We celebrated our 50^TH anniversary on February 2nd; it has been a wonderful journey. I write to humbly offer some advice that has kept our love alive and our hearts knit together through our “Journey of Grace.”

I pray you will heed these Scriptural principles so your love and your marriage will be an example to your children and to those lives you touch through the years.

• A successful marriage requires commitment for a lifetime. Remember you made a vow to God and to your mate.
• Love is a choice.
• Walk in love, walk as children of light, be filled with the Spirit, and submit yourself to him as unto the Lord. Ephesians 6
• Don’t forget your first love. Pursue Him like you did before he proposed.
• Memorize and heed 1 Corinthians 13
• Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath (anger). Ephesians 4:26-32, Proverbs 15:1
• Always forgive…it’s always your turn!
• Till the weeds in your garden of love. A marriage is give and take but mostly give.
• Always be best friends.
• Life isn’t always sunshine; learn to survive the storms with the Lord’s help.
• Don’t try to change him. You loved him like he was when you married him.
• Glorify God together. Romans 15:7 “Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.”
• Agree to wait when you disagree. Don’t insist on always having your way. You aren’t always right! (You are commanded to submit.)
• Don’t share the most intimate or the most controversial issues with your mom or your friends.
• Never override his decisions with your children. Always have a united front!!
• Study the Word like you did for your hardest exam. You need more than a light devotional.
• Memorize the Word. Psalm 119: 11
• Meditate on the Word. Joshua 1:8
• Learn to pray together every day. If you stay in the Word and on your knees, the problems become nonissues.
• Use the Bible as your guide. Psalm 119: 105
• Share your faith. When you tell others about Christ, it is one of the most intimate forms of worship.

REMEMBER:   We are engaged in Spiritual Warfare! Satan wants your marriage, your testimony, and your family, but “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” 1 John 4:4

Fruitful Growth in the Faith 2 Peter 1:5-11

But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Lord has equipped you to live godly and will empower you to be an example to others. Be sure that you know Christ in a personal way.

May the Lord bless you as your continue your journey together.

We give the Lord the praise and glory for His goodness to us. We are where we are today because of Christ alone.

Lovingly,

Sherry Sturm (pictured above with her husband and friend Steven)

One of our members and deacons, Roy Hooper, found this excellent article by John Piper:

Recently I spoke at Northwestern College as part of their year-long 100th anniversary celebration. The title of the message was "The Supremacy of God in the Life of the Mind." One capability of the mind that I focused on was the imagination. It applies to everybody who has a mind. Here's what I said: One of the great duties of the Christian mind is imagination. It is not the only thing the mind does. The mind observes. The mind analyzes and organizes. The mind memorizes. But imagination is different. It does not observe or analyze what's there; it imagines what is not seen but might be there and might explain what is there (as in the case of most scientific discoveries). Or it imagines a new way of saying what is there that no one has said before (as in the case of creative writing and music and art).

"imagination is a Christian duty"

I say that imagination is a Christian duty for two reasons. One is that you can't apply Jesus' golden rule without it. He said, "Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them" (Matthew 7:12). We must imagine ourselves in their place and imagine what we would like done to us. Compassionate, sympathetic, helpful love hangs much on the imagination of the lover.

The other reason I say that imagination is a Christian duty is that when a person speaks or writes or sings or paints about breathtaking truth in a boring way, it is probably a sin. The supremacy of God in the life of the mind is not honored when God and his amazing world are observed truly, analyzed duly, and communicated boringly. Imagination is the key to killing boredom. We must imagine ways to say truth for what it really is. And it is not boring. God's world - all of it - rings with wonders. The imagination calls up new words, new images, new analogies, new metaphors, new illustrations, new connections to say old, glorious truth. Imagination is the faculty of the mind that God has given us to make the communication of his beauty beautiful.

Imagination may be the hardest work of the human mind. And perhaps the most God-like. It is the closest we get to creation out of nothing. When we speak of beautiful truth, we must think of a pattern of words, perhaps a poem. We must conceive something that has never existed before and does not now exist in any human mind. We must think of an analogy or metaphor or illustration which has no existence. The imagination must exert itself to see it in our mind, when it is not there. We must create word combinations and music that have never existed before. All of this we do, because we are like God and because he is infinitely worthy of ever-new words and songs.

A college - or a church - committed to the supremacy of God in the life of the mind will cultivate many fertile, and a few great, imaginations. And O how the world needs God-besotted minds that can say the great things of God and sing the great things of God and play the great things of God in ways that have never been said or sung or played before.

Imagination is like a muscle. It grows stronger when you flex it. And you must flex it. It does not usually put itself into action. It awaits the will. Imagination is also contagious. When you are around someone (alive or dead) who uses it a lot, you tend to catch it. So I suggest that you hang out with some people (mainly dead poets) who are full of imagination, and that you exert yourself to think up a new way to say an old truth. God is worthy. "Oh sing to the LORD a new song" - or picture, or poem, or figure of speech.

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: www.desiringGod.org.

"Our Christian reluctance to speak honestly about temptation is precisely why Christians...often believe themselves to be unbelievers. All they see of other believers is a facade of smiling, peaceful Christ-followers. They assume then that the internal life of every other Christian is just a continual festival of hymns as opposed to their own internal life, in which the hymns are interrupted with constant gossipy chatter, violent rage, and hard-core pornography. This is exactly how the satanic powers want it. They want the prideful and obvlivious to stay that way until they fall and slink away in isolation, where they can be devoured. Preaching the gospel to ourselves, though, reminds us continually that we are sinners and that we can stand only by the blood of Jesus. We can walk only by his Spirit prodding us on. We need one another, as parts of the same body together."

From Tempted and Tried:Temptation and the Triumph of Christ by Russell Moore

One of our HP members, Kim Bierman shared with us what God has been teaching her...

God's pre-determined plan ends with only one satisfying answer -- the one He planned out ahead of time. The "puzzle" is only complete when every one of the "one through nines" is correctly inserted into the right space He has prepared for it. Some numbers aren't our favorites, but each one is necessary. Some numbers ARE our favorites, but too many of that number make the solution impossible.

If each "small game" is a different person's life, I'm reminded that my puzzle is only complete when those around me - and even at the opposite corner of the grid! - properly place each circumstance of his/her life in the perspective of what completes the "big game." By the same token, my failure to properly deal with the "one through nines" in my own life keeps others from arriving at the solution for their individual "puzzles".

It's not just about keeping my little "box of life" in order, it's also about seeing how each "line of events" is ordered properly as it intersects my life as it continues from and into the lives of others, and vise versa. And the amazing thing is, it's not just about the people whose lives directly touch mine - the "other corner people" are just as important to the completion of the puzzle as the people whose lives directly touch my own.

Maybe it sounds kind of "philosophical," but it's really just God's daily reminder that He is a God of order, not chaos. I've gotten a couple of "3s" lately when I was looking for my favorite "8s," but with each one I keep reminding myself of the satisfaction that is found in His completed plan with exactly the right number of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, and 9s -- each allowed and carefully placed exactly according to His perfect plan.

God IS good!

Kim Bierman

Interested in sharing what God has been teaching you? Email joshmccarnan [at] hamptonpark.org