When dating, we have two choices. We can either lose ourselves by compromising who we are and what God has made us be or lose ourselves by allowing God to shape us in his image.
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True confession: I’m not a huge fan of books on dating. I’ve always focused more on marriage. This is a personal preference. However, I LOVED Godly Dating 101. I think it’s an incredibly useful book - whether single, dating, or married. Why? Because the title is a sneaky one.
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I remember the special words my sister said to me before walking outside for the ceremony. I remember crying with joy as my new husband and I came walking down the aisle. I will forever remember the sweet few moments my husband shared right after the ceremony alone just having been proclaimed husband and wife. Mostly I think of God’s faithfulness to me my entire life, including that glorious day when I got to marry the best man in the world.
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After listening to only a couple of episodes of The Elisabeth Elliot Podcast, I was quickly drawn to her humor and abundance of wisdom. One episode in particular, A Peaceful Home, from her series Call to Surrender, led me to read her book The Shaping of a Christian Family.
As a new mom, I was hungry for wisdom and intrigued by the home life she fondly remembers in her podcast. The first couple of chapters tell the coming of age story of her mother Katharine Gillingham and how she met her husband, Elisabeth’s father, Phillip E. Howard Jr. Although interesting, I quickly moved through these chapters on family history to get to the main event, the life she lived as Elisabeth Howard.
Each chapter delves into different areas of her home life that exemplify how a Christian family lives out God’s word on a day to day basis.
Perhaps the entirety of the book could be summed up by John 15:13
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”- John 15:13
This verse seems to be a catalyst for the many ways in which every member of the family carries out his or her duties, spouses' treatment of each other, and children’s attitudes towards their parents and each other as well.
While Elliot appears to be influenced by many people including India missionary Amy Carmichael, along with known authors like Oswald Chambers, it is clear that her greatest influence was that of her parents.
Throughout the book Elliot shares her parents’ reasoning for why they parented her and her five siblings the way they did. Although simple and maybe strict, her parents emphasized the importance of being consistent in the discipline of their children from an early age. As I read the book, I could not help but think about how strict the writer’s parents were. Interestingly, as the book drew to a close, Elliot mentions a time in which an audience member at one of her talks approached her with this very sentiment. It seems that while others may perceive the Howards’ home life as a strict one, the laughter and love found within her home outshines that of the seemingly strict rules Elisabeth and her siblings grew up with.
Do not be misled by the title ‘The Shaping of a Christian Family’ because there is a lot for the unmarried to learn from this book as well. It is not necessary to be a mother or wife to learn the valuable lesson of being on time. Elisabeth Elliot recounts her father’s view that to be late is to steal “an irreplaceable commodity, time.”
Similarly, in a society that takes pride in saying things like “I’m just winging it, life, eyeliner, everything,” doing things in a flippant manner seems to be the norm these days.
Oftentimes, the uncertainty of someone’s lack of responsibility can cause fear or anxiety. Thankfully the author shares about the discipline of diligence she developed in her upbringing. One particular example Elliot depicts is her experience as a college student in which her regimented Monday through Saturday gave her the freedom to enjoy the sabbath. She was free to enjoy her Sundays by resting and even napping while others were catching up on school work.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book especially for women who did not grow up in a Christian home or one in which both parents were believers. The beginning of the book can be a little confusing considering there are pieces of her father’s journals and fragments of her mother’s articles and so the author’s voice can be mistaken for that of her parents. However, the pieces of wisdom found in this book are ones that can be carried and applied to everyday life to create and help readers to cultivate a peaceful home.
As she mentions in the preface and afterword of the book, the story she tells is simply a “description not a prescription” of how this Christian lived. While we may differ in preference, we can, like the Howards, turn to God’s word for guidance on how we can live out our lives.
The question to ask ourselves whether we read this book or not is if we live a life surrendered to God what would our homes look like? Not because Elisabeth Elliot gave her readers insight into her home life in ‘The Shaping of a Christian Family’ but because of who God is in our lives.
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Like I said I don’t run so here, I am walking through singleness. I wish I could rush past this, but God has me in this season for a reason, and it’s only for a season. Seasons always change. After the winter comes the spring. We sometimes have to face the fire before we get the rain. Walking through singleness means you might face some fires before the rain. But going through the fires makes dancing in the rain with your significant other and every blaze worth it.
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Song of Solomon is correctly read as a book about the romantic love a husband and a wife have toward each other in marriage. However, being that the Bible is the book about Jesus (Luke 24:44-45), I want to read this verse in a Christocentric way. When we do so, we find that it is a beautifully redemptive one.
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As I approach my third wedding anniversary, I’m aware of just how much I didn’t know about marriage when I first got a ring on my finger. I thought that I was the kind of person who was more interested in having a good marriage instead of planning a good wedding, so I focused on reading as many books about marriage as possible and listening to all the advice I could find beforehand.
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I started this book review with Romans 12:2 because I believe that God allows us to choose what we intake and He also gives us discernment. I was asked to review “Everybody Fights, So why Not Get Better at It?” By Kim and Penn Holderness.
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Let me begin by saying, I was single for twenty years. (Which doesn't sound like that much time, but a lot of life happened in those twenty years.) I was a self-described “strong and independent woman.” Singleness was amazing, though it was hard some days (I’m downplaying how often I cried in my car), but it was fulfilling to know I was focusing my time on serving God. Honestly, I expected there would be a much longer process between being single, and being in a relationship. Perhaps a couple of months of, “hmm, I could adjust to the idea of not being single anymore.” or something. Fireworks? A giant sign?
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I went into marriage with a lot of romantic, but vague, ideas about what a marriage would be like. A few years in, I’ve since found that marriage is very different from what I imagined. I’ve learned a lot, but one thing I was surprised to discover is that my marriage has been teaching me new things about my relationship with Christ.
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This week, Paul brings in another analogy to explain our relationship to God and sin: marriage. Let’s study how Paul connects these things.
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Many of you have likely wondered: “What exactly does a Godly man look like today?” There are numerous articles and books written about this topic, as each writer strives to uncover more of this mystery. Many of these types of lists are written from a woman's perspective, since not often do we hear from guys what their opinion of a godly man is.
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I once believed the only stories worth reading boasted of intriguing romantic plot lines. Over the past few years, though, the Lord has shown me what love truly is – and what it is not.
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As a teenager and into my early twenties, I really didn’t like the marriage set up painted by the church and the Bible. I am not even going to the topic of submission. That’s a topic for another day. No, I want to start with the basics: being a helper to a man.
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The way our society portrays relationships is confusing more often than not. I spent a lot of time being single before meeting the man I later married. And I spent more time than I’d like to admit being worried about that state of singleness. The advice offered to single women seemed to fall along the lines of, “Enjoy the time that you have by yourself.” To me, this always came across as either trite or—depending on my mood—even somewhat insulting.
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So you think you are ready to get married. Then be prepared to guard your heart like never before (Proverbs 4:23). Be obedient to strip down every ounce of pride that hides in the shadows of your heart (James 4:10). Be ready to fight, to be tried, and to be tempted (Hebrews 4:15).
Little girls often play house, innocently imagining themselves being married and having children. Later, those same little girls grow up to be young women who start dreaming of their wedding day, the white picket fence, and the fairytale, “happily EVER after.”
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We put marriage on such a high pedestal that to many it becomes an idol that defines womanhood. As if a woman only has worth if she is in a romantic relationship or if she is a wife and mother.
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