i am an offering

Two thoughts from today have been going through my mind over and over.  The first is from a meeting I had with our Pastor.  He said:

Life’s too short for mediocrity.

Good to remember and very challenging, isn’t it?  Is God satisfied with mediocrity in our lives?  Read Revelation 3:15-17 (and the rest of the Bible for that matter) to find out the answer to that question.

As I was editing an article on finances for a newsletter that goes out monthly, I read this:

(speaking of the precision needed for Apollo 13’s last burn to make it back to Earth) He asked what the degree of error was that they were working with to which they answered two degrees.  He further explained that, at only a two degree difference, they would miss the earth by 120 miles by the time they landed.  You might be asking what this story has to do with marriage and money?  We have all been taught different ways of managing our money and have developed different spending habits.  When we first get married, we may only be two degrees different from our spouse in the way we think, however, five, fifteen or twenty years later we are 120 miles apart in how we think and act in regards to our finances.

Wow!  Isn’t that true of every area of our marriage as well?  If you do not prepare properly and think things like, “Well, we disagree slightly on this one thing but it’s no big deal,” it could be a huge deal in the long run.

I totally apologize to Craig Groeschel for trusting me to write a review of this book in a timely fashion and taking months to do it! I want to live up to my word, however, and make sure this does get reviewed, as this book is a very valuable resource.

Craig Groeschel of Lifechurch.tv recently wrote a book called “Going All the Way - Preparing for a Marriage that Goes the Distance.” It is a fantastic book. It’s easy to read in the fact that Craig’s humor and writing style are very personal and it is easy to relate to him. It’s hard to read in the fact that there are a lot of challenges to popular culture’s view of love and marriage that might be hard for some folks to get through. But bravo, Craig for hitting the nail on the head. From the first chapter:

Let me warn you: this book may require a radical shift in your thinking. If small changes would do the trick, everyone would be making them. Minor adjustments produce marginal results. Most of us need to overhaul our thought processes. To experience the kind of relationships we long for, we must, with God’s help, prepare to be genuinely different.” (pg 7)

Well said. The one thing I appreciated most out of all of this book was that after the introductory chapter, the first chapter is about “finding the one.” In common cultural language, we immediately think that he’s talking about finding the one person we’re meant for on this earth. But he doesn’t write about that at all. He writes about Jesus being the one. Jesus being our first love. The person you marry will always be “the two” and Jesus will always be “the one.” Fantastic way of opening the book.

The rest of the book goes on to present some great challenges in how we handle relationships. Friendships, romantic relationships, engagements, roles of husbands and wives.

This book is a very, very good resource, especially if you are struggling with wondering how to handle a romantic relationship in a godly way while being immersed in a culture that’s full of lies about relationships and sex. Craig breaks through the confusion and lies of our culture and sets things straight.