I recently finished a reading plan on YouVersion called Uncommen Husbands. Here are some quotes that I especially appreciated from Brian Goins’ insights.
“Paul indicates there a came a time in his life when he grew out of an immature, boyish love and embraced a more mature, and dare we say, manly love [1 Corinthians 13:11]. If we’re going to love our wives like Christ loved the church, we must let the boy die. And in marriage, that’s far easier said than done. Check out the comparisons below:
- Boys retaliate quickly when hurt; manly love is patient and kind.
- Boys require constant affirmation; manly love is not arrogant or rude.
- Boys stew, stammer, and hold grudges when they don’t get their way; manly love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.
- Boys try to win every argument; manly love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
- Boys have a short fuse; manly love bears all things.
- Boys write people off when wronged; manly love believes God’s best for the relationship.
- Boys lose hope after they’re hurt; manly love always hopes for reconciliation regardless of the pain.
- Boys expect to be served; manly love endures all things.”
“Paul says, ‘cherish’ our bride like we cherish our own bodies. The word means, ‘bring warmth to,’ and from which we derive our words, thermal and thermostat. … When Paul tells us to love our wives as we love our own bodies, he’s encouraging us to cherish their emotional needs in the same way we cherish our own physical needs. If she’s chilly, it’s our job to warm her up. If she’s steaming, then we help lower the mercury. In other words, the call to cherish means we have to engage when we’d rather shrink back.”
“I’m not sure Paul was the most popular men’s retreat speaker. When he spoke, some fell asleep…and then fell out a window (Acts 20:9). He admitted to the church at Corinth his messages were a bit convoluted (1 Corinthians 2:3-5). Even his buddy Peter threw him under the bus for his ivory tower verbiage (2 Peter 3:15-16).
“Then there was his unfortunate use of the word nourish in Ephesians 5:28. I’m pretty sure every guy in the audience cringed a bit when Paul said to husbands, ‘nourish’ your wife. We may think of nutritious foods, but in Paul’s day, the word often referred to nursing moms. Try and get that picture out of your head.
“When my wife used her God-given equipment to nourish our children I don’t ever remember a time when I asked her, ‘Honey, when was the last time you fed the baby?’ and she responded, ‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s been a few days.’ Because instinctively a mom knows her baby’s nourishment has to be consistent, catered to their tastes, and is crucial for their survival. In the same way, Paul calls husbands to nourish their brides. Is your love consistent? I don’t know about you, but I rarely miss a meal. Unless I’m fasting (for a very short time!), about every 4-5 hours I feed the beast. It’s all too common for our wives to go months between meals: a date night, taking a walk, go on an adventure, a simple text saying, ‘are you tired? You should be because you’ve been running through my mind all day long,’ or a well thought out letter. Nourishment must be ongoing. Is your love catered to her tastes? You’re not going to catch me at the all-you-can-eat tofu bar. Unless I’m on the mission field, I generally nourish my body with stuff I like. It’s common to give love the way we want to receive love. But your love language probably doesn’t match hers. Want to know if you are catering to her ‘love’ taste buds, ask this UNCOMMEN question: ‘Honey, do you feel the depth of my love? Not do you know it, but do you feel it? If not, how can I nourish your soul?’ Do you realize your love is crucial to her survival?”
![Light & Truth [Acts]](https://craigtowens.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/light-truth-acts.jpg)
8 Quotes From “Light & Truth—Acts and the Larger Epistles”
February 10, 2016 — Craig T. Owens“Our Bible is of God; yet it is also of man. It is both divine and human. It comes to us from God’s Spirit; it comes also from man’s spirit. It is written in the language of the earth, yet its words are the words of him ‘Who speaketh it from heaven.’ Natural, yet supernatural; simple, yet profound; undogmatical, yet authoritative; very like a common book, yet very unlike also; dealing often with seeming incredibilities and contradictions, yet never assuming any need for apology, or explanation, or retraction; a book for humanity at large, yet minutely special in its fitnesses for every case of every soul; throughout its pages, from first to last, one unchanging estimate of sin as an infinite evil, get always bringing out God’s gracious mind toward the sinner, even in his condemnation of the guilt; such is the great Book with which man has to do, which man has to study, out of which man has to gather wisdom for eternity.” [Acts 1:1]
“One of the great characteristics of the whole interval between Christ’s first and second coming is the world’s rage, secret and open, against the Father and the Son. … It is very useless anger. It accomplishes nothing. It is like an angry child striking a huge rock with its fist. It is the mere display of impotent hatred, or the temporary gratification of their dislike of God, and their rejection of His purpose regarding His Son. … It calls light darkness, and darkness light; good evil, and evil good; but the light and the darkness, the good and evil, still remain as they were. All the enlightenment of the age, all the appliances of modern progress, are impotent against God and His Christ, against His truth, and His church, and His Word.” [Acts 4:25]
“This is one of the many repetitions of the Pentecostal scene which occurred in early days. Most unscriptural is the statement of some that the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost was a thing done once for all, not to be repeated, and that we are not to pray for or expect such things again. The whole of the ‘Acts of the Apostles’ is a direct refutation of this piece of human fancy. Wherever the apostles went there was a repetition of Pentecost, whether at Jerusalem, or Samaria, or Antioch, or Corinth. Every conversion is the repetition of Pentecost; it is doing the same thing for an individual soul as was done for three thousand then, by a similar process, and by the same power—the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost is the heritage of the church. The Old Testament saints possessed Him; and still more the New. This is our heritage, the heritage of every believing man.” [Acts 11:15]
“Beware of seeking anything less than the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Our whole life is to be a reception of the Spirit. He is to be continually coming down on us, and filling us. Let us open our mouth wide that He may fill it. Let us beware of anything that would present itself as a substitute for the living Spirit. Many such things may we expect in these last days from satan as an angel of light.” [Acts 11:15]
“We are tempted in our day to be ashamed of the gospel. It is thought to be bare, unintellectual, almost childish by many. Hence, they would overlay it with argument and eloquence, to make it more respectable and more attractive. Every such attempt to add to it is being ashamed of it.” [Romans 1:16]
“We must have a righteousness, else we cannot stand before God; we cannot have merely a religion.” [Romans 4:6-8]
“The prodigal did not work for the ‘best robe,’ but got it all ready-made from his father’s hands; Joseph did not work for his coat of many colors, but received it as the gift of his father’s love; Adam did not work for the skins with which the Lord God clothed him: so it is with the sinner in his approach to God, and in God’s approaches to him. ‘Righteousness without works’ is given him; nay, put upon him as a raiment, a divine raiment, to fit him for drawing near to God.” [Romans 4:6-8]
“When the night is darkest, and the stars are hidden, and the clouds are black, then we think most of the clear fair day, and long for its dawn. When the storm is roughest, with the waves and wind roaring around the laboring vessel, then we are troubled, and look eagerly out for the glad and sunny calm. When winter binds the earth in its chain of frost, and wraps it in snow and ice, then we begin to ask for spring, with its flowers, and songs, and verdure. So with the saint, as represented by the apostle here. This is night, and storm, and winter to him; he is ever thinking of the day, and the calm, and the spring.” [Romans 8:19-23]
More quotes are here.
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