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Some Good Questions for You And Your Spouse

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A few years back I found these questions by Merrit Anderson and applied them for fruitful communication in the home:

Here are a few potential grace-directing questions that you can ask yourself and your spouse when the temptation to stay sin-focused wants to linger around for too long:

What does the good news of the gospel have to say about your sin or trial? About the result and effects of Christ’s sacrifice for your sin? (Rom 5:6-8; 8:1)

What does the gospel seek to remind you about God’s plans for you? (Rom 8:28-29; Phil 1:6)

What does the gospel seek to tell us about practical help for right now so that change is possible? (Rom 6:22; Heb 4:15-16)

Questions like these are helpful in at least two ways:

First, these questions are good for encouraging your spouse to see and live in the mercy and grace of the gospel.

Second, these questions can provide clear indicators of where you can care for your spouse, if he or she is struggling to live in the good of the gospel.

The challenge for us is to not stay sin-focused.  The reality is that we will sin against one another.  We won’t be perfect.  We will always be progressing to do better.  By allowing the grace of the Gospel to flavor our lives with the nourishing streams of forgiveness, we will fight bitter spirits and wicked tempers and, in the end, foster community in the home that is centered in Christ: who He is and what He’s done for us.  I hope you are encouraged to live in this way.

Ask These Questions of Yourself, Men, … I Dare You…

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From Tullian…

He offers these for the men of his church “to understand and embody the life-giving power of the Gospel in their daily lives.”

Do you rejoice in position, power, accomplishments, entitlement, control, degrees, knowledge, status, authority, numbers, and rank?

Or do you rejoice in service, mercy, sacrifice, pastoral care, love, prayer, prudence, grace, relationships, and repentance?

Are you proud or humble? Do you put others before yourself?

Do you find your daily security and significance in your own accomplishments or in Christ’s accomplishment for you?

Do you seek first place or last place? Do you boast on yourself or on Christ? Do you talk about yourself a lot? Are you prone to envy and do you get defensive easily?

Do you weep with those who weep? Do you love people and look for opportunities to serve and shepherd them? Do you revel in self-confidence or self-sacrifice?

Do you have people in your life that you confess specific instances of sin? Do the people in your life find it easy to correct you?

This is what true Biblical manhood looks like. Examine your heart and where it is found lacking…REPENT!

Good Questions to Ask Yourself…

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I found these three from Justin Buzzard:

God has given you a life and he wants you to steward it well. This involves choices. How will you best steward the gifting, personality, resources, and opportunities God has given you?

Most of us reading this know we need to make some changes in order to best invest (instead of bury) the “talents” God has given us. But we often don’t know how to discern what changes to make. I think we often make this process too complicated. Here’s one simple way of diagnosing how you’re stewarding the life God has given you. Ask yourself these 3 questions. And ask a few people who love you to give you their input on these questions.

1. What is the one thing you are now doing that you think you should continue doing? (This should target towards your greatest strength)
2. What is the one thing you are now doing that you think you should stop doing? (This should target towards your greatest liability/time waster/sin/way of harming others/etc.)
3. What is one thing you are not now doing that you think you should start doing? (This should target toward your greatest opportunity/untapped potential/a big new risk)

The other questions were from a seminar entitled Watch Your Planning by Mike Bullmore:

Is there something I have a godly desire for in my life?
Is there something God’s been stirring me to address or change?
Are there some things in my life that are not the way I’d like them to be? (these are at the 1:02:15 mark)

Ask these questions, then, and see where God might lead you.

That Befuddling Bible…

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Kevin DeYoung offers some practical advice on What To Do When The Bible Baffles:

To begin with, we recall the sovereignty of God. God wrote the Bible and he inspired the hard texts. He breathed out his revelation through Paul. And he willed it so that some things in Paul’s letters would be hard to understand. Hard texts are still God’s texts. They must be hard for a reason.

What to do next? We embrace our finitude. We admit we are not terribly smart, nor all that clever, and so we pray. As the Irish theologian McHammer said, “You’ve got to pray just to make it today.”

And as we pray we work. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men” (Col. 3:23). So we pour over words and sentences. We read commentaries. We talk to other Christians. We interpret Scripture by Scripture. We ask God for breakthroughs. He wants to teach us. Remember, Paul wrote to slaves and the uneducated, those without wisdom, influence, or nobility (1 Cor. 1:26). They could learn and so can we.

Don’t give up on hard texts or hard doctrines. Don’t settle for platitudes or for bewailing “I’m not theologian.” We must not give up on understanding the Bible without a fight. As C.S. Lewis once remarked, “God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers.” We are all tempted to shy away from life’s difficulties, be they hard people or hard texts. But consider the wisdom of Proverbs: “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox” (14:4). In other words, oxen make messes, but they also help with the harvest. If you never think through difficult Bible passages, your life may be simpler, but it won’t be stronger.

God gave us brains so we could be obedient with them. And he has spoken to us in the Bible so he might be more easily known, even when some things are hard to understand.

Give yourself to work, then. Too often we want deep theological truths spoon-fed to us. As the old King James says…”Study to show yourself approved unto God.”