Kingdom Era

This week in class at the Tute has been one of the less thrilling weeks. 

History is interesting, but it's not always what you want to sit thru for 4 hours, 3 days in a row.  Especially when the week before was about something super applicable like marriage.  The history that we went thru was the Kingdom Era.  Basically 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles in the Bible.  Understanding the Kingdom Era is crucial to understanding the Bible.

I want to make sure and say that I did appreciate this week, even if I didn't necessarily love it.

So my assignment questions are a little boring, but ya know I have to answer them anyway.

Question 1: What have you learned about leadership from the Kingdom Era?

The thing that comes to mind right off the bat is, "how not to lead."  That is because the Kingdom of Israel was divided and rules by some awful kings for most of it's existence.

However, there were some good kings during the division, and there were also 120 years when the Kingdom was united under the rule of Saul, David, and Solomon.  Saul wasn't a righteous king.  David was a great king, and his son Solomon was a good king for about half the time. 

As far as leadership goes, David would definitely be the model.  Yes, everyone knows about what he did with Bathsheba, and he suffered some grave consequences for that.  David's life was so much more than the Bathsheba incident though.  Even before David was king he showed the leadership that a man of God should live by.  David relied on God's provision in several situations that people would normally shrink away from.  For example, David trusted that God would give victory in fights with lions and bears, and no one can forget the great underdog story of David and Goliath. 

It is important that we admire David's faith.  The whole Bible tells of people who were given power to do great things because of their faith in God.  David is one of these people who recognized that God's power was much greater than his own power.  He went to God humbly when he was facing trials.  The biggest issue that I have been working thru in my personal walk with God is my tendency to rely on myself to take care of all my needs, instead of relying on God to meet those needs.  God has been teaching me humility.  Usually He teaches me by humiliating me. I don't have to tell you how little fun it is to be humiliated. 

So God has taught me that a good leader has humility because of the knowledge that God is sovereign. 

Question 2:  What is something that you have learned from the Kingdom Era about the character of God?

Well, I think this relates to the first question.  David struggled at times with relying on his own strength for things.  Like when he took a military census and stuff like that that he knew God disproved of.  David was trying to get a gauge of how much power he had as king of the nation.

God taught David lessons by doing certain things to get his attention.  For example, God sent a plague thru Israel that killed 70,000 people after David took the census. 

This is a lesson to me that shows that God doesn't let things slide.  He teaches us lessons, and sometimes those lessons aren't easily learned.  In other words, discipline is in God's character.  I think when I am raising children this lesson will take on new meaning.

If you want to know anything about the Kingdom Era of the Bible, Holler at me. 

Marriage Week at the Tute

Marriage Week at the Tute

Dear reader,

This week at the Kanakuk Institute we talked about marriage.  Let me start by saying that I'm glad that I'm already involved in marriage with a WOMAN who loves me even though I don't deserve that love 105% of the time. 

You see when you're wife loves you like that, you know that she's a blessing from God.  Polly is my personification of the grace that we receive as believers in Jesus Christ.  By the way the Jesus Christ guy is the one true God who came down to earth as a man to live a perfect life so that He could die as a perfect human sacrifice for the sins that you and I commit on the daily.  The only way for any human being to live eternally in Heaven is for said human to place faith in Jesus that He is who He says He is.  The reason I say "is" instead of "was" is because after He was dead and buried for three days He was resurrected back to life by the power of God.  He then ascended into Heaven via a cloud.  A bunch of folks saw him get carried off into the sky, so don't act like I'm trippin.  Oh, and the reason you can live eternally when you believe in Jesus is because in exchange for simply believing, God offers you grace for your sins and sees you through the lens of Jesus' perfect righteousness. 

Holler at that, right!  I know man, it's crazy good news.  Lots of people call it good news too.

God even goes further than grace though (as if that weren't enough).  He comes and takes control of our soul and lives within us.  How?  There is an aspect of God called the Holy Spirit.  This is the part of God that dwells here on earth in order for us to live empowered and stay connect to God.

ok, back to the marriage stuff

So I didn't ever do relationships with girls perfectly.  I actually made tons of mistakes.  One time I realized how much of a failure I had become in the area of interacting with females; so I literally asked God to shelter me and girls from myself by distancing me from them.  Well along came Polly (oh get over it) about three months after this, and I wanted to treat her like she deserved to be treated.  So I tried to treat her good.  I messed up again.  The crazy thing though is that Polly forgave me for messing up and helped me learn how to treat her better.  God even let Polly fall in love with me after awhile (I was in love with Polly after two weeks of just being her friend).  So you see, grace is this phenomenon that comes from God, and it is crazy because no matter how much you or I mess up, God continues to hang in there with us and teach us how to serve him better.  He continues to trust us even after we betray His trust. 

So you see, He trusted me with Polly and helped taught me how to do right even after I had messed up a bunch of times before. 

Thank you God! I think this blessing everyday, and I will never take her for granted because I know that I only have her because of Your lovingkindness (yep, one word. no spell check line came up).

My assignment this week is to tell you 5 new things I have learned about marriage this week that I didn't already know, and tell you 5 goals that I want to implement in my marriage.

I'm combining them.  Here we go:

0.       I learned that my own quality of life is not based on my wife being the person who I think she needs to be.  My stress level is based on how my relationship with God is.  When I trust in Him to work things together for good according to His purpose, I can be at peace.  My goal from this is that when I get stressed and life is stormy, to be still and know that Jesus is God.  I need to remind myself that I'm not the sovereign authority on anything, and taking anything out on Polly is moronic.

1.       If Polly needs to change, God will work that out with her.  Im here to love and encourage  and pray for her just like Christ's love and sacrifice for the church is continual.  I'm so dang critical, and I should have my mouth permanently gagged because I say some dumb, hurtful things to Polly sometimes.  If I were to take a second and think before I speak, I would surely realize how much of an idiot I am.  My goal is to trust God's wisdom in how to correctly love and serve Polly.  I know there is wisdom in thinking before I speak, especially when I am frustrated.

2.      Proverbs 22:4 Says that "The reward of humility and fear of the Lord are riches, honor, and life."  I've got to be humble.  I've got to humble myself as a servant to Lord, to my wife, and to other people.  Mark 12:30-31 say that I must love the Lord and love my neighbors.  Humility in the marriage relationship is something that has hit me this week, and it is also my goal.

3.      I learned today that Polly has 3 doors to her heart.  The first is Logic which is opened by the Holy Spirit.  The second is Emotions.  Part of loving Polly is treating her emotions as important.  My goal is to validate her emotions by listening to her tell me about them and having empathy.  I can't easily do that.  I know that makes me sound like a jerk, but I'm being honest when I say that it is difficult for me. The third door is Spiritual.  I need to love her by participating in her walk with God.  I need to know what's going on with her, and she needs to know what's going on with me.  This takes time, and my goal is to make time.

4.      At the beginning of this week, we took spiritual gift assessments and personality assessments.  Polly and I learned that she is gifted with encouragement, and I am gifted with prophecy.  We also learned that I have a more task driven personality, and she has a more whimsical free spirited personality.  We kind of already knew the personality stuff, but the tests reiterated that it's true.  The goal from this is for us to be able to love each other better and serve God's kingdom better because we have a better understanding of who we are and what we are naturally bent to do.

Thanks for sticking it out through all that.

There are some things that convicted me, but they weren't new things.

5 new things is awesome! I have a lot to work on!