I make the money so I will do with it what I want

That wasn’t a joke this guy is serious. For the first time in a long time I was speechless. Several years ago I was riding in a car with a church leader as the subject switched to money and marriage. He went on to tell me him and his wife have an understanding with money. He is the head of the household, so he will do with it what he wants.

I thought he was joking. He then went on to explain if he decided to go golfing and it was between an average course that costs $40 for 18 holes and a cart or a nicer course that costs a lot more money he was going to take the one that costs more money. He said clear as day, “I make the money in our house, so I will do with it what I want. If I want to go golf at an expensive course I will.” The first 10 seconds, I was smiling and thought he was joking. I thought he was going to follow this up with a joke about making sure a sandwich was ready for him when he got home. After looking at his facial expressions and waiting another 10 seconds, I realized he was not joking and was dead serious. It was an awkward drive after that.

This goes back to one of the most misunderstood scriptures I deal with in premarital counseling that comes from the section Instructions for Christian Households Ephesians 5:21-6:9. The main scripture people use is 5:22, “Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”

It’s comical in a bad way how people can mess up this section. Verse 21, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” People miss the verse before this completely. Then if you look at the amount of verses. Paul gave women three verses to follow 22-24. Yet he gave men 25-33. Women you have three instructions and men, you need nine. I heard a sermon where the pastor said, women get this, they only need three verses, but men, we are a little thickheaded and Paul had to explain this out in further detail.

When talking about the husband as head of the household, The Bible Knowledge Commentary stated, “The reason for this submission is that the husband is the head of the wife (cf. 1 Cor. 11:3), and this is compared to Christ’s headship over the church (Eph. 5:23; cf. 4:15; Col. 1:18). As Christ is the Savior of the church, His body, so a husband should be the protector of his wife, who is “one flesh” with him (Gen. 2:24). As the church is in submission to Christ, so also a wife should be to her husband. It would be foolish to think of the church being head over Christ. But submission does not mean inferiority. It means that she recognizes that her husband is the head of the home and responds to him accordingly without usurping his authority to herself.^[1]

I personally believe that men are supposed to be the leaders in the home. A leader is not a dictator; it’s trying to know what’s best for the family. This can be a tough slippery slope as I have heard numerous stories of men abusing this. I have seen multiple marriages in trouble, the wife wanted and desperately needed the husband to go to marriage counseling only to be ignored. I have seen marriages in financial problems when the wife wanted to do a financial program like Dave Ramsey’s FPU program and the husband said, “We don’t need that.” One of the best ways I have heard this coming from a wife was, “Yes my husband is the head but I am the neck and I can turn the head anyway I please.”

 Men need to stand up and do what’s right. In verse 25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” The word love in this section goes back to the Greek word agape or agapao. This is described as seeking the highest good for another person. This is what Jesus did for us when he died on the cross for our sins. He fully gave himself up for us. This is what Christ asks us to do in verse 21, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Christ fully gave himself up for us and we are called to do the same in marriage.

“A wife’s submission in no way hints that a husband may lord it over his spouse, as a despot commanding a slave. The “submit-love” relationship is a beautiful mixture of harmonious partnership in marriage.” – Bible Knowledge Commentary

If you are married, what is a way you can show love towards your spouse today? If it has been rocky lately, what can you do to help your spouse out and show them love in action today?

Have a great day.

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^[1] Harold W. Hoehner, “Ephesians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 640–641.

The past does not decide your future

I remember it like I remember a kid stealing my lunch money in elementary.

What high school do you go too?

“Everett,” I replied.

An extremely shocked look came across the face of this guy at a Western Michigan party.

“Dude, I can’t believe you go there,” he replied.

“Why?” I replied.

“Man, there are so many fights, drugs, weapons and guns there.  I couldn’t imagine going to school there.”

“It’s really not bad, I like going to school there,” I stated.

Still shocked, he stated again he couldn’t imagine going to a school with so much crazy stuff going on there.  He followed up telling me this story…

The only bad thing that happened at Bath was at a party/bonfire was a guy was drunk and got into his dad’s gun collection.  He was joking around with a shot gun; it went off and killed one of our friends.  That guy went away for a little while but we heard the year he was going to come back to school the next year.  So me and some of my friends went to the school principal and told him if he steps into the school we will kill him.  He didn’t come back to school that next year and it was a good thing, we would have killed him.  That was the only crazy thing that happened at Bath, but man, I could never go to Everett.

Needless to say, I had an extremely shocked look on my face.

I said, that incident was crazier than anything that happened in all of my years of going to Lansing Public Schools.

He couldn’t believe me.

The past does not decide your future.

Just because your parents might have done wrong things like abuse, drugs, excessive alcohol doesn’t mean you will or give you the right too.

Some of my parents (I come from a multiple divorce family) struggled with alcohol and other forms of abuse.

It doesn’t mean I have too.

I have been reading through the book of Acts.

In it Paul went from not believing in Jesus and actually standing up to kill Christians.

Yet his life changed, Jesus changed his life around and soon he was sharing the Gospel message with people.

From killing Christians to become a Christian, Paul had a major change in his life.

In Chapter 22, Paul told his life story and said some harsh words towards a group of people at the time.

They wanted to beat him.

As they got ready to flog him, he mentions he was a Roman citizen.

It’s stated in verse 29…

“Those who were about to question him withdrew immediately.  The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen in chains.”

At the time you were not allowed to harm a Roman citizen without a trial.

The commander could have been in major trouble.

Paul played a card from his past.

He was a Roman citizen, but he was so much more.

It is not bad to remember the past.

It does not make our future.

When I got married my dad (Who was on his third marriage) told me this…

“You know how marriage is not supposed to look.”

Such powerful words.

Can you be someone who learns from others mistakes?

I loved the fact I went and graduated from Everett High School.

I will take all the weird looks and bad things that people say about that school.

It helped shaped me to the person I am today.

Same with the bad situations I went through as a kid.

I might have come from an abusive household at times, but it doesn’t make my family today.

Remembering the past is not bad, learn from it.

Mimic the good from the past and change the bad to make it better.

If you have fallen into the same problems of the past, today is a new day.

Jesus gives everyone another chance.

How do you want the future to be?

What can you do today to start working for that improvement?

If Paul can change his life from a man of killing to a man of grace and mercy through Jesus, you can too.

Have a great day.

Stubborn as a mule

We are stubborn.

We often have the abilities to make lives better and happier but we choose not to.

Why?

Because we are mad, angry and not so forgiving.

We could be, but we aren’t sometimes.

Why do we have trouble forgiving other people?

We feel hurt, angry and mad.

Sometimes we just have trouble to forgive other people.

Some of the hardest times of my life weren’t what I went through, but forgiving people that have hurt me deeply.

I grew up in a house with abuse going on, witnessing my parents getting in a fist fight in front of us (My siblings and I).

One time, they were arguing in the kitchen while I was sweeping the kitchen floor.

My mom was angry and yelled at my dad, “Why don’t you just have another beer that always seems to cure all your problems!”

My dad backhanded the beer and it was going right at me.

I ducked and the bottle that was going right at me hit off the wall broke and splash beer and broken pieces all around me.

I didn’t know what to do, I started to swept it up and my mom yells, “Joel, don’t clean that up, make your father!”

My father yells, “No go ahead and clean it up!”

I am confused.

Finally they both said, Joel leave us and go upstairs.

There was a lot of hate, hostility and anger in the household and it rubs off on you.

One of the hardest yet easiest things in life was forgiving my parents.

They made some mistakes and I thank God for getting us through a situation that today CPS would have probably been called for.

I have forgiven my parents for the abuse and the situations my brothers and sister grew up in.

I can forgive people because of one name, Jesus.

Yet could the forgiveness be because of me.

When Jesus first appeared to the disciples after coming back from the dead, he breathed on them and told them this in John 20:22-23…

“Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

We/I have the ability to forgive because of Jesus.

In the Bible Knowledge Commentary it said, “Forgiveness of sins is one of the major benefits of the death of Jesus….Jesus was giving the apostles (and by extension, the church) the privilege of announcing heaven’s terms on how a person can receive forgiveness. If one believes in Jesus, then a Christian has the right to announce his forgiveness. If a person rejects Jesus’ sacrifice, then a Christian can announce that that person is not forgiven.”

Bold statement, forgiveness is and can be in our hands.

We have the ability to forgive people.

Those who have done us wrong, those who are struggling with past sins and mistakes, we can forgive.

We can forgive because of Jesus.

The only reason I do not have hatred towards my parents is because of Jesus.

Jesus forgave me for my sins and I can forgive others because there is one who forgave me.

Who do you need to forgive, show grace too?

Today is a great day to get that hate, anger and hostility out of your system.

Forgiveness is so easy, just do it.

You will be amazed at how the burdens can come off your chest when you forgive.

Have a great day.

Bad karma

There are some things I believe in and some things I don’t.

I do not believe in karma.

Why?

John 19:1-7…

“Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.  The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head.  They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they struck him in the face.

Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.”  When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple rove, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”

Bad things happen to good people.

I have been reading through 90 Minutes in Heaven and Heaven is for Real, Both books tell a story of people that went through pain that not many people could bare.

Bad things happen to good people.

In the story above, Jesus went through a very painful death and Pilate recognizes multiple times, he did nothing wrong.

He did nothing wrong and suffered like this.

He did this for us.

An innocent man died for you.

An innocent man died for you.

He didn’t die for just one person, but to bare the sins of the world.

God sent his only son down on earth to die so that we can recognize this and have eternal life when we have faith and believe.

Bad things do happen in life.

Even when bad things happen, faith can overcome.

Being a minister I have been allowed to witness many things.

I get the joy of doing wedding ceremonies, baptizing people and seeing people turn away from drugs, alcohol and bad things because of Christ.

I also see people struggle through the sins of the world, struggle with the fact they killed someone, were in an abusive relationship, struggle with suicide and many more.

Faith can overcome bad things.

Everyone will face bad things that happen in their life even if they are good people.

Faith is there if you want it.

Faith can overcome.

Have a great day.