Posts Tagged With: relationship

Day 21: Threesome

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Tamar

O Magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together. Psalm 34:3

Contrary to what Hollywood is telling us, the Best most intimate sex is not only about the physical connection between two people; it’s a spiritual and emotional connection as well.  Sex connects your souls creating a bond that grows deeper and stronger and better the older that it gets.  Once you have protected yourselves, by taking away the option of divorce, you are free to bare your souls more fully with one another.  By sharing yourselves completely you are only then able to truly make the soul connection that we as human beings were created to have with our spouses.

Two heads are better than one.  As a couple you can do more, be more, love more, and help more; you literally complete each other.  You can lean on each other when you get tired, cheer each other up when you get sad, tend to each other when you get sick, warm each other when you get cold, defend each other when you get attacked, and love each other in spite of your differences.  Alone you are left, tired with no one to lean on, sad with no one to cheer you up, sick with no one to nurse you, cold with no one to warm you, attacked with no one to defend you. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says:

“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.  For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up.  Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone?  And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him.  A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.”

I think the principles from this scripture are perfectly illustrated by the following story.  There once was a father with two bickering sons.  One day, tired of their constant fighting the father gave each of his sons 2 sticks and first instructed them to attempt to break one of them in half; which they each accomplished with ease.  The father replied, “When you bicker and fight you stand alone and are easily broken.”  He then told them to hand him their 2nd sticks and he bundled them together along with his own stick and tied them with a cord.  He handed his oldest son the bundle and told him to try to break it.  He couldn’t do it.  Looking to his sons he said, “When you set aside your differences and work together you are like this bundle of sticks.  When we are tied together as one united group it’s next to impossible to break.”

In these verses from Ecclesiastes it talks about all the ways that two are better than one, and then at the end the number changes from two, to a cord of three strands.  This is a poetic device to draw attention to something.  It makes the reader ask, what’s the third thing?  A man and woman are better together than being alone.  However, we are not yet made complete until the third element is added.  God completes the cord of three strands.

Marriage was originally created to be threefold; God, a husband and a wife, 3 crucial parts to one cord.  If you take any one of those elements out of the marriage you weaken the entire unit.  Just like the sticks in the story, by themselves they are brittle and easily broken, but tied together with the bonds of love they become strong; an unstoppable force.  When we as a society try to re-define God’s original definition of the threefold picture of marriage we not only weaken those marriages themselves but also the society in which they exist.  Every society is built on the strength of the family unit.  When those units begin to break apart the society breaks apart right along with them.

Now, I’m going to say something that may be slightly shocking to some people, so prepare yourselves.  I am going to propose that you invite God, not just into your marriage, but into your bedroom as well.  I know, the thought of it is a little strange, but when you stop to think about it, He invented sex, He’s seen you naked, so what’s so different about acknowledging the fact that He’s there with you and that He *gasp!* approves of what you’re doing. I could go more into detail on this, but I don’t want to get anyone too excited, we’ve still got 12 more days of fasting after all.  So we’ll talk about this more later, at the end of the book.

Christian’s comments:

A triangle is the strongest shape. Husbands, if you are a gear-head like me, you probably watch auto racing. More specifically, stock car racing. If you have watched as much as I have, there’s no doubt that you have noticed the roll cages inside the racecars. They are made up of a whole bunch of triangles. They are built with the strength of triangles to withstand damage from huge crashes.

I’ve also watched a lot of off-road truck racing. The chassis of the trucks are basically a big triangle; strengthened with smaller triangles built into them. They are built this way to withstand the constant beatings the trucks take during races.

When I build a demolition derby car, I build as many triangles into the safety cage as possible. That way, my car can withstand the constant “attacks” from my “enemies” on the track. (For anyone that doesn’t know what a demolition derby is, imagine bumper cars with real vehicles.)

 

You build a triangle when you have God in your marriage. With the three (God, husband, and wife) working together, your marriage can stand up to any big crashes, beatings, and attacks that come along.

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Day 20: Divorce

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Tamar

To the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.  1 Corinthians 7:10-11

There are two kinds of marriages, Covenant marriages and Contract marriages.  To dig a little deeper I’d like to compare the two kinds of marriages so that you can see what they both are and possibly determine which kind of marriage you have.

*  A Covenant Marriage is based on love and the law.  It assumes that the relationship is “till death do us part”.  The husband and wife each have a “What’s mine is yours” and “Your interests are my interests” attitude.  A Covenant marriage prepares for a life together because they are no longer two, but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. Matthew 19:6

*  A Contract Marriage is motivated by commitment and compulsion.  It prepares for the marriage to fail and each spouse protects what is “theirs”.  In a contract marriage the interests of the other spouse are not taken into account as often as “my interests” are.  Contract marriages prepare for life apart because couples seeking contractual agreements seem to expect that someone or something will separate what God has joined.8

Believe me, Christian and I are living proof of this!  We have always been believers and we got married “till death do us part”, but still… in the back of my head there was always that option of divorce.  And when things started getting difficult after our daughter was born, I blamed the strife on her.  Well, not her really but having a new baby in the house and the stress of all that.  But then after her 1st birthday she couldn’t be the excuse anymore and that’s when I really started questioning what was going on.  Christian started staying away from home more and more, and I started being…well… a word that starts with a “B” that I can’t really say because it’s not polite.  The idea of divorce was becoming more and more appealing to me.  While I didn’t want to leave him, I didn’t want to continue living the way that we were; distant, cold, unloving.  There came a night where I went to him and told him that I was extremely unhappy and if I wasn’t such a Godly woman I would have divorced him already.  Deep down I didn’t REALLY mean it, but I said it all the same and then it was out there, the D-word.  If I remember correctly, this conversation occurred around day 17 in our own fast.  I was high as a kite flying with God, but down on earth with Christian I was angry, and hurt, and cold, distant, mean and just plain old fed up with him!  The next morning, after our conversation, God took me by the shoulders and shook some sense into me.  He gave me scripture after scripture after scripture about how HE felt about divorce… He doesn’t like it.9

I think that Andrew Trees in his book “Decoding Love” summed up our societies view on marriage so aptly when he talks of how people “engage in slow-motion polygamy by engaging in serial monogamy”.10 While hearing it called “slow-motion polygamy” is somewhat shocking, I heartily agree with him!  It is exactly what we’re doing.  God created humans to mate with ONE person for LIFE, not one person at a time for life.

Joe Beam, a pastor who does marriage seminars, shares his story of his separation and reunion with his wife:

“We got married a second time.  It was just the right thing to do.  We did not love each other, but we learned how to be in love with each other and now she’s my best friend.  I pray every day, Lord, let me die first.  I wanna get old with her and sit on the front porch.  No matter how bad a marriage is you do not want to die alone.  So if there’s something in the way, the Xbox, a job, pornography, get rid of it.  Make each other your focus.  Please, please.  You can do that.”11

I am going to join Mr. Beam in his plea, PLEASE PLEASE, DON’T GIVE UP!  Your marriage may not be perfect, no marriage is, but it’s better than divorce and it’s much better than being alone.  Nothing is impossible with God12, even an impossible marriage.

Christian’s comments:

We all know someone who has gone through “The big D”. With the divorce rate as high as 35.25% in first marriages and 40.5% in second marriages13 how could you not?

I want to give you a little family history. Tamar and I were married for two years before we had our son. All four of his grandparents are still alive, AND still married to their original spouses. When he was born, all eight of his great-grandparents were still alive AND still married to THEIR original spouses as well. Pretty cool, huh.

As you can see, our families are serious about marriage. Are they all perfect marriages? Of course not. But we all work on them to fix whatever problems we encounter. Can all marriages be fixed? I don’t know. I would like to think that they can. The key, I believe, is that both sides have to be willing to work on it. One half can’t just sit back and expect the other to fix it. It took both of you to get married. It will take both of you to stay married.

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Day 13: One and Only

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Tamar

A ruler questioned Him saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  Luke 18:18

Through the years I think everyone has asked that question and there are a lot of different answers to it.  While I can’t claim to know for certain the one true answer, remember I am not a theologian, I can tell you what Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good?  No one is good except God alone.  You know the commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.’”  And he said, “All these I have kept since my youth.”  When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” Luke 18:19-22 The man hadn’t broken a single commandment in his entire life, he was a “good person”, and yet he still “lacked one thing”.  That one thing was a relationship with Jesus.

So many people think that being a good person and doing good things is enough to declare them worthy.  No one is completely sinless and deserving of heaven (Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God).  There is NOTHING you can DO to earn a ticket to heaven.

Romans 4:24-25 says: but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification. You see, it’s kind of like each one of us has our own spiritual credit card.  Every time we sin it “rings up” a debt that has to be paid before we can get into heaven.  Because Psalm 5:4 tells us: For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; no evil dwells with You. While still sinful we cannot live in heaven with God because we have no way to pay that debt.  Nothing we DO can ever change the balance.

However, God loves us and He made a way.  For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)  For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15) Jesus lived a completely sinless life -zero balance on his “card”, and yet He CHOSE to die on the cross to pay for all of our sins.  (He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21)  When Jesus died He paid our debt, the whole thing.  It’s like; He called the credit card company, requested a balance transfer, and said “I’ll pay it all for them.”  So here we stand today with a balance on our cards and Jesus on the phone saying He’ll pay it all off IF we want Him to.  Hmmmmm…. let me think; zero balance on my sin card AND eternal life filled with His love…. Um, YEAH! I’ll take that deal.

Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.  If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.  And you know the way  where I am going.”  Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?”  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:2-6 emphasis mine)  Jesus is THE way to God the Father in heaven.  He didn’t say that He was ONE of the ways; He is THE ONE AND ONLY WAY.  We don’t get to heaven by who we are or what we’ve done.  We are forgiven and able to go to heaven because of who JESUS is and what JESUS has done.  Period.  If you don’t believe me, look it up for yourself, it’s all right there in black and white and red.

You see it’s all about belief:

[Y/N] Do you believe in God the Father?

[Y/N ] Do you believe in Jesus His Son?

[Y/N ] Do you believe that Jesus is the only way to the Father?

[Y/N ] Do you believe that Jesus died for you on the cross?

[Y/N ] Do you believe that His death was enough to pay for your sins?

[Y/N ] Are you sorry for the sins that you have committed in the past?

[Y/N ] Have you prayed and asked forgiveness for those sins?

[Y/N ] Have you prayed and accepted Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as payment for those sins?

[Y/N ] Have you prayed and asked the Holy Spirit to come live in your heart and help you not to purposefully sin in the future?

[Y/N ] Does someone else know about your commitment to God yet?

If you answered yes to all of the above then you are a beloved Child of God and fellow follower of Christ.  I look forward to meeting you in heaven my sister.

However, this is not the end, this is just the beginning!  It’s the beginning of a NEW YOU, a NEW LIFE in Christ.  One where Christ lives through you and you – love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matthew 22:37).  To do that, you love your spouse more than you love yourself.  Because love requires sacrifice & love requires obedience.

In John 3:36 it says that Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. Notice, the words translated “does not obey”, in the original Greek is apeitheo which means “to refuse belief and obedience”.  With the meaning of this one word, all of salvation is explained.  Belief and obedience are tied together as one.  To believe in Jesus is to obey him!  We’ll go over this a little more tomorrow.

Christian’s comments:

I used to work with a guy that said he thought he would go to heaven because he “lived a good life”. Sure, he was a good guy. He donated a little to charity. He helped people when he could. However, he didn’t have Christ in his heart. He also didn’t go to church or tithe. I asked him, once, why he didn’t go to church. His answer? “I like to sleep in on weekends.” I tried to explain that there were services throughout the day, even in the evenings. He explained that he was “too busy”. I worked with this man for almost two years and could never convince him that “leading a good life” wasn’t enough to get into heaven. He was living with Jesus as his savior, but not as his Lord. You have to live your life according to God, for Jesus to be your savior.

It scares me to think about all the people in this world that think leading a good life will get them into heaven. If I had longer time to work with and minister to my co-worker, I might have brought him to Christ (I like to think that I could have anyway). However, my work time with him was cut short, and I had to move on.

I’m praying that the change this fast has made in me will lead my friends, derby buddies, and coworkers to Christ. I pray that they will see me living with Jesus as my Lord and not just my Savior and want the same things that are happening to me.

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Day 11: United

Posted on May 28, 2011 by Tamar

For you formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb.  I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.  Psalm 139:13-14

So, what are you made of?  It’s an interesting comment to be sure.  But really, have you ever thought about it?  The nursery rhymes tell us: “Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.”  Then there’s science, the human body is made up of mostly water.  But what does the bible have to say about it?  Psalm 139:13-14 says that God wove us together in our mother’s womb, creating us with His very own hands, it’s just mind-blowing.  God’s hands created each and every one of us.  HE made us.  Just like Adam and Eve God’s hands formed us.  And just like creation He stands back, watches us grow and says “it is good”.

In the Garden of Eden:

“The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.  So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.  The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.  The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”  For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:20-24)

As Adam was naming all of the animals he realized that they all had mates and he didn’t.  He noticed that each of them had someone to call their own, and yet he didn’t.  Poor Adam was lonely, he wanted someone just like him; a partner, a mate.  So God lovingly created Eve for him.  But Eve unlike everything else in creation wasn’t spoken into existence or even made from the dust of the Earth like Adam, she was made from Adam’s flesh and bone.  When you think about how we as women were first created, it explains A LOT doesn’t it!  We’re tough and soft all at the same time; we’re made from bone and flesh.  God created us from man’s rib, not his head to be above him, or his feet to be below him, but his rib to be beside him.  And under his arm to be protected by him, close to his heart, to be loved by him.5 God made everything to serve a purpose, but I believe He had a very special purpose in mind when He created women.  We were made in such a different fashion than everything else on the earth, how can we not then BE different from everything else on earth?  While nothing in all of creation could fill the position of Adam’s “helper”, woman could.  Creation wasn’t complete until Eve came along.  It’s like God kept saying “Hmmmm, something’s missing… AHA! That’s it!  Woman!”  Hee hee!  We’re the icing on the creation cake!

In a conversation on this topic, my good friend Kelly commented, “… I’m made of ivory!”  I looked at her questioningly “Ivory?” I said.  “Yup, I’m made from Adam’s bone, polished-white-beautiful-ivory.”  I think Kelly’s got it right!  We are made of ivory.  We may have a few dirty spots on us, some dents and nicks, but under it all, we’re made of polished white beautiful ivory.  And it’s nothing for God to wipe those spots off for us and fill in those dents; all we have to do is ask Him to.  He’s got the best cleaning solution known to man; it fixes everything – Christ’s blood.

Now that we know what we’re made of, let’s look and see why it’s important.  In Mark 10:2-12 Jesus is asked about divorce by:

Some Pharisees [who] came up to Jesus, testing Him, and began to question Him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife.  And He answered and said to them.  “What did Moses command you?”  They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”  But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.  “But from the beginning of creation.  God made them male and female.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”  In the house the disciples began questioning Him about this again.  And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”

In this New Testament section, where Jesus himself is reminding us all that when God started creation He created them MALE and FEMALE, they were different and yet together made one whole.  I took a closer look at the words translated “and the two shall become one flesh”.  In the original Greek this word is “proskollao” which according to Strongs Exhaustive Concordance means “to be glued to, to cleave, to stick to”.  When God created Adam and Eve He never intended them to separate or divorce one another.  Notice how it states the same thing twice, adding emphasis to the fact that what used to be two separate entities, once married and united with sex, become one entity.

In Genesis 2:21 while God is forming Eve: the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. There is another place in Genesis where God causes someone else to fall into a “deep sleep”, and I KNOW that it’s not a coincidence.  In Genesis 15:9-18 God himself cut a blood covenant with Abram.  The procedure, to us is very peculiar, however as covenants go this one is filled with significance.  God instructed Abram to gather an assortment of animals for sacrifice.  Abram took the larger sacrificial animals and cut them each into half, and arranged the halves on the ground with space between them so that they could walk between them – just as the LORD had instructed.  Some birds of prey came and Abram chased them off, then the sun began to set and a deep sleep fell on Abram.  This is where God spoke to him and told him about the covenant He was making with him and his descendants.  When the sun had set God came down in the form of fire and passed between the pieces of the sacrifice; officially cutting a blood covenant with Abram and his heirs.

Now, tell me, when you cut an animal in half do you think there might be a little blood involved in the process?  Of course there was, hence the name “blood covenant”.  This type of promise was sacred to the people making the covenant.  By walking through the bloody animal halves they were promising that if they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain then they too could be cut in half!  This was a serious promise girls!  Are you ready for where this gets REALLY interesting?  When we get married we are also committing to a blood covenant between God, ourselves and our husbands.  When we cut this covenant God is joining the two souls of the bride and groom and making them one soul.  Covenants are NOT meant to be broken, ever.  They are meant to be protected, like when Abram protected the animal halves from the birds of prey.  There will be birds of prey in your life coming to devour your covenant, which is why you need to be vigilant and protect it.  And if these blood covenants are broken, there are deadly consequences involved.  THIS is why marriage is meant to be FOREVER, not just “till someone better comes along or I’m tired of you”.

Continue reading →

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Day 8: Sacrifice

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Tamar

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. John 3:16-18

When we love someone it requires personal sacrifice.  Sometimes it’s with a simple compromise: I want Chinese for dinner and Christian wants Mexican so I sacrifice my desire for Chinese because I love him.  At other times though, to prove our love to one another, it takes something a little more drastic.

After 5 ½ years of dating, I started having doubts about my future with Christian.  Since he was the only man I’d ever been with, I was starting to feel like I had missed something.  So one night I asked him to come over to talk, because I was planning on breaking up with him.  After many hours of tears and talking, I was ready to leave him.  I had given him my engagement ring back and everything.  But he wasn’t going to let that happen.  He asked if I was willing to take a walk with him and I said “sure”, despite the fact that you could see our breath as we walked.  When we got to the fountain at the center of campus I asked Christian why he was so disappointed that the fountain was off and he replied, “I was going to run through it to prove my love to you.”  Christian was willing to sacrifice his health and his comfort to prove to me how much he loved me; because love requires sacrifices, sometimes big ones.  The ultimate and perfect love of God for us, required the ultimate and perfect sacrifice of Jesus, for us.

Jesus – though He had done nothing sinful or against the law in His entire life – was betrayed by one of His closest friends, arrested, and secretly whisked off to an immediate trial in the dead of night.  The Sanhedrin found Him guilty and sentenced Him to be flogged, and die by Crucifixion.  Once sentenced, He had one chance to “get out of it” so to speak. At that time, it was the festival of Passover and during the festival it was customary for one prisoner to be released.  They were given their choice between the Savior of their souls and a murderer for a rebellion against Rome.  The Jews chose to release Barabbas the murderer (which is how it had to be for God’s plan of redemption to work).  Jesus heard His friends and neighbors chanting “Crucify him, Crucify him, Crucify him”.

The book of Matthew tells us that Pilate released Barabbas, had Jesus flogged and then handed Him over to be crucified.  Usually when retelling the story of Jesus’ sacrifice we focus on the crucifixion, skipping the fact that He was flogged – or brutally tortured – first.  Flogging is where they whip your torso and your back.  But it’s not just a simple whip like a horse whip, its long leather straps with fish hooks and metal shards woven within them so as to inflict the maximum amount of pain possible without actually killing the person.  Most times after being flogged the skin would be hanging open, the victim’s bones, muscle and internal organs completely exposed.  It is one short sentence in the scriptures, but it was not a short sentence for Jesus.  It was long and painful, and only the beginning.  Next, He endured more pain and humiliation as the soldiers dressed him in a “royal” robe and placed a crown of thorns on his head.  Beating it into His head with a reed while spitting on Him and mocking Him.  Once the soldiers were satisfied with this utter humiliation they took His robe, put His clothes back on Him and led Him out to be crucified.  By custom, crucifixion victims were forced to carry the 75-100 pound cross-member of their own cross for roughly 1/3 of a mile.  In John it says that Jesus carried this Himself, but in the other gospels it says that Simon, a Cyrenian, carried it for Him.  It is very likely that Jesus started out the journey carrying His own cross; however after being awake all night long, beaten, bruised flogged, beaten more and humiliated, He lost His strength quickly and couldn’t carry it any further, requiring the assistance of Simon.  Once He reached Golgotha He was placed on top of His cross where they drove spikes between the bones of His wrists and the heels of His feet.  Not the small wood nails we’re used to seeing in the hardware store but spikes, large metal spikes.  He was lifted into place on the cross, hung at 9 in the morning according to Mark’s gospel.  He was placed between two criminals, equating Him with criminals; something He was not.  As people walked by Him on the road they mocked, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself.  He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him.  HE TRUSTS IN GOD; LET GOD RESCUE Him now, IF HE DELIEGHTS IN HIM; for He said, “I am the Son of God.”  The robbers who had been crucified with Him were also insulting Him with the same words. (Matthew 27:42-44)  But that’s just it.  He COULD have saved Himself!  Just one word and He could have sent 10,000 angels to free Him from this pain and absolute humiliation but He didn’t say a word.  He endured every bit of it.  Just for you and me.  He hung on that cross, blood and life slowly draining from Him, excruciating pain and humiliation, His lungs filling with blood making it more and more difficult to breathe, slowly dying for SIX HOURS.  Luke tells us that for the final 3 hours of His torture it was dark.  Finally at 3 He cried out “It is finished” and died.  That, my sister, is part of the punishment that you and I deserve for our sins, and yet we will never receive that punishment… because Jesus took it all for us.  After watching the Passion of Christ I asked, “Why God, why would you do that for me?  Me?”  He replied, “Because my Beloved, that’s just how much I love you!  I love you so much I would rather die than live without you!”

Sigh…

Christian was willing to be cold and wet and sick for me, which was very romantic.  Christ was willing to be tortured and died for me.  So who loves me more?  There is NO possible way that Christian who is human can love me as much as Christ who was completely human and completely God.  Christ had a choice; He didn’t HAVE to do it.  He didn’t have to suffer the humiliation and the pain, yet He CHOSE to go through that so that we could live with Him forever!  The ultimate love required the ultimate sacrifice to prove that love, and it DID prove it!  When we ask Jesus how much He loves us, He says “This much” and spreads out His arms, reminding us of how He died for us.  He… chose… YOU.  He loves you that much.  He died and endured things that no one, human OR God should ever have to endure, and He did it to prove to you how much He loves you.  Love.  That’s what it’s all about, LOVE.

First, we are to love God with our entire self, more than everything else in our life.  Then, we are to love our neighbors more than ourselves.  This is especially important in marriage because it’s your love for God and your husband that is the greatest testimony to the people around you.  Your husband is your very own personal gift from God himself, show your husband you really love him, even when it’s hard and you really don’t feel like it.  If you claim that you love God, but complain constantly about your husband you are not showing him or the people around you the kind of love that God gives.  No matter what we’re doing or what our attitudes are like, God still loves us deeply and continues to show us all the time.  When we are being our most difficult, He still loves us; because He knows that that’s when we need His love the most.

Christian’s comments:

We have all had to sacrifice things before. But no one has ever sacrificed like Jesus did. He sacrificed His life; AND He did it VOLUNTARILY! Do you know why? Because He loves you that much. If you love your wife, you are going to have to make some sacrifices. You can’t just expect her to make them all.

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Day 6: Call Me

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Tamar

“Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”  Jeremiah 33:3

Call to Me and I will answer you.  You know, when you think about it, that is a really remarkable thing!  The creator of the UNIVERSE is promising that if you call to Him, He WILL answer you!  Oh, but wait, there’s MORE!  He’s not just promising to answer you, Oh no, He is also promising that if you call NOW, you’ll not only receive an answer, but He’ll throw in – at no extra cost – great AND mighty things, which you do not know.  So ACT NOW AND CALL!  But don’t call on just anyone, no, call on the One who REALLY cares for you.

It was through calling to God and learning as much as I possibly could about HIM, that I found the love I’d been longing for my whole life.  You see, according to 1 John 4:8 God is the definition of love.  I have discovered that until I really knew that love, His love, I couldn’t really give that love.   You simply can’t give what you don’t have.  I learned that I needed to fall in love with God first.  When I fell in love with God – something amazing happened – I began to fall even deeper in love with Christian!  And that, has transformed us both.  Psalm 147:3 says “[The Lord] heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.” HE healed our broken hearts and HE healed our marriage.  And if HE can do that for us then HE can heal you too.  HE can; no one else.  Jesus is the ONLY way.

You see, Jesus is the only way to the Father, and in my opinion the only real way to solve ANYTHING that you are facing in life as well.  Jesus tells us in John 10:10 that He has come so that we may have a super-abundant life.  Jesus didn’t come so that we could just simply survive here on earth and then live in heaven with Him.  No!  Jesus came so that we could surpass surviving and LIVE our lives with a FULLNESS that we can only achieve through His power.  “How do I do that?” you ask?  You call to Him.  Life is filled with hardship, it just is.  And when I’m going through a really hard time, I know that God is there, waiting to help me.  Even if it doesn’t always feel like it, He’s there; with His arms open wide, ready to hold me.  Love me.  Comfort me.  He’s there; ready to listen to everything I have to say.  He’s there; ready to catch all my frustrations when I throw them His way.  He’s God, He can handle them.  I… can’t.  In those times when I just can’t take it anymore He reminds me WHOSE I really am.  I am HIS CHILD, His Precious Baby Girl.  When my own baby girl is hurt or sad, I rush to comfort her, to soothe her, to make the hurt go away.  When she was tiny I used to marvel at how I could sit with her on my lap and if she tucked her knees up close to her chest I could wrap my arms around her and lean over her in a way that my body would completely cover her, protecting her, taking away the hurt.  For a child there is little more soothing than climbing into a parent’s lap and being wrapped up in their loving embrace.

Last night God woke me up in the stillness of the night to give me some extra TLC during a particularly difficult week.  I followed His lead out to our living room where I wrapped up in a blanket and sat down in our big comfy red recliner.  As I sat there with my feet tucked up under the blanket warm & cozy & still, I realized what God had done.  Amidst this amazingly challenging and difficult time, He drew me away from all the noise and chaos, into the stillness and quiet of the night to spend some time on His lap (symbolized by the chair) wrapped up in His loving arms (symbolized by the blanket) to just snuggle and talk.  I sure do love my Daddy!  I can’t begin to explain to you how delicious it was to come to Him, curl up in His lap and relax with my head against His chest.  Casting myself and all my burdens at Him knowing full well that in that moment He was tenderly holding me in His arms and cooing to me “Oh my Beloved, all is well, tell me about it.”  He soothed me, and rocked away all the pain, and worry, and anger, and whatever else was bothering me.  I called to Him and told Him all about it, and He took it ALL away.  (Not necessarily the situation as much as my emotions and feelings about the situation.)  And when I was done spilling my guts to Him, I felt like a completely different person… because I was!

So, now the question is, do you believe that He’s there for you? Listening to you?  Are you willing to crawl up into His lap, snuggle into His chest, and let Him completely encircle you with His arms?  If you are, while you’re up there, you’ll be close enough to hear His heartbeat, and touch His face.  Then, in that moment, you will really be resting in the Lord and placing your faith in Him to do the things that He has promised to do.  Then, you will truly know that He is real.

Today, make some time, I recommend a lot of it, to crawl into YOUR Father’s lap.  Find a quiet private spot, preferably with a big comfy chair and a warm blanket, to pour your worries out at His feet like a drink offering onto the ground never to be returned to you.  We all have problems; more numerous than we can count. So, start by telling Him all about them!  Pour your heart out to Him, tell Him what hurts and why.  Let Him pour out His soothing balm onto your soul, let Him heal your broken heart and mend your aching Spirit.  Cry out to Him and let Him tell you great and mighty things!  When you reach out to Him and truly trust Him completely, you will soar on eagles’ wings.  You’ll start to see His face all around you; and experience the thrill of miracles, real miracles, in your life.  Trust God, who better to lean on and give you rest than the comforter and creator of love Himself.  Find rest in His arms, there is such a peace there because He is love… and all that love can be directed straight at YOU.

Christian’s comments:

In Jeremiah 33:3 God promises that when we call to Him, He will answer us.  He does not, however, promise that the answer will be immediate, or that it will be “yes”, but He promises to answer.  And He does, every time, with the answer that we need; not necessarily the answer that we want.  Sometimes “No” is the best answer we can get. We may not want to hear it, but His answer is ALWAYS the correct one.  As a parent, you know this to be true.  Your kids can not have everything they want, so you have to tell them “No”. If you don’t have children, think back to when you were a kid. Try to remember when your parents told you “No”. You were probably upset by it; but as you think back about it, you (hopefully) realize that “No” was the correct answer.  The reason we tell our children “No” is because we love them, and we want what’s best for them. We are all God’s children, and He loves us, and wants what’s best for us. That is why He tells us “No” sometimes.

As far as letting things go to Him, I still have trouble with it. I hold on to things. I have to really concentrate on giving it to Him. But Tamar is correct, when I do give everything to Him, I feel SO much better. I challenge you to do the same thing. It may feel strange, or difficult to you, but try it out. Find a quit place, and just pour your heart out to Him.

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Day 3: Return

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Tamar

And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.  Luke 1:45

Bessed is she who believed.  Do YOU believe that God can heal your marriage?  I believed; and it totally changed the course of my entire life.  God’s plans for us are so much bigger and better than our own plans.  HE knows the future, we don’t.  Trust Him.  He is faithful to His word.  When you obey Him, He blesses you.  Sometimes more than you can bear.  So I hope you’re ready for this!

I would like to share a letter to God that I wrote in the beginning of this journey.

“Lord, my heart is so broken right now.  I am so consumed with Christian and his neglect of his duties to us.  I don’t understand what you want me to do.  I know that you don’t want divorce because I have a blood covenant with him, but he hurts my feelings so much.  I feel like he’s sucking the spirit from me.  Yet I love him so desperately.  I can’t REALLY leave him.  You’re not really telling me to leave the husband of my youth are you?  Surely not.  What you have joined together let no man tear asunder right?

Lord, I need an undivided heart, one where BOTH halves are pumping and functioning together as one.  PLEASE help us become one again.  And not just for a short time but for forever.  Please please please don’t let it come to this again!  Please Lord, I’m begging you; heal us back together again so that we are one functioning heart again.  Let the two become one and stay that way!”

Reading that letter again I remember the pain and grief that I felt over how our relationship was fairing.  Yet, it makes me happy to read it, because it shows me just how far we’ve truly come; how far God has brought us on the path of healing.  In response to this letter do you know what God told me?  Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; (Acts 3:19) He gave me my answer.  Repent, turn to God, and times of refreshing WOULD come.  Not maybe they’d get here, they WOULD come.  I had already repented of my sin of pre-marital sex and I believe God had forgiven me for it.  But I hadn’t forgiven myself, and I certainly hadn’t forgiven Christian for taking my virginity before it was time to take it.  Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t rape me, if I had told him “no” he would NOT have had sex with me.

I’ll never forget that moment of decision as long as I live!  We were lying there completely naked together, Christian over me asking “What do you think?”  And I heard God’s desperate plea in my right ear say: “Baby, don’t do this!”  But the tempter was right there too, in my left ear, “Oh, it’s no big deal, you’re going to marry each other at some point anyway so what difference does it make if you do it now or later?  It’s all the same.  Go ahead.  Do it.”  And just like Eve, I believed his LIE!  So instead of saying “no”, I said “yes”.  And that moment, the moment I said “yes” instead of “no”, changed everything.  That moment of disobedience turned my world upside down.

So, back in the present day, what’s a girl to do?!?  I felt like I needed to talk to Christian and in the least, request an apology from him.  But as I was preparing for my “talk” with him I did a lot of praying and scripture searching.  I felt that we needed to do more than just ask for forgiveness, we needed to DO something.  “God guide me!” I said.  He immediately made my eyes fall on Ezekiel 33:14-16.  But when I say to the wicked, “You will surely die,” and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes which ensure life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die.  None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him.  He has practiced justice and righteousness; he shall surely live.

God gave me the steps to take.  1) Repent of our sin of sexual immorality by asking for forgiveness from God, each other, and ourselves.  2) Do what is right and restore what has been taken, therefore making restitution.  3) Sin no more.  Once we’ve done those three things NONE of our sins will be held against us anymore!  We will be free!  “OK”, I thought.  “I can do that!  Ummm, but Lord, how can I pay You back?  How can Christian return what he stole from me?  I mean… A hymen’s not really something that grows back ya know.”  That’s when the idea of fasting came to mind.  How can you give back sex?  Stop having it!  Not forever obviously, just for a time.  In 1 Corinthians 7:5 Paul writes: Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. He was telling his followers in the church of Corinth that they should not withhold sex from their spouses except to grow closer to God, and only for a specific period of time so that the enemy would not tempt them to commit sexual immorality.  All of this seemed to fit perfectly for our situation.  I needed to repent and return the things that I had stolen and I needed to do that by abstaining from sexual relations with my husband for 30 days (which is the traditional length of a mourning period, fitting I thought).  I knew that Christian would not be happy about it, but I also knew that I would give him no choice.  And he’s a great man; I knew he wouldn’t force me.

Christian’s comments:

Christian was not happy, not happy at all. No sex for 30 days! We weren’t having sex all that often, but 30 days? That’s like a month!

Yeah, I wasn’t happy and I didn’t really understand either. But it was important to Tamar, so it was important to me.

As was stated in chapter one, as well as here, I wasn’t a great husband. No, I wasn’t a good husband, or father. I’d stay out late, working on demolition derby cars at one of my friends’ shops. I would only begrudgingly come home if Tamar had something to go to. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Tamar, but to me, everything I had going on was more important that anything she had going on. Little did I know, that’s what was tearing us apart.

The fast came along about the same time that I began to realize that I was a major problem in our marriage (after the pre-marital sex, multiple partners, masturbation, and porn of course). So I thought, “Hey, if this will help us to get closer, I’m in.” Boy howdy! Have we ever gotten closer (Wink wink, nudge nudge). Things aren’t perfect, but they are much better, and getting better every day.

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Day 1: God and Sex

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Tamar

For nothing will be impossible with God.  Luke 1:37

One night before sharing my testimony at church, I had a vision.  I was lying in bed and the enemy was sitting on my chest with his hands over my mouth.  At first I could only murmur and make sound through my nose, then the longer he sat there, the less noise I could make until finally I could utter no sound whatsoever.

As chilling as this experience was, I was relatively unconcerned with what had just happened to me in my vision, (because I have nothing to fear, GOD is on my side) so I rolled over and went back to sleep.  The next morning, before dawn had fully broken, I was on my way to church and praying for insight about my vision.  As I prayed, God revealed to me that the enemy would do ANYTHING to keep me from sharing my story with others.  As I spoke those words aloud, instantly there was a deer in my headlights!  “Nice try!” I told the enemy.  Maybe one of these days he’ll discover that “greater is He who is in [me] than he who is in the world.” 1 John 4:4b (I, of course, didn’t hit the deer.)  You see, the enemy really would do anything to keep me from telling my story.  Why?  Because it is through our faults and mistakes that we relate with each other.  Because my story is less a story of what I’VE done and all about what GOD has done.  The enemy doesn’t like these stories, because they break the chains of slavery that he has wrapped around us.  Those stories, transform lives, and set captives free!  So yes, he would do anything to keep me (and you) silent, usually with embarrassment.  BUT he has no power over the Children of God, and can NOT keep us silent when it is God’s will for us to speak.  So, speak I will, and there is NOTHING the enemy can do about it!  He can TRY, but he will not succeed.  He will try to keep you silent as well.  As your journey to sexual freedom progresses I encourage you to share your story with others.  Don’t allow the enemy to keep you embarrassed about this!

In today’s society, most Christians don’t feel comfortable talking about sexual issues; especially in church.  Most of us have encountered them at some point in our lives and have come out of the experience with permanent damage.  But yet, we don’t TALK about it!  Why?  Because, that’s the enemy’s goal; to keep us embarrassed and silent!  Well, I’m here to tell you that GOD does talk about it!  A LOT!  And if HE talks about it I think it’s about high time that we did too!

You see, God created us and therefore sex; and He knew what He was doing too!  Did you know that the area of the brain that receives religious experiences is the very same area that receives sexual pleasure input.1 You can try all you want to separate God and sex, but in the end, there’s no denying it; sex and God go together.  Sex with your husband can actually be a spiritual experience.  Believe me, by the end of this challenge you will be praising God for the miracle of your husband’s body with yours!  God knew what He was doing.  He meant for sex to be a God-glorifying experience.  Why do you think that in those moments of pure passion many people say “Oh God!”?  We are forced to praise Him in those moments of physical enjoyment.  We are, after all, enjoying the fruits of HIS labor of creation.

So.  If God and sex go together, and I’m dissatisfied in my marriage and sex life, then doesn’t it make sense to go to the One who created them both and ask Him how to make them both better?  Maybe even great!  I mean, if you’re having trouble with your dishwasher, you don’t call the telephone company to get it fixed!  You call the maker of the product!  And so, that’s exactly what I did.  I prayed and went to the Bible first.  Did you know, there is a whole book in the Bible about relationships and sex!?!  A whole book!  And yet I had gone most of my life without knowing it was even there, let alone that it held the many secrets I longed to know.  However, it wasn’t just the Song of Solomon where I found the keys to unlocking this wonderful mystery of truly intimate sex; it was throughout the entire Bible.  God has quite a bit to say about sex and intimacy!

When we love and obey God not a single solitary good thing does He hold back from us.  Not one.  Right now, He has a whole storehouse full of amazing blessings for you.  Good health, AMAZING SEX, love and a deeper connection with God and your husband… the list goes on and on!  If you think it’s good and would like to be blessed with it, it’s most likely in there waiting for you.  However, before those blessings can rain down on you, you have to remove all the things that are blocking them from getting to you.  For years I asked God to change Christian.  For Y-E-A-R-S.  I was beginning to think God just wasn’t listening to my pleas!  I didn’t understand why it seemed like my prayers were simply hitting a brick wall and bouncing back to me.  Why wasn’t He making our marriage better?  According to Isaiah 59:1-3 God was (and still is) able to save our marriage and He did (and still does) hear our prayers for help.  However, since our hands were still covered in the blood of sexual sin – and not Christ’s forgiving blood – then God could not justify fully blessing our marriage with His presence.  He desperately wanted to bless us, but like Isaiah 59:2 points out, our sins had built barriers between us and God. I had hindered my own prayers from being answered “Yes”.  To remove these “blessing blockades” I had to first have a relationship with Christ.  All good relationships take time and communication.  Without these two crucial elements I didn’t have a relationship; I had an acquaintance.  Jesus was someone I knew of, but not very well.  To build my relationship with God I 1) Spent time talking with Him, and not just to Him.  I stopped talking when I asked questions and was surprised with what happened.  He talked back!!! Not always audibly or immediately, but He spoke to me none the less.  2) Studied the Bible as a student studying for a test.  The better I know His word, the better I know Him.

Still not sure if you believe that God can help your marriage and your sex life?  Well, whether you know God personally or not, you do know the difference between right and wrong.  And when you do something you know is wrong you get a guilty conscience.  I believe it is our guilty consciences that hold us back from a multitude of blessings.  One of which being the most truly intimate sex you’ve ever known!  I believe, with my whole heart, that our pre-marital sexual experiences led to all the strife in our marriage.  They started a snowball rolling down a hill that got too big for us to control and it ended up rolling on top of us, nearly crushing us.  However, God loves us and pulled us up from under that crushing snow.  It is because of Christ that today we are able to stand on the top of that mountain of snow instead of under it.  It is because of Jesus and His saving grace that I can sincerely thank God for the blessing of my husband every day, instead of every day begging God to “fix him”.

Christian’s comments:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. God and Sex? Hang on here. I was raised in a Methodist church, and we NEVER talked about sex. In church, out of church, anywhere. I’m sure I would have paid more attention in Sunday school if we had. The only time I even remember hearing the word sex spoken in that church was the day Tamar and I were married.

As we were having our picture taken with the preacher after the ceremony, he said “Think sex!” right before the photographer snapped the picture. If you look at the photo, our eyes are huge! We just couldn’t believe such a sweet, short, little man had said that! In church!

Most Christians would balk at the idea, but we believe what the bible teaches about sex needs to be taught in church, especially to the youth. They need to be taught how dangerous and damaging sex can be if it’s done with someone other than their spouse.

I’m glad Tamar missed the deer, not only because of her safety, but she was driving my truck that morning too. It wouldn’t have stopped us from sharing our message, though. I would have gotten in the car, picked her up and taken her to church that morning. Nothing ticks off the enemy more than when you pick yourself up after he knocks you down, and continue on your way.

As far as sin holding your blessings back, there is a solution. Get on your knees and ask for forgiveness. God wants to forgive you, but you have to ask. Repent of your sins. That means, after asking for forgiveness, don’t just turn around and sin again.

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