Some Days Are “Fridays”, But Most Days Are “Mondays”.

There are seven days a week, a large portion of people in the United States work Monday through Friday, so obviously those people, and the family of those people, look forward to Friday each week.  Friday is also a day when many people get paid; so place the coming weekend and the addition of receiving money for your work, Friday is a good day.  This is a known cultural phenomenon in our context, evidenced through such phrases as TGIF.  The phrase TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) was first largely presented through ABC’s Friday family-friendly broadcasting block dating all the way back to 1958 with shows such as “Leave it to Beaver”, “The Flintstones”, “The Brady Bunch”, “Full House”, “Family Matters”, and many more.  The phrase TGIF even inspired the name for the restaurant, “TGI Fridays”; Friday is viewed as a good day in which nothing can go wrong. 

           

Then there is Monday.  Under the previos explanation of the cultural workweek, whereas Fridays may symbolize everything that is right in the world, Mondays symbolize the polar opposite.  If you follow people on “Facebook” or “Twitter” you will notice a trend around 8 am Monday Morning of negativity that includes a variety of comments of “back to the grind” or “is it Monday already?” comments.  Mondays are not America’s favorite day; evidenced through the fact there is no restaurant named “TGI Monday”. 

In the Christian life there are many days that are “Fridays”; we are able to join in with the joys that the Lord has set before us.  However if we were to be totally honest with each other we would admittingly agree that most days are “Mondays”.  If we think back through the biblical timeline, there were many “Mondays” in the life of God’s people; whereas there are few “Fridays”.  In the book of Philippians, Paul was suffering a season of imprisonment yet says, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.  I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”(Phil 4); this sounds like Paul was having a case of the “Mondays” but chose to be content no matter what day of the week it might be.   

What’s my point?  In the Christian walk, some days are “Fridays”, but most days are “Mondays”; people get cancer, people lose their job, bad things happen; if our joy is dependent upon the circumstances of life, then we will never be joyful or happy.  We must learn to take a note from Paul in being content.  We are not content because every day is a “Friday”, we are content because we understand the truth of “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved” (Eph 2). This truth drives our contentedness not to be subject to our temporary satisfactions, rather through our unbounding, overflowing, and Heavenly Joy of our Salvation!

Yes some days are “Fridays” and most days are “Mondays”, but with the joy of our salvation, what day it is, really does not matter. 

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.(Matthew 7:15 ESV)

God's Creation: From Cosmo to Cricket

When I was a Child I wanted to be an astronaut.  I loved studying about space, the galaxies, the moon, and the planets.  At night I would stare at the stars and try to focus on a single one trying to comprehend how large it really was even though it seemed so tiny. 

In high school I was fascinated by human biology.  I could not comprehend how my body was made up of trillions and trillions of cells which my human eye could not focus on, that made up a living organism.  It was beyond my imagination.  I was and am amazed by God's Creation.  

In the Sunday School class I teach we have been going systematically through a theology book written for the lay person which answers the basic questions of "What Do We Believe?", "Why Do We Believe This?" "What Does the Bible Say About This?" and "What Do Others Say About This?".  In the past few months we have discussed The Trinity and God's Revelation; this week we began studying on God's Creation.  

God's creation still amazes me; from the macro to the micro, from the cosmos to the cricket, God's creation is absolutely amazing.  God could have chosen to create in black and white, He could have chosen to create the whole earth flat and uniform, and He could have chosen to create everyone to look exactly alike, however He did not.  His creation reveals how far God's knowledge is above anything we could ever humanly comprehend, it reveals His beauty, and it reveals that He is gracious. God not only created in uncomprehendable detail, He not only created in indescribable beauty, but God also created a beautiful world in which He graciously allows us to enjoy.  We get to enjoy the beauty of the Alaskan Mountains, the beauty of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and the vastness of the Grand Canyon while at the same time enjoying the quietness of a rustling stream and the song of the crickets at night; God's creation is amazing. Creation is an image of the beauty of God in which we get to enjoy every day.  

What's my point?  We can allow life to be incredibly stressful and worry-filled.  Jobs will come and go, finances will come and go, sicknesses will come and go; our greatest purpose is to Glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.  One way that we can enjoy Him is through taking the time to enjoy His beautiful and awe-filled Creation.             

Christ, the Church, and Pat Robertson by Russell Moore

I think this post by Dr. Russell Moore highly continues on the discussion I posted early this week of husbands loving your wives focusing upon a timely issue.  I don't repost articles often, but I think this is a must read.


Russell D. Moore is dean of the school of theology and senior vice president for academic administration at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. This column first appeared at RussellMoore.com:

Christ, the Church, and Pat Robertson

"This week on his television show Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said a man would be morally justified to divorce his wife with Alzheimer’s disease in order to marry another woman. The dementia-riddled wife is, Robertson said, “not there” anymore. This is more than an embarrassment. This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore. Most roll their eyes, and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment (for instance, defending China’s brutal one-child abortion policy to identifying God’s judgment on specific actions in the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake). This is serious, though, because it points to an issue that is much bigger than Robertson.

Marriage, the Scripture tells us, is an icon of something deeper, more ancient, more mysterious. The marriage union is a sign, the Apostle Paul announces, of the mystery of Christ and his church (Eph. 5). The husband, then, is to love his wife “as Christ loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). This love is defined not as the hormonal surge of romance but as a self-sacrificial crucifixion of self. The husband pictures Christ when he loves his wife by giving himself up for her.

At the arrest of Christ, his Bride, the church, forgot who she was, and denied who he was. He didn’t divorce her. He didn’t leave.

The Bride of Christ fled his side, and went back to their old ways of life. When Jesus came to them after the resurrection, the church was about the very thing they were doing when Jesus found them in the first place: out on the boats with their nets. Jesus didn’t leave. He stood by his words, stood by his Bride, even to the Place of the Skull, and beyond.

A woman or a man with Alzheimer’s can’t do anything for you. There’s no romance, no sex, no partnership, not even companionship. That’s just the point. Because marriage is a Christ/church icon, a man loves his wife as his own flesh. He cannot sever her off from him simply because she isn’t “useful” anymore.

Pat Robertson’s cruel marriage statement is no anomaly. He and his cohorts have given us for years a prosperity gospel with more in common with an Asherah pole than a cross. They have given us a politicized Christianity that uses churches to “mobilize” voters rather than to stand prophetically outside the power structures as a witness for the gospel.

But Jesus didn’t die for a Christian Coalition; he died for a church. And the church, across the ages, isn’t significant because of her size or influence. She is weak, helpless, and spattered in blood. He is faithful to us anyway.

If our churches are to survive, we must repudiate this Canaanite mammonocracy that so often speaks for us. But, beyond that, we must train up a new generation to see the gospel embedded in fidelity, a fidelity that is cruciform.

It’s easy to teach couples to put the “spark” back in their marriages, to put the “sizzle” back in their sex lives. You can still worship the self and want all that. But that’s not what love is. Love is fidelity with a cross on your back. Love is drowning in your own blood. Love is screaming, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

Sadly, many of our neighbors assume that when they hear the parade of cartoon characters we allow to speak for us, that they are hearing the gospel. They assume that when they see the giggling evangelist on the television screen, that they see Jesus. They assume that when they see the stadium political rallies to “take back America for Christ,” that they see Jesus. But Jesus isn’t there.

Jesus tells us he is present in the weak, the vulnerable, the useless. He is there in the least of these (Matt. 25:31-46). Somewhere out there right now, a man is wiping the drool from an 85 year-old woman who flinches because she think he’s a stranger. No television cameras are around. No politicians are seeking a meeting with them.

But the gospel is there. Jesus is there."

Marriage: A Biblical Mandate of Christ's Love

What do you value?  There are many things that we attribute value to.  For example our money system in America, the paper that we hold in our hands is just simply paper, similar to receipts, junk mail, and advertisements that we throw away each day; however we would never knowingly throw away a dollar, because we have attributed value to it.  There are many things in life that are of value to one person and not to the next, as precious as our money is to us, in many third world countries or remote villages who don't rely upon currency, our dollar bills are simply paper to them.  Value is attributed by us to certain things; that being said what are some things that Christ attributed value or worth to?  Christ obviously placed value or worth upon Himself, His Father, and The Holy Spirit as the Godhead.  Christ also placed value upon those who would follow Him, or in short the "church".  He shows us this value because He tells us through scripture and in particular in Ephesians 5:25 that He gave/handed over Himself for her (the church).  Therefore Christ placed much worth and much value in the church that He would hand Himself over for her.  

Obviously you know though that the emphasis in Ephesians 5 is not in the fact that Christ gave Himself for the church, but it is in the comparison that Christ demands that same love which He displayed for the church to be portrayed from a husband to his wife.  Christ placed extreme value in the church, to the point of death, He is commanding us to find that same value in our spouses.  Christ does not stop at the point of calling us to find value in the same way that He valued our souls, He continues in verse 29 calling us to love our wife in the same way that we love our own bodies.  I am not sure about you, but I am scared and fear bodily pain, in that way I seek in every way and effort to protect my body from physical pain and damage.  This imagery that is set before us is that in the same fashion that we seek to protect our body physically, emotionally, and mentally, so should we seek to protect and love our wife.  Christ is serious that we as men practice spiritual headship in which we are the leader and protector of our homes.  

Now I am not unwise in the aspect that I recognize most of whom read this have not only been married longer than I have, but many have been married longer than I have been alive; I have learned much about how to treat my wife and my family by watching the biblical example that many of you portray for me as a young husband and father.  However with that being said, the Lord has spoke into my life the past week a burning desire to discover and share the way in which we as Men, the spiritual leaders of our household should treat our wife as a testimony of Christ's love for the church to a world around us who does not understand a biblical view of marriage and therefore does not understand the imagery displayed through marriage of Christ's love for the church.  Therefore I urge you as Godly men, publicly share with others how you love your wife, adore her, and "love her more than your own body" so that the hurting and dying world around us will see the biblical view of what marriage should be and can understand what Christ has done for us through loving us more than He loved His own body.