the reality of God’s word

three people have got me thinking this week.  1) zoomtard because of this.  2) nelly because now that i live with him he’s harder to avoid. 3) bonhoeffer who’s dead but whose words follow me around with life.

being in a marriage relationship is chipping at my heart, I could do without it to be honest but since it keeps happening I’ve decided to go with it for now.  The lastest was the raw realisation that deep down I fear (or probably more honestly believe even though I know it is not theologically true) that God is ashamed of / disappointed with me.  I haven’t allowed myself get close enough to God to find out otherwise.

Anyway my issues are kind of irrelevant but they were the context for thinking about what hargaden was shouting (he bangs his fists and everything) from the metaphorical pulpit on sunday about how the resurrection changes EVERYTHING.  I was feeling my shit and then i was thinking but if the resurrection changes EVERYTHING then it changes this, it changes me… but I still couldn’t really get from the place of seeing it logically to feeling like it was a reality.

…then i read this for the second or third or fifth time “the christian… knows that God’s word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God’s word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all.  The christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God’s claims and God’s justification.  He lives wholly by God’s Word pronounced upon him…”

The only reality about who or what I am is what is spoken by God.  And what he speaks of me and of this world comes into being.  If he has declared me his beloved righteous child that is both what I am and what I will become.  If his word is powerful enough to speak this world into existence i think we can be sure he is powerful enough to straighten my crooked heart.

L.   praying she will live in the reality of his word spoken over her, spoken to her, spoken for her.  praying she will live of His claims not her own.  repentance, submission and rest is needed.

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a wee lesson learned in marriage

I don’t normally blog about personal stuff, only God stuff – he’s not personal at all.  Anyway if there was ever an occasion to break the norm it is surely getting married.

nelly and I (see what i did there?!) tied the knot almost a month ago – so far our married life has literally been a holiday until today when i finally started back to work.  Marriage is not like the movies, it’s both better and worse.  It’s definitely more messy.

When you’re married to someone you don’t just see them in a deeper way, you see yourself more too.  For me this part hasn’t been so fun, it’s the most transparant relationship i’ve ever been in, I can’t hide.  I want to hide.  But the crap just keeps coming out of my heart.

I look at my new husband (sounds like I just bought him in tesco) and I am often ashamed by how I treat him, I am ashamed of the ways I  am impatient with him, the ways i am selfish around him, the ways I fail to see him and enjoy him,… basically being in a relationship this up-close-and-personal blatantly exposes my failure to love well.  I feel shit about this a lot.  (incidentally this tends to make me treat him worse!)

I was saying this to nelly earlier, and he helped me to see that my despair over what is exposed of my heart is only there because I refuse to believe that God is the one who enables us to love one another.  I feel like it’s up to me to fix me.  I feel despair because i view God as being on the sidelines saying ‘come on, just love him better, get it right, stop being so self absorbed and selfish..’ I am legalistic about loving well, but in fact God goes before me, loving andy in ways and to extents that I will never comprehend and I as his wife just get to partake and join in on that.  We love one another because we are wrapped up in Him.

This is a cooler way to live – and my very cool husband just helped me figure it out.  cheers;-)