When we are protecting our worth, we are protecting our idols.

Voddie Baucham Talks about homeschooling our children

Training for one of the most important careers

Our society tends put an emphasis education and on training for a job, but little emphasis is placed on training our children for the most important career they will have - being a husband/wife, father/mother and keeping a home. These skills take a lifetime to learn and require purposeful and intentional training and growth. We are foolish if we take them lightly or wait till we are in those situations to learn. Thankfully God's grace is there for us all and God is a good trainer and shepherd, and if our hearts our willing to pursue these things He will be there.

Mars Hill - Being a Man

Beauty fades even in youth and for the still poster perfect

"Like a gold ring in a pig's snout

is a beautiful woman without discretion."

I have heard so many stories of  man who marries a beautiful woman in appearance, only to soon regret his decision, because the woman had no discretion.  This woman who was once a beautiful woman to him, quickly becomes as beautiful as a ring in a pig's snout to him. Even though she has not aged, her beauty fades away.

The opposite is true for a man who marries a woman because of her godly character, no matter her physical appearance. "She is far more precious than jewels." She lets her "adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." This man boasts in his wife and is filled with great joy when thinking of her. Instead of fading, her beauty, both physical and internal, grows and increases and is abundant. And he is satisfied by her physical appearance.

Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.

 
Her children rise up and call her blessed;

her husband also, and he praises her:

“Many women have done excellently,

but you surpass them all.”

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,

but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Give her of the fruit of her hands,

and let her works praise her in the gates.

How to gain your wife to love you

The Bible compares the love and admiration and romance of marriage to the bond that that Christ and the Church have. "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body."

Husbands, learn to love your wife well. What does the scripture say, "We love, because He first loved us." Husbands, love your wife as Christ loved you and enabled you to love Him. Lay down your life for her, love her with the word, be gentle washing her as something that is cherished, a precious jewel, bringing out her beauty.

Husbands, it is for us to love and to love first and to love well. May God help us to do so.

The Children's Hour by Henry Longfellow

The Children's Hour by Henry Longfellow

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

Clip from the Nativity Story

I really love this movie because it challenges me on what it means to be a husband. This clip for the first 5 minutes and 5 seconds shows good part of how this movie demonstrates a godly husband.