Top Her Couture

Making the choice to get married is more than just saying I DO.  It requires sacrifices, sharing, compromise, etc.  It is a time in life when we must learn to let go of what we have been for what they are.  Many times people get married and forget why they did in the first place.  It is important to remind ourselves just how sacred marriage is and renew our vows often.  This could be formal with another ceremony or even a quiet romantic night where you both tell eachother the reason you are still here.  It could even be in the form of a letter.  Regardless of how you revisit these vows, make sure your significant other knows just how important your marriage is and abide in its loyalty, stabiliy, and love. "He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word he commanded to a thousand generations."  Psalm 105:8 "Where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God."  Ruth 1:1...

We have all grown up knowing of unconditional love.   It is often used with very close and intimate relationships.   Many a times we are told to love unconditionally as God loves us; but what of unconditional respect.   This being a fairly new notion in today’s society, one may say respect has to be earned.   If that is the case, aren’t the scales a little uneven? Ephesians 5:33 says, “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”   God has said we MUST love our women and we MUST respect our men.   God doesn’t say we love our women unconditionally and men must earn their respect nor does he say we must love our men.   While most men want love, they thrive on respect.   Without one, the other is in jeopardy creating a vicious cycle which may be very hard to stop once it evolves. This is a hard lesson to learn for some women.   This is a hard lesson to learn for some men.  ...

Faith looks back and draws courage; hope looks ahead and keeps desire alive. And meantime? In the meantime we need one more item for our journey. To appreciate what it may be, we have to step back and ask, what is all this for? The resurrection of our heart, the discovery of our role in the Larger Story, entering into the Sacred Romance-why do we pursue these things? If we say we seek all of this for our own sake, we're right back where we started: lost in our own story. Jesus said that when a person lives merely to preserve his life, he eventually loses it altogether. Rather, he said, give your life away and discover life as it was always meant to be. "Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self " (Matt. 16:25, The Message ). Self-preservation, the theme of every small story, is so deeply wrong because it violates the Trinity, whose members live to bring glory to the others . The road we travel will take us into the...

Against the flesh, the traitor within, a warrior uses discipline. We have a two-dimensional version of this now, which we call a "quiet time." But most men have a hard time sustaining any sort of devotional life because it has no vital connection to recovering and protecting their strength; it feels about as important as flossing. But if you saw your life as a great battle and you knew you needed time with God for your very survival, you would do it. Maybe not perfectly-nobody ever does and that's not the point anyway-but you would have a reason to seek him. We give a halfhearted attempt at the spiritual disciplines when the only reason we have is that we "ought" to. But we'll find a way to make it work when we are convinced we're history if we don't. Time with God each day is not about academic study or getting through a certain amount of Scripture or any of that. It's about connecting with God. We've got to keep those lines of communicat...