MMA: 8 Different Kisses You Need to Employ

Let’s get this much straight:  I love kissing my wife.  We’ve been kissing since early February of 2005 (we can never remember the exact date), and it’s only gotten better.  I’ll spare you any more details but suffice to say that I believe kissing in a variety of ways can be extremely beneficial to the health of your marriage. 

 

Some of my MMA’s are a bit more on the serious side, but this is not one of them.  This is more of the straight forward, you-need-variety kind.  That being said, I do take seriously the goal of helping your marriage flourish, either to new heights of awesomeness or getting further down the road of repairing a struggling marriage.  Whoever you are, the prescribed remedy is the same today:  more kisses and more variety.

 

Here’s a breakdown of some different kisses as I see them.  There are surely more, and I would greatly appreciate your contribution in the comments section of different kinds of kisses that you and your spouse enjoy.

 

The “Hello” kiss.  Do you kiss your spouse upon coming home?  Do you have at least

The Kind of Spiritual Milk You Do Need

The gospel demands things of you.  Uncomfortable and hard things, and maybe more things than you would expect.  Believing in Jesus is not mere mental ascent; it is a whole life transformation – transforming the mind, heart, will, and actions.  In fact this transformation is more than transformation, it is newness – a new mind (the mind of Christ), a new heart, a new will, a new and different life. 

 

In 1 Peter 1:22-2:3, the Apostle Peter goes back and for the between the truth of the gospel and the results expected from our lives.  This is important to remember:  moral imperatives always come from gospel indicatives.  What in the world does that mean?  It means that commands spring forth from reality, that expectations on how you ought to live only come after a thorough explanation of God’s work and power to make you able to live that way.

 

In this section, the command to

Seven Ideas For Lent

“So, what are you doing for Lent this year?”  I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown to hate that question… unless I’m actually participating in lent, then I feel a great self-righteousness and piety stinking to high heaven.  When I was a freshman in college, I got excited about lent for the  first time and went all in – I gave up meat.  Bad idea.  I suffered long and hard for six weeks in the cafeteria of Point Loma Nazarene University, longing for a freshly grilled burger or a turkey sandwiched stacked eight inches high.  But, I persevered – come to think of it, I probably did it for some girl.  Another bad idea.

 

Ash Wednesday and Lent are often misunderstood, and for good reason.  Why would you go to church on Wednesday night, first of all, and why would you suddenly come out with a cross on your forehead, vowing some sacrifice like not eating meat or not drinking coffee for 40 days?  It just isn’t logical.  But here are a few facts about the season:

 

Ash Wednesday, which starts today (February 22, 2012), is

MMA: Disarming The Landmines

I’m no expert on landmines, but if my logic serves me correct (which should never be assumed!), landmines by their very nature are hard to find.  That’s sort of the point – put them somewhere the enemy won’t expect them and then… wham! Boom goes the dynamite.  It may be a bit of a vivid picture, but I think it’s exactly the kind of thing many, many people have laying around their marriage.

 

What is a landmine in a marriage?  Simply put, it’s anything in a particular marriage that is potentially explosive.  It’s the thing in the past that was never resolved or forgiven.  It’s the lie not confessed; the habit that’s becoming an addiction but isn’t being discussed; particular words or attitudes that set your spouse off. 

 

There are many potential landmines and they are usually undetected for months if not years.  Understanding how to

A Whole Gospel for A Whole Person

There is tragic truth in these words of Martyn Lloyd Jones:  “…a common cause of spiritual depression is the failure to realize that the Christian life is a whole life, a balanced life” (Spiritual Depression, p. 52).  By “balanced”, L.J. does not mean we only give part of ourselves to God and keep part of it for us; nor does he mean we don’t go all in for Jesus.  He means that the gospel takes all of us, it is a balanced or an entire message for the entire person.

 

The gospel is like a glorious, multifaceted jewel.  Looking at it from a certain angle you see one radiant truth shine forth.  Turn it just slightly and suddenly something else comes out which you did not see from the other angle.  Turn it again and still another wonderful, beautiful sparkling truth catches your attention.  The glory of a multifaceted jewel is not in its ability to fascinate you with one angle but that every which way you look at it, it radiates and amazes.  So it is with the gospel.

 

But the tragedy is that

What Would The Marathon Man Say To The Persians?

This question was recently posited in class:  what would the marathon runner say to the Persians had he kept running and went to one of their cities to announce the victory of Athens?  You know the about the Battle of Marathon, right?  The one where the guy ran 26.2 miles from the battle site to his hometown Athens and declared the victory of Athens over Persia.  It was a most unlikely victory for the Athenians, but you can read more about it on your own if you’d like (and apparently some of it is more legend than history).  The point of it all was this:  how should we portray this good news to non-believers?  My professor Gerry Breshears gave a pretty brilliant answer which I’ll try to accurately reflect here.  

 

The question about the marathon man sort of stumped us, as does many of Dr. Breshears’ questions.  I recently realized who Breshears is like:  he’s like a

Men As Trees, Walking

OK, I’m convinced:  Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones was a flipping genius.  He is drawing insight from the Scriptures that I just never saw before, and it is extremely helpful.  I’ve said it each time I’ve written about Spiritual Depression so far, but I’ll say it again – do yourself a favor and buy this book… it’s less than $5 used!

 

In ch. 3, Lloyd Jones goes into detail about spiritual depression by illustrating from a most peculiar miracle of Jesus in Mark 8.  Jesus led a blind man out of the city, spit on his eyes (what?!), touched him, and asked the dude if he saw anything.  The guy responds “Yes, I do see men, but they appear as trees, walking.”  This guy started to see but the forms were unclear, and he was probably mixed with delight at seeing anything but frustration that Jesus apparently couldn’t or wouldn’t heal him all the way.  But then Jesus touches him a second time and he sees everything clearly.

 

Lloyd Jones goes on to say “…all our Lord’s miracles are more than events, they are in a sense parables.  That does not mean that we do not believe in the actual incident as a fact of history.  I am simply asserting that a miracle is also a parable…” (p. 38).  Jesus did many things not recorded in Scripture, and so we need to give the writers of Scripture some credit by

MMA: How Do You Think About the Death of Your Spouse?

Do you ever spend much time thinking about your spouse dying?  I know, it’s a very chipper way to start off your Monday morning, not to mention Valentine’s Day Eve, but it’s been on my mind for a while since reading a very popular blogger confess her fear of her husband dying.  The post is well written and short, and I suggest you read it for context of the rest of my MMA today.  Over 450 people have commented on her post, mostly confessing a similar fear or sharing some insight.  Here’s the reality:  all of us have to deal with death.

 

By “deal with death”, I don’t necessarily mean we have to experience a loved one dying, though this will probably happen before we die.  Rather, we all have to give an answer for death somehow. Death raises questions – what is the meaning of life?  Why do we die?  What will happen (if anything) after we die?  The list goes on and on.

 

The truth is, there is a

Because of The Resurrection…

“What does all of this matter?”  This was the question posed by one of my friends in our community group a few nights ago.  We had been discussing Peter’s sermon from Acts 2, the first Christian sermon given just moments after Pentecost.  We’d spend maybe 10 minutes sharing points of interest, asking some questions, and then got into the fact that for Peter, the resurrection was of great importance.

 

But just what does the resurrection mean for us today, anyways?  Why would Peter give it such an inordinate amount of time in his sermon (at least 9 verses to it, and 1-2 to Christ’s death), and should this be of any insight for preaching today?  After hearing my friend confess that this discussion was interesting but

U-200: The Terror of the Two Great Commandments

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

 

Have these two verses ever struck you as terrifying?  I often see them as cute, winsome, charming little things.  Except that they’re not.  They’re indictments, judging us guilty before we even get to the other specific commands like don’t murder, don’t lie, don’t covet.  It’s over before it started.

 

Every day I must reckon with the fact that I can’t even keep two commandments perfectly.  I don’t love God perfectly every moment (maybe not any moment!) and I certainly love myself far greater and better than other people. 

 

What is our hope in these verses?  Our hope is in the One who summed up the Law and the Prophets, the One who obeyed every command perfectly.  He loved his father perfectly in our place, loved everyone perfectly in our place, and took the punishment for not obeying the commands upon himself.

 

These two terrifying commands become the wonderful commands we delight to obey.  Jesus willingly died for me and gives me his perfect record, his righteousness.  I am changed to the core, filled with the power of God by the Spirit of God to obey the two great commands of God.  Suddenly, I can love him and others.

 

Word Count:  198

 

Thoughts, objections, enlightening comments?  I welcome them all, just start typing below.  And share this with others by clicking any of the share buttons above.