Photo credit: Imb.org
Question. How important is it to be physically attracted to the person you want to marry?
Obviously a person can be attracted to other qualities about a person. But then there’s the Song of Solomon, where a husband and wife are exclaiming over the beauty the see in each other’s bodies.
We heart this new, ongoing series–a little cup o’ joe with organizations to help you go there, serve Him, and love them even better. (For more thoughts about why you might join an agency–and a handful of reasons you might not–make sure to check out He Said/She Said/You Say? “Should I go overseas with an organization?”, both the pros and the cons.)
Today, we’re grabbing a cinnamon latte with Push the Rock, a sports ministry that also happens to have internships and a gap-year program. Pull up a chair.
We’re a sports ministry using sports to impact the world for Jesus Christ…one life at a time. We use different kinds of sports to introduce people to Jesus and teach biblical values.
The journey overseas gets long, belabored with details and fundraising and emotions that somehow resemble peppering by a paintball gun.
Sure, you could go through the motions. But the Psalms speak of our souls blessing God.
So tape these babies up on a bathroom mirror or inside a cabinet, or tuck them in your books or Bible, or position them on your desk (whose surface is likely about to disappear right about now, either beneath papers or sold right out from under them). Memorize these like the gold they are (see Psalm 19:9-10).
Tim Keller writes,
The Church needs artists because without art we cannot reach the world. The simple fact is that the imagination ‘gets you,’ even when your reason is completely against the idea of God. ‘Imagination communicates,’ as Arthur Danto says, ‘indefinable but inescapable truth.’
…There is a sort of schizophrenia that occurs if you are listening to Bach and you hear the glory of God and yet your mind says there is no God and there is no meaning. You are committed to believing nothing means anything and yet the music comes in and takes you over with your imagination. When you listen to great music, you can’t believe life is meaningless. Your heart knows what your mind is denying.
What effect does language have when we’re considering “calling”–something that’s definitely become a buzzword beckoning forth a generation that longs for purpose and certainty. As a global worker in Tanzania, Amy Medina relays wise sentiments you might not have thought of as you consider the nebulous concept–and possibly damaging language–of the phrase “God called me.”
Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, is November 6-10 (interested in praying during this festival? Click here for a free guide!). Indian neuroscientist Sai Anand communicates about God’s ingenius design of the human body, using it to share the Gospel. He’s written a fascinating article about his time as a Hindu, and how to share Jesus with the Hindustan population.
Eleven years ago was a long period of searching for truth about God to feed my own soul. I’d lost my grandpa. My (now former) fiancé had called off our wedding four months before we were to be married. In short, I was in a state of life- altering confusion.
One night alone in my room kneeling by my bed, when I was at a point of final desperation, I cried out to God, tears waterfalling down my cheeks.
Moving to Africa was like seeing a new version of my husband.
Sure; in some ways it aged us and strained us in ways we could have never experienced. But it was also extremely cool to see my husband as the guy tooling around an African metropolis, learning to navigate the streets to care for his family. I would have never anticipated the overwhelming generosity he possessed; the crazy-cool gifts of cultural understanding and helping Africans through heartbreaking conflicts and difficulties. What if I’d never seen the African version of him? And as I at last realized my dream of moving overseas, we laughed out loud about the “Afro-disiac” it was for our marriage!
While living in Uganda, we paid a trusted African friend to watch our kids while we went on date nights. At first, she looked at us like we’d grown horns.
“He still takes you out on dates?”
She opined aloud that if I were Ugandan and had borne four children, my husband would probably be looking for another woman to…entertain him. So believe it or not, our consistent dates and happy marriage were a fun and refreshing testimony to those watching us.
One of the biggest stresses on my engagement wasn’t really the normal stuff–the wedding planning or whatnot. It was a phrase I’d rerun over in my head a hundred times: I don’t feel called overseas. Evangelism is not my gift. My husband-to-be surpassed the one I’d been looking for so many times over. And it really did seem God was leading us to marriage.
But was he?
Was I…selling out? I’d been headed in an overseas direction for years. What was I missing?