Precious Promises

I wrote this over the past few months while getting to know someone I met through an online dating service. I wanted to have a concise way to express to him, when the time seemed right, my perspective about both my faith and the kind of relationship I hope to experience someday with a man who either already shares or could come to understand and agree with my fantasy of how great life together as a Christian couple could be. As I post this, I don’t know whether I’ll ever get to ask him to read this because circumstances have separated us either temporarily or permanently, whichever remains to be seen.

Writing this has been very therapeutic for me, so whether the intended audience ever reads it or not, I want to share these thoughts about my heart’s desire. This is my fantasy of what I’d love to experience for the rest of my life. I’ve felt a deep hope for a long time that someday God would grant me the opportunity to experience the kind of marriage, fellowship with close brothers and sisters in Christ, and natural and fruitful outreach to those who need a relationship with God that has seemed so obvious to me in the Bible but which I’ve never experienced to the degree I know is possible. As I’ve reached the point, 6-1/2 years after the sudden and unexpected death of my husband, of being ready to want and even look for a man to share the rest of my life with, I’ve needed to ponder what I am hoping for in a relationship with a man.

My path to this point has needed this much time. The first 3 years after my husband died were spent in facing and coming to an understanding of how dysfunctional our relationship was, finally reaching the sad conclusion that my experience of marriage was emotionally abusive. After writing out a thorough summary of what I experienced and what I learned in hindsight, which I posted here in February 2015 in the hopes that others might be helped by it (which proved true), I felt ready to look forward, including thinking about the possibility of falling in love and marrying again. But I live in a small town and knew that the likelihood of finding someone there in the regular course of my life was small. I’ve prayed a lot about my future, and the past 3+ years has given me several interesting experiences which have helped me thaw out emotionally and reach the point of knowing for sure that I’m ready to be in a romantic relationship.

I’ve written so much over the past 26 years, starting when my family chose to break away from the International Churches of Christ. In 1992 we reached the point of realizing that it had crossed the line into becoming a human-led, controlling cult rather than a family of God that followed the New Covenant. We planned to take a few weeks away from it to re-study our own convictions, but once we were away, we could see clearly some ways it had become unbiblical, so we couldn’t go back. I sorted out my convictions and my hopes to find a more biblical path by writing, which eventually resulted in a series of booklets about topics that seemed to be foundational but seldom focused on in my own church experiences. They are available elsewhere on this blog and I’ll describe them later.

So, this is my perspective on life and my fantasy about living it with a man I love and who loves me:

I’m looking for a man to someday be my husband, my Aquila, which I’ll explain later, which means I want us to be intimate in every way. I want to be united mind, heart, body, and spirit. I want him to be my best friend, my lover, my soul mate, my partner in every part of life. I want to enjoy talking to him about everything, including our feelings, our opinions, our beliefs, our likes, our dislikes, our strengths, our weaknesses, our baggage, our fears, our needs, our hopes, our desires, our dreams, our fantasies. I want to fall in love with each other and stay in love for the rest of our lives. I want to follow the advice of Dr. Willard Harley and his Marriage Builders principles (https://www.MarriageBuilders.com), meeting each other’s most important needs and avoiding love busters and guarding our love banks from outsiders. I want to spend the 15 hours each week with each other that Dr. Harley says is needed to stay in love, continuing to date each other in the way that will keep our love banks filled to overflowing, separate from the rest of the time together in the mundane business of life tasks that don’t proactively make love bank deposits but that would also be more fun done with the one we love than done alone.

What do I mean when I say I want him to be my Aquila? In the early days of Christianity, Priscilla and Aquila were a married couple who worked together in everything, including their tent-making business and also in their personal ministry. Ephesians 4:12 says that God gives the church leaders whose responsibility is to “equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.” Every Christian has the privilege and responsibility to participate in the work of God in this world. Leaders don’t do all the work; rather, their role is to train everyone else to do the work along with them. Leaders have learned from others before them, and they turn around and train others. Jesus said in John 14:12, “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.” He left behind his chosen first leaders, the apostles, who learned from being with him and then started the chain reaction that was designed to continue throughout history that Paul described in his instructions to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2: “You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.” There is an example of Priscilla and Aquila passing on what they had learned when they met a God-seeker named Apollos who believed in Jesus and knew some truth about him and was even preaching about him publicly, but he was lacking in his understanding about baptism, so “they took him aside and explained the way of God even more accurately.” Priscilla and Aquila are role models for me in the fantasy I want to experience, best summarized by saying that I want to learn, together with my mate, more and more about God’s wise and awesome design for our lives and then together pass on to others what we have had the privilege to learn and experience.

So, what is my fantasy? It is to find my Aquila, the man who would first be willing to consider my understanding of what the Bible teaches in the basic areas covered by the booklets I’ve written, to see if he would either discover that we are already of one heart and mind or if he could come to see it for himself if he’s never been exposed to it before.

I want to experience being free to be partners in every way with my Aquila within our own marriage and in the lives of those we know and meet. I want a relationship that is first of all meeting each other’s deepest and most important needs, and that is so happy and full of love and joy and all the qualities that God’s Spirit produces in his children that we would want to just go about our own personal ministry and see how God can use us. I suspect that if I ever have the opportunity to experience this fantasy of a life that is one in every way with my mate – one in mind, heart, body, and spirit – that God could use our example to help others who want what we have. And I would want to share with others the biblical foundations that our happiness is built on. Whether or not we could have an impact on how church is done on a wider scale, I know that I would be blissfully happy that God has granted my hopes, prayers, and dreams to live out my life with my Aquila, the man I love and who loves me. I want to be in love with him and have the life of intimately shared experiences that God promises is possible in a marriage of two people who know and trust and follow his wise ways.

Daily life as a Christian seems best summarized as loving God, which overflows into loving one’s spouse, which overflows into loving one’s children, which overflows into loving brothers and sisters in Christ, which overflows into loving and sharing our faith with those who we know and meet as we go about our everyday lives. When we have a deep and honest and intimate relationship with God, when we grasp and bask in the precious promises God has made to us and we live with a conscious awareness of what God has revealed to us in his Word, the Bible, then “We love, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

The practicals are given in the one-another scripture admonitions. In our personal character, the goal is to be like Christ in all interactions with everyone, Christian or not, to be loving, kind, patient, giving, forgiving, quick to listen and slow to speak, encouraging, warm and affectionate, compassionate, and honest. The list could go on and on, but basically life would be a growing process of becoming more and more giving and caring in practical ways.

In our participation in the family of God, the body of Christ, the ekklesia (I don’t like to think in terms of “church”), our goal is to love each other and meet each other’s needs. Sometimes what is needed is encouragement, sometimes teaching, sometimes help to see and overcome a struggle with sin, sometimes help with physical needs, sometimes advice about how to be a great husband/wife/parent/child. Every Christian would agree on this in principle, yet very little of this kind of practical involvement in other Christians’ lives actually happens in the way we “do church” now. And this is where my personal experiences with different churches has helped me to see what doesn’t work and given me a vision for what I see in the Bible being practiced in ways that do work. I will elaborate on that more later.

In sharing our faith, the goal is to find ways to broach the subject of God and Jesus and to find out whether those we know or meet as new acquaintances are seeking God or are at least open to learning more about him. But being preached to in sermons that we ought to be telling others about Jesus is not effective, is discouraging, and only makes the preacher feel good for having admonished or even rebuked the lazy Christians who aren’t doing so. Nothing will ever change, or could ever change, as a result of sermons that simply say, in effect, “Go and do it.” It’s unrealistic to think that anybody would just jump into talking about God or Jesus or the Bible with someone else, whether they are strangers, acquaintances, close friends, or even family. It’s just not seen as polite to do so, and it will arouse negative reactions in the hearers which defeats the purpose. So, though I believe every Christian would love to experience being part of the process of someone they know learning more about God and even becoming a Christian, they will never experience it because of the way they are preached to to “just do it.”

The big question in both loving fellow Christians and in sharing the good news about Jesus with those who need the opportunity to hear it is, “HOW?” How can these desires of every sincere Christian’s heart be experienced in real life, in everyday life, in the time between the spectator-style worship services that we sit through for an hour or maybe more on Sunday mornings?

My answer, my vision, that I see from the example of the first century Christians, disciples of Jesus, is to “do church” not as we do now by packing hundreds of people into an auditorium to listen to public prayers, to sing, to take the Lord’s Supper, to give a contribution, and to listen to a sermon, and then to go our merry way for a week until the next Sunday. Very little of the “one another” admonitions can be put into practice in that setting. Yet that is the only time of even being with other Christians for the vast majority of members of most congregations. So much of what God designed for his body, his family, to experience in this life has been prevented at worst and not facilitated at best by the way we do church.

The early Christians, the ones we can read about in the New Testament from Acts onward, had close connections and deep relationships with one another. How did this happen? They didn’t have the large institutional church buildings that are the norm nowadays. They had to “make do” with meeting in homes. My suspicion is that our belief that we have improved upon their circumstances–by building church buildings and holding worship services that hold a lot more people at once than any house could–has actually hurt the ability of God’s children to experience what he intended and how he designed for their needs to be met.

Am I saying that I believe it is wrong for a congregation to build a large building where all members can gather at once? No, I’m not saying that, though it is possible that such a building might become obsolete if the congregation was to try breaking down into groups small enough to gather in the homes of members for worship. Smaller groups can, and naturally will, be more close-knit, more personal, more participatory rather than the spectator nature of worship in a church building, and the needs of the members will be more readily apparent and met by their fellow house-church brothers and sisters in Christ.

Many congregations, including my own, meet all together for worship on Sunday mornings and then encourage members to participate in the small groups that meet on Sunday nights or another night of the week. That is a step in the right direction, but just because one does meet with a smaller group of Christians doesn’t mean that the biblical goals are automatically met. It’s true that just meeting regularly with a small group of fellow believers will, over time, form deeper connections and more likelihood that needs of members may become known and then met. But in order to have truly effective dynamics that we are taught and that are exemplified for us in the Bible, each group needs good leadership by those who have either experienced the effective use of small groups for fellowship and outreach or who at least can be given some training by others, perhaps from another congregation that has more experience with this approach.

Ephesians 4:11-16 is, to me, the clear and simple instruction about how any group of Christians is to work: “Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” Good leadership is so essential, and that means leaders that are careful to use Scriptures and not their own opinions as they help others grow. I’ve experienced bad leadership on both extremes, both those who go beyond the Bible and demand submission to their opinions, robbing me of my freedom in Christ to put biblical principles into practice in my own life as I believe is wisest, and those who don’t proactively lead either by teaching or example, leaving those they are supposed to be leading to grow as best they can without the equipping they need. With Christlike, servant leadership that is worthy of respect and deserving of other Christians being persuaded by their wisdom and knowledge, the growth that Ephesians 4 describes can and will happen.

The books of the New Testament were written to address the needs and beliefs of the first generation of Christians. Now we benefit from what they were taught and the examples their lives and experiences can be for us. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” It is truly awesome to see from experience how, though the books of the Bible were written to real people with their own unique needs for knowledge and guidance as the church was being established, God also guided the writings to be exactly what would be needed from then on for all generations. There is no issue in life that we need God’s guidance for that isn’t answered in the writings that were gathered and compiled into the Bible we now have. There is an answer to everything we face in life. Answers may be in the form of direct commands, examples of how the issues were handled in that first generation, or by what is called in logic “necessary inference.” Those answers may guide our actions, our restraint from action, or our attitudes. So, there is always an answer to the question, “What does the Bible say about this question I have or this problem I’m facing?” Our problem is usually that we don’t ask that question and then look for the answer, not that the answer isn’t there to be found.

A house-based organizational structure is so practical and helpful. Whether used for worship gatherings or as separate gatherings in addition to the whole-congregational gatherings for worship in a church building, this is where the real body life will be experienced by the members, where the connections are made with each other, and where the needs will become known and then can be met by the other Christian brothers and sisters. With good leadership that teaches and encourages the practical application of all the “one another” Scriptures, the equipping, growth and maturity that Ephesians 4 describes will become the natural process God intended. Then four qualities of being disciples of Jesus experienced by the members will be the result that Jesus described as being the powerful proof to the world that he is truly God’s Son who died for the sins of every person. And this is the good news—the “gospel”—that he commanded his disciples to preach to the whole world after his resurrection and before he went back to heaven.

Jesus described four qualities as having a powerful impact on the world. I’ve experienced a taste of this in the past in a small group Bible study setting, and I want to experience it again!

First, John 8:31-32: “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The lives of disciples will be obviously different from those who haven’t been set free from sin and guilt, and that freedom is something disciples will want to tell others about so they can experience it, too!

Second, John 13:34-35: “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” The house-based gatherings are the real-life places where this kind of love can be experienced, and the members will be excited to want others to see and experience it, too so there is a natural motivation to want to invite friends and acquaintances to visit to come see for themselves how great it is to be a Christian. This is how others will be drawn to God as Jesus promised.

Third, John 15:4-8: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.” There are two kinds of “fruit” mentioned in the Bible. One is the qualities of the Spirit of God that a Christian experiences in his or her life in an increasing measure. The other is the harvest of new believers that Jesus said his workers would bring in to his kingdom and that the apostle Paul was such a good example of for us. He made clear that God is the one who produces the results of anything we do. We have the privilege of working together with God to draw others to him, and we have the promise that our work will be productive. 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 promises, “So we keep on praying for you, asking our God to enable you to live a life worthy of his call. May he give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do. Then the name of our Lord Jesus will be honored because of the way you live, and you will be honored along with him. This is all made possible because of the grace of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ.” Again, house-based groups are the ideal setting for having a way to get a conversation going with those we know as we invite them and share with them how meaningful it has been for our own lives. Those who are either already seeking God or who are at least open to visiting the group will then have the opportunity to see for themselves how God has worked in the lives of the members and the love they have for each other.

And fourth, John 17:20-23: “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.” The sad fact is that there is no unity like Jesus prayed for across Christendom. And therefore, there is not the impact on this world that Jesus promised would happen if unity were a fact. But within the microcosm of a house-based gathering of Christians, there is much greater possibility of maintaining the oneness that he prayed for, and that can have a great influence for good, as he hoped. When Christians can study the Bible together, help each other apply it to their lives, resolve any conflicts that arise, and be humble and forgiving of each other, this oneness of heart and mind is possible. It will be the stark contrast to any other organization in the world, and it will make guests of the group realize that yes, Jesus WAS sent to this world, and God does love these and all people.

One of my favorite Bible verses that is so enticing to me is 2 Peter 1:4, “And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.” Yes, he promises that we can experience a new life that is greater than we can imagine, where God gives us his own divine nature!

There is so much more that could be said about the precious promises God has made to us, that he wants us to experience. My Precious Promises series of booklets describes many of them, the ones that seem to me to be the answers to the big questions we have about God’s perspective on life. Here is a summary about them, and they are all available elsewhere on this blog:

1. “New Treasure! Precious Promises” is about what is most important in life, what is the treasure that God offers us.

2. “New Birth! Known by God” is about how one is born again and becomes a child of God.

3. “New Life! The New Covenant Paradigm” is about serving God from the heart and not from external rules.

4. “New Love! Focus on Phileo” is about the special brotherly love God blesses us with for our fellow Christians.

5. “New Family! Koinonia in the Ekklesia of Christ” is a rethinking of what “church” is all about.

6. “New Spirit! Sharing in the Divine Nature” is about what we can know (and what we cannot know) and experience of the amazing promise that each child of God has God’s Spirit living within.

7. “New Purpose! Christ’s Ambassadors” is about the simple and natural way we can have the opportunity to share in God’s work when we are experiencing what the other booklets are about.

I’ve also compiled a series of five biblical topics that give an overview of what someone needs to learn to become prepared to make the most important decision of one’s life, the decision to be born again into the new life that God offers us by participating in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is what happens when someone is immersed (baptized) in water with repentance and faith. This is also elsewhere on my blog, titled “That You May Know.”

My vision is so simple, such good news! What Jesus described in Matthew 11:28-30 is the best summary: “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Aaaahh, we can exhale, we can find rest for our souls, we can release and turn over everything to God, as in 1 Peter 5:7, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” Learning to trust God, to believe these promises are true, that he really does desire to know us and for us to know him, and for the rest of our lives to be a loving response to his love for us first, is the simplest summary I can articulate.

With that perspective, daily life is also simple and joyful. Nothing changes about the challenges that face us, but our perspective changes, we know God cares about what we’re going through, we know he will work on our behalf and will work within us through his Spirit that he gives us, giving us all the qualities listed in Galatians 5:22-23 that we all want and can at last experience, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Our practical focus is on loving our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and our privilege is to share what we have received with others who need it, and both of those goals are able to be accomplished very simply, by being involved in a small group of like-minded believers who are devoted to meeting each others’ needs that WILL happen when the one-another Scriptures are put into practice. That kind of group is a natural way to share the good news with others also. Inviting people God puts in our paths is easy to do, and we will experience the thrill of being used by God to draw those to him who are either already seekers or who are at least open enough to take advantage of the opportunity.

The most intriguing verse about marriage that summarizes best what I want to experience with my Aquila is Ecclesiastes 9:9, “Live happily with the woman you love through all the meaningless days of life that God has given you under the sun. The wife God gives you is your reward for all your earthly toil.” That’s what I want, that no matter what the daily challenges and routines and drudgery – and joys – we may go through, that we would go through everything together and live happily together because we love each other. I want him to believe that I am his reward, and I want to live happily with him for the rest of my life. This is my prayer, my hope, my fantasy.

Filed under: Personal Subjects | Tagged: Christian life, marriage | 2 Comments »