In Memory of Betty N...

Within the past few weeks, I was reminded of someone I met nearly 4 years ago and with whom I  had only one conversation.  The remembrance of this person came as my eyes caught a name one morning in the obituaries published in our local newspaper.  The name was Betty N.  I wrote about our meeting and its spiritual significance on December 10th, 2008 in this blog.

Since Betty has recently left this world for her eternal home, I will share again the story I wrote following that one conversation we had.  The story was a portion of my blog post that day.

Before Marriage Begins...

I recently posted the 10 BEST DECISIONS OF OUR MARRIED LIFE.  This is a 10 post series.

Today I read an article which I saw linked on Facebook.  Steven Crowder shares his opinion about the best way to prepare for the wedding night.  He got married recently.

I recommend his blog post, "Waiting till the wedding night - getting married the right way."
You'll find the article on September 14, 2012 by Steven Crowder.  Apparently I can't include the link with the title of this article but you can find it at www.foxnews.com/opinion/.

This article is a wonderful predecessor to the 10 Best Decisions... which I have shared in the past few weeks.

Some may call Steven Crowder old-fashioned, crazy, unrealistic but I call him godly, wise and a man worthy of an awesome woman who shares his values.  I think you'll enjoy his report.

10 Best Decisions of our Married Life... #10 Remain Committed in Adversity

Recently I began to share something I composed some years ago to be part of a document for a niece as she got married in June 2004.  That document was created as a compilation of entries under the title:  

THE TEN BEST... or 

The Wisdom of the most important women in your life.  

Each woman who submitted an entry chose her own subject matter.  I promised to post my entry on this blog.  This is the Tenth of our top decisions in the list of:

The Top Ten Decisions Guiding Our Married Life

By Uncle John and Aunt Linda Worden

10.  We will remain committed to God even in adversity.

I Peter 1: 5b-7 THE MESSAGE The day is coming when you’ll have it all - life healed and whole.  I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime.  Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine.

Philippians 1:29 THE MESSAGE There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ.  There’s also suffering for him.   And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting.

Life is a combination of good times and bad times.  When there are difficulties, some people chose to blame God for their problems and turn away from following him.  We have had some times of adversity.  We have chosen to continue trusting God’s leadership in our lives even through the pain and disappointment.  Doing this has strengthened both our individual and our joint faith relationships.  Besides our personal faith, we have been supported and sustained by family and friends who have given us much encouragement.  Some hardships have happy endings but some don’t.  We’ve had a great place to work and serve following the congregation’s decision for John not to continue pastoring the church in Delafield.  And we trust God’s leadership but still pray for healing of Uncle John’s left eye though it remains legally blinded due to retina trouble.  But suffering is not grounds for desertion of the path on which the savior leads us.  We have absolutely no regrets for having followed this decision throughout our lives.  And the path of life is much easier when a couple shares the same goals and philosophies.

10 Best Decisions of our Married Life... #9 Weekly Church Participation

Recently I began to share something I composed some years ago to be part of a document for a niece as she got married in June 2004.  That document was created as a compilation of entries under the title:  

THE TEN BEST... or 

The Wisdom of the most important women in your life.  

Each woman who submitted an entry chose her own subject matter.  I promised to post my entry on this blog.  This is the ninth of our top decisions in the list of:

The Top Ten Decisions Guiding Our Married Life

By Uncle John and Aunt Linda Worden

9.Weekly church attendance and regular participation in church leadership opportunities for the whole family according to our spiritual gifts is a given.

Hebrews 10: 25 THE MESSAGE Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on,

            I Peter 4:10a Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others,

We have not struggled with this decision and fortunately, our children grew to understand that our family participated regularly with attendance and involvement.  There was never an argument from any of them about attending church.  We think it is because it was a “given” - not negotiable.  Our participation was their example and they followed willingly.  We have absolutely no regrets for having followed this decision throughout our lives.  Of course church attendance does not ensure adherence to Biblical teaching but it is more likely that your faith commitment will be embraced by the next generation if there is involvement in a local body of believers.  

10 Best Decisions of our Married Life... #8 Trust & Respect

Recently I began to share something I composed some years ago to be part of a document for a niece as she got married in June 2004.  That document was created as a compilation of entries under the title:  

THE TEN BEST... or 

The Wisdom of the most important women in your life.  

Each woman who submitted an entry chose her own subject matter.  I promised to post my entry on this blog.  This is the eighth of our top decisions in the list of:

The Top Ten Decisions Guiding Our Married Life

By Uncle John and Aunt Linda Worden

8.  We will support each other with mutual trust and respect confident that each is striving to know and do God’s will.

Ephesians 5: 22, 23, 25 THE MESSAGE Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ.  Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church - a love marked by giving, not getting. 

One of the greatest gifts Uncle John has given me is to trust the choices I make about how I spend my time.  I have many friends whose husbands demand an accounting of everything that has been done, spent, said, with whom, where, when, etc.  And then there is often criticism of those choices.  This trust is precious and for us it has given us both freedom to exercise the strengths we have received from God.  There have been some times when each of us has seen a worrisome expenditure of time and energy in the other.  We have expressed that and it has provided a good balance for us in seeing mistakes we were making.  It is easy to get over committed and find ourselves operating under significant stress.  One time when that was true for me, I talked to Uncle John about my feelings and his counsel was, “Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean that God wants you to do it.”  That freed me to resign from a position I had so I could take better care of my family.  But to be honest, this is an on-going choice which we have to work on.  It is easy to be critical of how our spouse spends time but it has worked for us to talk about our view of things and get the other’s perspective about what they are doing.  The principle that needs to be at work here is that each partner must be thinking of serving and giving and then trust and respect are the result.  We have absolutely no regrets for having followed this decision throughout our lives.  The truth is, however, that we are still working on this one in our marriage.

9/11 Reflection...

As I've been reading articles today which share memories of 9/11, I've wondered if there was something relevant I could share also.

Before I attempted to put something into words for this blog, however, I decided to take care of an important item for a meeting I will chair today at 6:00 PM - the agenda for that meeting.

I am the Missions Director at my church.  A meeting will take place this evening of the Missions Council and this group of people will consider ways for our local congregation to continue international involvement in 2013.

I began the agenda as usual with a scripture which includes mention of God's concern "for the nations."