A Marriage Without Regrets Order Printed Copy

Author: Kay Author
Size: 1.28MB | 325 pages
|

Download Read Online

Continue with

Google Twitter

Email Register

Others like a marriage without regrets Features >>

Marriage Matters (Extraordinary Change Through Ordinary Moments)

Healing Your Marriage When Trust Is Broken

Your Marriage And Your Ancestry

Marriage Covenant: The Biblical Secret For A Love That Lasts

Marriage On The Rock - God's Design For Your Dream Marriage

Paul, Women And Wives: Marriage And Women’s Ministry In The Letters Of Paul

About the Book

"A Marriage Without Regrets" by Kay Arthur is a practical guide for building a strong and fulfilling marriage based on biblical principles. The book offers insights and practical advice on communication, forgiveness, conflict resolution, and intimacy, with the goal of helping couples create a lifelong relationship that is free from regrets.

John A. Broadus

John Broadus, Southern’s second president, was born on January 24, 1827 in Culpeper County, Virginia. After undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Virginia, he joined the university’s faculty as an assistant professor of classics. There, he displayed unusual facility in his post. He served simultaneously as pastor of the Charlottesville Baptist Church. In this period, Broadus won the heart of Maria Harrison, daughter of renowned classics professor Gessner Harrison. Married on November 18, 1850, the Broaduses had three daughters (Eliza, Annie, and Maria) together before Maria passed away on October 21, 1857 at twenty-six years of age. On January 4, 1859, Broadus married Charlotte Eleanor Sinclair, who gave birth to several additional children. The 1858 Education Convention elected Broadus to the seminary’s first faculty. Broadus declined the position because he had close ties to school and family in Charlottesville. For months, Boyce and Manly doggedly urged him to reconsider. After much thought, and not a little anguish, Broadus accepted. From the time he began teaching, Broadus showed a lifelong affection for instructing and mentoring students. Prior to the seminary’s closing in the Civil War period, Broadus drew a single student to his homiletics class. Rather than canceling the class, Broadus lectured to his lone pupil week after week, honing the content that later became the book The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. The text’s durability was remarkable. Over half a century later, several seminaries used it in homiletics classes. When Southern suspended courses in 1862, Broadus served as a chaplain to Confederate soldiers. He returned to Southern at the war’s end and resumed his teaching post. His talents gained renown. Over Broadus’s career, the University of Chicago, Vassar University, Brown University, Georgetown College, and Crozer Theological Seminary each wooed the professor as a potential president. Large and wealthy churches invited him to be their pastor. Broadus declined these overtures. The greatest need and his greatest influence were at the seminary he loved. In 1889 trustees elected Broadus president of the seminary to succeed Boyce. He guided the school for six peaceful years. Broadus contributed much to the fields in which he taught. In addition to his landmark text on preaching, the scholar labored over his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew for twenty years before publishing it. With such depth of thought, he excelled at preaching. University of Chicago professor W. C. Wilkinson once remarked of Broadus that he had “every natural endowment, every acquired accomplishment to have become, had he been only a preacher, a preacher hardly second to any in the world.” (1) By his plain exposition and conversational delivery, Broadus changed the character of SBC preaching, a shift seen in the current day. Broadus’s life is notable on a variety of fronts. While a pastor in Virginia, Broadus baptized Lottie Moon, who became Southern Baptist’s most famous overseas missionary. In the Civil War, Broadus preached before Confederate general Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals, earning a standing invitation from Lee to preach for him. J. D. Rockefeller went further than Lee—he offered Broadus a hefty salary to become his pastor in New York City, an offer Broadus turned down. In 1886, on the 250th anniversary of Harvard University, the school conferred an honorary degree on Broadus due to his national academic reputation. In 1889, Yale University invited the professor to New Haven to deliver the Lyman Beecher Lectures on preaching. Broadus was the only Southern Baptist to address the Ivy League school in a series of talks. Together with Basil Manly, Jr., he founded the monthly Sunday School newspaper, Kind Words in 1866, a title that was eventually adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board. As a preacher, professor, and leader, Broadus looms large in Southern’s history and in the history of the SBC. He was an active churchman at Louisville’s Walnut Street Baptist Church. Broadus passed away on March 16, 1895. (1) William Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 67. Sources: William Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, TN: Broadman, 1959.

God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life

How do we choose what path to take? We have more opportunities than any generation before us. Technology, material wealth, and a global interconnectedness presents the average American Millennial with more potential than our parents could have ever imagined. In this cacophony, we routinely wonder — and worry — what direction our lives will take. For the believer, we are told to trust God and know that his will is perfect. Pulpit axioms and best-selling books echo themes to the effect of the Lord’s words to Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). God desires good for his children (Romans 8:28). This theme is repeated throughout his word and is true. But Paul has more specificity to add to God’s will for our lives. Paul states it in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “For this is the will of God — your holiness.” The Plans You Have for You I hate everything the prosperity “gospel” stands for, but too often I live like one who believes it. When I think about God’s good plans for me, I picture getting married and raising a family as soon as possible, becoming a mid-level manager by 30, and retiring comfortably at 60. In other words, my way of viewing God’s plan for me looks oddly like the American Dream. These things are all good gifts, and there’s nothing immoral about wishing for a comfortable life in the right context. In fact, we should pray that God blesses us and his people. The problem arises when we wish for such temporary things more than the ultimate joy received through sanctification. The reality is that for most of church history — and in most of the world today — Christians have been severely oppressed, marginalized, and killed for their beliefs. Observe the lives of the early apostles; almost all of them were martyred. For most Christians, seeking God’s will doesn’t look like fretting over career decisions, but learning how to live for God’s glory when the stakes are high and the costs steep. Life Coach Or Lord? We often want God to be our life coach rather than our Lord. We want a pastor to give us three to five helpful tips on how to live an easier life, all the while forgetting that our mission is to exalt God. Instead of letting his glory to shape our desires and ambitions, we too often expect him to reveal his minute-by-minute instructions for our lives. We expect him to spell out everything. We crave the personal comfort of knowing our destined five-year plan over faithfully trusting him the next five years. Slowly, we forget that faith might look messy, and that we might not have our entire life plan unveiled to us immediately. Sometimes, we must step forward with both confidence and uncertainty. We forget that, while God has conquered death through his Son on the cross, we still live in a fallen world and are amid a spiritual war between good and evil. We forget that he’s sovereign over us. God’s Wonderful Plan for Your Life God does have a wonderful plan for your life. But for the believer, that plan is salvation from his wrath that we justly deserve. And it is indeed a wonderful plan — while we merited eternal punishment, God satisfied that payment through his Son. God’s wonderful plan for our life is that we continually surrender the evil desires of our flesh and conform more to his image. God’s wonderful plan for our life is that we repent, believe in him, and fight sin through his power. God’s wonderful plan for our life is sober-mindedness, sexual purity, and that we “walk not as unwise, but wise, making the most of our time because the day is evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16). God’s plan is that he may be most glorified in us through us being satisfied in him. As Christians we know that true happiness — the truly wonderful life — comes from true surrender. Free to Trust God So, what would it look like to reconstruct how we, as believers, view God’s will? His word says that “Godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6), and to, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). How ought we make decisions in this light? In the here-and-now, it can be difficult to decipher what he’s telling us. In times when God seems to be speaking to us in a faint whisper, we must realize his primary will for us: holiness. This realization is tremendously freeing. Instead of being stuck in paralysis of deliberation, we can take the next step forward. We begin to recognize that what is on this earth is fleeting. We don’t have to fret in indecision, futilely trying to interpret God’s will as if it were a complex puzzle. When we have the choice between good options concerning careers, jobs, places to live, and the like, we can decide confidently knowing that God wants our holiness regardless of our context. We don’t know what the future will hold, but we know that he is good and will bring what he began to completion (Philippians 1:6). If we pursue holiness first, wherever we may end up will be of some importance, yet ultimately trivial. Before every big decision, surrender to God and pursue holiness. Trust the Lord and his promises to make your paths straight (Proverbs 3:5–6). Article by Daniel Hess