Wholly Dependent

“Now suppose this man fathers a son who sees all the sins that his father has done; he sees, and does not do likewise" Ezekiel 18:14

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. Philippians 3:7-9

I can still remember the first day that she walked into my life.  It had been announced that our regular professor would not be returning from maternity leave.  Up until this point in my life, I had never met anyone as caring, or as beautiful as Linda.  I spent the next 6 months “trying” everything and anything to get her to notice me.  On the final day of school, she introduced me to her husband…a doctor.

I spent the next few years corresponding with her, all the while wishing and hoping that I could find someone just like her.  A couple of years would pass before I would be introduced to the girl who would change everything…

In the summer of 1979, at the ripe old age of 10, I met and “fell in love” with Lauren.  She was worldly, intelligent, had an incredible sense of adventure, well read (very important for a kid who was reading the Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater, 14^th ed.) and she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.  Unfortunately she was a character from the movie, “A Little Romance”, being played by a young Diane Lane, who at that time, was a whopping three years my senior.

A Little Romance, 1979

From the moment I saw that movie, like the character that played her young love interest, I was drawn into experiencing life and love through the cinema.  Thirty years would go by before I would truly understand biblical love between a man and a woman. For the next thirty years, society would define the rules and boundaries of love.

Through one relationship or another, from one societal influence to another, my life reflected the world’s view of love.  I found no rest in my heart as I pursued adventure and excitement in my relationships…and not the steadfast love exemplified by God.

Over time, I was able to separate life from art but the expectations set at a young age and the restrictive path of worldly love held together by a contractual obligation to perform the duties of a husband, left my marriage without the strength to endure or the roots to withstand and persevere through all of life’s ups and downs.

Shortly after coming to Christ, I attended a Men’s Bible Study in which the pastor shared some alarming statistics.  Most notably, the amount of time (minus the discussions about kids, dinner and superfluous issues) that couples in America spend talking to each other on a weekly basis.  And as you might have guessed by the title… we spend a whopping “six minutes for love”… connecting and talking about the things that are truly important.

When I inventoried my list of television shows that I “had” to keep up with, the Internet sites I had to visit every day…it was no wonder that our marriage ended up where it did.

That week, I said “goodbye” to a great number of “friends”… and started getting to know some new friends. I fell out of touch with Izzie Stevens, Meredith Grey and Dr. Bailey and started following Paul, Timothy and Titus.  More importantly the Spirit convicted me to leave my childhood fantasies about love and “falling” in love, and to start focusing on what God says about love.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

As I think back to the examples of the type of love the world had demonstrated, it wasn’t patient…most of the romance movies never depicted couples waiting to have sex.  Worldly love was consistently insisting on its own way, asking the question, “what have you done for ME lately”.  Even artists who I thought were okay, would add to the world’s appetite for love that doesn’t endure:

Good morning, dearly beloved

I’d like to welcome ya’ll

To see the side-effects of sex and alcohol

Please bow your heads and join me

In a prayer for these two

Who’ll be together forever

’til they find somebody new

- Faith Hill, Fireflies, “Dearly Beloved”

It’s a well-known fact that marriage is under attack in this country and the sad thing is that we have brought this upon ourselves.  That’s right …  I said it – We are trampling on our own Christian values.  The same values we profess with our lips we are abandoning in our actions.  Let us dwell on the following verses:

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.    - Deuteronomy 6:5-9

Consider these facts:

• The average child in America spends nearly twice as much time in front of the TV as they do in a classroom.

• 60% of the country can name all three stooges while less than 17% can name three Supreme court justices…If we are to be praying for our elected officials – Which camp are you in?

• Nearly 55% of children aged 4-6 would rather spend time in front of the TV over time with dad.

• A University of Maryland study concluded, after studying 45,000 Americans over the course of 35 years, that the happiest people watched the least amount of TV, while the least happy people spent the most time in front of the TV.

• According to the American Journal of Public Health, (also something I used to read at the age of 10), an adult who watched three hours of TV a day is far more likely to be obese than one who watches less than one hour.

• The average reader can get through the bible in about 55 hours.  Translated into the average time an adult spends in front of the television…it would require sacrificing 3 weeks or 21 days to go through the Bible.

So what do we do with all of this information?  We can either let society program the meaning of love or we can instruct our children in accordance with sound biblical truths.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, 
nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Psalm 1:1-2

When the media outlets of today are used to perpetuate a “how to become a better you” society and not on how to depend on God to bring glory to the Son through our relationships, then we are left with children who seek the only “truth” that is available to them. Am I saying stop watching TV?  Am I saying that technology is bad?  Am I saying that we need to start burning records?

A piece of metal can be used as an instrument of death or life.  In the hands of a murderer it can be used to inflict a deep mortal wound in the body of a victim. And in the hands of a skilled surgeon, that same scalpel could be used to remove some cancerous tissue that saves a persons life.  Are we using the Lord’s provisions for his glory or our immediate gratification and justification of our fleshly desires?

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8

I suppose it could be easy to point our finger at the world.  Or we could look into our own hearts and pray then that our marriages reflect God’s will.  We should pray continually for our lives to be a living testimony to the covenantal love expressed by the Almighty Father and that our households would be shining examples in a dark and dying world.

Wives, submit to your husbands, as fitting in the Lord.  Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.  Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.  Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Colossians 3:18 – 21

I took an inventory of my life today.  I know I spend too much time in front of the TV, watching “Friends” from years gone by.  Being comforted by temporal things and not the living Word of our Creator.

He has equipped us to carry out our responsibilities and to stand up for him in everything we do: instructing our children, the music we listen to, the shows we watch, the relationships we build and the love we show to our spouses. I’m so thankful that by God’s grace alone, I’m ready and eager to focus firmly on him and not the temporal things of this world.  It’s not about relying on our feelings, but earnestly praying to have a propositional objective view of God’s Word.  It’s about focusing on the steadfast hope we have in him, and not the foolish desire to carry out simple-minded fantasies from our youth.

Through the movies they watch, the music they listen to, or the influences in their own classrooms, our children in the absence of direction will form their own opinions on what love is or isn’t.  As an 8-year old child, I started down the path of discovering what love was and wasn’t.  As my own child turns 8 this year and enters that grade where I had my first crush, I pray Linda and I can be effective stewards and examples of God’s Word. That our girls learn about love from our firm focus and application of God’s Word and from how we treat and honor each other.

Let us pray that our lives reflect real love, and that we consider what the world calls love “rubbish”. Let us fight the good fight to the end and remember that what the world calls love God calls sin.