Sin Problem or Purpose Problem?
In a world where purity can almost be unheard of amongst many people, you have to ask yourself: why is purity so hard to obtain and maintain? Whether you are a new believer, mature believer, nonbeliever, or anything in between, the reality is that maintaining purity in relationships can be very challenging.
Unfortunately, purity is often times absent not only in the lives of unbelievers, but also in believers themselves. What causes people to get into relationships and forfeit their purity with people who they are not married to? Though there are several things that can attribute to this issue, I feel like a major one is not so much dealing with sin itself, but dealing with purposeless relationships and purposeless lifestyles.
The enemy loves to convince people that just because they slipped up and compromised their purity, that they are plagued with an unbreakable sin issue. The thing is, we are all plagued with this same issue with sin. So why is it that some can beat it and others cannot? Just because we were born into sin does not mean that we must be slaves to it according Romans 6.
If you find yourself in a relationship in which you are compromising your purity, I would challenge you with this question: Do you have a sin issue or a purpose issue?
I believe that when people fall into sin it’s usually due to a lack of understanding or a lack of being in purpose. When you are in a purposeful relationship and you know that the relationship has a reason to stand for purity, it makes it a lot easier to fight temptation, because you understand the purpose behind it. Think about Jesus, He knew the pain that He was about to experience on His way to the cross, yet endured every aspect of it because He understood the purpose of His actions. What are the purposes of the relationships you are in? Are there people waiting on the other side of your experiences for you to help and walk them through similar situations?
If you understand your purpose in being in a relationship, it makes it easier for you to fight the temptations that come. I can endure anything if I fully understand the purpose behind it. So the next time you find yourself in a relationship or even spending time with someone of the opposite sex, you should ask yourself, is there a purpose behind this? If there is a Godly purpose behind it, the fight for purity becomes a little easier. We are no longer just hanging out with idle time or even dead end situations. We can now have meaningful and purposeful conversations that lead to growth and honor of God. Just because you have fallen into sin before, does not necessarily mean you have some deep rooted sin issue. It could just mean that you have a purpose issue and lack an understanding of your own purpose and the purpose for the relationship you are in. Find the purpose and fight and endure everything else with an understanding of the purpose at the end.
The parenting can be a heavy job sometimes, especially when your kids are misbehaving and you have to think of different ways to make them reconsider and change their bad behaviour in the future. The punishments are the most used ways for the shaping of the mind of the children but they have to be created wisely, in order to be achieved the right effect. Making the kid do the dishes, vacuum the carpets or take out the laundry are among the common punishments which the parents use every day. This is a smart strategy which will either make the child more responsible or will end up making the little one even more rebellious than before. That is why you have to consider all pros and cons of the punishment you are planning to give to your kid in advance, if you want to avoid dealing with the bad side effects of your decision.
Cleaning your entire home might be of great importance for the reshaping of the behaviour of your child. Since the good order and the presentable look of your property have to be maintained any way, making your kid participate in your daily or weekly cleaning routines will definitely teach him or her a good lesson and it will also help you in a way. Before you make the important decision of burdening your children with various cleaning task or other household chores, it will be very useful to sit down and make a list with the pros and cons which come with your choice. In this article we will present to you some examples for the common advantages and disadvantages of using the different chores as a punishment tool.
The Pros
In the category with pros of punishing your children with the performing of different household chores could appear several things. Undoubtedly, the most obvious pro is the fact that by helping around the house, even without wanting, the child will learn to be more responsible. What will begin as a punishment might develop into an important habit which will help to the child later in his life to plan and accomplish easier the maintenance of his personal home.
Another pro is that in the course of the punishment, the kid will learn to work with various utensils, appliances and products. For instance, if you decide to punish your 13 year-old daughter with ironing the clothes, she might not like it but will definitely remember how to use the iron.
The punishing will definitely make the children respect you more. This will teach them that every bad decision they make and the following actions from it have consequences in life. Even though they might not realize that immediately, they will certainly understand you later when they are more mature.
The Cons
As good as the punishing with household chores looks to you, you have to consider also the bad sides of that decision and it certainly has such. One of them is burdening the mind of the child with negative experiences. If the kid has never done any work around the house before, making him or her do it by force might lead to the hating of this type of work in the future.
Another thing you should consider for your list with cons is whether or not your child will be able to handle the cleaning, the washing or some other type of household task you are planing to give. If your kid is too small, this type of jobs might seem too complicated and he or she might not even understand the meaning of the punishment. You should also think about whether or not it will be better and more productive to think of some other way to teach your little one a lesson.
Author Bio: Kathleen Crane is a busy mother and housewife but her busy schedule at TenancyCleaners NW5 don’t leave her children without the daily dose of hugs and love.
I love the New Year, especially as a coach. I really enjoy hearing about people’s 2015 plans for their money, and nothing makes me happier than seeing people achieve those plans!
But what breaks my heart is seeing financial goals pass like many other resolutions. I never want people to stay in the same place, when I know they deserve financial growth.
Those who struggle to see growth may have very complex situations outside of their control, but the majority of them are married to one or more of the below excuses. But I’m here to retire these phrases in 2015. I’m retiring them, so that you can see greater financial progress in 2015.
#1 “A budget is not for me, it’s too restricting”
The popular misconception is that living on a budget is limiting. I usually hear it right before they say, “I want to enjoy my hard work”. And I totally get it. We work hard Monday through Friday, so who wants to limit their spending after all of that? Well I’ll tell you who, people who want to have money!
Budgeting does limit what you spend, but it limits what you spend so that you’re sure to spend on things that will make your future easier (savings and investments). What you don’t want to do is enjoy all of your hard work now, and have to work even harder when you’re older and ready to retire.
Instead view your budget as a means to get you to a brighter future (here’s a free one for you to try out).
#2 “I don’t have enough money to save”
The beauty of budgeting is that it allows you to know where you’re money is going, so that you can make sure some of it goes toward healthy items, like savings. If you don’t budget, you end up spending on other stuff, and you never will have money for saving.
Those who save aren’t able to because they have a lot of free money lying around. They’re able to save because they force themselves to. They spend less in other areas.
Realizing the control you have over your money, and the control you have to exercise over your money will open the doors for financial growth.
#3 “Don’t worry, it’ll just work out”
This is probably one of the worst phrases you can say about your money. And it’s not an attack on faith. Trust me, I know that God’s mercy, grace, favor, and purpose for my life is the ONLY reason why I am where I am. But I also know that God is not an ATM that gives funds at your request.
Either I can wait for God to work it out while I continue to spend frivolously with no regard for my future, or I can take the steps necessary to make sure that when He does it, I’m ready to receive it. I choose the latter every time. I take the steps in the natural to show God that He can trust me with a little, and however much more He wants to bless me with in the future J.
There’s nothing wrong with having faith that God will work it out, but we must align our actions with our faith.
#4 “Yea, I can loan it to you”
I know this one is tough for a lot of people. Kind, compassionate hearts want to help everyone who is in a bind, but if it consistently stops you from reaching your goals, you have to learn to say “no”.
This is especially true if you’re a first generation game changer. If your parents and parents’ parents struggled living paycheck to paycheck, you have a lot of pressure. But be wise in how and how often you help because you have the opportunity to significantly shift finances for future generations. Someone has to break the cycle.
#5 “But I want our kids to have more than what I had growing up”
We all want our kids to have a better future. But what does that look like? Is it more and better clothes, shoes, games, phones, jewelry? Or is it educational funds, savings accounts, and the opportunity to not have to go into debt? New things aren’t bad, but you don’t want to sacrifice their future for their right now. And it’s extremely important to teach them what to value (the younger the better!).
Make sure some of the spending on your kids is toward financial goals that will teach them strong money values and give them a more promising future (see 5 Lessons to Teach Our Kids About Debt).
2015 can be an awesome year with a plan. If you don’t yet have one, see how I can help!
I was still a teenager when I officially “went crazy,” according to my friends. I literally went from graduating from high school to planning a wedding with my beautiful young fiancée. Six months later I was waiting for her at the altar.
Why did my friends think I was crazy? Because in their well-pondered logic, I was still in the infatuation phase of the relationship. From their perspective, there was a likelihood that I was marrying Sarah because I still had the “warm fuzzies.” Good analysis, guys, but your logic was flawed!
We had invested seven years of friendship into this relationship already. We had fights where we got so mad at one another that we couldn’t even speak. We laughed so hard that we gasped for precious oxygen between intervals of embarrassingly high-pitched guffaws. We wiped away tears that we had caused one another to shed.
My point? Infatuation was not the engine driving our decision. Love was. Love anchored me to her bedside when she had her wisdom teeth removed and I helped her up from her bed to the bathroom door because she was so nauseated she couldn’t stand. Undiluted, ever-increasing love planted her feet before that altar and emboldened her tear-jerking vows to me—me—on our wedding day. Yes, it was love, but also peace. It was the perpetual peace of God in us that evaded well-intentioned skeptics and hand-wringing nervousness of people around us.
Though the objective of marriage is not to fulfill my needs, these are five reasons that I needed marriage—and still do:
1. I need what God hid for me to find in my wife. God has graciously and humorously deposited attributes of Himself throughout creation. My wife is a treasure trove of beauty that contains pieces of the mysteries of God that I am privileged to unearth, through the inexhaustibility of Christ in Sarah. (2 Corinthians 4:7)
2. I need to love someone even when there isn’t immediate gratification. Godly marriage is an invitation to invest into a something big that doesn’t only benefit us. I need to love outside of myself, my ambitions, my rewards. I need marriage because it evokes an “other-worldly,” supernatural, bond-breaking love that “covers a multitude of sins.” (I Peter 4:8)
3. I need my wife’s tenderness. I need my wife’s feminine tenderness. I get into “warrior mode,” slaying dragons, and hunting beasts to protect and provide for my family. But God gifted man with wives to bring the beauty and tenderness of His nature to man. My wife does that for me.
4. I need my wife’s relationship with the Lord. My wife is such a worshiper! She is prone to enter into the presence of God and man, waving the banner of His majesty. She brings to my relationship with the Lord the reverence and awe of Him that I so often neglect.
5. I need my wife’s friendship. I need an encounter, in the flesh, with true unconditional love. My wife knows things about me that none know, besides God Himself—and she loves me and approaches my weaknesses with patience and faith in the God Who “works all things together for the good of those who love Him.” (Romans 8:28)
Every night I kiss the face of a fellow pilgrim who nudges me ever-closer to the shores of Heaven. In the end, we will reach those shores together and look more like Jesus because of our journey in marriage. I needed marriage then, and I need it today. And I accept this certainty with a smile on my face.
Does marriage provide God-ordained solutions to your shortcomings? How does it push you closer to Christ?
In the previous article, I described some tips a pastor gave to find (or not find) a husband.
- Let your husband find you.
- Make a list of all of the things you want in a husband.
- Trust the word that God gives you.
I followed these steps and my husband of almost four years has every quality I desired from height to ethnicity to personality.
When I heard the sermon I was only 19 and the story seemed far fetched but I was so desperate for relief that I was ready to try anything. I must have sat in that bath tub for more than two hours listing all of the things I desired and trying to be honest with myself and God. There were many times that I said what I thought I wanted and then had to mentally erase these so-called qualities that have gotten me in trouble in the past. After praying, I sat silently, waiting for God to speak to me. It wasn’t long before I heard a quiet voice tell me that I will meet my husband in a year and six months after, I would be married. He said that the devil will send people in my way but not to get distracted.
The very next day, I met a Packaging Designer for Fisher Price. He was sexy, strong, had money and was a little mysterious, every girl’s superficial dream. I tried to turn him into the man I asked for but in the end, I realized he was like every other “man” I dated: selfish and abusive. Even with that experience, I still tried to force three more relationships, including one with my ex…and his baby….and his baby-mama and each were utter failures. June 2010, a year after my prayer, I decided that I wasn’t going to get married; I’d just focus on my writing career. The next week, I met Robert Crewe. His best friend introduced us because we were both writers. We spoke everyday for three days before we actually met. I was convinced that we were going to be friends at most. Three days after meeting him, while on our first date, we stood at the Promenade Downtown Brooklyn (New York).
I said to him, “There’s something that I want to say but I’m afraid to say it.”
He said, “I want to say it too.”
Instead I told him, “I want a daughter with your eyes.”
Three years later, I gave birth to Jael Octavia Crewe, a beautiful little girl with daddy’s eyes and mommy’s nose.
There are no words to explain God’s miracles but I want you to know that you can and will experience them. I was a woman with very little faith in what God spoke into my life but I always kept it in the back of my mind because I knew that maybe, one day, it would be true. Everything He spoke into my life has happened thus far. Even though I had naysayers, including my spiritual counselor, I held on to God’s blessing. As we move toward a new year, I want you to sit down with God and discuss your future. Don’t be afraid to claim your destiny and declare your victory.
Revelation 21:6-7New Living Translation (NLT)
6 And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. 7 All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.
Categories
Keep Her How You Got Her
Fellas. I’m going to keep this short and sweet. Whatever you did to get her, plan on doing that for the rest of your life.
Whether you wined and dined her, gave her flowers every week just because or sang and wrote poetry, the precedent that you have set must continue forever. You have set the standard and your wife or future wife will expect nothing less. It can be done and should be done especially since you were sincere in the beginning. If you decide to lower the standard it will be as if you tried to fool her. It will be as if you planned a bait and switch. It will seem as if it was all a ruse.
What’s that you say? You don’t have the time or the money. Make time and if you are strapped for cash, be creative. It really isn’t about the money, it truly is about the thought.
Brothers it’s up to you to keep the fire burning intensely as it was in the beginning. When thinking about this topic a scripture comes to mind:
Proverbs 15:18-19
18 May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19 A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
Be blessed and enjoy your day.
Joel Pearson
Categories
Home for the Holidays
This will be the 7th Christmas Joel and I have shared together as a married couple. Christmas or any holiday can be stressful on a couple, especially new couples. You now have two sets of families to visit and you are splitting your time between your family and your spouses family. I can speak from experience that this was hard in the beginning. I had special memories and traditions that I wanted to continue with my family but wanted to include my husband now. Joel also wanted to share his traditions with me. How do you fit all this in in ONE day? Both of our families lived within an hour from each other so that made splitting time much easier. We have had many debates and discussions about how we will spend our time. We have to and still are working through it, even more so since we have a child.
Here are 5 key pointers that helped us enjoy our Holiday trips home:
1. Have discussions with your family about your plans before you travel so no one has false expectations.
2. Be considerate of your spouse and the fact that he or she may or may not feel as comfortable as you are around your family.
3. Be inclusive of your spouse. Fill him or her in on the traditions and explain why it is so special to your family.
4. Be thankful that you now two sets of families to celebrate with.
5. Prayer and patience will be your best tools.
It was four years ago when I expressed to my pastor that I was in love and we were going to be married. He insisted that my husband-to-be only told me those words to sleep with me. It was at that point that I knew I didn’t have a counselor. I felt alone. How dare he try to take away my blessing? That day I walked away feeling like I was in a fight for my life. I knew that his feelings were that of many people who could not understand finding happiness in just 6 months.
A year and a half before meeting the love of my life, I sat in a bath tub with tears flowing down my face. I was suffering from a broken heart. My ex-boyfriend cheated on me again and this time got a girl pregnant. I felt like dying. Was he the best that I could do?
As I cried, I recalled a sermon that I heard just a few weeks before. He met a young woman who was desperate for a husband. He explained to her that her husband will find her.
“The man who finds a wife finds a treasure, and he receives favor from the LORD.” Psalm 18:22
As women, we cannot force relationships because its not our calling to. God created man FIRST meaning it is his duty to initiate the relationship. When he finds his wife he finds a good thing because he has found the missing part of HIM.
The pastor then instructed her to make a list of all of the qualities she desired in a husband and said that in a year, she will be married. The word of God says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7 It is when we ask, and have faith that God will answer us. We may not receive what we want exactly when we want it but in His time we will receive our answer and possibly our husband.
The young lady didn’t believe the pastor but by the next year not only was she married, she had a child.
God knows exactly what we need and when we need it. It is not up to us or anyone else to tell us what our calling or a blessings are. When we make the conscious decision to talk to God about our future, we are relinquishing the right to take control. “Give your burdens to the Lord, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.” (Psalm 55:22). If we put our total trust in Him, He will not steer us wrong, whether it be in relationships or life in general.
Following the pastor’s advice, I was able to marry the man that I requested. I rebuked every negative person that tried to advise me against following God’s word for my life including my pastor. We cannot let anyone stop us from obtaining what is rightfully ours.
