![]() This perspective offers hope for anyone and any pattern of behavior that is unlike Christ. Jesus can change anyone from the inside out. Sometimes, when confronted with a person entrenched in sin, I have to go back to the hope this glorious New Covenant provides. Serving people is messy work because we are all messy people. As a pastor, I have found encouragement in the New Covenant countless times. Paul, writing of this New Covenant, said, “we have such hope” (2 Corinthians 3:12). So we let go of the nagging, pressure, and complaints that are often attached to feeling as if your spouse’s spiritual and personal growth is dependent upon you. We try not to take responsibility for that purifying work. We believe marriage is one of the primary ways God sanctifies us, but we still think it is God who does the sanctifying. So, patiently, we try to allow space for the other to grow. Nor do either of us know how the other should look. Neither of us is a finished product, but someone Christ is shaping and molding into his image. Since the process of transformation happens “from one degree of glory to another,” Christina and I try to be patient with one another- and she needs a truckload of patience to deal with me! We believe God is progressively working in the life of the other. We try to set up our calendars and lives to reflect these beliefs. We believe transformation comes as we read and pray, but also as we extend ourselves in generosity, fatigue ourselves in service to others, and receive from other believers’ lives. God has put his stamp of approval on the Bible, the gathering together with other believers, prayer, giving, and service, so we prioritize all those elements in our weekly rhythms, partly so that he might transform us. ![]() We believe encountering Christ, beholding his glory, leads to personal transformation, which causes us to pursue settings where the Spirit is present. 3 The prioritization of Spirit-saturated settings We don’t count each other's sins, but instead celebrate the righteousness of Christ in the other, realizing we both need his grace and mercy on the daily. Because Christina and I are under the New Covenant, we try to have a relationship based on grace, rather than law. But the New Covenant with Jesus is “the ministry of the Spirit,” a “ministry of righteousness,” with surpassing glory (2 Corinthians 3:8-11). He said it was a “ministry of condemnation” (2 Corinthians 3:9) whose glory was passing (2 Corinthians 3:9-10). It is the Old Covenant Paul refers to when speaking of “the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone” (2 Corinthians 3:7). 2 A grace-and-life, rather than law-and-death, environment I don’t think this practice would have become routine in our home had it not been for the belief that personal transformation is (A) needed and (B) found there. Because the new nature in us is brought out as we fellowship with Christ, each of us reads the word and prays each morning. Since “beholding the glory of the Lord” leads to personal transformation, Christina and I have always encouraged each other to protect a daily morning quiet time. Here are some ways this truth has impacted our marriage: 1 The priority of a quiet time ![]() ![]() We become like him, slowly and steadily, “from one degree of glory to another.” As we unveil our faces and behold Christ and his gospel, we go through a process of transformation. We are not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2). Then, after that past moment of salvation, as we walk with Christ, he makes that newness shine. All things become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). When a person comes to Christ, they are made into a new creation. In the larger passage, Paul taught that just as Moses received a law written on tablets of stone, so now we have received a new covenant written on human hearts. The verse above captures another marriage principle Christina and I feel is responsible for much in our married life- real transformation comes from walking with Jesus. He has shaped and molded us over the years. No, we have both experienced spiritual transformation at the hands of Jesus Christ. But our personal growth is not due entirely to the natural flow of life. ![]() In a sense, because we were relatively young when we married, we have grown up together. As age and life has ticked by, we have both matured. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." - 2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV)Ĭhristina and I are not the same people we were in 2002, the year we stood before God and witnesses and declared our covenant of love for one another. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. ![]()
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