Oh dear! December and January got away from me! There was Christmas, a super fun Disneyland trip right after and we rang in the new year there (*side note: Almost all of us were standing right next to Dennis Quaid there, except me watching the littles while everyone rode Radiator Springs. They think they raced his car!), and a long flu to recover from when we got home. Nonetheless, I have been pursuing love and not even remembering to blog about it. I have seen growth and am so thankful. I know marriage has peaks and valleys and we are on the peak right now. It is such a lovely place to be. My pastor has quoted that book, "Don't sweat the small stuff and it is all small stuff." The small stuff seems not to be so offensive as it used to be! I was thinking on this this morning and how far it goes just to be patient with our spouse when they offend us and to just let more things go. The scripture, "Love covers a multitude of sins," came to me when I thought of it. I had to stay home from church with little Noah because he had a fever and listened to a John Piper sermon, "Love Her Less, Love Her More." Hardly a couple of hours after I had thought on it, Piper was quoting that very verse and talking about exactly what I had been dwelling on! The sermon lined right up with it! I love it when it seems the Lord seems to be affirming things to us. It happened not too many weeks back with a sermon my pastor preached as well.
My notes on Piper's sermon~
If your marriage is going to make God look glorious, you must be more satisfied in God than marriage. If he's vastly more beautiful to us than we are to each other. Long-suffering required to be in this marriage for the glory of God. Daily, hourly, yearly, decades long dying, self-denial that will be required to love this man/woman so God gets the glory. How does love cover a multitude of sins? You're married to a sinner, your kids are sinners, there's a daily disappointment in life, at church, in the home. If this is not figured out, if you don't find a way to cover those sins...this is the end! True love covers them so you don't see them or they don't make you bitter, angry, hard, resentful...how does love cause you not to respond that way?! Faith working through love to cover all these sins in my family, friends, in my church... Faith in what? What act of faith releases a love that covers sins and keeps me happily engaged in all my relationships without bitterness and anger, resentment, and hardness? Here's my sentence: "'Piper, you have a blood-bought, inexpressively happy, totally undeserved future.'" If I could believe that at every moment of conflict, every moment of difficulty, at every moment of frustration, at every moment as I look out onto the world, I'd be a loving man. If our marriages are going to show God gloriously all satisfying, then we must find more satisfaction in Him than in anything, especially marriage. Marriages sweetened by the glory of God...Marriages to portray truth and beauty...Make God central in preaching, not marriage. HE is my satisfaction.
http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/love-her-more-love-her-less
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