Good Marriage

Jeff and I have just wrapped up a 3 week sermon series on marriage. This was our first attempt at tag-team preaching with each other. We looked at expectations in marriage, taking out the accumulating trash, and some ideas on communication.

It was wonderful. It was exhausting.

Am I the only woman in Ontario that gets a baby and then increases my workload?!

For anyone that might be interested, the podcast is here: http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/jeffrey-johnston-epic-change/id275923312

I asked the kids individually this past week what they think makes a good marriage. I think you will enjoy their responses.

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Mykah, “When you get married when you are older.”

Me, “Like how old?”

Mykah, “Like when you are seventeen.”

Then over dinner the night before the last message I brought it up & told them I was going to share their answers with the church because I liked them so much. She wanted to be reminded what she had said, so I told her.

Then she said, “I changed my mind. I meant to say eighty.”

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Carter just may be smarter than anyone gives him credit for…

Me, “Carter, what do you think makes a good marriage?”

Carter, “Love.”

Me, “Anything else?”

Carter, thinking hard, “I think it’s good if you marry someone you’ve known since you were a kid.”

Me, “Why is that? I didn’t know daddy when I was a kid.”

Carter, “Because then you’ve had time to know a lot about them.”

To throw him off a bit I said, “But what happens if you don’t actually like what you know?”

He said, I kid you not, “Then you’re just going to have to get over it.”

(Which is probably the best marriage advice I’ve heard.)

So he concludes by saying, “I think a good marriage is made up of love, knowing a lot about each other and not getting a divorce.”

Next time we’re asking Carter to preach.

He can even…

This past week has been challenging for me in ways that even this tell-all girl cannot tell-all.

New joy came to me through something my 4 year daughter said at bedtime the other night.

We are reading through The Message for kids, and I had finally convinced her that we should read it through cover to cover instead of randomly picking stories, which is her preferred method, because it means we can read the favored stories over and over.

We had come to the story of the parting of the Red Sea, which also means that we have finished reading about the plagues and the captivity in Eygpt. I was feeling a bit stirred up in my spirit and to be honest, was trying to make sure that Mykah was really “getting it”. She is four, mind you, and I think her favorite part of Bible reading is trying to shut the book before I have completed the last page 🙂

So, this particular night I expounded a bit on the written story, and said, “Mykah, did you know that we serve a powerful God? He is so much bigger than even all that water (the Red Sea)! He can do amazing things!

She immediately responded, “And He can even change my heart.”

I am choked up again right now, because the more I think about it, the more I KNOW that the biggest miracles of all, are those when God transforms the garbage within and brings out His Glory in the midst of our mess.

In what ways do you need POWERFUL GOD to work a miracle in you today?