Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Malachi 2:15

You were united to your wife by the Lord. In God's wise plan, when you married, the two of you became one person in His sight.

Happy 48th Wedding Anniversary Coach Wonderful

As you can see it turns out good but we did have a little trouble getting to "ONE" in His sight. We started off with "I got my eye on you". But after the wedding day that quickly turned into "don't tell me what to do".  The years of the power struggle were and I for and I. Then life got busy with children and work and we spent many more hours apart than together.  We both misread the 'no time for' or 'lack of conflict' for a good marriage.  I have to laugh - how many people does that happen to?  Naive, not schooled in relationships, just doing the best we could to do good to each other. I took my helpmate role quite seriously and I set out to take care of everyone in this family. Of course I gleaned my wisdom from my own family experience.  It never occurred to me that my husband's wisdom from his family experience would be so contrary to my view. Yikes that caused serious trouble through the years and bad names formed in my brain towards my husband.  That's not healthy. We were both church people but neither of us had ever known to ask Christ into our lives as Savior and Lord. Through the Holy Spirit it becomes a living relationship with our Creator. 

Now you are probably thinking ok now that they have the Lord they are fixed.  Not exactly.  We seem to have a recurring pattern: we've got our eye on you Lord, not real comfortable being told what to do, an I for an I struggle, Bible studies, Christian family camps, church and community service kept us busy.  We both misread that full and busy life for being a good Christian family.  We were changing, we were growing but we were also missing something much needed.

A pearl to string: Receiving the Holy Spirit and being filled by the Holy Spirit are not functionally identical. All Believers receive the Holy Spirit at salvation but you don't get filled just one time and ride that out for the remainder of your life. In Ephesians 5:18 the Greek word for 'filled' is a verb (present passive imperative) that, based upon the tense, speaks of a continual process of filling.  In other words, the filling of the Holy Spirit involves a continual process in the Believer after salvation.  When you are full of the Holy Spirit, you are led by the Holy Spirit. When you are led by the Holy Spirit, people see the attributes of Jesus Christ flowing out from you, the "fruit of the Spirit." (Galatians 5:22-23)

And that my precious friends is beautiful
it's what we aim at and pray for in our walk with the Lord and in our marriage 

Immersed in His love
                               Lyndi

No comments: