1. 16 years is a long time to be married. Many of my friends from high school and college didn’t make it that long before succumbing to divorce. One friend from college lost his wife to cancer. I’m blessed to have spent such a large part of my life in partnership with one woman.
2. 16 years isn’t a long time to be married. I think of John and Hannah Roduner (Naomi’s grandparents) and of John and Edith Moody (my own grandparents). Though all four of them are in heaven now, their marriages endured (over 100 years between the two marriages). They made it – and they set an example for us to emulate.
3. While living in South Florida, we had the privilege of knowing Frank and Joyce Phillips, an older couple who married late in life. They shared with us the idea that if you assume that the year of marriage ahead of you is “the one everyone struggles with”, you’ll be ready for the trials when they come. So I’m watching our for year 17 – I hear it’s a doozy!
4. Married people really do grow more alike as time goes on. Case in point: Naomi will now (sometimes) watch football with me, and I now eat squash.
5. I married a babe. Just sayin’.
6. One of the great joys of life together is the accumulation of shared stories, “inside” jokes and shared vocabulary that no one else will ever understand. Ask Naomi about the “sugar cookies” incident sometime for an example.
7. When we were newly married, we decided that we needed pet nicknames for each other. So I was christened “pain in my butt” and Naomi was “thorn in my flesh”. (Sounds better than “smoochy-poo”, right?)
8. When you’re married, you end up having to forgive your spouse for the same failings over and over. This is easier to do when I remember how often God has had to do that for me. (Although Naomi has to deal with this a lot more than I do, truthfully.)
9. Being married to your best friend – your honest-to-God best friend in the world – is a glorious thing.
10. I still remember the lump that came into my throat when I saw Naomi walking down the aisle on our wedding day.
11. As beautiful as Naomi was on our wedding day (and trust me, she was gorgeous!), she was 100 times more beautiful lying on an operating table, wearing one of those hair caps they make you wear in operating rooms, looking up at me as I’m holding our firstborn daughter for the first time after 31 hours and a cesarean delivery.
12. There’s nothing like married life to show you just how selfish you are.
13. I am supposed to love Naomi like Jesus loved the church. The tenses there are important – I am supposed to love (present tense – meaning a continual action) like Jesus loved (aorist tense – a past, point-in-time action) the church and gave himself up for her(also aorist). In other words, Jesus died for the church, and I’m supposed to die daily for my wife. I’m not there yet – not even close.
14. Did I mention that I married a serious hot babe? I did? Oh well – it’s worth repeating.
15. I am totally unworthy to be married to this woman. Like pretty much all of God’s blessings to me, being married to Naomi is a gift of sheer grace. I thank the God who created her, who brought us together, and who has sustained our marriage all these years.
16. Naomi, I want to grow old with you. You game?

• Basic Christianity by John Stott
• Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by John Piper
• Dug Down Deep by Joshua Harris
• The Holiness of God by R. C. Sproul
• Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris

Just missing the cut, but still recommended: Don’t Waste Your Life, The Pleasures of God, and God is the Gospel by John Piper, The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace by Michael Horton, and Knowing God by J. I. Packer.

• A king dies in the place of one of his subjects
• The eternal God of the universe take on humanity and dies in the place of one of his creatures

Obviously, as great as the first is, the second is greater by several orders of magnitude.

I bring this up because in church today, we sang a praise song that is theologically accurate and edifying – and yet it annoyed me tremendously. Here’s the chorus of that song:

Amazing love, how can it be
That You my King would die for me
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor you
In all I do, I honor you

The first two lines probably sound familiar to those of you who were raised singing hymns. It’s a modification from Charles Wesley’s hymn “And Can It Be”. Here’s the first verse:

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me who caused His pain,
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love – how can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

So, although Christ is our King, and a king dying for his subject is an awesome thing, it is a much more massive, significant and praiseworthy truth that it was not just our King who died for us, but God himself. I don’t know what the author of the modern chorus was thinking when he wrote it, but to take Wesley’s words and water them down as he did – frankly, it ruins the song for me.

(By the way, this is not a criticism of the worship team at my church. In fact, it’s not a criticism of anyone, or at least it’s not meant to be.)

This work of God, no work of man
My only hope, my only life
Has given me a place to stand
Has made me love what I despised
- Jeremy Casella, “Cast Away Stones”

My “place to stand” is the righteousness of Jesus reckoned to my account, just as my many sins – and my constant sinfulness – were reckoned to His account and paid for on the Cross.

What’s your “place to stand” in 2010? If it’s not Jesus, your firm foothold will ultimately turn out to be quicksand.

DA Carson on “permit” in 1 Timothy 2

Oh, I’m into everything I hate
My spirit is not fooled
My members take the bait
Oh, I’m into everything I hate
Still not dead enough
To stifle this debate

Smalltown Poets, “Everything I Hate”

Or, as someone else put it: Who will deliver me from the body of this death?

As the proud owner of both Scholar’s Library and the Piper Sermon Library, I strongly encourage you to enter the contest! (Full Disclosure: I used to work for Logos, and I’m a rabid fan of their stuff.)

He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood

I can’t think of a better thought on which to end the year.

• The Cross of Christ (John Stott)
• The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Leon Morris)
• Pierced for Our Transgressions (Jeffery/Ovey/Smith)
• In My Place Condemned He Stood (Packer/Dever)
• Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die (John Piper)
• The Cross He Bore (Frederick Leahy)
• A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations (Alex and Brett Harris – audiobook)
• Hebrews: Reformed Expository Commentary (Richard Phillips)

Most of the above titles are on my list because I’m planning an adult Sunday school class for my church this fall on the subject of the cross. (To clarify: I don’t know if the class will actually be approved by the powers-that-be. I’ve proposed the class, and gotten a “maybe” as a response; I’m preparing the materials over the summer so that I’ll be ready to go if the class is green-lighted.) I plan to focus on the different ways the Bible talks about what was secured for believers (or on behalf of believers) on the cross – justification, propitiation, reconciliation, etc.

The Hanson title is my “beach reading” book – or it would be if any beach time were in the works for the summer. Instead of the beach, I’m getting a new baby girl. (I’ll take that trade!) I like ancient history, and I like Hanson’s work in general. (I’m one chapter in already, and am enjoying it very much.)

I picked up the audiobook version of Do Hard Things the other day while I was at a bookstore to pick up a computer book for a work project. It’s targeted at teenagers, but 1/3 of the way through the book, the Harris boys are doing a fine job of challenging this 36-year-old. When I’m finished with it, I’ll probably give the CD’s to my church’s youth group. (Drew – you want it?)

I’m also starting to study my way through Hebrews, and the Phillips commentary will be a good resource for that.

I’ll post reviews as I get through each of the above works.  (I’ve read a few of them before, but I plan to tackle them again this summer.)

I suspect that the reason the Ten Commandments begin with the commandment “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3) and ends with the commandment “You shall not covet” (Exodus 20:17) is that they are essentially the same commandment. They bracket the other eight and reveal their source.

Read the whole thing.