by Scott Kaczorowski

In a recent Falling in Love Again with Your Lord lecture, Laurie Aker spoke about what it means/looks like to truly seek after God.  One area where she applied this to the ladies was submission to their husbands–even if they don’t agree or understand or think it makes any sense.

Men, we can translate this into the biblical injunction on our end as well: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25).1  Even when we don’t think we understand them!  And we need to love them in the way that they understand and receive love.2  (Anyone embracing the concept of “love languages” à lá books like The Five Love Languages should be nodding in approval right now…)  We get this concept clearly at a linguistic level.  If you say, “I love you” to someone in English but they don’t speak English, we have expressed our love to them but they have not received that expression of love.  We can forget that this applies not only to the linguistic realm but also to our actions.3  We need to communicate by our words and our actions in ways our wives receive and understand love.

Here is where it gets sticky.  She is probably not going to come right out and say, “Honey, I need you to love me in this way…”  Men, if you have a wife like that… praise God for her!  For most men though the cues will probably be more subtle.  There will be cues.  You will just need to be actively looking for them.  This may sound like hard work, and for some men it may be.  But we must if we would love our wives as Christ loved the church.

Footnotes:
1It was suggested to me that I make these points for the men.
2On this point, see footnote 1.
3The I had the idea for this example the morning I wrote this, upon further reflection I may have read this in the literature previously.  It would be odd if someone hadn’t made the point this way before.

Thistlebend Quiet eMoment

by Laurie Aker

Focus Scripture: Luke 6:12-16 ESV

12 In these days he went out to the mountain to pray,
and all night he continued in prayer to God.  
13 And when day came, he called his disciples  
and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: 
14 Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother,  
and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew,  
15 and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus,  
and Simon who was called the Zealot,
16 and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot,  
who became a traitor.
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Would you take a extra amount of time to pray today
after you read this eMoment?

Would you humbly come before the Lord
and ask Him to meet you right where you are?
Whether you have been praying faithfully
and diligently for decades
or have never learned to pray
for more than five minutes a few days a week,
would you allow Him to speak to your heart?

Would you lay yourself before Him and say like the psalmist,
“But I am a worm and not a man…” (Psalm 22:6).

No matter what you have done,
or how you have prayed,
would you say with Isaiah:

Isaiah 35:3
Strengthen the weak hands  
and make firm the feeble knees.

TAKING GOD’S WORD TO HEART

Seek the Lord and ask Him to do what only He can do.
Ask Him to bring a fresh wind, a fresh fire, a new thing.
Ask Him.
Cry out to Him.
God Most High!
God of your salvation.
If He has brought you from death to life,
He can certainly bring new life and new intimacy
and new faithfulness and new power to your prayer life!

Psalm 57:2
I cry out to God Most High,  
to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

Psalm 88:1
O LORD, God of my salvation;  
I cry out day and night before you.

Psalm 142:1
With my voice I cry out to the LORD;
with my voice I  plead for mercy to the LORD.

Psalm 40:1-4
1 I waited patiently for the LORD;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,

a song of praise to our God.
Many will  see and fear,
and put their trust in the LORD.   
4 Blessed is the man who makes
the LORD his trust,
who does not turn to the proud,
to those who go astray after a lie!

MEDITATE or MEMORIZE

Write out the following verse from Luke 6 and recite it 3 times.
Take it with you throughout the day.

12 In these days he went out to the mountain to pray,
and all night he continued in prayer to God.   

PRAYER

Father, please cut through the excuses that we make
to not pray. Draw us into your presence.
And hear our cry.

In His hands for His glory,

Laurie
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Thistlebend Quiet eMoment

by Laurie Aker

Focus Scripture: Luke 6:17-19 ESV

17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place,
with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people
from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, 
18 who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. 
And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 
19 And all the crowd sought to touch him,
for power came out from him and healed them all.
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Do you realize how dependent you need to be
on Jesus for everything?

Where else can you go?
For healing?
For comfort?
For your salvation?

We are all such self-reliant people, aren’t we?

In his book
What is the Gospel, Greg Gilbert wrote:
“We are convinced of our own self-sufficiency,
and we resent any insinuation that we are what we are
because of somebody else’s intervention.
Think of how you would feel if someone said
about your job or something else you value,
‘Yeah, you didn’t earn that.
You only have it because somebody gave it to you.’
This is exactly the case when it comes to our salvation before God.
It is given to us as a gift of grace
and we don’t contribute anything at all–
not our own righteousness,
not our own payment for our sins,
and certainly not any good works
that balance the account. (Galatians 2:16).”

Do these statements surprise you?

TAKING GOD’S WORD TO HEART

We all are much more self-reliant than we realize.
We are so sophisticated.
So 21st century.
We think, “Jesus can’t be all that we need.”

But whether we acknowledge it or not,
we are utterly dependent upon God and His Son, Jesus Christ,
and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Apart from Him we can do nothing!

You must put all of your hope in Him.
You must abide in Him.
You must draw near to Him and rely completely on Him.

Will you lay down your ways and your self-reliance?
Will you draw near to Him?
Will you look to Him for everything?
Will you go to Him to receive His power for your need?
Draw near to Jesus.
Bring your hurts, your needs,
and your impossibilities to Him.
Ask Him to heal you.
Ask Him to bring His power to bear in your weakness.

MEDITATE or MEMORIZE

Write out the following passage from Luke 6 and recite it 3 times.
Take it with you throughout the day.

18 who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. 
And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 
19 And all the crowd sought to touch him,
for power came out from him and healed them all.

PRAYER

Lord Jesus, I draw near to you.
Help me see my utter dependance on you.
Be my everything.

In His hands for His glory,

Laurie
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