And Now for Your Viewing Pleasure…

When I was a kid, my dad would always bring home pizza every Friday night after work.  We would stay up ‘til 1am watching old TV shows.  Anybody know what TV show Bob Denver starred in before “Gilligan’s Island”?  The old shows would start with the main characters doing a little commercial.  Each show had a special product that they would hock.  For George Burns and Gracie Allen it was Carnation Milk, Jack Benny was Jello, Ozzie and Harriett was Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix, Groucho Marx was Prom Shampoo, and even Yogi Bear hocked Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.  Anyway, they would finish up with their commercial and then they would say “and now for your viewing pleasure”.  Great now the program was starting!  That’s a good memory.

A lot of us guys have used the same phrase for the start of summer.  And now for your viewing pleasure we present short-shorts, low-cut tops, bikinis, etc.  Summertime can be tough on a guy trying to live Christlike.  The O’Kaysions made it an official pastime in 1959 with what else “Girl Watcher”

I'm a girl watcher

I'm a girl watcher

Watchin' girls go by

My, my, my

I'm a girl watcher

I'm a girl watcher

Here comes one now

Mmmm, mmm, mmm

I was just a boy

When I threw away my toys

I found a new pastime

To dwell on

Whenever I detect

Members of the other sex

I play the game I do so well, oh

I'm a girl watcher

I'm a girl watcher

Watchin' girls go by

My, my, my

I'm a girl watcher

I'm a girl watcher

Here comes one now

Hello there, female

My, my, but you do look swell

Could you please walk

A little slower

I wonder if you know

That you're putting on a show

Could you please walk

A little closer

I'm a girl watcher

I'm a girl watcher

Watchin' girls go by

My, my, my

I'm a girl watcher

I'm a girl watcher

Here comes one now

Mmm, mmm, mmm

Okay let’s get all of the rationalizations out of the way right now.

·   I’m just window-shopping.

·   God wants us to enjoy His creation.

·   I’m just looking, it’s not like I’m going to sleep with her.

·   If she didn’t want me to look she wouldn’t dress that way.

·   Looking never hurt anyone.

Now that we got that out of our system let’s take a look at King David.  2 Samuel 11:1 starts the story of David enjoying a little girl watching.  (vs. 1) Instead of being with his men David is just lounging around the palace. (vs 2) David can’t sleep so he takes a walk on the roof and there is where he got a look at naked Bathsheba.  Now I’ve always taken the philosophy even up to this point David hasn’t done anything wrong.  We’ve all seen things that we didn’t mean to see (internet pop-ups) and that’s not our fault, right?  If we’re on a risky website we certainly greaten our chance of seeing the wrong kind of pop-up.  So if we we’re where we shouldn’t be in the first place, yeah, that’s wrong.  Back to David on the roof.  Did I mention Bathsheba was naked?  It seems that part kind of stuck with David too because he sent for her.  (vs. 4)  David goes from taking a walk to sleeping with one of his general’s wife. I’ll let you read the rest of the story 2 Samuel 11:5 – 12:23.  Shall we go back to the list above?  Just looking, doesn’t hurt anyone.  Have you ever asked your wife if she feels hurt when you look at other women?  I’m guessing the answer would be YES!  Do you think she may feel like Uriah with a spear through her heart?

Again we’re only looking we’re not going to sleep with her.  Remember the statement from a famous person, “depends on what is, is”.  Sleep with her, sex, adultery that’s the line, right?  Old Testament law agrees, Leviticus 20:10 “If there is a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, one who commits adultery with his friend’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”  There you go, it’s the act of having sex with someone not your wife! That’s the sin!  Okay as long as we don’t take it that far we’re okay. 

Wait a minute, God wasn’t finished talking to us when Leviticus was written.  He still has plenty to say in the New Testament.  Let’s take a look at Matthew 5.  Jesus has just finished picking His disciples and a crowd starts to gather.  He goes to the mountaintop to speak to them; we know this as the “Sermon on the Mount”.  Jesus starts to reveal new teachings.  It’s not only the act but it’s also the heart attitude.  (vs.21) Jesus starts with us angry people.  “You have heard that the ancients were told ‘You shall not commit murder’”.  (vs. 22) “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court...”  He continues to look into our hearts.  (vs 27-28) “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  Guess what, looking is a sin too!

Guys we have to watch out for what we’re watching.  It doesn’t take long for the “and now for your viewing pleasure” attitude to care control of us and lead us down a very dark path.  The next time you think that just a look won’t hurt anyone, remember where it took David.

~Walter E. Homan

Passive Husbands are Killing Their Wives

I hope you were able to see Mark Shaw at either Blessed Hope Community Church or Gateway Christian Church in the beginning of April.  Mark i spart of a Christian counceling group in Alabama called Truth in Love Ministries.  To be honest it wasn't what I was expecting but I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I also learned a lot.  Thanks Mark!

I was reading through his blog and found this great article that really hit home with me.  I was a passive husband/father for years until I finally realized what I was doing to me family.  Here's Mark's article:

The epidemic I see most often in biblical marriage counseling cases I am privileged to serve in are passive husbands and assertive wives. The two go hand in hand, unfortunatlely, and I blame the husband for much of this problem (though wives are not totally without some blame).

Most Christian men I counsel in marriage counseling are...(read the rest)

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Enjoy Life with Your Wife

This was posted on the Men of Armor" website the other day.

Encouragement proof text of the day….
Ecclesiastes 9:9
Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.

 The verse starts off amazingly sweet, doesn’t it?

(read the rest)

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Balancing the Budget

If you’ve seen the news in the last few weeks, the United States government is about to shut down.  We are just days away from the budget deadline and if it passes before a new budget is voted on and passed, the government will be out of money.  Now the President and the Republican leadership in the House are going back and forth trying to prove who has the better plan and blaming the other for this crisis.  Politics aside, everyone knows that in order to balance any budget you can’t spend more than you take in.  Our government has had this backwards for years so don’t expect too much from the next vote.

Like I said, to balance a budget you need at least an equal amount of deposits to balance your withdraws.  The other night I heard a metaphor for budgets and marriage.  It is called Emotional Bank Account.  I know, I know anything that starts off with the word EMOTIONAL you want to run from.  So do I, normally, but this really makes a lot of sense.  A bank account has deposits and withdraws.  What if you withdraw more than you’ve deposited?  You have a deficit!  For years we’ve almost joked about our national dept, but someday someone is going to have to pay up.  You can’t run a deficit forever.

So how this concept works is really pretty simple.  Deposits build up your wife and withdraws tear her down.  There is one caveat to this.  Normally when you have a bank account the deposits will benefit you by means of interest or just more money.  In this case you can’t think that way.  In this account you can only be concerned with how your deposits will benefit your wife. 

What sides of the ledger to the following situations fall?

·   You come home from work and scream from the front door, “Why isn’t dinner on the table I’m starving?”	Deposit or Withdraw
·   You come home from work and notice that dinner isn’t ready.  You walk up to your wife kiss her on the neck and ask, “How can I help?”	Deposit or Withdraw

By no means am I a rocket scientists but I think I can figure these out.  In my 21+ years married and starting to get this stuff, but in all honesty it normally takes me picking the wrong way first.  After the cold draft starts I get to thinking, it would have probably gone better had I handled that differently.  One thing that I am constantly reminded of is women are wired way different then men.  What most guys and me would think is almost always the direct opposite of the way most women think. 

1 Peter 3:7 You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.  Understanding way?  This makes me think that women were as confusing to men in New Testament times as they are to us now.  So how do we “live in an understanding way?”  I hate this part, we have to study them.  Your going to hate this one too, ask them what they mean when they start using that foreign language womanese. 

Between some of the good messages I’ve heard lately and the book I’m currently reading, For Men Only! I’m starting to learn how to make a few deposits.  Here are a few ways I’m learning to make deposits with my wife; maybe your wife would like them too.

·   Plan a date night.  Not just once but make it a regular part of your schedule.  I always thought this was just a nice, once in awhile thing, then I learned that she really wants this more often.

·   Find ways to give her a break from the kids.  Whether it’s encouraging her to go out with friends or a ladies Bible study but something.  When doing this, be happy.  If you act begrudgingly to her going she will count this as a withdraw.  I thought I was doing her a favor and I wanted her to know that, then I learned if she leaves while I’m acting like a 2 year old she’ll be thinking about that all night and she won’t enjoy herself.

·   Value her more than money.  We all want to be good providers, work extra hours, take on second jobs; then I learned she would rather have less stuff and have me around the house with her and the kids more.

·   Make sure she knows I love her unconditionally.  I don’t remember doing this, but my wife tells me in an argument several years ago I told her she needed to loose some weight. Then I learned how self-conscious women are about their bodies.  With all the Photoshopped magazines and billboards out there my wife needs to know that I accept her as she is.

·   Listen to her without distractions.  I always “listened” to her while she was talking, and then I learned I couldn’t do this effectively while sitting in front of the tv, computer, etc.

·   Be understanding when she’s not interested in being intimate.  Guys have needs and desires right! Then I learned that women’s motors aren’t revved up all the time like guys.  She needs to be pursued all the time not just when I’m in the mood.

By the way, “then I learned” is code for “after I messed this up I learned…”

So how is your wife’s account been lately?  Have you made more deposits than withdraws?  Is she running a deficit?  I know I still have a lot of work to do.

~Walter E. Homan

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Why I'm Not Getting an iPhone | Plugged In Online Up Front

I hope all of you are familiar with Plugged In.   If your not, let me give you a short bio.  Plugged In is the media wing of Focus on the Family.  They research and write reviews for movies in the theater, dvds, music, video games, etc.  Occasionally they will also write an editorial mostly on media or technology issues.

I'm on Plugged In's email list and they had a great article in it this week.

Why I'm Not Getting an iPhone | Plugged In Online Up Front by Adam R. Holz

One of my most memorable bouts with techno-lust happened in late 2005. My wife and I were visiting relatives over Thanksgiving, and a cousin's boyfriend had gotten his hands on the just-released fifth-generation iPod … the first with video capability.

"Ooooohhhhhh," I cooed. "That's cool!" Never mind that I already had an iPod of my own. This was drool-worthy. This had pictures to go with the sound. This was so much better than my so-much-smaller, so-much-less-capable and so-much-less-cool fourth-generation model.

So that Christmas I dutifully ponied up $299 to get one … for my wife. And we're still using it today, remarkably, though its battery life isn't what it used to be.

As for its supercool video feature, well, I think we downloaded exactly one video (U2's "Vertigo"). The new iPod's biggest wow-inducing factor, it turned out, was a total non-issue when it came to our real-world usage of it. In the end, it was just another iPod … and wasn't at all different, functionally, from than the one I already had.

In other words: It was nice, but it didn't complete me.

While I like tech toys as much as the next guy, and while I'm not averse to coughing up the cash if I want (need!) something badly enough, and while I'm certainly not anti-technology, and while I really do think it's even cooler than that 2005 video-enabled iPod … I'm not getting an iPhone. Or any other smartphone for that matter. And I'd like to take a few minutes to tell you why...  (Read the whole article)

I'm one of the few guys left that still doesn't have a smart phone.  I just have an old Motorola Razor.  I've wanted an iPhone for a long time but I've been waiting for Verizon to pick it up.  I'm still on the fence, but Adam's article is definitely something to consider.

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I Want to Know What Love Is

If you’re in your late 30’s or early 40’s you’re like me and were a teen in the 80’s.  We were lucky enough with the bands of the 70’s and 80’s.  I mean not just some wimpy teeny-bopper bands like today, but these were some established rock bands that wrote some awesome songs. Many of these bands wrote some great ballads as well. I used to crank this stuff all the time.  That’s what we did, right?  I drove around with my girl friend in my ’68 Chevelle, back when they really were hot rods not just chick cars with subwoofers.  We listened to all those songs and we thought we had it all figured out.

Ok, fast forward a few years and I’m getting married.  Standing at the altar and my soon to be wife walks into the room on the arm of her father, my first thought was “I’m getting married!?!?”  Don’t get me wrong, I was in love with her, I mean I knew all the songs by heart.

Fast forward a few more years.  I’m a married guy and I’m wondering why my wife is upset with me.  Every morning before I left for work I would tell her, “I love you” because I still remembered what it meant.  So what was bugging her?  In 1984 Foreigner released the song “I Want to Know What Love Is”.  Here’s the chorus:

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me
I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
And I wanna feel, I want to feel what love is
And I know, I know you can show me.

I was beginning to get the feeling that saying “I love you” was not showing her that I loved her.

The Bible uses three different words for our word love.  Phileo is friendship love, Philadelphia – city of brotherly love.  Next is eros.  This is passion, sexual, or erotic.  Sadly our world has high jacked this and told everyone this is real love.  Soap operas, porn, tv, and movies portray people jumping into bed and say that it’s love.  In God’s plan of marriage first and sex second, eros love is a great thermometer of our relationship, but the world thinks it’s a thermostat.  What I mean is the world thinks if we have great sex our relationship will get better.  The truth is, if your marriage relationship is great you’ll have great sex.  The last, and in my opinion, the greatest love is agape.  This is the self-sacrificing love, the selfless love, the willing to give up our wants to please our spouse.

In Ephesians 5:25, Paul tells us how we are to love our wives, “as Christ loved the church”.  He died for the church, remember?  1 John 3:16 “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”  I think that is probably the ultimate in self-sacrificing.  John even tells us that we should be willing to die for the brethren.  We should be agape loving our fellow believers, and I think you could argue all mankind.  Christ didn’t only die for Christians; He died for all.  Here is another part that the world gets wrong, agape love isn’t reciprocal.  It’s not give and take; it’s all give.  Our goal should be to please others.  Paul write for us in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  While we were living against God’s law, he still loved us enough to die.  We can’t “love” our wives according to what she does for us; we are commanded to love our wives because we are to mirror Christ.  This falls into all of our relationships.  We can’t only love our kids when they get good grades or score more points. 

Likewise, I believe that showing agape love towards our neighbors and the world in general is the best way to win them to Christ.  By consisting serving your neighbor he may wonder “why do you shovel my snow even I yell at your kids?”, “what’s so different about you?”.

Agape love is what holds marriages together for 60 years.  Agape love builds long lasting friendships.  Agape love brings people to Christ.

~Walter E. Homan

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Not Returning... 1 Peter 3:7-9

I've  been reading "the Christian Husband" by Bob Lepine.  I was reading this morning and came across 1 Peter 3:7-9. 
7 aYou husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with 1bsomeone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

8 1To sum up, aall of you be harmonious, sympathetic, bbrotherly, ckindhearted, and dhumble in spirit;

9 anot returning evil for evil or binsult for insult, but 1giving a cblessing instead; for dyou were called for the very purpose that you might einherit a blessing.

I have read this at least 20 times before but for some reason this morning it just jumped off the page at me.  Look at vs 9.  Not returning evil for evil, insult for insult but give blessings.  Why didn't I ever see that before.  I know for a fact that I've gotten caught up in "discussions" with my wife and I did not flood her with blessings.  I was doing more of the chucking insult/blame grenades.  I need to keep this in mind the next time.


After I finish the book I will post a full review of it.

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Walter
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What Does God Think About Sex? - FamilyLife.com

Post from:  FamilyLife 

Dennis and Barbara Rainey

When you and your spouse married, I'm sure you expected to have a healthy and active sexual relationship together. That's great—that's what God intended. Unfortunately, the daily stress of life often gets in the way of sex, distracting the attention of a husband and wife from each other and from pleasing each other.

Sex can become a marital battleground, even in young marriages, because of emotional and mental baggage from histories of sexual abuse, inappropriate sexual behavior in past relationships (or even with your spouse before marriage), or pornography. Even if these experiences or issues do not apply to you directly, our culture's messages about and portrayals of sex can unconsciously influence the way you and your spouse respond and relate to each other in bed. 

To build an intimate marriage, husband and wife must be committed to meeting each other's physical and emotional needs. Because most men and women have differing ideas, standards, and expectations about sex, it's no wonder that many marriages suffer in this area.  One of the best things you can do is learn about God's purposes for sex.  After all, He is the Designer—He created our bodies.  And you may be surprised to know what He had in mind.

God's purposes

The Designer of sex made numerous statements integral to the sexual aspect of marriage. First, sex is the process He gave us to multiply a godly heritage. He commanded us to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it" (Gen. 1:28).

But God also designed sex for our pleasure, to be enjoyed in the marriage bed. Sex is meant to be a bonding experience with your spouse. Scripture talks significantly more about enjoying the pleasures of sex than it does about being fruitful and multiplying! As Dr. Ed Wheat wrote, "God Himself invented sex for our delight. It was His gift to us—intended for pleasure."

The Song of Solomon, though full of spiritual meaning and application, provides an excellent description of God's intention for a husband and wife's sexual relationship. According to Solomon, the man has the freedom to enjoy his wife's body, and the woman has the freedom to enjoy his. Here's a sample of how the lover and his beloved expressed that freedom in the Song of Solomon. The lover (King Solomon himself) said:

How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O prince's daughter! The curves of your hips are like jewels, the work of the hands of an artist. Your navel is like a round goblet which never lacks mixed wine; Your belly is like a heap of wheat fenced about with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. ... How beautiful and how delightful you are, my love, with all your charms! (Song of Solomon 7:1-3, 6)

Men, these words give us three points on how to be great lovers for our wives.

First, Solomon readily praised the young Shulammite woman, his beloved. He told her how beautiful she was with vivid and picturesque language that communicated his admiration to her. I often ask the husbands at our marriage getaways, "When was the last time you wrote your wife a love letter that praised her and told her how beautiful she is?" Solomon understood how important this is in communicating love.

Second, Solomon was romantic. His poetic words describe his beloved's entire body as a source of delight. Some husbands have an easy time being creatively romantic, but the rest of us need help in this area.

Third, Solomon's focus was physical. A wife may be tempted to resent her husband's sex drive and physical focus, but she should understand that much more than a woman, a man is stimulated by sight. And God designed him this way deliberately.

A lovely lover

What about the bride's approach to sex? Some of her comments about her lover indicate that she focused on what she saw (Song of Solomon 5:10-16):

My beloved is dazzling and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand. His head is like gold, pure gold; his locks are like clusters of dates, and black as a raven. His eyes are like doves, beside streams of water, bathed in milk, and reposed in their setting. His cheeks are like a bed of balsam, banks of sweet-scented herbs; his lips are lilies, dripping with liquid myrrh. His hands are rods of gold set with beryl; his abdomen is carved ivory inlaid with sapphires. His legs are pillars of alabaster set on pedestals of pure gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars. His mouth is full of sweetness and he is wholly desirable. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

She also spoke of how she felt in her lover's arms (7:10-12):

I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. Come, my beloved, let us go out into the country, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us rise early and go to the vineyards; let us see if the vine has budded and its blossoms have opened, and whether the pomegranates have bloomed. Then I will give you my love.

Then she revealed her feelings about physical passion (8:5-7):

Beneath the apple tree I awakened you; ... Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, jealousy is as severe as Sheol; its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love; nor will rivers overflow it.

These passages illustrate the two main aspects of a woman's approach to love: the physical and the relational. The Shulammite woman described her lover's body as richly and colorfully as Solomon's depiction of her. But she then focused on him as a total person and their relationship.

Men often make the mistake of focusing only on the physical side of sex. Sex is much more than a physical act that ends in a few minutes. Sex actually brings two people together in body, soul, and spirit. When the soul and spirit parts of sex are missing, the woman will feel empty, undesired, and used. One woman I counseled confessed that her husband approached her only one night a month. "He never shares his life with me," she said. "He slips into bed with the lights off, we make love, and that's it." I will never forget her next comment: "Making love with him is like a bread-and-water diet." Ouch!

If a marriage is going through a rocky spell, or a spouse is struggling with an emotionally difficult issue, the problems will almost always manifest themselves in the sexual relationship. Sex acts like a gauge, measuring the depth of a relationship. For the woman I just described, the physical experience left her lonely and longing for true companionship. For sex to be truly satisfying for both partners, each has to be totally open and vulnerable to the other. Each person must feel needed, wanted, accepted, and loved sacrificially.

Sexual adjustment takes time in every marriage. Enjoy the process—that was God's intent when He created this awesome experience for intimacy in marriage.

Adapted by permission from Rekindling the Romance, by Dennis and Barbara Rainey, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2004.

Related resources
Rekindling the Romance, by Dennis and Barbara Rainey
God on Sex, by Daniel Akin
Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God, by CJ Mahaney
Sexual Intimacy in Marriage, by Dr. William Cutrer and Sandra Glahn

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It's Getting Closer

We're getting excited!  The UPS man dropped off 2 heavy packages for us today.

Just 10 days away.  My wife and I have so many great contacts because of this conference.  If your coming, I hope you know that there are thousands of people praying for you all over the world.
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Why I am Passionate about Ministry to Men

Last year I year I heard Charles Stecker from A Chosen Generation Ministry speak at Iron Sharpens Iron event.  He was an excellent speaker and really hit home the reasons we as men need to be investing in our kids especially young men.  Below is a post from his blog.

Post from:  http://drcstecker.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-i-am-passionate-about-ministry-to.html

Why I am Passionate about Ministry to Men

The Following blog rated as one of the most read last year. the events since that time only serve to reinforce what I wrote nearly one year ago. I want to also encourage men to invest in themselves by attending trainings for men. These include, but are not limited to, denominational events, Iron Sharpens Iron Conferences, Man in the Mirror Annual Summit, Dangerous Man Conferences, Men of Valor Conferences and so many others.

FROM MARCH 2010
Last weekend I had the privilege of speaking to nearly 700 men as a part of the speaking team at the Iron Sharpens Iron conference in Rockford, IL. Roy Abbott and his team at Focal Point Ministries did a tremendous job of sponsoring/hosting this event.

For me to speak at this event, I spent a few hours on the road to and from the airport in Denver. I spent time in the airport waiting for flights or to get my bags. I spent nearly a total of three hours on a bus between Chicago and Rockford. It was not just me, by the way--many of the speakers/workshop leaders did the same thing. Here is the point. Lots of hours invested in this by many many men so that we could come together and build ourselves as well as other men. My close friends and brothers, Ray Morgan, Ken Larson, Dan Erickson and Sam Mehaffie had similar travel schedules to be there and invest in men.

So Why???

Here is a glimpse of my last four days from just one small perspective.

1. FRIDAY AFTERNOON: The young lady at the Information Desk was divorced because her husband had left her for another woman. As a note, he was divorcing that person now and had called her to see if this young lady would take him back. The young lady said that men these days are just weak and looking for a "Sugar Mama" to take care of them.

2. FRIDAY NIGHT: Our server was a great young lady. She was raising two children, ages 2 and 5 on her own. We prayed with her.

3. SUNDAY AFTERNOON: Our server when asked if we could pray for her, asked for prayer for her "ex" boyfriend. She said that he just needed help being a man and finding himself.

4. MONDAY LUNCH: My wife and I had lunch together and asked our server if we could pray for her. Without any hesitation she said yes and when asked if there is anything specific, she asked if we would pray for her family. She shared that her father had left her family about four years ago and they were still struggling, especially her two little brothers.

Here is my take on this-- we need stronger men. Ladies of all ages deserve much better than they are getting. Is this an indictment on all men in the land. Absolutely not!! I am meeting with guys across the land who are working hard to be the men God created us to be.

I am suggesting that there is still a great deal of work to be done.

So why do I do what I do and why does my bride of nearly 32 years support me beyond anything that would seem reasonable to others?? We have three of the most amazing Granddaughters (and who knows how many more in the future). They are being raised to be strong Godly ladies. I am working to see if we cannot help to raise some strong Godly men who will raise their sons or grandsons to be the kind of Godly men my granddaughters deserve.

Our families, churches, communities and our nation all need and deserve strong Godly Men.

That is why I am passionate about ministry to men and why I am heading to Springfield, IL this weekend.

                                                                

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The Art of Marriage Conference

Only 2 1/2 days left for the early registration deadline.  January 23rd at 11:59pm is your last chance to register at the $35 fee.

Click here for more info or to register!



 

• Session 1:  love happens  (purpose of marriage)

• Session 2:  love fades  (drift to isolation)

• Session 3:  love dances (roles)

• Session 4:  love interrupted  (communication)

• Session 5:  love sizzles  (romance and sex)

• Session 6:  love always  (legacy)

Feel free to forward this on to friends.  Can you imagine if our whole community had great marriages?  What would our churches be like?  What would our homes be like?

We want you to be able to take part in this conference.  If your schedule is holding you back, please don't let it. We want to work with you.  We would be willing to meet with you for a showing or we're also considering maybe a Bible Study or Sunday School class time to view it as well as the February 11th & 12th.  We're even willing to run the program in your home church at a later date if your church would allow it.  But you need to register before the Jan, 23rd deadline to get the $35 price.

We even had a few more door prizes come in this week.

Man Up Men! Live Christlike!
Walter
Email me!

The Art of Marriage Conference

You may already know a little about the Art of Marriage conference that we are hosting at our church on February 11th & 12th.  It seems some people got the wrong impression.  Some thought that this was only for couples that had marriages in trouble.  Believe me it's not.  If your married or engaged to be married, it's for you.  For $35 per couple you can't beat it!  We even have door prizes. 



The conference will hit several topics including:
SESSION 1:  LOVE HAPPENS  (PURPOSE OF MARRIAGE)

SESSION 2:  LOVE FADES  (DRIFT TO ISOLATION)

SESSION 3:  LOVE DANCES (ROLES)

SESSION 4:  LOVE INTERRUPTED  (COMMUNICATION)

SESSION 5:  LOVE SIZZLES  (ROMANCE AND SEX)

SESSION 6:  LOVE ALWAYS  (LEGACY)

Now be honest, isn't there at least one of these topics you feel your marriage could improve on?  Ruth and I have been married for 21 years and we found great info here.

Remember, early registration is only $35 until January 23rd.  Registration will then be $45 from January 24th-30th.  If you know of anyone else that would be interested, please pass it on.

Registration is easy, just click the link below.
Click here for more info.

Guys only! What do you think your wife will say if you tell her you want to take her to a marriage conference to improve your relationship?  Do you really have to think about this?  Come on it's even Valentine's Day weekend!


Man Up Men! Live Christlike!
Walter
Email me!