Does your marriage have a critical mass of Christian Discipline?

“This day I call the heavens and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Now choose life, so that you and your children may live…” – Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV)

Critical Mass – the amount of a given fissionable material necessary to sustain a chain reaction at a constant rate.

Many people realize the fact that it takes actions to help mold a person into what they desire to be.  If I would like to be a soldier I would join the military service to obey my superiors in order to be noted as a good soldier in the Armed forces, if I wanted to be a writer I would find myself writing down thoughts, facts or even events that happen so that I could perfect my ability to relay the ideas that I write so that others would want to read.  A person who desires to have a great marriage must put forth the effort to have a great marriage by the standards of the one who created marriage, and who promises to sustain the family that comes forth from that marriage.  Many understand grace as the favor from God for persons who could not earn it for themselves.  The passage above was given to the Israelites on their entering into the “promised land”.  The promise was not for them to do these things so that they would get to the “promised land” but for the type of lifestyle and practices they would maintain after they got to the “promised land” so that they would enjoy the favor of God while in the land God had already promised them.

Our marriages are setup for success if we continue in the grace that God gives us in a way that says we want to enjoy the grace of God in what He has already done.   God’s grace is not cheap, it is valued at the cost of the life of Jesus Christ, the only sinless person who ever lived.  Christ’s death on the cross is the perfect illustration for a husband who needs to make great sacrifices for his wife.  The time that Jesus came to the world to give obedience to the perfect ordinance of God is the example for any wife should understand in order to know that her obedience to husband will bring about tremendous gain for her life and family.  The bottom line is that a yielded heart to the Lord for the success He desires brings about the real life that we all want when we said, “I Do”.  When Christ suffered himself to be baptized by John in Jordon, he gave any husband the ability to bear the weight of responsibility for his family, identifying with his wife and children.

The people of Israel were given promises by God because God has a holy character which calls for those who really believe in Him to lean upon his power, wisdom and authority in their life to stay in step with His will.  The Christian life is not a set of rules to live by but a lifestyle to be grasped with the understanding that God wishes to show his power and ability to rule above circumstances in this life.

“These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.   Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you.” – Deuteronomy 6:1-3 (NIV)

God even instructs the people through Moses that life will go well because you take hold of this lifestyle which gives God glory.  There are laws which lead to success and there are rules which when followed bring about the fruits of a great family.  So many people do not realize the promises of God, so they feel that they are ordered not to have fun in life.  I know that the decrees of God are fixed up so that those who honor God, will be honored.  They will see trouble but will not be set aside in their progress in life.  Listening to the terrible statistics about the family today gives every husband the responsibility of taking a hard look at his relationship with his wife and revisiting the disciplines of praying together with his wife, getting involved with his children’s spiritual maturity, gathering information from scripture to teach his children so that they will look to God for the future.  The verse here even implies that the husband and wife will diligently seek to know the scripture better so that they will lead their children to a closer walk with God.

A Critical Mass is the amount of a given material necessary to sustain a chain reaction at a constant rate.  A Critical Mass of Spiritual Discipline in marriage is needed to sustain the favor of God supporting the relationship and the family during the challenges of life.  Challenges come from all sorts of places, school, work peer pressure, extended family and any other place imaginable.   The issue is that we do not know what challenge will be next.  The only sure strategy in marriage and family today is a close walk with God and focusing on His involvement in your life.  Children need a ritual to fall back on, a place they go to when life gets antsy.  They do not know that now but you are aware of the need.  As husband and wife you are aware of the many set-backs your child will face.  It is impossible for you to prep them for everything but you can give them the advantage they need in knowing the Lord, who knows what will happen in the future.  The Critical Mass is the sustaining material needed to bring about joy and peace in the middle of whatever life throws at them.   Begin working on building and maintaining a Critical Mass of Spiritual Discipline in marriage so that, as God says, “So that you and your seed may live.”

Peace and God’s Speed to ya
~ Pastor Horace Cutter

Malachi 2:15 Didn’t the LORD make you one with your wife? In body and spirit you are his. And what does he want? Godly children from your union. So guard yourself; remain loyal to the wife of your youth.

Somebody To Love Me

Many people marry so that they can have someone to love or to be loved by someone.  The truth of the matter is that God designed marriage in order to serve a purpose that was much bigger than the man and the woman.  Most people approach marriage with love as the goal but love was never to be viewed as the goal of marriage.   Love is the active obedience to the law of God along with the solid commitment of the two individuals to become one for the purpose of producing an offspring that would continue to seek God and find Him when they seek him with all their heart.

Malachi posses the question about marriage, “Didn’t the LORD make you one with your wife?” The prophet assumes that we realize that taking someone to be your wedding partner ‘as we call it’ is a process that has an affect upon the two persons who come together.  God makes them one as the married couple one in body; the consummation of the marriage union is one of the traumatic, life changing, experiential events of one’s life.  Just the closeness of two people in certain proximity alters the thoughts of one’s mind and gives stimulation of a persons emotions.  Each human being is put together in such a way that we detect the life flowing in another person’s body.  You could call it a resonating of the bodies in just coming close.  The event of  two people coming together in spirit creates a bonding of the two in another real and experiential way.  What about the spiritual binding of two people?  God intended for the marriage covenant to bring about an effect that would alter the life of man and woman. Not only in living together but also in creating another human being, who lives and breaths and has dreams and a personality.  God intended that His image be reflected in this new person who did not exist before the two people came together.

As a prophet of God Malachi informs his readers that we are God’s possession.  Both body and spirit are His, created by Him and reflecting the image of the creator of all mankind.  It is the image of God within that transcends our person, place, culture and geographic location.  Malachi admonishes us in these words, it is not what you want that is the main issue.  It is what God wants that we must concern ourselves with.  God looks for godly children from the union.  This, of course is a general statement because we could question the prophet with the question about women who cannot have children?  That would be another discussion for another time, that has the will of God over and above our own preference and experience.  But I would ask the expected question, what about most people who look forward to having children.  Many more than those who don’t desire at least one child.

It seems to me that God has not forgotten his mandate for mankind to be fruitful and multiply.  God did not just want an obedient creation, he also wanted a creation that would reproduce itself and fill the earth.  So guarding yourself is an important issue, from what?  From yourself.  You must remember that the propensity to break our commitment to one another, refusing to be loyal is a fallacy within our human condition since “The Fall”.  But we have the call to be loyal to God first, then to the wife or husband of which we have joined ourselves.  In order to bring about the godly offspring we have to guard ourselves from the pressure of the flesh to disobey God and run to our sinful inclination.  Guard yourself from the sinful pull.  Honor God, give yourself to the call of the Spirit of Truth.  Be loyal and receive the blessings of God, just because you followed HIS truth rather than giving in to your own.

~ Pastor Horace