The Seductivenes of Infatuation, or "But I'm in Love"

As a young man I remember standing around before work on a construction site. The men were talking as they often did about people and happenings when someone mentioned that the son-in-law of a sub-contractor was divorcing. Of course he was also fired, though he had been in line to be a partner. Apparently he had met a girl who worked at an ice cream shop and had “fallen in love” with her and went home and told his wife. One man spat out, “He got his brain caught in his zipper.” Well, pardon the crudeness, but that pretty much describes the situation.

I have lived more than half my life since then and have seen this same script play out many times. It is not sex dependent; women can be as guilty of this as men. Often a marriage is going through a difficult time, one partner meets someone different, sparks fly and the course is set.

What is going on? People confuse love with infatuation.

Infatuation is easy, Love takes work.
Infatuation is temporary, Love never fails.
Infatuation is about how I feel. Love is about seeking the best for the beloved.
Infatuation is quick to get and quick to leave, Love takes a lifetime.

All that surrounds us says that “love” hits you from outside yourself and you are powerless before it. What a lie. Solomon warns us of flattering and seductive words and tells us to run. Of course you can do something when infatuation hits you. It may be fun to give in, but what pain and destruction you cause.

Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. (II Tim. 2:22)

For the sake of your spouse, for your vows, for God whose you are,

RUN!

Helping Our Children Find Their Calling, Part 2

The training of our children includes their whole being: spiritual, character, physical, and mental/academic. The spiritual aspect of our children's lives is paramount. If this aspect of their training is missing, the others don't matter much. A successful man without Christ is little different from a poor man without Christ. What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul? (Matt. 8:36)

This spiritual training must begin early and continue as long as you have any influence in your children’s lives. The three broad areas to be addressed are:
1) Who God is.
2) Who the child is.
3) What to do about 1 and 2.

More specifically,
1) God is the holy, All Powerful, Creator and King of the universe. Everything rests in His hands.
2) Your children are created in God’s image but born in the sin that they inherited from you.
3) They are to respond to God with repentance and faith that comes from God and walk in good works that He has prepared for them to do.

A related aspect to training our children’s spirit is training their character. We want our children to be courageous, hard working, honest, merciful, faithful, and many of the other traits taught throughout scripture but especially in the book of Proverbs. These fruits are vital to seeing them fulfilling their callings.

The second area to consider when helping a child work through his calling is his personality and gifting. This is more discovered than developed. We need to understand how God has put this child together. We can direct him in his use of his personality and gifts after we know what they are. For example, is your child a “people person?” You can teach him to use that to improve others instead of making himself the center of attention. Perhaps we can direct this people person into managing others or helping people to find solutions they are looking for. Perhaps he is good at math and can think in concepts and images instead of words. Some form of engineering might be a path for this child.

To do this work of matching personality and gifts with a career, we need to become familiar with a variety of jobs and note what those who are successful in them are like. I remember years ago standing in my oldest son’s closet and realizing it looked just like Tim Quiring's garage. (Not a pretty picture.) Tim Q. was a founding elder of CGS and an EE (electrical engineer). Andrew is now getting his PhD in EE. There are often personality features common to those who practice a particular profession. Electrical engineers tend to have many hobbies and collect “stuff” from their varied interests such as rebuilding old motorcycles, computers, or stereos. An interest in model trains is also common for engineer types. We haven’t seen as obvious hints with our second and third children, but even with them we’ve noticed clues.

When we have an idea of the general direction a young person should go, we need to tailor his education to match. This is easiest when the child is home schooled, but it should always be done regardless of the type of school the child attends. Is the child bound for the hard sciences or engineering? Then he needs calculus before he graduates from high school. Is he gifted with computers? Make sure he takes some programming classes or learns thatin some other arena. Is she bound for nursing? She needs to take anatomy. Not only academic work needs to be matched with possible career training. We need to give our young people opportunities to be around people doing the calling he is considering. Can he volunteer at the hospital, radio station, church? Can he get a part time job at the restaurant or the construction site? The more experience and knowledge the child has, the better the direction will be. While doing career exploration volunteer or paid work, your son or daughter will get an idea whether this is indeed the correct direction for him.

It is both exciting and intimidating to help our children find their calling. Can God lead them without us? Of course! But what a joy to stand alongside our children as we look to their future together.

They just don't write them like that no more

They don't write them like that no more.

At the recent Clearnote conference, Jody Killingsworth mentioned how hymns have changed. I pulled out a 1947 hymnal published by Hope publishing and found the following 1929 hymn:

Be Strong
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift
Shun not the struggle, face it, tis Gods gift
Be Strong, Be Strong

Be Strong
Say not the days are evil - who's to blame
and fold the hands and acquiesce – oh shame
Stand up, speak out and bravely, in Gods name
Be Strong, Be Strong

Be Strong
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong
How hard the battle goes, the day how long
Faint not, fight on! Tomorrow comes the song
Be Strong, Be Strong

words by Maltbie D. Babcock

Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside don't it.

Helping Our Children Find Their Calling (Part 1)

I believe that one of the duties of parents is to help our sons and daughters find their calling. Today we seem to have parents fall into two extremes, neither of which has the child's best interest at heart.

On the left side of the path is the swamp of no guidance. In this gooey, sticky mess of muck and quicksand, we lob our children, hoping that as they do what they like, they will somehow find their calling. Does he like building things? Set him up in a wood shop. Does he like to sing? Send him off to IU Jacob’s School of Music. Did he love the outdoors? He could study outdoor recreation. Whatever my child enjoys is his life’s calling, even if it has little chance of success or it is impossible to support a family doing it. He may be sucked under the muck and never be seen again.

The deep ditch on the right side of the path is the parents’ dreams ... what they did, or didn't get to do, what they think will impress their friends, what will make their children financially secure. Many a child flung into this ditch by their parents, with the best of intentions, is broken on the rocks below. Sometimes they crawl up out of this ditch bruised and bleeding and regain the path God intended for them, but not without a cost.

So if you have a narrow path of a young person’s calling, how do you help your children find it? I think there are four areas to consider: spiritual, personality, gifts, and education. My wife and I begin discussing this while our children are young, and we adjust their training as we go along to prepare them for what may lie ahead. We by no means consider ourselves expert in this area, but we are started. In the next post we will begin going through these four areas one by one.

He Who Covers Over an Offense Promotes Love (Pro. 17:9) (Grace in Marriage)

My first year of marriage to my dear wife Anne was marked by more fights than I ever imagined. The first of our peers to marry, we were feeling our way forward without much instruction or friends to talk it over with. As two people learn to live together, there are the inevitable opportunities for conflict because two people just do things differently. Anne, still a college student, liked to stay up late studying. I had to be at work early. I liked the toilet paper coming out from underneath; she preferred it coming over the top. It was all the stereotypical points of conflict. There was a bigger problem, though. I was sure that Anne was doing these things to bother me. And she needed to understand how much it bothered me, so I would purposely do things to aggravate her. She might respond in kind, and you can imagine the escalation.
We made it through that first year, and after almost twenty-eight years of marriage I look back on my attitudes with a combination of shame and mirthful disbelief. My default setting now is that Anne would never purposely do anything to aggravate me, and if she inadvertently has, it must be because she forgot or just didn’t think about it. So I wonder, what made the difference? How did I change my attitude toward living with my wife? In a word – kids. As God gave us children, the marriage stopped being all about me. We had a common purpose and job. When you are on your hands and knees on the floor at 3 in the morning cleaning up vomit, you realize you need each other to do the job before you, and more than that, that you trust this person to help you more than anyone else in the world. Kids can be a great selfishness killer. It isn’t always the case, but having kids (and for us it took a lot of kids) has helped to suppress our natural self-centeredness.
I say “can” because one can still be selfish and have kids (even a lot of kids), but the Holy Spirit is working in the believer’s life to conform him to the image of Christ. That is almost always difficult. For us He used a big family; for others He may use a different means. But if you are God’s child He will be working on and with you to make you more like His Son. We want to be working with Him and not against Him.
So what does this look like in our marriage now? Anne still likes to stay up later than me. But when she is reading in bed next to me I think, “She needs time to unwind after this day. I hope this helps her,” rather than thinking, “She’s not considering me.” We still have our preferences about which way the toilet paper goes, but it just doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore. I simply can’t imagine Anne doing anything to purposely hurt me. Is this because she is a perfect woman? No. As with many of us, she has her same besetting sins she has had for years, as do I. But as we work together to prepare the arrows God has entrusted to us, I know we are both headed for the same goal, and there is no one else I would rather have with me.

1Pe 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Backpacking anyone?

So this is a test to find out if anyone still has a feed from this lonely, forsaken blog;

Wanted! Men to go on short local backpacking overnights.

Summer is upon us, the forests are thick and green, the nights are hot and sticky, and while a trip to the cool, high and magnificent Rocky Mountains would be fun, some of us will be in southern Indiana this summer. I am looking for a few men from CGS who would like to take an overnight hike with me. You don't need lots of equipment or experience for this kind of trip, but you do need an adventurous attitude.

You can comment here or email me.

Or maybe no one is listening after a year and a half. :)

Family Christmas Letter

Check out the Wegener Family Christmas letter at our daughter Kara’s Blog.