What We Can Change

Forgiveness, Marriage 0

We generally cannot change the actions and thoughts of other people or what happened in our own past.  What we can change is ourselves.  Forgiveness is one way to change ourselves and in that way change our relationships with our lovers.  As we change, we go from anger and self-pity to understanding and goodwill.  Becoming a more forgiving person helps us to change our focus from our wounds to the present and future possibilities for happiness in our marriage.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 169

God’s Heart

God 0

God means His children to look to Him for the fulfillment of their human needs.  The great, pulsing Father-Mother-Lover-Savior heart of God holds all that the human heart — even the single human heart — can desire.

— Margaret Clarkson, So You’re Single, p. 125

Promised Power

God, Life, Obedience 0

It was the Place of Hope.  It was the place where, after His resurrection and just before His ascension, He would speak to His disciples one last time.  On that occasion, with the authority of a man who had just conquered death, Jesus would say, “Soon you will receive power, power to be My witnesses.”

He would promise them not the power to avoid trouble, but the power to live the only life worth living.  He would promise them the same power that was keeping Him on course while His own worst nightmare came true.  He knew these words would strike a chord, that they would thrill His disciples and fill them with hope.

“Soon you will have that power,” Jesus would say.  “You will be able to remain faithful to Me no matter what happens in your life.  If your spouse leaves you, you will be empowered to reveal My character.  If your son is in jail, you will be able to go on loving him.  That is your hope till I return.  Never lose it!”

— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams:  God’s Unexpected Pathway to Joy, p. 42

God Is Love.

God, Love 0

God does not just happen to love, nor is it true that he chooses to be love to certain individuals, as if he could just as easily have chosen not to love them.  Rather, it is impossible for God to be God and to act in an unloving way towards anyone.  If God is love, then all God’s actions must be compatible with his love.  This means that his holiness is loving, his justice is loving, and his wrath is loving. . . .  Consequently, any account of hell must see hell as a manifestation of divine love and mercy even if it is a severe side of that mercy. . . .  How could God be love if he draws a line at death and says, “Beyond this point I will look for the lost sheep no more; and even if they try to return, I shall turn them away.”  It seems to me that such a God would not be behaving in a loving way.  In conclusion, I suggest that the problem is not that the universalist sentimentalizes God’s love and forgets his wrath but, rather, that the traditional theologians underestimate God’s love and unhelpfully disconnect it from his justice.

— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 104

Beyond All Reason

Love 0

When love is good and right, I believe, it’s the way God loves us — beyond all reason — and it not only blesses the lives of the lovers themselves but everyone around them.  May we all experience such love in our lives, and may we recognize it and treasure it every second.

— Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queens’ Field Guide to Men, p. 238

Love Your Neighbor

God, Love, Relationships 0

Has the man no hand that you might grasp, no eyes into which yours might gaze far deeper than your vaunted intellect can follow?  Is there not, I ask, anything in him to love?  Who said you were to be of one opinion?  It is the Lord who asks you to be of one heart.  Does the Lord love the man?  Can the Lord love where there is nothing to love?  Are you wiser than he, inasmuch as you perceive impossibility where he has failed to discover it?

— George MacDonald, Your Life in Christ, p. 206

Mastery Over Compliance

Parenting, Teenagers 0

We stay connected with our teenagers as they pursue their independence not by trying to make them compliant to our wishes but by staying focused on their developing mastery in and over their lives.  Our job is to help them become experts on themselves and to help them discover what they want for themselves.  This is definitely not top-down parenting, but neither is it laissez-faire parenting.  Instead, this approach recognizes that healthy teenagers need to struggle with and for their autonomy; when parents recognize and embrace this developmental reality, the relationship is able to sidestep many of the struggles associated with stereotypical teenage rebellion.  Issues of independence and dependence, viewed through the goal of mastery, become a continuum rather than a dichotomy.

— Michael Riera, PhD, Staying Connected to Your Teenager, p. 95

Forward on our Journey

Letting Go, Life 0

Wouldn’t it be easier to skip this whole business?  If we can’t hang on to our desires, wouldn’t it be simpler not to acknowledge them in the first place?

Probably.  But it doesn’t work that way.  There’s something magical and necessary about the process, the way it stands.  The victory, joy, and growth aren’t achieved by avoiding.  The rewards come by overcoming.  Each time we surrender, each time we let go, we’ll be propelled forward on our journey.  We’ll be moved to a deeper level of play.

— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 243-244

A Conversational Walk with God

God, Guidance, Life 0

I’ll tip my hand to one assumption I am making.  I assume that an intimate, conversational walk with God is available, and is meant to be normal.  I’ll push that a step further.  I assume that if you don’t find that kind of relationship with God, your spiritual life will be stunted.  And that will handicap the rest of your life.  We can’t find life without God, and we can’t find God if we don’t know how to walk intimately with him.

— John Eldredge, Walking with God, p. 7

Stay Curious

Marriage, Relationships 0

The key here is going slowly and staying curious.  Again and again, we have seen couples turn things around simply by asking a lot of questions in the spirit of inquiry, rather than by jumping in to explain themselves.

The rule to remember is this:  Understanding comes before explaining.  Most people reverse this and try their hardest to get their partner to see things their way.  It’s truly uncanny how it shifts when you can really hear your partner, when you can say “tell me more” and mean it.  This, of course, is difficult when what your mate is telling you is hard to hear.  But when you can hold on to it, this approach creates absolutely the right atmosphere for intimate disclosure.

— Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, Tell Me No Lies, p. 121