A Fragrant Aroma to Your Husband

by Susan Sampson

I was thinking yesterday about different aromas that I love.  Burning leaves in the fall; jasmine; Christmas pine trees; Thanksgiving dinner cooking; Moonlight Path from Bath and Body Works; Pure Vanilla Extract; my husband’s cologne and my dogs feet:)  Don’t your favorite aromas minister to your soul?  Don’t they bring peace and comfort and joy?  These are gifts from the Lord.

“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere” (2 Cor. 2:14).  I very much want the Lord to use me to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ and of His gospel to my husband.  We are the “aroma of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15)  It is Christ IN us, the hope of glory.  It is only when we put to death our stinking rotten flesh, that the aroma of life, the aroma of Christ will come forth.

My dear sisters, let us be vigilant.  The enemy is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking to devour us.  He is actively trying to destroy our marriages.  He is insidious.  He is subtle.  He does everything he can to distract us.  I am seeing how easily I get distracted!!  By the least little thing.  I can spend such sweet time in communion with the Lord, pouring over His word, thanking Him, praising Him, in tears of joy over His lovingkindness and then a mere two hours later (and even as I sit at this computer) my brain can hardly remember what was so wonderful just this morning!!

Listen to how James describes this very thing.  “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:22-25). 

This is why I believe with my whole hear that the Taking the Truth to Heart and Bringing it to Life pages in our study as well as the Taking the Truth to Heart cards are so vital.  We are sheep who are prone to wander.  We so easily forget.  We are weak.  Praise God that “he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). 

My sisters, I exhort you and me to stand firm in the grace given to us in our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Let us submit ourselves to God and resist the devil and he WILL flee (James 4:7).  Do not be distracted.  Cling to Christ and His word.  Ask the Lord for His grace to bring the truths He is teaching you and showing you to life in your heart and in your marriage!  We have only 3 more weeks.  The Lord brought each one of us to this study for His purpose.  Let us thank the Lord for this study, for His word, for our husbands, for the mercy and grace we have been given in Christ.  These are all such precious gifts!  Let us pour ourselves into our study for these last 3 weeks, looking to Christ, the Author and Perfector of our faith.  Let us put our homework ahead of our agendas.  “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you” (Mat. 6:33). 

When Esther and the other young women were preparing to go before the king they spent “six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices and ointments for women” (Esther 2:12).  Jesus has already done this for us!!  Christ loved the church and “gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27).  Praise be to God!!

Love protects all things.  May we seek to protect our marriages and our husbands by immersing ourselves in the word of life and in prayer.  Love always perseveres.  Love believes all things.  “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16). 

Let us reign in our brains and believe the truth of God’s words and stop believing the lies of the enemy.  Stop giving into our feelings, our flesh.  Let us truly be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we will then be able to discern the will of God (Romans 12:2).  Let us seek to be that fragrant aroma.

So what is the Lord tenderly speaking to your heart?  What truth is He wanting you to take to your heart and bring to life?  How is He asking you to show your love to your husband?  Father God, help us!  Give us ears to hear, eyes to see, and humble hearts to receive your word.  Bring your word to life in us!  Fill us with your love that we will be a fragrant aroma to our husbands and to you!

 

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Who or What Am I Seeking?

eMoment by Laurie Aker

Focus Scripture: Luke 11:29-32

29 When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, 

“This generation is an evil generation. 

It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except 

the sign of Jonah. 30 For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh,

 so will the Son of Man be to this generation. 31 The queen of the South 

will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and 

condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the 

wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon

 is here. 32 The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment 

with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the 

preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

____________________________________

The crowds were increasing.

It was becoming more and more popular to follow Jesus.

Everyone’s curiosity was stirred.

Hoping to witness a miracle,

or something that would prove

this was not just any holy man but perhaps the Messiah.

they put down their plows, their nets, their hammers, and came to Him.

Knowing men’s hearts and what they were thinking,

Jesus spoke directly.

He cut through all of their fleshy foolishness

and spoke to the heart of the matter—their sin.

The Great Physician knew their disease and that He was their cure.

They were blinded and distracted by their fleshly craving,

unable to see their remedy, Jesus Christ, because they were so focused

on satisfying their appetites and indulging their flesh.

They came seeking a sign, to be in the know,

to be where the action was, to get their fix,

to be able to be on the cutting edge,

to have something pithy to Tweet.

“It is an evil generation which nothing will awaken and convince,

no, not the most sensible demonstrations of divine power and goodness.”

—Matthew Henry

We need to ask ourselves the question,

“Who or what are we seeking?”

Much of the church in the United States is putting aside their work,

their play, and their agendas to go to church each week.

They come to worship and listen to a sermon.

They say that they believe in Jesus, that He is their Lord and Savior,

but their actions are saying something completely different.

They are behaving like the world or worse.

Lord, by your grace, help me see what is happening in my own life,

what is happening in my own heart.

Where am I going through the motions without true devotion?

Protect me from the illusion that acquiring information in

and of itself is sanctification.

Awaken me to realize that because I listen to a sermon and agree with it

doesn’t mean that I am living according to it.

Keep me from the delusion of feasting on the fleeting.

Reveal to me where the enemy has twisted the truth to

lure me away from the Truth!

Heavenly Father, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Help me fix my eyes and my affections upon Christ and Christ alone.

Help me desire only Him and feast upon Him and His Word.

Help me be like the Thessalonians:

1 Thessalonians 2:13-14

And we also thank God constantly

for this, that when you received the word of God,

which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men

but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work

in you believers. For you, brothers, became imitators of

the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea.

The Word is living. God lives, speaks and works in those

who call on Him and receive His Word.

Lord, help me take the Truth to heart and bring it to life.

Father, help remind me that the Word is Truth, not mere suggestion.

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Far More Than All

eMoment by Laurie Aker

Focus Scripture: Luke 11:24-28

24 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person,

 it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, 

‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ 25 And when it comes, 

it finds the house swept and put in order. 26 Then it goes 

and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they

 enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person 

is worse than the first.”

27  As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice 

and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts 

at which you nursed!”  28 But he said, “Blessed rather are those who 

hear the word of God and keep it!”

This precious gift of God is priceless, 

worth far more than all the friends, fame, 

or financial security in the world. 

When the Lord and His Word

are our one true love, we have everything.

 

We want to immerse ourselves in His Word and dwell with Him often,

enjoy all of our worth in Him, find our true abode in Him and in His Word,

and magnify His name and His Word,

for the Lord is our ALL in all—our sanctuary!
 

Psalm 69:30  

 I will praise the name of God with a song;

I will magnify him with thanksgiving. 

  

 Those who say that they are Christians but have no

longing for the Word of God and no real desire to keep it

or who love the world and the things in the world

 are open to the charge of hypocrite.

But far worse than such a charge is that they have 

cause to question their salvation. 

Oh, that they would see their desperate and 

precarious state and cry out. 

 

John 14:23-24 

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me,

 he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, 

and we will come to him and make our home with him. 

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.

 And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.

 

1 John 2:15-17   

Do not love the world or the things in the world. 

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  

For all that is in the world-the desires of the flesh and 

the desires of the eyes and pride of life-is not from the Father 

but is from the world. And the world is passing away 

along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

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