GRACE-BASED MARRIAGE

"When I got married, I didn't understand grace. I had a principle-istic view of Scripture that caused me to bring a law economy into my marriage. The central focuse of the bible is not a set of practical-life principles. No, the central theme of the Bible is a person, Christ. If all you and I had needed was a knowledge and understanding of a certain set of God-revealed principles for living, Jesus would not have needed to come. I think there are many Christians living in Christless marriages. Without knowing what they have done, they have constructed a law-based rather than a grace-based marriage, and because of this, they are asking the law to do what only grace can accomplish.

"The problem with this is that we are not just people in need of wisdom; we are also people in need of rescue, and the thing that we need to be rescued from is us" (Paul Tripp, What Did You Expect?, 64).

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

Yesterday wasn’t a very good day for me. I was infected with a nasty case of “The Monday’s”, even if it waited ‘til Tuesday to take effect.

Day’s like yesterday make me think of Judith Viorst’s children’s book, Alexander’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and the seemingly cynical conclusion of the book, when Alexander’s mom declares, “Some days are like that.” I may prefer to hear Daniel Pewter sing his empathetic refrain, “so you had a bad day” over and over again, but what Alexander’s mom lacks in compassion she makes up for with candor. 

Some days really are just terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. It’s absolutely true.

WE ARE ALL VULNERABLE

I came across an article this morning that reported on a study being done in Canada that captured my attention. It read this way:

A study into how porn affects men had to be scrapped and radically rethought after experts failed to find any young men who had not watched it.

Originally researchers at the University of Montreal wanted to compare the behavior of men who viewed sexually explicit material with those who had never looked at it all.

Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse says he had to drastically rethink his study after failing to find any male volunteers who had never viewed porn.