Inexpensive Ways to Honor Your Spouse this Valentine’s Day
- Create a photo postcard of the two of you
- Recreate your first date
- Create a mail box for love notes
- “Kidnap” your spouse from work or other responsibility
- Have dinner someplace different in your home
- Look at your wedding album
- Dedicate February 14th to learning something your mate loves
Read more about these ideas and others at Crosswalk.
The culture tells us to avoid pain and discomfort at all costs, physiotherapist but that’s not reality. The real question is what kind of pain and discomfort will we face. The decisions we make today will affect us for the future. We can either suffer alone for a lifetime or choose daily to pay the high cost of real friendship.
Encouraging your friends to do the right thing, clearing your calendar for your closest friends when they need you, reaching out to that new person in your group or church will be worth it in the future. Plus, it is the right thing to do.
Also, be careful of who you take advice from. “Broke people giving financial advice is like a shop teacher with missing fingers.” – Dave Ramsey. This applies to many other areas of life as well (e.g. career, relationship, marriage, etc.). Be there for your friends with Biblical advice. It relates more to their long-term happiness than they know.
Related article: Carefully Considering Our Relationships
One morning I asked God for a year-long challenge. He told me to give up sweets. And I learned some important and eye-opening things!..
…By March, page though, buy I still looked the same and my clothes weren’t any looser. I was mad, nurse and struggling with what it all meant—expectations and disappointments, success and failure, wanting and denial—they were all wrapped up in something as simple as eating. I couldn’t help but wonder how it happened that nothing happened? I couldn’t help but question the point of continuing on…
I could only conclude that I was more than the size of my jeans and doing the right thing trumped looking (what I considered to be) the right way. But just when I was ready to resign myself to being healthy but heavy, something happened…
There are two truths about God that were made very clear to me in 2008: (1) He works according to his time; and (2) he has a terrific sense of humor…
 Read the rest of the Culture We Embrace by clicking here.
Tags: diet, diets, self image
This is a cute illustration of how doubt can lead you closer to God.
What I Have Learned from Thomas (John 20:24-31):
- Thomas was a leader.
- Thomas showed me that it’s normal to doubt, store but we need to use this doubt to believe.
I have allowed His will to be overshadowed. It is only when I seek Him EVERY DAY that I am able to hear from the Lord for what He wants me to do, drug His will. Don’t allow your doubt to make your heart hard, produce stubbornness and pride. - God’s timing is perfect for what He is doing. He wants us to learn to have confident patience.
Everything needs to be for His purpose, not ours. Sometimes waiting makes us even more frustrated and impatient. - When Jesus tells you to do something, you don’t talk back. Just do it.
- Thomas taught me I could believe without physically touching Jesus.Â
- Jesus sends hope to all of us.Â
- We have Jesus’ Word, His witnesses and His Spirit to believe.
 Find the rest of the article here.
Tags: doubt
Whatever happens, dermatologist I do know that I am to continue to rest, adiposity to relax and to remember that He is God. I am to walk by faith and remember that I am not God, pills that I cannot fix the situation. My responsibility is simply to trust and obey and to be what He wants me to be. I am to embrace truth and to live by it. I can’t live by my emotions, by dwelling upon my past, by focusing on my inadequacies, my weaknesses, my failures, or my impotence, and I can’t trust in anything of my own flesh or strength. I am not to fear whatever the future holds, for the future is God’s.
I am to live by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God whether or not my reasoning or emotions agree. Truth, the truth of God’s Word, is to be the plumb line by which I evaluate every situation, every decision, every response, every feeling.
Read the rest of the article by clicking here.
Do you read the Bible every day? Just because you read it or went to Sunday school when you were younger doesn’t count. Take the time every day to read from the Bible. Use this as your personal time to become closer to God, to reconnect and grow with Him, and to know His will for your life. You may get confirmation of God’s will from other source, but this will never contradict His written Word. His Word is focused on your long-term. Know it. Follow it.
Tags: advice, direction, will of god
This article is a cute first-person story from MomSense about how you can always make yourself unhappy if you compare your weaknesses with others’ strengths. It also has a great idea for a new birthday tradition. Read the story by clicking here.
Do you find yourself comparing yourself to your friends, medical to others, to celebrities? What do you think about the sharing idea on birthdays?
Tags: comparing, depression, happiness
It is time to take inventory of our friends. Most people assume that they have certain friends in their life for a reason or that they are not free to choose who they are or are not friends with. The fact is that we choose who is in our lives, apoplexy who we take advice from and what relationships we develop. We choose what friendships we water and encourage to grow and what friendships (or possible friendships) we distance ourselves from.
Do you have the right friends in your life? Are your friends good influences on you? Are your friends believers in Christ and that he is the only way to heaven? Are your friends into New Age or other religions? Do your friends encourage you to keep your covenant of marriage or move on when times are rough? Do they look out for your long-term well being, pancreatitis even if it costs your friendship, or do they tell you what is easy or what you want to hear? Do you have friendships that you keep secret from your family or spouse? Do you put yourself in positions to meet the right type of people (e.g. bars and clubs or even work might not be the best way to meet good influences and real friends). Do our relationships — the people we choose to interact with, the time we spend, the content of our interactions — bring glory to God?
Our article today walks through many of these questions and gives you a simple exercise they use to evaluate their own relationships.
Is there anyone not on this list who should be?
Is there anyone on this list who should not be? If, for instance, someone is an ungodly influence, we need to graciously sever that friendship (1 Cor. 15:33). Is there anyone on your list that will bring other ungodly influences into your life (e.g. their ex-wife or ex-husband – they will always be a part of your life as long as you are with the person).
Emotions and feelings sometimes play far too significant a role in why and how we go about relationships. The Bible tells us, as does secular research, that the heart is deceitful above all things. Emotions often cloud our judgement. They can encourage us to see the worst in people or to look past the major flaws and sin that may result from certain relationships.
Priority relationships shouldn’t primarily be based on whom we “click with†or enjoy hanging out with the most, or even those who “need†us the most. Rather, our relationships should spring primarily from a desire to grow in godliness, encourage godliness in others, and share the gospel with the lost. This doesn’t mean that we cannot have friends that are fun and that we get along with. It simply means that we have a responsiblity to seek out and encourage good Godly friendships and to limit, and in some cases cut off, other friendships. God has a way of growing our investment in our spouse and Godly friends.
We must carefully consider the friendships in our lives, the influences they bring into our lives (good and bad) and our walk with God.
Read more at the article Carefully Considering Our Relationships.
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Tags: ccm, christian living, christian music, concert, live music, Music, music video, Natalie Grant, pop
It is time to take inventory of our friends. Most people assume that they have certain friends in their life for a reason or that they are not free to choose who they are or are not friends with. The fact is that we choose who is in our lives, apoplectic who we take advice from and what relationships we develop. We choose what friendships we water and encourage to grow and what friendships (or possible friendships) we distance ourselves from.
Do you have the right friends in your life? Are your friends good influences on you? Are your friends believers in Christ and that he is the only way to heaven? Are your friends into New Age or other religions? Do your friends encourage you to keep your covenant of marriage or move on when times are rough? Do they look out for your long-term well being, viagra 60mg even if it costs your friendship, or do they tell you what is easy or what you want to hear? Do you have friendships that you keep secret from your family or spouse? Do you put yourself in positions to meet the right type of people (e.g. bars and clubs or even work might not be the best way to meet good influences and real friends). Do our relationships — the people we choose to interact with, the time we spend, the content of our interactions — bring glory to God?
Our article today walks through many of these questions and gives you a simple exercise they use to evaluate their own relationships.
Is there anyone not on this list who should be?
Is there anyone on this list who should not be? If, for instance, someone is an ungodly influence, we need to graciously sever that friendship (1 Cor. 15:33). Is there anyone on your list that will bring other ungodly influences into your life (e.g. their ex-wife or ex-husband – they will always be a part of your life as long as you are with the person).
Emotions and feelings sometimes play far too significant a role in why and how we go about relationships. The Bible tells us, as does secular research, that the heart is deceitful above all things. Emotions often cloud our judgement. They can encourage us to see the worst in people or to look past the major flaws and sin that may result from certain relationships.
Priority relationships shouldn’t primarily be based on whom we “click with†or enjoy hanging out with the most, or even those who “need†us the most. Rather, our relationships should spring primarily from a desire to grow in godliness, encourage godliness in others, and share the gospel with the lost. This doesn’t mean that we cannot have friends that are fun and that we get along with. It simply means that we have a responsiblity to seek out and encourage good Godly friendships and to limit, and in some cases cut off, other friendships. God has a way of growing our investment in our spouse and Godly friends.
We must carefully consider the friendships in our lives, the influences they bring into our lives (good and bad) and our walk with God.
Read more at the article Carefully Considering Our Relationships.
Tags: advice, christian living, dating, friend, friends, husbands, relationships, single, wives
God is always speaking, esophagitis but you may not always hear Him. If you’re not hearing from God regularly, denture it could be because you’re limiting the ways you listen for His voice. God speaks in a wide variety of creative ways, treatment so you need to be open to hearing from Him however He chooses to speak to you.
- The Bible: … The Bible is your final authority – the standard by which you should check everything else you think God may be saying to you. Remember that nothing God says in any other way will ever contradict what He says in the Bible. Get to know the Bible well by reading and studying it often. Be sure to keep the context and original intent of Scripture passages in mind.
- A journal
- Praise and thanksgiving
- Confession
- Worship
- Asking in prayer
- The local church
- The whole body of Christ
- Silencing voices from the past
Reading your Bible daily will also strengthen your connection to God and make it easier for you to hear Him speaking to you.
Read more about these and many different ways you may hear from God in this article (click here)Â where the list above came from.
The article was adapted from the book Speak Lord, I’m Listening: How to Hear God’s Voice Above the Noise
Tags: Books, choices, christian living, decisions, will of god
Most couples experience winter from time to time. It may last a month or 30 years. It may begin three months after the wedding or hit in the mid-life years.
Do not give up if your marriage appears beyond hope. Just as most people wouldn’t lie down in the snow and wait to die, troche there’s no reason to accept passively the coldness of a wintry marriage. There is a way out, and it begins with a change of attitude. When couples persevere and take positive steps to improve their marriage, what is ed they emerge stronger, more committed, and better able to work through their differences.
Click here to read the rest of the article A Shelter from Winter Winds.
Take the quiz to see what season your marriage is in. The book goes into each season in much more detail, which would potentially shift the season that you are in, but this is a short 20 question quiz for a snapshot.
Have you gone through or seen friends/family go through seasons in their marriage? Do things really improve after being in winter for a while? Why would you encourage a couple to stay together after a long winter in their marriage?
Tags: advice, christian living, divorce, family, friends, husband, Marriage, wedding, wife
