Reminding myself

So, the Lord has blessed my perseverance and patience in Him. The Lord has brought me to a new amazing faith family to love, guide, teach, equip, and serve. God has placed a burden on my shoulders and has brought me to a place that now more than ever I need His power in my life and a humble spirit to lean and trust on Him to provide. As I have been thinking and praying about my new role in this faith family I was reminded of a post that I wrote months ago. I need to reread it and remind myself that as I venture out into this new life and service for God somethings though in my life should and will not change. And in those areas and relationships that do not change I need to grow and become stronger in. My first priority in this life after God is the one area that will not change by this new adventure and in fact my relationship with my beloved should grow stronger through this new adventure and challenge. So here is a re-post from months ago about my relationship with my wife that I need to remind myself of.

Priority #1

 As I have moved one step further into my journey with God each day I seem to be reminded that no matter what I do, I must put my family first. I believe this will be vitally important when I get into full time Pastoral ministry. 

I have first learned to sense when my wife and better half is in need. I have notice that unless I bring her along with me in this journey and share with her a lot of what God is doing in me and through me, she seems lost. I have noticed that her gauge is tuned into mine. When I feel close to God she is strong confident and is a great support. But when I become distracted, disillusioned, and totally over burdened in life, she to can become irritable and a stress factor for me. This also then factors into her spiritual heart beat and relationship with God. This challenges me to because I believe that God makes the man accountable to Him for the spiritual heart and the wife. 

God is reminding me through each step that when, Lord willing, I become enthralled in my ministry and my faith family that I shepherd that I will only go as far as my wife's support. My wife must come first because then and only then will my ministry succeed. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians, "husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the church". 

This means practically that my ministry cannot come first before my wife. My wife must come first. She must be the ultimate sacrifice and my first choice. She must realize that she means the world to me and that even as the weight of ministry and love of God's children, she is still my first and most important love. 

God created the man and women and the relationship of oneness in marriage before sin entered the world, before His mission through Christ, and way before the church. This union is the foundation for the rest of the Christian life and it is also what I found to be the foundation for success in what happens next. That means and what I have come to realize my wife is the most important thing and relationship in my life next to my bond and relationship with God.