Monday, May 12, 2008

Lux Vent Reading Group


The Excellent Wife Chapter 7: Christ A Wife's Heart

First I'd like to apologize for not doing commenting on Chapter 6; it was a busy time and I would not have been able to do it justice, but if you go here and follow Leslie's links there are plenty of other women who have written many encouraging and challenging things.

This week we are in chapter 7, and Peace is talking about the wife's heart. Her focus is the Idols/Lust in the wife's heart

We all have idols in our heart...we all set our hearts on getting something that God does not want us to have or to have right now. An idol can be anything. An idol can be anything, it can even be something good in and of itself, for example having a Godly home. Peace gives us examples of what women can set their hearts on on and what can become become idols to them. Here are a few of them...

  • Physical Appearance
  • Having a Christian marriage
  • Material things
  • Others approval
  • Children
As long as I am getting what I want and things are going the well, I am feeling good, but when things don't turn out the way that I want them too, I get frustrated , anxious or afraid, even to the point of being desperate. That will lead to sin.

God wants my undivided worship and devotion. He wants my thoughts motives and focus to be on glorifying Him and only Him. Peace gives some great examples of this in Psalm 119. (If you haven't already read through the psalm, please do.) The Psalmist wanted what God wanted, no matter what.

We cannot gain this type of "heart for God" on our own, it is given to us buy our heavenly Father who always wants what is best for us. Peace says
"God places that kind of passion within the deepest longings of a person. The wife's responsibility is to ask God for that passion and then diligently to seek God through His written word. She also has a responsibility to cultivate a grateful attitude and thankfulness to God regardless of her circumstances. To cultivate a grateful attitude she will have to deliberately think grateful thoughts to God even though she my not feel like it. God will do the rest , because it is consistent with His Character that He answer such a prayer." Page 68. Read 1John 5: 14-15.
Lastly, Peace gives us some examples of how we can set our minds on the things of God.
  • Think about and deliberately delight in the Lord
  • Build contentment in your life
  • Pray and ask that God give you new motives
  • Invest more time in memorizing scripture (on this blog I am doing Scripture Memory Mondays to help me and others to cultivate Gods word in our hearts.)
  • Make your goal to please the Lord
  • Be aware of sinful anger, frustration and anxiety

This, like the previous chapters have helped me to take a look at myself and in part my own heart. What struck me the most was when Peace said "even good things can become idols in our hearts." This immediately reminded me of my attitude towards my husband when it comes to eating dinner together as a family. Now, sitting down to dinner as a family is not a bad goal to have, but at this time and season of our lives it is just not possible. I can get myself worked up, angry and frustrated when my husband can't get home before 7pm. By that time I have missed the opportunity to have a great dinner with my little daughter and I have an awful attitude when my husband comes home. What a terrible thing to do to him. I am so consumed with reaching MY goal that I miss what God has already provided for me.
I am able to stay at home with my daughter because my husband works so hard to make that so; I have a wonderful husband who loves me and a son and daughter who are healthy and happy. I can take this season in our lives and glorify God in it by, having a lovely dinner with my daughter and afterward read with her from her Children's Devotional, and likewise when my husband comes home I can take that time to sit with him and talk about his day as he enjoys his dinner. What opportunities we miss at times. I am thankful to the Lord for his grace and mercy in my life.

This chapter was very needful in my life, if you would like to comment feel free I would love to hear you thoughts. Also you can read what the other members of the Lux Venit reading group have shared on this chapter.

3 comments:

Lisa said...

That is so true that we often miss opportunities to have God's best while we are busy doing our best.

Such a good reminder to keep God's priorities as our own.

Adzele said...

thanks for sharing your heart...indeed it is not always easy. We need to give it all to God and keep our focus on Him. ALL things are possible through him, no matter how small or big we think it is.

Anonymous said...

What happened to your post for chapter 8? I have it in my google reader, but it's not here.