I can not even post on the first day, I am 42 mins late. Maybe God did not will it. I was even thinking about posting about some music lyrics I heard on Air 1 when I went to get food. I got back to my dorm room and completely forgot to post. Anyways it is 0100 and I have to be at work in 3hrs so I want to take this time to comment about a post on Boundless.org blog. The post is called "Men Afraid of Bad Marriage."
The lady writing the post was reading an article about how men are afraid about marriage. The article is secular in nature but many Christian men feel the same way according the writer from Boundless.org talking with her single group at church. She claims that "two resounding themes [that men are afraid of commitment]: 1. A lack of desire for marriage (or suspicion of it); 2. An uncertainty about how to go about it. (The second is a sentiment I have heard often from my male friends. One guy recently told me, "I think a lot of guys would be willing to walk through that door [commitment] if they only knew where it was.")."
As I know people who have courted, I think that a fear of commitment is because we do not have a proper fear of God. I really can not talk because I am single without a relationship that would even come close to an idea of marriage. What I have heard or overheard is that you will know if God wants to marry that person. If both are strong in the Lord I think that they are right. It is trusting the Lord. As I have learned about biblical dating, it seems that it looks at what will generate a marriage that is worthy of God praise. If God is pleased with the relationship and that it looks like a relationship that God has described. They a fear to commit for the rest of your life is an easy choice.
BTW, I still have a ways to go in trusting in the Lord and also becoming a true man after God's heart but God is working on me. I have also realized that if what I feel that God wants me to do in my life is right, I need to get over this fear of commitment of marriage and get married.
I hope this post makes sense, I was going to wrote a comment on the blog but my writing was not making sense. So for all people (all zero of you) who read my blog, please comment about this.
Hey Mike,
ReplyDeleteI was totally about to comment on your blog last night. I had written this really nice response to your MacArthur article blog and my internet went out right as I clicked to post it!!! Ahhh!!!
However, Christ is victorious, and I can rewrite it. :)
In a different comment. :)
Hold on a minute . . . YSIC
Okay, here's my response, to this blog and to the MacArthur article blog that you wrote:
ReplyDeleteUnion is a blessing (as opposed to a lifelong union being a reason to not get married). Unlike society today would have you believe, i.e. MacArthur stating that the permanence of union is a reason not to be married, the permanence of a marriage is a blessing. I think to think otherwise would be to give into what Satan desires - to destroy the idea of marriage because it is a sacred covenant with God and your spouse and you. In my personal opinion, I find a great deal of safety, security, love and belonging in knowing that Mike and I are joined in marriage, a sacred covenant between us and the Lord, until one of us dies. I have cried tears of gratitude for the Lord bringing Mike and I together and for Mike choosing me to be that woman to spend his life with. And I thank the Lord and Mike for that often. That commitment is a wonderful, joyous thing, not something to be scared of. Committment in marriage is something to be embraced by both partners. I mean, how awesome is it that you are marrying not only your (hopefully) best friend, but you are marrying someone that the Lord hand picked for you, and you for them! (That is saying that you were following the Lord's will first off in your search for a marriage partner and throughout courtship, knowing that if you, or they, realized it wasn't the Lord's will, you would be willing to break it off.) If the Lord said "yes" to you marrying a particular person, what is there to fear? The Lord isn't going to put a mass murderer posing as a Christian united together with a true Believer, is He? It does take faith to say "I do" on your wedding day. Not necessarily faith in your spouse (although that is something important), but more importantly faith in the Lord that He will always be there with you and your spouse - watching, protecting, loving. All the more reason to be following, seeking, searching and obeying the Will of God before and throughout a courtship.
If you are seeking the Lord’s will for the right spouse before you even begin to think about courting (or dating) a person, then that person can also be a great asset to you, and you to them, in their walk with the Lord. Paul was correct when he wrote about married men being concerned for the things of the world, how they may please their wife. However, I do believe, and have experienced, that if you are seeking the Lord's will before and during courtship, that your walk with the Lord will be strengthened by the person that the Lord has for you. I can't even begin to tell you the number of ways that Mike lifted me up spiritually when I was down when we were friends. He always had just the right verse for me, or a prayer to say for me. If a person marries the man/woman that the Lord has for them, they will grow in ways that they might not have been able to if they were single.
That being said, I do think that being single is a calling, a gift. And that gift is not meant for everyone. The Lord created us with biological drives to procreate. He even said "Go and make Godly offspring" (Mal 2:15). I think the Godly offspring mentioned there is twofold: spiritual and physical. Furthermore, the Bible mentions several times that man is to leave his parents and be united to his wife (Gen 1:24, Eph 5:31). We were not created to go through this world alone, single, without that intimate companionship that only a spouse can bring. God created man and woman to desire each other.
MacArthur also stated that fleshly desire was a reason to not get married. I definitely do not agree with that at all. As I said above, we were created to desire one another. The last time I checked, greater than 95% of people struggle with fleshly desires, i.e. they want to have sex at the very least. If a person is married, that desire is satisfied and they do not sin. If a person is struggling with fleshly desires and are not able to control them, than I think they should definitely get married. Of course seeking the Lord's will in whom they should marry. Then when they think of their spouse in a lustful manner, they are not sinning. To say that is a reason to not get married is to invite trouble. I have not read MacArthurs' article though, so maybe you could send it to me so I could see exactly what he meant by that. Read Song of Songs and you can see that "fleshly desire" that the two lovers have for each other. And they are man and wife - so it perfectly nature, and indeed a beautiful thing.
Because marriage is so sacred and is something that the Lord designed just for us humans from the very beginning (i.e. Adam and Eve), of course it is going to come under attack. I think that Satan sneaks in and attacks marriage from a lot of different angles. One of which is confuse people about marriage is really about. It seems like everywhere from sitcoms to email forwards to newsletters you see small jokes bashing marriage - everything from the "ball and chain" to pictures of a trashed home because a man cheated. I think those are attacks from Satan on marriage. Other attacks including glamorizing the single life with the spotlight on one night stands, wing men and other such things. Or girls night out, or whatever. And it's everyhwere. Just another reason to stop watching TV.
Marriage is so beautiful, it's hard to put into words. It's fun - being married is so much fun! Everything from laughing while cooking in the kitchen to private, intimate jokes just between you and your spouse. It's hanging out with your best friend everyday. It's knowing that in your day to day life you are fulfilling the Lord's will - whether you are the man being the Protector and Spiritual Leader of the home or you are the wife providing for her family and caring for her husband. And it's so many more things than that. It's knowing how much you love your spouse and trying to imagine that that love is nothing compared to how much Jesus loves you. It's feeling the love your spouse has for you and knowing that God loves you infinitely more.
I feel like I have so much more to write, so I'll have to put some thinking into it. I hope that my response helps you out a bit.
I think that one of the most awesome things about Mike and I's courtship was that it taught me the importance of obeying Christ. I grew in a lot of ways when I was single, but I grew in ways I could not have imagined when I was courting Mike. Ways I would not have grown if I had remained single.
YSIC ~ Tegan
Tegan, for the most part I agree with you. I think the biggest problem with your comment was either you did not understand me or (and more likely the reason) I did not explain it well enough. When reading the MacArthur post, it seemed that all of the reasons were for someone would has the gift of singleness. What I was trying to convey was if you are called to be single, then the fact that marring someone would hinder your work for God. This hindrance is not bad because the person called to be single can still marry and not sin. If a person called to be single would be more fruitful not being married than married. Again, that person must be called to remain single.
ReplyDeleteAlso with the desire of flesh, MacArthur was talking about the fact that when you start adding more sinners into a mix, the harder it is going to control. We must realize that sin can separate a family. That is what I think Dr. MacArthur was saying.
Both sermons are at the bottom of the post. Permanence of Marriage is spoken about in part 2 and desires of the flesh is spoken about in part 1.
I'll read the sermons. I probably got really excited on my talk about marriage and singleness when I was responding to your blogs. As you may know, I'm a pretty passionate person and I know that I can get carried away. Besides that, I have been dying to tell someone my views on marriage and seeking the Lord's will for a long time. Not everyone wants to hear what I have to say . . . so I sort of unloaded all of that on you in my response. Hopefully it was to a good end though. Debate is fun, even if both sides pretty much agree on the issue at hand. It's good to share, you know? I'll get back to you after I read the sermons. :)
ReplyDelete