that I've really felt "on the inside" with other brothers in this family of God. It was nice :)

It's worth mentioning, we all have had friendships gone awry. I've engineered too many friendships with people who never came through for me. And it's hurt my heart in the process. And through the healing from that, I've learned that it happens because of the sin of the world against the family and kingdom of God we are in and to just let forgiveness take the place of any bitterness in my heart. That was a hard task at times, but I'd like to say I'm close to being where God wants me with others. But oh how much we all want to have friendships, close fellowships, of which we can say, we are all "a chord of three strands [which] is not quickly broken" (Ecclesiastes 4:12). And irregardless of this world, the next promises a richness of friendships and brotherhood and sisterhood unmatched by what we have (or haven't had) here and now. To see new friendships with people we never knew blossom and our own friendships now be carried into the Kingdom of our God in eternity will be one of the many facets of love we will have in our future with our Prince. It is one of the (many) things our hearts can hope for in life with our beautiful Love, our Jesus.

Thanksgiving is only a couple days away. Today is the last day of class (thankfully!). It's getting colder as the week goes by. An arctic air mass is scheduled to arrive ~Wednesday night and will make Thanksgiving a cold one. And the thing that makes this time more special than anything, it's not the cold air, or the hot coffee, or the Fall comfort food, or the falling leaves, it's feeling Jesus' beautiful Holy Spirit around me, talking with me, listening and waiting for me to tell him how lovely I think he is, loving him, and spending time with him with my family. I so hate to live life as if God is not apart of our family. He is! It's why he is coming from Heaven down to earth to live forever, and why our very own bodies are his temple and not some church building with angels and choirs. He's the Leader of our family, but he's our Father, and he's my Beloved, my Friend, the One I sit around and talk to because I love being with him. I feel so out of place when I don't pursue him during the day. But I'm more thankful for God's Son as our own than anything else. For his love and his desire for me. To love me, to wed me, to pursue me, to make me his own and give me his heart and a life of worshiping him forever. How perfect! And it's the battle of our lives here, to never not stop worshiping him even though our minds forget him at the drop of a hat. And also to know one day, we never will have to fight that battle again when we do live with him forever and his lover and with all our brothers and sisters in our Father's house. It will be so great to take a walk one day with my Lover Jesus, my wife, my daughter, and my brothers and sisters on that road above ^ during an autumn afternoon; then go back to our Father's house and have some apple cider by the fireplace and have a wonderful dinner. Life with him is coming soon!

The other thing was I've been reading the Bible in the original Hebrew lately. Well, the Old Testament anyway. And it's incredible. I mean, the translations we've been given from the Hebrew to our English just utterly fail the richness of God's love letters to us and our story with him from the beginning. I applaud Eugene Peterson for attempting to bridge that attempt in his version The Message, but it really is worth it to read it in depth in the original language. I'm thinking we might start a sister blog on translating some original Hebrew and Greek passages with interpretation and discussion (with great props to my dad, who knows a lot of New Testament Greek). We'll see!

The Biggest Marriage Proposal Ever to Give Everyone Their Heart's Desire

Delight yourself in Yahweh and he will give you your heart's desires - Psalm 37:4

God has set eternity in the hearts of men - Ecclesiastes 3:11

How engrained on our hearts is romance! We each desire a perfect other to be one with; to be human is to feel this. It is a central part of the heart. We as human beings are meant to live married. Like in Isaiah 62:4-5, we are meant to live one with God, one with each other and with the beauty in the natural world. We are always suppose to be in the family of God with all of our brothers and sisters, with our Father, with the Holy Spirit, and our Spouse Jesus. Life is meant to be worshipping him, one with him in deep spiritual intimacy at all times. How wonderful it will be to one day be staying up late with God at a coffeehouse in the New Jerusalem.

Jesus came here to give us good news. Not just "good" news, but news that is really, really good. Eg if you heard that Congress was discussing a bill for something that might decrease your taxes by 0.5% if you might certain "criteria" and that there was a 50% chance of it getting passed, well that's "good" news. But if you got a check for $750 in the mail because you did your taxes wrong and got a refund and could now finally go buy a new laptop, now that's good news. It's the same with Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Good news isn't that we get to sing hymns in heaven, good news is that we get to be in a rapturous romance with God, who is madly in love with us, desiring incredible intimacy with us at all times and wanting to whisk us away on a honeymoon we'll never forget and giving us every single desire our heart has ever had and never being away from our loved ones forever; now that's good news :) Heaven begins with the 24 elders, the 4 living creatures, and a plethora of angels worshipping God (Revelation 4-6). It ends with us, his bride, living together with him forever here on earth. It begins in an imperial kingdom, but it ends with the two lovers getting married. If your heart's desire is to be on a coffee date at 10 pm with God and your spouse talking about everything and anything, that's what is coming :) The first great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Sacred romance with Jesus. Check! (even though we will never love him as much as we should here on earth) The second great commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. We have to tell everyone that God is so in love with them that he desires an intimate relationship with everyone and wants to give them their heart's desire in a perfect romance with him. Jesus coming here and asking us to marry him was the biggest marriage proposal ever to give everyone in the world their heart's desires. Which is just to have one Person to love as their God forever. And that is Jesus Christ.

Experimental Love/An avante-garde love with Jesus

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart. Jeremiah 29:13



We live, caught between a world of baseness and a world of passion. One of sin and Satan and ourselves and one of love and God and marriage. And yet, why aren't we thinking about this? Most of the time we are caught up in ourselves, or we are caught up in some trite thing in the world. Why aren't we thinking about what's going on here? On the one hand, there is an existentialistic world bent on growing old and then dying and on the other we have this passionate God ready to marry us. It's two extremes. Except, we are playing at the existentials home field. In my Bible study with my friend we were reading Isaiah 62:4-5:

No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called My Delight Is In Her,
and your land Married;
for Yahweh will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.
As a young man marries a maiden,
so will your sons marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.

That's a lot. There's enough there for a 2 hour theological discussion on that. It has to do with intimacy, a oneness far like the closest intimacy here on earth, that between a young man and his bride, which is exactly how God will rejoice over us. Not only that, but there is shalom between us and each other and us and our land, our Earth. We not only will be married to our God, but to each other and to our home, to our land. It's those things in the world that we so often feel take our breath away by their beauty, the autumn leaves, the sunset, the clouds in the sky at a time of day, these things in nature we will be married to also, even music (it's a part of our natural world; music is just waves) never to be separated from them again. Or from each other. It's completeness. It's exactly what God says when he, in Revelation 21, he finally says, "It is done." We are finally made whole and complete and we are one, not only with our Beloved Jesus, but with each other and with our world. With everything that has ever romanced our heart, we will be married to forever. It will finally be ours. And it's ours because it has been made good by our God :) Not only that, but it will be all to make us fall deeper in love with our Beloved Jesus. Remember the seraphim in Isaiah 6? They were crying holy, holy, holy to each other, not to God. They wanted to see what the other ones saw in God's beauty and celebrate him together. So it will be in the bride of Jesus. We are not just individuals madly in love with Jesus and running away to be only with him. We are together falling for him, marrying him, and beginning a life of eternity of forever and ever, happily ever after. The rich, bare intimacy with God, one of a closeness and fire in which we cry out, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul, let me to thy bosom fly" (Charles Wesley), we will one day share all together as we worship our Beloved God in a single body. Many of God's people don't have a closeness with their brothers or sisters in Christ, many God has allowed to be in isolated areas. Just remember, we are all apart of God's bride, we are together his own. We are never alone; never without God, and never without each other in Jesus' body. We can always be apart of the sacred romance that God is pursuing with us through Jesus Christ. And when we live in him, we are always made one with God and we are called to be one with each other.

How radical this is! How unknown by our world, unknown by our society. Isaiah 62:4-5 is saying marriage in this world is what will be the standard in the next. Where we are constantly being rejoiced over by our God who is rejoicing over us as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. It's not just joy at the reception, it's the joy of the intimacy and the tenderness of the wedding night. It's this oneness in our spiritual bodies that we will have in our redemption (Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15), that we will experience a spiritual intimacy that physical, earthly intimacy is only the shadow of. And loneliness, separation, distance, these words won't exist in eternity with us. It says as a young man marries a maiden, so your sons will marry you-not only will we have rich intimacy with God, but we will have it with each other. Like the seraphim calling to each other of how beautiful they see God and wanting to share that. It's why Jesus said that in heaven people are not married any more, but are like the angels (Matthew 22:30). Married lovers on earth will finally be one, never to be apart from each other and always one!! Amen! I can't wait for that with my wife!! Not more daily grind of getting up, going to work and school and not seeing her until I get home. Not in heaven! And even more so than that, we will live our lives in this bare intimacy together, always worshipping God and being excited to see what other lovers of God see in him. And we will take joy in each other's love for our God, and our love for each other. It will just be one big festival of love with which we will partake of forever to our heart's utter delight. That's avante-garde marriage. Marriage that's not just us and God, but us together in one body married to God, to each other, to our land, to everything in the natural world that romances our heart. And romances each other's heart. Imagine the conversations that will take place! To see and to feel something that romances someone else's heart and to experience that for yourself. How wonderful God is to be so generous in his love for us to not only give us himself, but also each other. Experimental love-it's a way of life in heaven. Where marriage is everything.

My brother and I love Isaiah 62:4-5. It's so deep. Why aren't there people down at the local coffeehouse talking about this until the wee hours of the night? If you know that it's not going on at your local coffeehouse, we'd strongly encourage beginning it :) We need someone down there hashing it out over a cup of coffee! Or taking a walk through downtown at 2am while it's raining trying to figure this out with the Spirit. It's experimental love; it's avante-garde marriage. It's the biggest marriage proposal ever to give every single person their heart's desire through Jesus Christ, our Lover, our God.

A Romance Like None Other

"Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?" - Song of Songs 8:5

"My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water." - Psalm 63:1

I was reading my daily John Eldredge excerpt email and he was talking about how John Wesley, from way back in the day, wrote about God as his Lover. And he even wrote a hymn about him being his Lover. And how today, Lover has been replaced with Savior or Lord in the hymn. True names of God, but not exactly what was meant. It's like replacing the two in Song of Songs with Master and Servant instead of Lover and Beloved. In today's world of post-enlightenment science, we tend away from thinking of our God as our Lover, instead prefering something less intimate, but still reserving his holiness. It's a way of keeping our fig leaves on, but at the same time not taking anything away from God's perfection. But it is, because it's taking away from his love for us. And God is love.

I like how Eldredge and Curtis wrote in The Sacred Romance that the chief end of man was to know God and enjoy knowing him forever. Today, that would be thought of as going down to the Christian bookstore and getting a book on God's attributes. Fail! Knowing God is what we will do forever in Heaven, but it will be like Adam knowing Eve intimately in the Garden. That's the knowing meant here with our God. He desires us. Yes, it's a great mystery. Paul even said that (Ephesians 5:32), but it's everything we've ever wanted or desired in our hearts, soul, bodies, and minds. It's all in him. The One who wants to be our Lover. He promises to give us a romance like none other in our lives. He wants to rock our world! And he will do it. That doesn't necessarily mean becoming an apostle and going overseas or handing out soup under the freeway (although those are certainly wonderful works of love and badly needed), it means he wants intimacy with us. He wants "us" time with us. The same intimacy, for those of you married, that you want with your spouse. Oneness. Physical intimacy is a shadow of what intimacy God desires with us. So is the sweet emotional and mental intimacy in marriage. It's all about oneness with our God, because only then do we worship him with all of our mind, soul, and strength which is the first commandment. God wants that between us and him. God wants us to desire him, to want him. And when we do, and we rejoice in his complete, bare love, we find ourselves getting our heart's desires by finally having our One True Love, the Perfect One everyone is searching for in this world who completes them in ways that no one can. The secret to that, is that it's God. And that's how marriage images our relationship with God. Both are a romance like none other in history, the present, or the future. It's forever and always with our Beloved Jesus Christ. And as we live in a spiritual desert, he can't wait to come and rescue us and take us home into the oasis of his love when we find ourselves in rapture in his arms in the clouds, at one perfect and stolen moment in time some day soon.

John 1

So my wife finally got me to listen to The White Album. She's a huge Beatles fan, which she got from her dad. And so we were all three having dinner tonight and talking about how I'm a Beatles fan now. It's good stuff, but then any music about social rebellion, insurrection, and counterculturalism I tend to gravitate to. And in other news, my God finally got me to read the Bible (just kidding). But I do tend toward certain parts in the Bible more than others, certain verses, certain books, etc. And I recently have felt like I fall short of having eyes and ears to see and hear the divine romance with Yahweh God in his Word, who is Jesus Christ. I feel like Israel sometimes when Paul told off the leaders of the Jews in Acts 28 and how they were blind and deaf and couldn't understand. But as my wife and I and one of my close brothers in Christ have talked about, it's in him and through faith in him that we approach God with freedom and confidence (Ephesians 3:12). Paul even said at the even of Ch. 7, 1 Corinthians, that I too think that I have the Spirit (out of all people, Paul had to write that he thought he had the Spirit as well as other believers did-he had his dry times with God). We come to Jesus in two parts: 1) in his Spirit, and 2) in our faith in him. Perhaps, it is the faith we are forced to perfect during dry times that he will never leave us even if we don't feel him near to us that we must use as our faith in our Beloved that comprises the part 2) in approaching our God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made...The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:1-2,14 (NIV)

The Word, our Lover Jesus Christ. He is our love letter from our God. How badly deep down we desire him and true life with him. To be the couple with him having black & white photo moments all day long to put in the scrap book of eternity. To hear him laugh and smile in our arms. Worship. It's worship. Life is worship and that's what this divine romance with God is. It's falling in love with him and worshiping him and one day knowing we will have these types of moments with him all day forever, like that couple above learning the guitar. It's why marriage is the reflection of our relationship with God in eternity. It's why God says, "In that day," declares Yahweh, "you will call me my Husband; you will no longer call me my Master." Hosea 2:16

God wants to fulfill our heart's desires. Psalm 37:4 - delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you your heart's desires. That doesn't mean be happy about God, read your Bible and he will give you your spouse and family and life will be good. That's not a verse about prosperity, it's a verse about falling in love with our Heavenly Lover. When you delight in your Beloved, you have your heart's desires fulfilled. That's marriage :) And look what we have coming to us when he returns: our wedding to him (Revelation 19:7-10), and then our beautiful city to live in, the New Jerusalem, which will prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. All the imagery, all the verses and hope and vision is pointing to one thing, our marriage with our God. It's all about love, because our God is love (1 John 4:8). One day, we'll walk through the New Jerusalem on a date with our Jesus, laughing, loving, playing guitar, holding each other and wearing the coolest, most indie shades ever through the entire time (trading off as the day goes on). The tree of life is there, so is there a great river coming out of his throne that will go through the city and we'll hang out there in his arms watching the waves go by. And in him, in love, we will reign for ever and ever (22:5). Where will we reign? In his heart. It's what we really want: a love neverending with the desire of our hearts, our Beloved.

And we will live happily ever after, forever and ever, with our Beloved Jesus Christ, our Father, His beautiful Spirit, and our entire family of brothers and sisters, in paradise.

Beginning again!/Honeymooning with Jesus in Martha's Vineyard

It's been over a month since I last blogged :( I really felt it was time for me to back off for awhile on blogging and whether that was God or me, I'm not sure. Me and God went through some interesting times. But everything is wonderful, as always :) I had gone through a dry time with God and my wife said I did things differently, just normal things in the day because I physically missed him. It was one of the sweetest things to hear. But, I do wish I had blogged more and am ready to begin again!

I was so taken tonight by how beautiful God is; Yahweh God is gorgeous. And through his Son Jesus who came in the flesh and died for us, we can live a romance with him. One that is forever and neverending. I love the dialogue we can have with our Beloved, if only our hearts are open to him and worshiping him with all we are

'How beautiful you are and how pleasing, O Love, with your delights!'
'I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me.'
'...at our door is every delicacy, new and old, that I have stored up for you, my lover.'
Song of Songs 7:6,10,13

He desires a romance with us, one where we are so captivated by him that the only thing we can do is completely ache down to our muscles and our bones, physically aching to be with him, while we wait for his return. And in the aching we worship him and love him and desire him.

How wonderful it would be, truly, to just to do what we want to hear him whisper in our ears: "Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom-there I will give you my love." Song of Songs 7:11-12 (NIV)

It's like a couple running away to a cottage B&B in Martha's Vineyard, drinking a glass of wine at sunset watching the Atlantic settle into nighttime with a fire going in the fireplace in the background with the crackling of the wood that's burning and the cold easterly breeze coming in over the porch and then drawing the blinds on a nighttime outside that gives love and passion new meaning and then waking up and loving each other and then going out for a walk in the nearby vineyard and knowing each other and loving each other and driving out to the Berkshires mountains and sharing a picnic and holding each other and living fully in God and then coming back and doing everything again in the next beautiful New England day.

He wants to be our Everything, not our something we give 20 minutes a day too. He wants true worship, he wants our hearts to be fully his. Not anyone else's, nor anything else's. It's the reason he tells us to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) because he never wants to not hear us talking to him and telling him how much we love him and how crazy we are about him and how much we desire him and how we badly want and need him all around us and to never be away from us ever again and to just jump into his embrace and raise our hands up around him and pull him close never to let go.