For My Wife

From Steven Curtis Chapman's new CD, "This Moment."

Here are the full lyrics:

You're up all night with a screaming baby
You run all day at the speed of life
And every day you feel a little bit less
Like the beautiful woman you are

So you fall into bed when you run out of hours
And you wonder if anything worth doing got done
Oh, maybe you just don't know
Or maybe you've forgotten

You, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time

With every "I know you can do it"
Every tear that you kiss away
So many little things that seem to go unnoticed
They're just like the drops of rain over time
They become a river

And you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time

You're beautiful
You're beautiful
How you're changing the world
You're changing the world

You, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
Oh, I believe that you
You are changing the world
One little heartbeat
At a time

And you're changing the world

Headship & Submission

In Part 1 of "Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head" (read or listen), John Piper takes a look at the mystery of a husband and wife being a shadow of Christ and the Church; he addresses the egalitarian view of gender roles; and he closes by putting forth the following definitions for headship and submission referred to in Ephesians 5:21-33:

• Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christ-like, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.
• Submission is the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts.

Piper will expand on this definition of headship in Part 2.

Double Function of Grace

In "Marriage: Pursuing Conformity to Christ in the Covenant," John Piper builds on his previous message of "Forgiving and Forbearing" (which I referred to in a previous post):

...we have emphasized that this grace empowers husbands and wives to keep their covenant by means of forgiveness and forbearance. That emphasis is at the heart of what grace is: treating people better than they deserve. ...

... But now I want to emphasize another truth about grace. It not only gives power to endure being sinned against, it also gives power to stop sinning.

In all our emphasis on forgiving and forbearing, you might get the impression that none of our sinful traits or our annoying idiosyncrasies ever changes—or ever should change. So all we can do is forgive and forbear. But what I want to try to show from Scripture today is that God gives grace not only to forgive and to forbear, but also to change, so that less forgiving and forbearing is needed. That too is a gift of grace. Grace is not just power to return good for evil; it is also the power to do less evil. Even power to be less bothersome. Grace makes you want to change for the glory of Christ and for the joy of your spouse. And grace is the power to do it.

Piper explains that the forgiving and forbearing serves as a "rock-solid foundation" on which requests for change can be made without coming across as a threat. I think this ordering of forgiving and forbearing before making changes also reflects the order of our salvation. God forgives us, as Romans 3 tells us: "God presented [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished..." And then God works sanctifying change in us, as Philippians 2 says: "...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose."

The Compost Pile

As I continue to "work" my way through John Piper's sermon series on marriage, I listened to "Marriage: Forgiving and Forbearing" (read or listen) today. He ended the sermon with an analogy of a compost pile that I was thought was quite good:

So what about the compost pile? Picture your marriage as a grassy field. You enter it at the beginning full of hope and joy. You look out into the future and you see beautiful flowers and trees and rolling hills. And that beauty is what you see in each other. Your relationship is the field and flowers and the rolling hills. But before long, you begin to step in cow pies. Some seasons of your marriage they may seem to be everywhere. Late at night they are especially prevalent. These are the sins and flaws and idiosyncrasies and weaknesses and annoying habits in you and your spouse. You try to forgive them and endure them with grace.

But they have a way of dominating the relationship. It may not even be true, but it feels like that’s all there is—cow pies. I think the combination of forbearance and forgiveness leads to the creation of a compost pile. And here you begin to shovel the cow pies. You both look at each other and simply admit that there are a lot of cow pies. But you say to each other: You know, there is more to this relationship than cow pies. And we are losing sight of that because we keep focusing on these cow pies. Let’s throw them all in the compost pile. When we have to, we will go there and smell it and feel bad and deal with it the best we can. And then, we are going to walk away from that pile and set our eyes on the rest of field. We will pick some favorite paths and hills that we know are not strewn with cow pies. And we will be thankful for the part of field that is sweet.

Our hands may be dirty. And our backs make ache from all the shoveling. But one thing we know: We will not pitch our tent by the compost pile. We will only go there when we must. This is the gift of grace that we will give each other again and again and again—because we are chosen and holy and loved.

---

© Desiring God

Once again, follow the links to read or listen to this sermon, or go to the page for the entire sermon series here.

Go There With You

After listening to a couple of John Piper's sermons about marriage (see previous post), I thought back to my wedding. My wife and I will celebrate our 5th anniversary next month. While I was in college, I heard the following song and immediately asked my sister if she would sing it in my wedding. Not exactly a strange request, as my sister has sung in many weddings. The strange part was that I wasn't even dating anybody at the time, let alone planning a wedding. Well, three years later, my sister made good on her word and sang Steven Curtis Chapman's "Go There With You" at my wedding.

I know you've heard me say these words before
But every time I say I love you the words mean something more
I spoke them as a promise right from the start
I said death would be the only thing that could tear us apart
So now that you are standing on the edge of the unknown
I love you means I'll be with you wherever you must go

I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone
And fill it up with you make all your joy and pain my own
No matter how deep a valley you go through
I will go there with you
I will give myself to love the way Love gave itself for me
And climb with you to mountaintops or swim a raging sea
To the place where one heart is made from two
I will go there with you

I see it in your tears you wonder where you are
The wind is growing colder and the sky is growing dark
Though it's something neither of us understands
We can walk through this together if we hold each other's hand
I said for better or for worse I'd be with you
So no matter where you're going I will go there too

I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone
And fill it up with you make all your joy and pain my own
No matter how deep a valley you go through
I will go there with you
I will give myself to love the way Love gave itself for me
And climb with you to mountaintops or swim a raging sea
To the place where one heart is made from two
I will go there with you

I know sometimes I let you down
But I won't let you go; we'll always be together
I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone
And fill it up with you make all your joy and pain my own
No matter how deep a valley you go through
I will go there with you
I will give myself to love the way Love gave itself for me
And climb with you to mountaintops or swim a raging sea
To the place where one heart is made from two
I will go there with you

Marriage

I've been quite blessed with the examples of marriage that God has surrounded me with. My wife and I are probably in the minority, but we don't have any immediate family members or close friends who have suffered through divorce. Not that we're surrounded by perfect people or perfect marriages - not by any means. But we are surrounded, for the most part, by couples who take marriage seriously as a covenant picture of Christ and His church.

John Piper, Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, has been preaching a series on marriage titled "Marriage, Christ, and Covenant: One Flesh for the Glory of God." Here are links to the sermons thus far:

• Staying Married Is Not About Staying in Love (It's About Keeping Covenant), Part 1 - Read or Listen
• Staying Married Is Not About Staying in Love (It's About Keeping Covenant), Part 2 - Read or Listen
• Marriage: God's Showcase of Covenant-Keeping - Read or Listen
• Marriage: Forgiving and Forbearing - Read or Listen
• Marriage: Pursuing Conformity to Christ in the Covenant - Read or Listen
• Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 1 - Read or Listen
• Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 2 - Read or Listen
• The Beautiful Faith of Fearless Submission - Read or Listen

If you really want, you can even watch video of any of these sermons at DesiringGod.org.

I've listened to the first two sermons and been humbled to be reminded that my marriage is not about me, or even about loving my wife, but is ultimately about glorifying God, who sent His Son to give His life for His bride. Whether or not you read or listen to any (or all) of the sermons, please remember to pray for the marriages of those around you. Pray that they would be examples, dim as they may be, reflecting the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.