52 Ways To Wow Your Husband Order Printed Copy

Author: Pam Farrel
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About the Book

"52 Ways To Wow Your Husband" by Pam Farrel is a practical guide for wives to deepen their connection with their husbands and strengthen their marriage. The book offers 52 simple and practical tips for showing love, respect, and appreciation to your spouse in daily life. Each tip is designed to help wives understand and meet their husband's needs, and ultimately create a happier and more fulfilling marriage.

Hudson Taylor

"China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women … The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary." In September 1853, a little three-masted clipper slipped quietly out of Liverpool harbor with Hudson Taylor, a gaunt and wild-eyed 21-year-old missionary, aboard. He was headed for a country that was just coming into the Christian West's consciousness; only a few dozen missionaries were stationed there. By the time Taylor died a half-century later, however, China was viewed as the most fertile and challenging of mission fields as thousands volunteered annually to serve there. Radical missionary Taylor was born to James and Amelia Taylor, a Methodist couple fascinated with the Far East who had prayed for their newborn, "Grant that he may work for you in China." Years later, a teenage Hudson experienced a spiritual birth during an intense time of prayer as he lay stretched, as he later put, "before Him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy." He spent the next years in frantic preparation, learning the rudiments of medicine, studying Mandarin, and immersing himself ever deeper into the Bible and prayer. His ship arrived in Shanghai, one of five "treaty ports" China had opened to foreigners following its first Opium War with England. Almost immediately Taylor made a radical decision (as least for Protestant missionaries of the day): he decided to dress in Chinese clothes and grow a pigtail (as Chinese men did). His fellow Protestants were either incredulous or critical. Taylor, for his part, was not happy with most missionaries he saw: he believed they were "worldly" and spent too much time with English businessmen and diplomats who needed their services as translators. Instead, Taylor wanted the Christian faith taken to the interior of China. So within months of arriving, and the native language still a challenge, Taylor, along with Joseph Edkins, set off for the interior, setting sail down the Huangpu River distributing Chinese Bibles and tracts. When the Chinese Evangelization Society, which had sponsored Taylor, proved incapable of paying its missionaries in 1857, Taylor resigned and became an independent missionary; trusting God to meet his needs. The same year, he married Maria Dyer, daughter of missionaries stationed in China. He continued to pour himself into his work, and his small church in Ningpo grew to 21 members. But by 1861, he became seriously ill (probably with hepatitis) and was forced to return to England to recover. In England, the restless Taylor continued translating the Bible into Chinese (a work he'd begun in China), studied to become a midwife, and recruited more missionaries. Troubled that people in England seemed to have little interest in China, he wrote China: Its Spiritual Need and Claims. In one passage, he scolded, "Can all the Christians in England sit still with folded arms while these multitudes [in China] are perishing—perishing for lack of knowledge—for lack of that knowledge which England possesses so richly?" Taylor became convinced that a special organization was needed to evangelize the interior of China. He made plans to recruit 24 missionaries: two for each of the 11 unreached inland provinces and two for Mongolia. It was a visionary plan that would have left veteran recruiters breathless: it would increase the number of China missionaries by 25 percent. Taylor himself was wracked with doubt: he worried about sending men and women unprotected into the interior; at the same time, he despaired for the millions of Chinese who were dying without the hope of the gospel. In 1865 he wrote in his diary, "For two or three months, intense conflict … Thought I should lose my mind." A friend invited him to the south coast of England, to Brighton, for a break. And it was there, while walking along the beach, that Taylor's gloom lifted: "There the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to God for this service. I told him that all responsibility as to the issues and consequences must rest with him; that as his servant it was mine to obey and to follow him." His new mission, which he called the China Inland Mission (CIM), had a number of distinctive features, including this: its missionaries would have no guaranteed salaries nor could they appeal for funds; they would simply trust God to supply their needs; furthermore, its missionaries would adopt Chinese dress and then press the gospel into the China interior. Within a year of his breakthrough, Taylor, his wife and four children, and 16 young missionaries sailed from London to join five others already in China working under Taylor's direction. Strains in the organization Taylor continued to make enormous demands upon himself (he saw more than 200 patients daily when he first returned) and on CIM missionaries, some of whom balked. Lewis Nicol, who accused Taylor of tyranny, had to be dismissed. Some CIM missionaries, in the wake of this and other controversies, left to join other missions, but in 1876, with 52 missionaries, CIM constituted one-fifth of the missionary force in China. Because there continued to be so many Chinese to reach, Taylor instituted another radical policy: he sent unmarried women into the interior, a move criticized by many veterans. But Taylor's boldness knew no bounds. In 1881, he asked God for another 70 missionaries by the close of 1884: he got 76. In late 1886, Taylor prayed for another 100 within a year: by November 1887, he announced 102 candidates had been accepted for service. His leadership style and high ideals created enormous strains between the London and China councils of the CIM. London thought Taylor autocratic; Taylor said he was only doing what he thought was best for the work, and then demanded more commitment from others: "China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women," he wrote. "The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary." Taylor's grueling work pace, both in China and abroad (to England, the United States, and Canada on speaking engagements and to recruit), was carried on despite Taylor's poor health and bouts with depression. In 1900 it became too much, and he had complete physical and mental breakdown. The personal cost of Taylor's vision was high on his family as well: his wife Maria died at age 33, and four of eight of their children died before they reached the age of 10. (Taylor eventually married Jennie Faulding, a CIM missionary.) Between his work ethic and his absolute trust in God (despite never soliciting funds, his CIM grew and prospered), he inspired thousands to forsake the comforts of the West to bring the Christian message to the vast and unknown interior of China. Though mission work in China was interrupted by the communist takeover in 1949, the CIM continues to this day under the name Overseas Missionary Fellowship (International).

‘obedience will make you miserable’ - the tired lie satan loves to tell

There are at least two ways to please the devil when it comes to the pursuit of holiness. The first way, of course, is to run from holiness altogether — to flee, with the prodigal, to the far country of this world, away from the Father’s home (Luke 15:11–13). The second way, perhaps even more dangerous than the first, is to pursue holiness (or what we imagine holiness to be), and yet not be happy about it. We may call this second way older-brother Christianity. Like the elder son in Jesus’s parable, such people follow the Father’s rules with a sigh (Luke 15:29). Their holiness is all pursed lips and sober glances. “Such is the cost of righteousness,” they remind themselves. “We must relinquish pleasure on the path to heaven, you know. Holiness, not happiness, is the true good.” “What virtue!” some may exclaim. “What uprightness! What self-denial!” What a sham. Older brothers, for all their outward purity, are still in the grip of the serpent’s ancient lie. They have been deceived, along with our first parents, to live in a world of the devil’s own making: a world where our Father wears a frown, where heaven has no laughter, and where holiness is ultimately a sacrifice. As long as we live in such a world, we will miss the feast that our Father has prepared (Luke 15:22–28). If we want to rid ourselves of older-brother instincts, and pursue holiness in a way that shames the devil, we would do well to return to the garden and listen again to that first lie. Song of the Morning Stars When the serpent approached Adam and Eve in the garden, he knew that only a lie could put the forbidden fruit into their hands. Only a lie could somehow convince them that they were the slaves of a stingy God. Only a lie could do the trick because reality, as always, was not on Satan’s side. For when God first breathed the oceans into being, and lit the stars like candles, and filled mountain fields with wildflowers, no sigh could be heard in all heaven and earth. Rather, all creation joined to praise their glorious Maker. From heaven’s lofty balconies, the morning stars raised their song, the sons of God shouted for joy, and Wisdom delighted in God’s handiwork (Job 38:7; Proverbs 8:30–31). From “Let there be light” onward, the heavens have declared his glory (Psalm 19:1). And how shall we hear their declaration? As an apathetic exhale? As a monotonous lecture? As a distracted recitation? No, as the very pitch of delight: “You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy” (Psalm 65:8). Adam and Eve, upon hearing the melody of creation, could not help but join the song. As they gazed across God’s handiwork, they trusted the goodness of their Father. They admired the beauty of their Creator. They enjoyed the fellowship of their Friend. They obeyed the counsel of their King. They had no higher happiness. Life in the Serpent’s World No, the devil knew Adam and Eve would never eat the fruit as long as they worshiped the glorious God in his marvelous world. So what did he do? He invited the couple to imagine a different world and a different god. He shuttered their eyes to sunsets and tulips, blocked their ears to the chirping of the robins, and calloused their skin to spring breezes. In short, he shrunk creation to the size of an apple, and gave them eyes for Eden’s only “No.” In the world of the serpent, the morning stars sing a dirge, the hosts of heaven murmur, and creation only groans beneath the dictatorship of the Almighty Ruler. In such a world, Adam and Eve had only two options. They could, like the prodigal, disobey their God and run from their Father’s garden. Or they could, like the older brother, sacrifice their pleasure on the noble altar of obedience. “Either rebel and be happy — or obey and be miserable.” This was the serpent’s offer (Genesis 3:4–5). Adam and Eve took the fruit and fled into the far country. Many today do the same. Many others, however, refuse the fruit — but only on the serpent’s terms. Like older brothers, we aim to keep our Father’s rules. We do so, however, not because his rules are satisfying, but only because they’re right; not because holiness is glorious, but only because it’s obedient; not because fellowship with God is happifying (as Jonathan Edwards used to say), but just because he says so. Which brother we become matters little to the devil. As long as we live within his world — a world where the gifts are scarce and the God is stingy — he is happy whether we rebel or “obey.” As long as we cease to hear and sing creation’s song of praise, the serpent is pleased. Deeper Than Self-Denial If humanity’s first sin arose when we believed the serpent’s lie, then our repentance must go deeper than rule-keeping or self-denial. After all, some of this world’s most marvelous rule-keepers are still tenants in the serpent’s world. No, our repentance requires more: we must break free from his spell altogether, and return to the real God in the real world. We must bend our ears upward once again to hear the heavens sing, “Glory!” We must feel again that heaven and earth, though fallen now, still pulse with God’s pleasure (Psalm 104:31). We must wade again in this delicious stream called creation, remembering that God himself is the fountain (James 1:17). In other words, we must step past the ancient lie and believe once again that God created us to be happy in him. As soon as we “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8), and that he himself is our “exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4), everything about our pursuit of holiness will change. We will still deny ourselves, practice obedience, and kill our sin, to be sure. But we will not dare for a moment to think that we are exchanging happiness for holiness. We will trade away our sin because we have seen the treasure to be found (Matthew 13:44). We will forsake the lusts of our flesh because, as Jesus promised, “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). And even when we must sacrifice something precious to follow Christ, we trust that we will “receive a hundredfold now in this time . . . and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:30). The Holy Spirit teaches us not only to obey God, but to enjoy him — indeed, to obey him by enjoying him. He teaches us not only to withstand the devil’s temptations, but as Martin Luther put it, to laugh our adversary to scorn. He teaches us not only to wonder at the mercy of Christ, but to breathe a grand sigh of relief, amazed that joy has been so near at hand all this time. Discipline does not defeat the devil — happiness does. Join the Father’s Feast From where we stand now, of course, we can look to more than creation to see the happiness of God, and to nurture our happiness in him. We now have seen wonders that the morning stars could never have imagined. We have seen a God so happy that he could bear up under a world of sorrows without breaking (Isaiah 53:3). A God who recognized the joy set before him so luminously that he could endure the darkest shame (Hebrews 12:2). A God who runs to meet his prodigal children, too delighted to be dignified (Luke 15:20). A God who even now holds out his own joy to every older brother who will come in from the cold and join the celebration (Luke 15:31–32). Come now, older brother, put up your ear to the door. Can you hear the saints’ laughter? Can you hear the angels’ praise? Can you hear the Father singing over his children who’ve returned? Whatever we must forsake to walk inside this door, there is always more ahead of us than what we leave behind. So go ahead: Turn again to that serpent in the darkness, and laugh his bruised head to scorn. And then open up the door, and join your Father’s feast.