The Spender, The Saver, and Finding the Sweet Spot for Both

Several years ago I was talking with someone who's been married just over a year about their finances. She's the saver, he's the more-free-to-spend-er. It seems like there's always one of each in every marriage.

Her temptation: to be a bit self-righteous. She's the more self-restrained, after all. And she's the one who's setting them up for a good life in the future.

But as we talked, it was clear that it was easy for her to be a fearful saver. There were times when she was grasping for security. It wasn't a glad, confident, hope-filled saving that motivated her to say no to buying frivolous things.

In the New Testament, Paul writes to the Galatian church. They're fighting over circumcision--Jewish boys were circumcised as a symbol of their identity as a part of God's chosen people. As non-Jews enter into the mostly-Jewish Christian community, the question looms: do they have to get circumcised?

Paul argues rabidly against it. He argues that faith, not circumcision, is now the true marker of who's a part of God's family.

He summarizes his argument with this compelling statement in Galatians 5:6:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, butonly faith working through love.

And so it is with how we handle money. In Christ Jesus, neither spending nor saving is of any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. That can look like saving, it can look like spending.

But it's gotta' come from faith, or else it's simply another un-healthy expression of a grasping, needy, soul trying to prop itself up rather than allowing itself to be cared for by a good and beautiful God.

A Wedding Homily Part 4: The Good News of Demonstrating, Not Generating

[This is the fourth part (hence the title) of a series of posts from a wedding homily I did this past weekend. If you missed the first three, you might just need to catch up a bit before diving in here.]

And the good news is that this isn’t up to you to do: Jesus Christ in you and he has already done it.

When we were God’s enemies, when we had turned away from him and as we continually turn away from him, again and again and again, God who is rich in mercy, graciously and compassionately and continuously turns towards us, runs toward us

He does not turn away from us in anger or harden his heart toward us. He turned and still turns towards us, he offers us not just a chance to make it up to him but he gives himself up for us. He dies! Even though WE are the ones in the wrong!

Here’s what God does: he turns towards us perfectly in Jesus Christ. And then he invites us to abide in him and to allow him to abide in us. And then he says let me lead you into a life of turning towards the needs and people around you—including your spouse!—because that is what I have already done.

So when you are in the midst of conflicts, hardships, difficulties—when one of you hurts the other, when you sin against one another

Remember that Jesus Christ has already absorbed that sin. He has already forgiven it—yours and theirs. He has already taken on all of the ways that you’re both going to sin against one another—it is already covered and paid for and done in Christ.

Here’s the good news, Eric and Cristina: I’m calling you to turn toward each other and not away from one another, but the bottom line is that Jesus has already done this AND he has taken up residence inside of you

And so your job is not to GENERATE this turning toward but simply to DEMONSTRATE this turning toward

You don’t have to drum up turning towards one another, but you do have to abide in Christ, look to him, allow HIS story and his energy, his Spirit to shape and re-shape how you’re thinking about your story

And allow the fact that he is already turned toward both of you to drive and allow you to turn towards the other.

You don’t have to generate turning toward the other, you simply have to demonstrate—because Christ in you has already done it. It is already reality, the most real thing imaginable.

A Wedding Homily Part 3: S/he Just Shouldn't Be That Into You and Making the Right Turn

[Note: this is the third in a scintillating series from a wedding homily I delivered this past weekend. If you've missed the previous posts, you might not be ready to be married.]

Let me invite you and charge you if I might be so bold to do two things, in this order. I believe that if build on these two things in your marriage in this order, it will set you on the right trajectory as you share in your married life together.

The first is Jesus’ word to us in this passage: that you abide in Christ. I want to challenge and remind you that for both of you, you come into this marriage with a prior commitment and a greater lover: Jesus Christ himself.

And sometimes you’re going to have to remind each other of that as various things attempt pull you away from your first love

The siren call of career and work, kids, even one another and even service to others will attempt to call you away from abiding in Christ and towards trusting and attempting to find life in other things.

It can be a tricky thing, especially initially, to tell the love of your life that they’re just not supposed to be that into you. But that’s your first job towards one another—to point one another to Christ.

So the Scripture you’ve chosen and had read over you this afternoon is your first call: abide in Christ, turn toward him, rest in him,

The second thing I want to charge you to do after you’ve made abiding in Christ your priority is this—there’s going to be times when you have conflict, get frustrated with each other, drive each other more than just a little crazy.

And while here and now we smile and laugh and everyone here who’s married can identify with a rueful smile

The honest truth is that conflict is where the true battles are fought for the quality, character, intimacy and direction of your marriage. How we handle conflict is what makes or breaks our marriage relationship

And I want to call you, and charge you with this: in the midst of difficulty and hardship, as long as you both shall live, turn toward each other, not away from each other. Turn towards each other, not away from each other

In those hard moments, those conflicts where you can’t see how you can work around it or manage it, when the other person appears to you at that moment to be the most obstinate, wrong-headed person you have ever met in your entire life and you just honestly can’t stand them

You have a choice to make: will I harden my heart toward this man, this woman, will I shut down, check out, give up on him or her, roll my eyes and just quit?

Or will I turn toward him, turn towards her? Will I fight to keep my heart soft? Will I turn toward and not away?

A Wedding Homily Part 2: The Cure for Fruit-Constipation

[This is part two in a series of posts from a wedding homily I gave over the weekend. If you missed part 1, you missed the set-up! Scroll down a bit and check that out first.]

We’re here to worship Jesus, we’re celebrating the two of you. It’s a subtle but important distinction.

This reality is a great gift to each of you individually and to your marriage. We worship Jesus because your life together and your marriage is too great a thing to be built on the fickleness and arbitrary-ness of human love.

Your marriage is too profound, too wonderful a thing to be left to your own devices to figure out.

And so you’ve chosen a great passage for today’s ceremony—John 15 where Jesus invites us: “abide in me and let me abide in you!” And as we do so, there’s a tremendous promise: if you abide in me, you’ll bear much fruit—fruit that will last.

In the Scriptures, love is not primarily about our emotions and it’s not even primarily about our decisions, even though both emotions and decisions are required as a part of it

In the Scriptures, love is a fruit of the Spirit, it is the work of God. And it happens not as we try harder but as we abide in Christ

Branches do not have to TRY to bear fruit because fruit-bearing is very simple: a branch that stays attached the vine bears fruit. If it doesn’t stay attached to the vine, it withers and dies. If you find in your life that you are fruit-constipated, perhaps it is because you are abiding-deficient.

The good news about marriage is that it is a gift!

And part of that gift is that marriage becomes one of the primary ways that God will shape both of your characters for the rest of your lives—marriage is one venue that the Lord uses to teach us to abide in him and trust in him to shape our souls

Sometimes that will be a welcome shaping, sometimes it will be a little less welcome! And sometimes, honestly, it will feel literally like death—because it is death.

There are things about each of you that needs to die, that need to be pruned as it talks about in John 15—the Father is a good gardener, he prunes us so that we’ll bear more fruit. He often uses people to do that--our spouses most of all.

And putting things to death, while it's a good thing, can be extremely, extremely painful.

A Wedding Homily Part 1: Evil Professors, The Impossible Promises, and The Reason We're Here

[This past weekend I had the privilege of preaching my first wedding homily at two former students' wedding, Eric and Cristina (now!) Stam. Below is the first in a series.]

It was really just a handful of weeks ago that the two of you had a different kind of celebration—you graduated from Carolina! Go Heels!

And if you’re like me when I was at Carolina, there was probably at least one class where you experienced first day, syllabus shock—it’s like sticker shock, only slightly more personal and invasive.

Some professors enjoy making sport of undergrads by trying to scare them out of their classes with a syllabus that you look at and instantaneously break out into a cold sweat.

You look at it and your gut reaction is this visceral cry:

“This is impossible! The only way to get this amount of work done would be to drop all friends, drop all my other classes, quit all other activities, give up on eating and sleeping and going to the bathroom, hook up a permanent caffeine drip on my arm and work this class 24/7 for the entire semester!!”

And if you’re at all like me, there was probably at least one class where the professors evil intentions worked and you dropped the class at the earliest possible moment because he had scared you away with his impossible, impossible syllabus.

Well, here’s the deal, in about five minutes you guys are about to subscribe to a syllabus that’s way more impossible and intimidating than any syllabus you were handed in college.

See, we’ve all gathered here to watch and celebrate you two making promises to each other that are outrageous.

And if we’re going to be perfectly honest, they are promises that are beyond your ability to keep.

If it’s just up to the two of you, no matter how warm and fuzzy your love looks now and no matter how beautiful this day is, the promises that you’re about to make are utterly absurd.

That's why it's critical for us to understand what we're doing here. This is a worship service.

And it can get confusing because there’s so much about you two in the midst of all of this, it can start to feel like we’re worshiping you or worshiping the potential of human love or something equally as sentimental and vacuous and empty as that.

But the reality is far different and it’s far better news. We’re not worshiping you two, nor are we worshiping the potential of human love.

We’re here to worship Jesus, we’re celebrating the two of you. It’s a subtle but important distinction.

Why Wedding Vows are Ridiculous--And Why That's A Good Thing

Working with college students for fourteen years, I have participated and/or attended a disproportionate number of weddings. Long-term consumption of wedding cake is an occupational hazard of my work, but one that my metabolism has set me up well to deal with.

When it comes to the vows, it would seem that there's two equal and opposite realities that are worth considering.

The first is that vow-making is a good thing. "Make your vows to the Lord and keep them" enjoins the Psalmist.

Vow and promise making runs everything from family life to commerce to politics. And as cynical as we might get about the whole enterprise, we have very little choice but to proceed wisely into relationships built upon vows and promises made--both by us and by the other party.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the reality that drives some of us to cynicism: vows are broken. And the reality is, no vows are more useless than wedding vows in terms of dictating our behavior.

The truth is that every one of us on our respective wedding days lied. We made promises that we were entirely incapable of keeping and that we were destined to fail at.

Of course, this reality has driven many in our culture to give up on the institution of marriage altogether. And I grant that this is one option, but certainly not the preferable one.

We will fail on our wedding vows, to varying degrees (and certainly some degrees have more catastrophic consequences than others). But the point is that our lives are not primarily about our performance. Our lives are about learning to live in radical and reckless dependence on Christ.

One of my former pastors in Richmond, Kevin Greene, used to give the same homily that I must have heard at least a half-dozen times--and each time it was like water to a thirsty and weary soul.

We make wedding vows that we will fail to execute on. And what this reminds us is that we need a very big Savior. We cannot save or redeem ourselves in any area of our lives, our marriages least of all. We need the gospel in real-time in our marriages as we make glorious but ridiculous vows--an act celebrated in Scripture not in the least because it reminds us that we need something outside ourselves to actually fulfill them.

The point of marriage, as Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians, is that it is a picture of Christ's love for his church. And nothing is more true than the base-line reality of our struggles to live up to our own standards, let alone God's, and yet his immeasurable delight in extending forgiveness, offering healing, and bringing redemption to broken and messy people.

So as we head into wedding season--celebrate the glory of love and delight in the vows of those getting married! But let's not kid ourselves: the hope for all of us in any of our marriages is that Jesus delights to take messy people and redeem them.

As for me, I'm just looking forward to more good wedding cake.

Why Your Marriage is So Stinkin Hard...and What Easter Has to Do With It

Over the past week or so I've had at least a half-dozen conversations regarding marriage--why it's so hard and what might be done about it.

We all get married because we think that the person we're marrying is compatible with us, because we love them (or at least we think that we love them) and because the person generally makes us happy--it seems like it's a good match.

But then something remarkable happens a year or two or three into the marriage: the person who seemed like such a perfect match back then is suddenly plucking your last nerve. They have issues. And maybe you do, but theirs are (of course) much, much worse.

And before you know it, the person you were dying to spend the rest of your life with just a couple of years earlier is now a distant stranger who makes you crazy.

One thing that my wife and I have noted in ourselves and in many of our friends and "counseling" situations that we've faced is the principle of "baggage fit." That is, God seems to put together couples who's "baggage" (be that family history, personal insecurities, poor relational habits, or other stuff) hits at exactly the wrong (or right) place.

For example, the person who runs from conflict finds herself somehow married to a man who's willing and eager (perhaps over-eager) to engage in conflict. The man who comes from a work-aholic family finds himself married to a woman who is unafraid to make her emotional needs known and refuses to roll over to his over-commitments at work.

Gary Thomas writes in his book "Sacred Marriage" that no one gets married thinking that they're doing it for the purposes of sanctification--that is, no one thinks that primary purpose of marriage is to make us more holy, to transform us.

But that's exactly what God is up to with all of this. The intimacy of marriage un-earths all our junk. We want to blame it on the other person, and they're certainly a sinner just like us. But that's not the primary issue. The primary issue is us.

We have three options: 1. we can run away (ultimately leading to divorce), 2. we can pretend there's nothing wrong and/or shut down emotionally because it's too hard but stay in the marriage itself (the emotionally vacant marriage) or 3. we can lean into the hard stuff, turn towards the other person and not away, and dig into our fears and sin and brokenness and fight and seek and ask the Lord to heal us.

That last option is, of course the hardest one. But for most of us that's the path that God's called us to. In fact, that's the reason why he had us get married to the person in the first place.

Thomas writes that for those of us who are Christ-followers, the least helpful question is the question "have I made a mistake in marrying this person?" In all but the most extreme (i.e. abusive) situations, that question leads into infinite pointless speculation rather than helping us to deal with the real issues.

Marriage is hard. I'm never shocked when I hear divorce statistics. In fact, I'm regularly surprised by how many stick with it--particularly without some sort of prior God-commitment to the sanctity of the thing.

But if we let it, marriage can be the most significant crucible for our spiritual formation--and there's no doubt that it's painful at times. And in this, of course, we are following Christ. He invites us not to hop in his Hummer and go for a smooth ride over the rocky terrain of our lives. Rather, he calls us to take up our cross and follow him.

Death is the only way to life--this is the Easter story, it is to be our story as well.

And it seems to be the most important mark of any healthy marriage...at least the ones that I know of, anyway.

Heeding the Words of my Wife

Over the weekend I made a passing comment to my wife and another regular Piebald Life/Facebook Note reader that I'd gotten fewer comments recently.

Their rather direct and honest answer: because I was posting from talks I was giving rather than more personal reflections.

So, acting on this information, here's something that's been rolling around in my head from last week.

I was meeting with an older, wiser man over lunch last week and he was encouraging me to do some life and career inventory. He encouraged me to ask a couple of 'hook' questions, among them the very basic question: "who am I?" That one was harder to answer on the spot than I thought it would be.

But the thing that has stuck with me was his encouragement to ask my wife Kelly to answer these questions along with me.

"Get her to write down her answers," he said, "most guys in their first ten to fifteen years of marriage haven't figured out how to listen to their wives yet."

Ouch. Intuitively, I knew that to be true. Both in my own personal experience and in knowing some of my friends marriages, us guys have a hard time really hearing our wives.

"Now granted," he continued, "some of that is because their wives haven't found their voices yet."

Also true. And it makes me wonder about the inter-relationship between us husbands learning to listen, to encourage, to "call forth" our wives voices.

Of course, there's exceptions to everything. Plenty of you wives have plenty of voice, thank you very much. And some men that I know do an excellent job genuinely hearing their wives.

But for many of us, there's a growth curve here in our marriages. I wonder how much is lost in terms of quality of relating and healthy processes due to all these misses...in my own marriage over the past eleven years and in the marriages of folks around me.

But hey, I changed my post for today! Look at me! I'm listening!

The Bad (and the Good) of Knowing Right Answers

This past weekend I was talking with a friend of mine about some of the struggles that Kelly and I had in our marriage, particularly in our first few years. We were in and out of marriage counseling several times between years 2 and 5 as our marriage brought out some of the deep-seated issues that we had brought with us into marriage.

One of the things that made our struggles particularly splash-worthy was that we were pretty arrogant during out engagement period. We pretty much thought we had it all together. We called ourselves "A.P. Engaged"...old-school high school speak for Advanced Placement Engaged. Pride doth indeed goeth before downfall.

I was sharing about how having the right answers made our struggles that much more surprising and in some ways more difficult. We knew what needed to happen or what we thought we needed to say to one another when conflict arose. But actually having a real relationship and working that stuff out was much harder than we thought it would be. The right answers didn't really serve us all that much.

But as we talked further about this, I opined that having right answers is better than having wrong answers. Even if you can't get there, at least you sort of know where you want or need to go. There is clearly a place for learning right answers. It's just important that we understand that knowing what is true or right or good and living that out are not the same things.

I think that this is what the Scripture writer James is talking about when he writes, "Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says!"