Way Truth Life: November 2012

Monday, November 5, 2012

"I Love You, Pizza Man!"

by Lori Stanley Roeleveld

I answered the door for our pizza delivery, and my 4-year-old rushed up. "Hi, pizza man!"

He smiled and greeted her back. As he walked down our front steps, Hannah shouted, "Bye, pizza man! I love you!"

I laughed, but the encounter made me think. My children would identify someone they had never seen before as a stranger, but what about the strangers we sometimes talk to and interact with? Would they know that store clerks and librarians are strangers, too?

I began to play a game as we made our rounds of activities and errands. We greeted people as usual. Then back outside, I asked, "Is the lady at the coffee counter (or gas station or grocery store) a stranger or a friend?"

Initially, my trusting cherubs identified everyone we greeted as a friend. So we began fine-tuning our stranger-danger skills. Our rule became: Someone is a stranger until Mommy or Daddy says he or she is a friend. These rules apply even to friendly strangers.

I knew the game was working when Hannah told a gas station attendant, "You’re nice, but I wouldn’t go anywhere with you unless Mom says we’re friends."

Socially awkward moments? A few. Safer from strangers? Definitely.

Weigh Your Words

by Jill Savage

My husband, Mark, and I sat across from a couple who had asked us to mentor them. They rarely had a nice thing to say to one another, reacting impulsively and verbally lashing out. Like so many of us, they struggled with control over their words.

If we're honest, many of us will admit to being irritated by our spouse at times. Our fast-paced, stress-filled lives too easily feed our impatience — causing us to react, rather than respond, to one another.

Scripture clearly defines the power of our words: “Reckless words pierce like a sword” (Proverbs 12:18), and “The tongue has the power of life and death” (Proverbs 18:21).

Because careless words can wound, practicing a little self-control at home is a great way to implement change in our marriage. When we are tempted to react by speaking harshly or thoughtlessly with our spouse, we can use these three steps to exhibit self-control:

Stop. When you're irritated, angry or frustrated, don't say the first thing that comes to mind. Stop before you speak. Think. Carefully consider if your words will be helpful to your spouse and your marriage. Is this the right time and place to share what's on your mind?

Choose. Recognize that you are at an important fork in the road. Carefully choose your response. Speak words that will bring life to your marriage — or bite your tongue and say nothing.

As marriage mentors, we challenged the couple mentioned previously to start with these three small steps. We asked them, with God's help, to focus only on changing themselves. Three months later, they reported success. Small daily choices revolutionized their marriage.

When we control our tongue, we trade instant satisfaction for the greater vision of a healthy, nurturing marriage. Exercising self-control in the little things may even help strengthen us to overcome temptation in the bigger things. There's wisdom in measuring our words — we can bring healing and life to our marriage.

Talk About It

If we determined to stop, think and choose our words carefully when we're irritated or upset, how might that change our marriage?
Which of these three steps is the most challenging for us?
Could we make any changes in the pace of our life to allow us to respond, rather than react, to one another?

Thursday, November 1, 2012

To claim the Promised Land, God’s strategy for His people was fairly simple: drive a wedge through the middle, dividing the north from the south. There was only one problem, however. To do this, they had to take Jericho — a city which seemed absolutely impenetrable because of the thick double walls surrounding it. Certainly as the Israelites marched around the walls once a day for six days, the people in Jericho must have looked down on them and laughed. ‘That’s their army?’ they must have scoffed. ‘That’s their strategy?’ On the seventh day, however, the heretofore impenetrable walls came down.

Listen, gang, the walls came down not brick by brick, but by faith.

‘There’s a wall between my eighteen-year-old daughter and me’ cries the brokenhearted mother. ‘We’ve gone to counseling; we follow the workbooks; we try all the techniques — and, although a brick or two might get chipped away, within a month there are three more in their place.’

‘The walls between my son and I are keeping me out of the Promised Land of what I know a Christian family should be,’ says the weary father. ‘I try to reason with him, but there’s a wall between us.’

Perhaps you are looking at a wall in your own family which seems impenetrable, a wall which appears as though it will never come down. The key? Not counseling, not dialoguing, not role-playing. The key is faith.

‘But I’ve been marching around, working on, going through this situation for a long time,’ you say.

Great — because the longer the wall has been up between you and your husband, or you and your father, or you and your daughter — the more you know it can’t be brought down by your own effort. Walls come down when God moves in — but until God moves in, you’ll just chip away, and frustration will fill your heart. Have faith in God, for when you finally realize that human skill or ability is insufficient, when you finally say, ‘Lord, if anything’s going to happen, it’s going to be because of You,’ — that’s when the wall will fall.

Oh, it might take a week or a month, a year or a decade. But by faith in God, the wall will come down. How? In a way you would never have guessed, planned, or predicted. The older I get, the less impressed I am with people's abilities to solve problems, and the more amazed I am at God’s faithfulness if we’ll just believe Him. If you think that’s a cop-out, join the jeerers of Jericho. But if you want to see a miracle, march with the Lord, and see what He’ll do.

Deception feeds on ignorance