OT DAY 289 - Husband, Love Your Wife (Please click here for English podcast)

Please click the link below to my new 40 days Break.Build site any time you like to having a 40 days "Break.Build" daily devotion with one to two people as a discipler to help those Jesus prepares for you to disciple. You need to know that the call and purpose of my Break.Build and this Discipler123 blog/podcast is for you to become a discipler to help more people to have a daily intimate relationship with Jesus and then they can become disciplers too:
http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Please click these links to the app. Andy Ng wrote if you have an Android cel.:

Discipler123: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.rec.app

Break.Build: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.bb.app

Silence

1.   Put on your “brakes” and stop for a moment of silence

2.   Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace and feel His presence. Exhale your worries.

Praise and Thanksgiving

1.   Think through your day, all the times that made you smile

2.   Thank God for all those moments, and for all those people

3.   Open your heart to praise the Lord

        
         As a father shows compassion to his children,
                          so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
14         For he knows our frame;
                          he remembers that we are dust.

               
                                    Psalm 103:13-14

Confession and Repentance

1.  Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you:

     “Dear Holy Spirit, shine your light into the places of darkness in my life. Show me my sins, everything that blocks me from encountering God. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

2.  Through the Holy Spirit, examine yourself for a short silence and then pray:

     "Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and being victorious over death and sin. I confess my sin to you(pause, to tell Jesus what the Holy Spirit has shown you). Forgive my sins by your blood and help me follow you. Holy Spirit, fill me that I may be able to receive your gift to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word (Deuteronomy 24:1-22)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy 24&version=ESV

“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house,2 and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
5 “When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken.

                   Deuteronomy 24:1-5

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

My Listening

      Just like yesterday's chapter, this chapter has lots of things for us to learn and think of. I would like to draw your attention to only one thing and that is about the right attitude concerning with marriage and divorce. The divorce rate nowadays is higher than 50%, which means one couples out of two when they get marry they end up divorce. That is terrible!  Jesus teaches us to love our spouse:
      

2 And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” 5 And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

10 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

                                                                          Mark 10:2-12

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us: 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

    

     In this connection it gets up in Mark 10 in a discussion between Jesus and some other Jews. The question is, what is the Torah's attitude to divorce? The Pharisees allow divorce in light of this passage. Jesus points out that it presupposes a different attitude from one implicit in Genesis 1-2 that suggests lifelong marriage as God's vision. Deuteronomy 24 makes allowance for the hardness of human hearts. Marriages will break down, and God does not then leave people on their own to live with the consequences; the Torah incorporates a rule to help people manage this situation…
     Specially, Deuteronomy presupposes a world in which a man has the power to decide to divorce his wife…Deuteronomy is not saying they should have that power; it knows this is just how things are in a patriarchal world. When a husband initiates a divorce, it leaves the woman in an ambiguous position. Her rights need protecting. The assumption that her husband provides her with divorce papers making clear her status is one way the Torah seeks to offer that protection…
     The rule about a man's being excused military service for a year after marrying "in order to make his wife happy" makes for a neat visionary companion to the divorce rule. The two belong in different worlds. Deuteronomy is concerned for both worlds.   

John Goldingay. Numbers & Deuteronomy for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.177.

      The reality is that we might not be able to change this situation about the high rate of divorce. But, if more and more Christians understand God's original intention as Jesus says is not to have divorce at all. Then, there might be a chance to have the change start from you. No divorce! Instead, both of you have a daily intimate relationship with God so that you can have a daily intimate relationship with each others. And, Satan does not have a place to attack your marriage causing you to think of divorce and then take action to divorce.

     Husband, loves your wife!
     Wife, loves your husband! 
     Husband and wife, love Jesus! Jesus loves you! 

Dear Lord Jesus, 
Help us to enjoy love in our family so that we are being protected from the trap of divorce to destroy our family.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Have you thought of divorcing your spouse? How many times? Why?

2. Have you got a new understanding that you should not divorce your spouse? 

3. What is the positive actions you need to take each day to protect your marriage and to build up love in your marriage?

Praise and Thanksgiving

Let's give thanks for God with us. Let us praise Him:

10,000 Reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E

You may choose to follow my other daily blog:

Daily Devotion on Fire: http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

Break.Build: http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/