Marriage

Here are my notes from the men's meeting this morning. Thank you to all who attended, and to those who watched the LiveStream.

If you're interested in the sermon audio or video, you can find them on this messages page.

This summer a group of us were studying the Trinity and exploring some very deep waters. As part of our reading we looked at Kevin DeYoung’s excellent post on the Trinity. In that article he makes the point that we need to be careful, very careful, when using the Trinity to defend a certain view of gender roles. He was referring to male headship in a marriage.

Our church affirms that God made men and women equal but different—equal in that both made in God’s image and thus are infused with inherent dignity (Gen 1:26–28), different in their…

Yesterday we looked at the sobering topic of spousal abuse or domestic violence. We noted how it can be physical or non-physical and is far more common than we’d expect. It is something that Bible condemns and the very opposite of what it requires of husbands and wives. These two posts are a way for the elders to communicate our desire to see victims supported and abusers brought to repentance. The complexity and nature of these issues mean that we can only scratch the surface. There are some resources below if you want to explore the issues further.

A couple weeks ago we briefly looked at the topic of abuse (oppression) within a marriage. The elders felt it would be helpful to add to this with a couple blog posts that speak to some of the issues surrounding spousal abuse—sometimes called “domestic violence,” though it can be physical or non-physical violence... It’s important that you in SGC know and are confident that the elders are ready and willing to protect the abused and call abusers to full account and repentance—legally and spiritually. Unfortunately, it’s all too common to hear stories of failures and breakdowns in how Christians and…

Last Sunday I preached on 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, one of the most challenging passages on sexual immorality in the New Testament. The overall theme of the passage is on our holiness, but purity is the central focus of that holiness--at least, within this particular passage.

In the sermon we also looked at the category of lust from Matthew 5:28, I briefly mentioned pornography as one of the most significant issues of our day. It has made life treacherous for all of us regardless of our personal level of temptation. The ubiquity of the internet--through the obvious sources like mainstream…

Just under three years ago our church lost Scott Monroe, but our collective loss was nothing compared to what the Monroe family experienced themselves. It taught all of us a great deal about the earthly side of death—a side very different from the heavenly side of it that Scott joyfully experienced in a brilliant moment. As a church we are still learning how to come alongside those who have faced trials and tragedies very different from our own, but this is what Christian love and compassion call us to do. In this note from Carla, she shares something of the way the church has entered into her suffering these last several years. We hope it is both encouraging and challenging for you.

The rest of this story moves so much faster than the beginning, but now that I have the benefit of hindsight, I am clearly able to see God’s hand in the waiting. 

It was absolutely thrilling to have a baby in the house at last, but we knew that God was only just beginning the story of our family, and we were eager to see what else He had in store for us.

When Eli and I were married in 2003, we already knew that adoption would very likely be part of our story. We started out the same way so many other couples do, desiring a sweet, tiny baby (or several!) to call our own. However, my infertility had been diagnosed many years before, so we knew that God would be writing our story differently.

Warren Harvey is the pastor of Ambassador Presbyterian Church, one of our co-hosts of the upcoming marriage conference. He recently sent a note to the men of his church that we wanted to pass along to you as well.