Living Marriage October 2010 – Week 3: Impacting Others

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The Having a Marriage of Influence series concluded last Saturday evening at Elmbrook Church, with a focus on how God can use our marriages to impact others. Dan and Stephanie Rolfs kicked off the evening with a great drama depicting the way we can positively impact others by our attitude and through prayer.

Dick and Cindy Greenup delivered a compelling message about what it means to be an influence on others. Dick began by providing a definition of “influence” – the power to produce effects without power, force, or authority. As Christians, we have an influence – and our motivation is Jesus Himself. In John 14:15 Jesus says:

If you love me, you will obey what I command.

Living Marriage October 2010 – Week 2: Impacting Your Spouse

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The Having a Marriage of Influence series continued last night at Elmbrook Church, with a focus on Impacting Your Spouse.  Andrea and I shared a message that explored the ways that God uses marriage to transform us, and how we can promote the spiritual growth of our spouse.  We pointed to Hebrews 10:24, which reads:

Let us consider how we may spur one another on to love and good deeds.

We need to give active, prayerful thought to how we can encourage our spouse to love and good deeds.  In their book Love and War, John and Stasi Eldredge write, “Marriage is a divine conspiracy designed by God for our transformation.” While we are not responsible for our spouse’s walk with Christ, we have the incredible privilege to cheer them on in their walk.  Husbands and wives can positively impact one another through:

Living Marriage October 2010 – Week 1: Impacting Family

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This past weekend (Oct 2nd) Dawn and I had the privilege of kicking off the Fall 2010 Living Marriage series “Having a Marriage of Influence” by discussing our call to influence those closest to us – our family!  With Matthew 5: 13-16 as our foundation verse Dawn and I considered how we can live out Jesus’ call to “let our light shine before men” while establishing a legacy of active Faith in the next generation.  We’ve recently become parents for the first time with the birth of our daughter Evelyn so this call was especially close to our hearts.  It was also especially challenging to us as we come from very different Faith backgrounds of our own.

Research shows that even those raised with church attendance are not significantly more likely to develop a living Faith than those raised without “religion.”  How then can we take the call in Deuteronomy 6 to impress God’s commandments onto our children?  Thankfully the Bible provides some wonderful instruction and examples of Faith legacy.  During our talk we highlighted the example of Timothy, Paul’s protégée and the first New Testament example of Faith in Christ passed from one generation to the next. 

Living Marriage April 2010 – Week 3: Forgiving Love

The Love Like Christ series wrapped up yesterday evening and Elmbrook Church, with a focus on the theme of forgiveness.  Dan and Stephanie Rolfs kicked off the evening with the third installment in their drama series – offering a glimpse into the ways husbands and wives often struggle with forgiveness in marriage.  Dick and Cindy Greenup offered the evening’s message, and provided a biblical perspective on forgiveness.

Cindy emphasized the importance of forgiveness, and the damage we cause when we fail to forgive.  She focused specifically on the anger and fear that we cultivate absent of forgiveness.   Anger manifests in many forms, including:

Living Marriage April 2010 – Week 2: Selfless Love

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The Young Couples Fellowship series “Love Like Christ” continued this past week with the topic “Selfless Love”.    The theme of this week’s message concerned how we can adopt a Christ-like attitude of selflessness and apply that attitude to our life and marriage.  Shane and Andrea Fell welcomed everyone and MC’d the event.  Once again Dan and Stephanie Rolfs set the tone for the evening with a humorous skit about how easy it is for us to be self-seeking in our marriage.

Dawn and I then spoke about the dichotomy between a worldly self-centered mindset and the selfless servanthood of Christ.  Following the series theme set out in I Corinthians 13: 1-8 and expanded through a number of additional scriptural references, we presented four key points: