day no. 15,375: it's a tough call

"Be tough for your wife, which is a very different thing than being tough on her." -- Douglas Wilson, Flesh of My Flesh

God made men strong. They are built, God-tough. The reason is so that they can be hard for their wives. Their broad shoulders were meant to carry loads for her. To clear the driveway for her. To take the heavy, cumbersome trash bags out for her. When men go rogue, they either do so by being weak where they were made to be strong or by using their strength for something it was not intended for. So men either refuse to chop wood because it's too cold or they use the axe to chop up the house. These fall short of the glory for which God created men -- to be strong and good. If you are tough on your wife, you are a bully, using for wicked gain what God gave you to employ for her good. If you are tough for her, you are like Christ, giving your gain to her because God is good.

day no. 15,374: sharpies and smoothies

"In marriage, much depends on understanding the God-given distinctions between male and female, and much depends on understanding how they are intended to blend in an organic and complementary way. But we stumble—we were supposed to blend our wills, becoming more and more like-minded, and we were supposed to keep our personalities distinct and sharp, becoming daily more and more like ourselves, growing up into ourselves. Instead of this, we blend our personalities, and everything and everybody gets all tangled up, but we keep our wills distinct, becoming increasingly stubborn as the years go by. And then we wonder at the conflicts." -- Douglas Wilson, Flesh of My Flesh

God likes writing with a sharpie and He enjoys making smoothies. But when we make smoothies out of sharpies, they taste bad and kill us to boot. And when we try to write with a smoothie, we make a mess of everything. 

God's desire is for a man and woman in marriage to use sharpies for their personalities and to make smoothies out of their wills. A man should not lose himself in his wife. He should surrender his will for her. A woman should not be absorbed in her husband. She should surrender her will to him. 

Oneness is the goal of marriage. This is best accomplished by blending your wills in a smoothie while keeping your personalities distinct like sharpies. This allows two to become one in a way that complements. This allows the key and the lock to be one unit without becoming one giant lock or one great key. Key and lock, arrow and string, violin and bow: two distinct personalities, one clearly defined will. The distinctions are sharp in form and function which gives way to the smoothness of the functionality. The purpose is produced smoothly because the personalities are kept sharply.

day no. 15,373: the right kind of bright: love children, raise warriors, hate evil, praise God

"We (must) finally recognize the importance of the time we are called to invest in our children. Because it is a long war, it crosses generations. In a very short space of time, your children will join you in the line, and a short time after that, their children will join them. This means that we begin by fighting for our children, but we must end by fighting by means of them. We must do two things simultaneously—we must fight today’s battles, and we must recruit and train tomorrow’s warriors. If I am allotted more than the proverbial three score and ten, I hope that as my children and grandchildren are hitting their stride, I will see myself as still fighting through them. I hope that I have the privilege of seeing a lot of downstream damage to the work of the adversary. Decades from now, when my descendants are giving fits to whatever progressives are calling themselves in the 22nd century, I hope that my name is a hissing and a byword to God’s enemies. A short-sighted man who throws himself into ministry, neglecting his family in order to do so, is not just demonstrating for us that he doesn’t understand his wife and kids. He is demonstrating for us the fact that he doesn’t understand the nature of true ministry. A man who is wrong about children will find it difficult to be right about anything else. So what we need (as I’ve said in other places) are more children with the right kind of bright in their eyes, like Jonathan after he ate the honey. We want children who have that kind of bright in their eyes because they have fathers who gave them the honey in the first place. " -- Douglas Wilson, The Neglected Qualification

THIS!

Ministry is primarily multi-generational, mission-minded, multiplication of disciples that begins in the home and produces the right kind of bright.

Love children.

Raise warriors.

Hate evil.

Praise God.

day no. 15,372: sinsanity

"A man who sins sexually can come to his senses a half an hour later, and often does. But a man who refuses to come to his senses, who refuses to accept an authoritative law/word that governs all lovemaking . . . such a one is seriously attempting to be God at all times, instead of what the sexual sinner is doing, which is forgetting he is not God for half an hour." -- Douglas Wilson, Pomosexuality

All sin is insanity. It is either momentary madness or deep-rooted delirium. It is forgetting the God above while believing the god within. It is madness. Those who come to their senses, repent and ask God to forgive this insanity. But those who never come to their senses expect God to accept their insanity, not as a blunder of hysteria, but as an alternate reality, a  recreation of the world in their own image. This second insanity trumps the first and is of a different species entirely. The flashpoint is still observed in the sexual behaviors of the sinner, but the essence of the sin is different. It originates in believing in one's blindness as opposed to being temporarily unable to see clearly. Both are sins, but the former is foundational as evidenced by its insistence after the fact while the latter is practical as evidenced by the immediate regret and repentance in acting out of insanity. The one attempts to justify its insanity by calling it "order," while the other acknowledges the insanity by repenting of it the moment it becomes clear to them what it was all along.

day no. 15,371: the situation and the sacrifice

"There are two different kinds of good news. The first doesn’t really require much context. If you were surprised by a massive inheritance, this would simply be good news. If you found out that you had been awarded a huge promotion at work, this would be good news. But if you heard that a cure had been developed for a particular kind of cancer, you would not hear it as good news personally unless you had previously taken in the bad news that you had that particular kind of cancer." -- Douglas Wilson, Flesh of My Flesh

Everyone likes good news, but not everyone appreciates the Good News. In order to appreciate it, you have to appreciate the weight of the bad news. Grace teaches our hearts to fear and then grace our fears relieves. Grace does not artificially create something to be afraid of in order to produce the sensation. We are actually in danger, we just don't realize it. So grace reveals the danger for what it already is. And when we see that clearly, if we see it rightly, we shudder. It is then that the Good News of Jesus Christ makes sense. It is then that His death becomes Good News of a particular variety. It is not just bonus news or happy news, but the best news ever! It is realizing that our biggest problem is worse than we thought only to discover that God's solution is grander than we ever imagined. That is appreciating the sacrifice by first understanding the situation.

day no. 15,370: if we win, they lose; if they win, they lose forever

"We must remember that our adversaries are rotting away from the inside out. If we win, they lose. If they win, then they lose forever and ever." -- Douglas Wilson, Pomosexuality

Anything that can't go on forever... won't.

Those who oppose the will of God will not be able to oppose it forever. It will eventually impose itself upon them. This will happen either in the gracious form of conversion through repentance, faith and regeneration, trading uniforms from enemy to ally; or it will take the form of holding out until the very end and being completely undone by the presence of God. 

God will overcome every enemy. Some will become friends, the others will be utterly defeated. Their only hope is that we win before they die. If they win, they have nothing to look forward to. So we must fight to win. If we don't, they will saw the limb off the very branch on which they sit.

day no. 15,369: the answer is, "Yes"

Q: Should I stay or should I go now?

1 Samuel 30:17-25
And David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day, and not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled. David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken, and David rescued his two wives. Nothing was missing, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that had been taken. David brought back all. David also captured all the flocks and herds, and the people drove the livestock before him, and said, "This is David's spoil." Then David came to the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow David, and who had been left at the brook Besor. And they went out to meet David and to meet the people who were with him. And when David came near to the people he greeted them. Then all the wicked and worthless fellows among the men who had gone with David said, "Because they did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered, except that each man may lead away his wife and children, and depart." But David said, "You shall not do so, my brothers, with what the LORD has given us. He has preserved us and given into our hand the band that came against us. Who would listen to you in this matter? For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike." And he made it a statute and a rule for Israel from that day forward to this day.

Q: Should I stay or should I go now?

A: Yes! One or the other.

Those who keep watch and hold down the fort enable those who go out to be fully out. They can leave without also having to worry about what's left behind. They are able to go knowing that reliable people have stayed.

Acts 1:8
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

In order for the great commission to be fulfilled, some will need to stay, some will need to travel and some will need to move altogether. Those who remain in order to witness to Jerusalem make it possible for those going to Samaria to know that the Gospel doesn't evaporate behind them. The point of planting churches is to see them bloom where they are planted, which means some must stay to water while others must sow somewhere else in order to cover the world in the sweet-smelling aroma of the Gospel.