Sarah Bessey – 15 Practices for a Good Marriage

 

 

1. Put the other person first. This sounds pretty simple and straight forward but it’s probably the hardest. We’ve always called it “you first.” Choose each other first and always.
2. Make it a priority to make each other better at being yourselves. Whatever goodness or calling you see in one another, celebrate it and strengthen it, speak it out and pursue it together. Set each other free to fly and when necessary give one another a good hard push out of the nest with a cheery “you’ll be fine, you’ve got this!”
3. Assign positive intent to one another.
4. Faithfulness and intimacy in heart, in mind, in spirit, in body.
5. Spend time together. Like a lot a lot a lot of time. Especially time to have fun and laugh and make private memories. We have always found that a lot of small or daily talk has to happen before the big heart and life and dream talks have room to breathe and grow between us.
6. Guard your words to one another and don’t speak careless or cruel words to or over or about one another – those words take seed in your own heart as well as your partner’s heart – they will bear fruit for years in your lives. Speak words of life.
7. [I’d put something about sex here but our parents subscribe to this e-newsletter so just yeah…..yeah.]
8. A lifelong love will require equal parts romance and grit. Be ready to show up.
9. Talk about everything dear to your hearts and mundane in the daily and then keep talking through the years especially when you’re feeling like you’re in conflict. Avoid manipulation or control or passive aggressive crap.
10. Don’t ever make any big decisions unless you’re in complete agreement. Trust each other’s instincts.
11. Learn to let small things go and to forgive even before asked.
12. Weave your lives together and build a shared family narrative. Remind each other of your love story and keep building on the foundations of it. Believe it’s a love story worth embodying even in the middle places of love.
13. Give each other room and permission to change in profound and life-altering ways. You will both do a lot of changing in ways you can’t even fathom or imagine – keeping pace with each other’s new selves will mean you grow together even if you don’t always agree.
14. When you are suffering or struggling, make it the discipline of your marriage to turn towards one another instead of away from one another. Those deserts and wounds will become part of the fabric of your love story; heal each other steadily over the years.
15. Make Jesus – knowing him and following him – the centre of your home.

Read HERE the entire article.

 

Sorting out the Bible | Today’s Christian Woman

How Jesus changes the way I read Scripture

Source: Sorting out the Bible | Today’s Christian Woman

Sarah Bessey on Jesus centred Bible reading.

Second Sunday of Advent 2014

The Visitation
[Art by He Qi. http://www.heqiart.com]
Blessed Among Women
Luke 1:39-56 (The Message) 
Mary didn’t waste a minute. She got up and travelled to a town in Judah in the hill country, straight to Zachariah’s house, and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby in her womb leaped. She was filled with the Holy Spirit, and sang out exuberantly, “You’re so blessed among women, and the babe in your womb, also blessed! And why am I so blessed that the mother of my Lord visits me? The moment the sound of your greeting entered my ears the babe in my womb skipped like a lamb for sheer joy. Blessed woman, who believed what God said, believed every word would come true!”

And Mary said, “I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Saviour God. God took one good look at me, and look what happened – I’m the most fortunate woman on earth! What God has done for me will never be forgotten, the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others. His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before him.

He bared his arm and showed his strength, scattered the bluffing braggarts. He knocked tyrants off their high horses, pulled victims out of the mud. The starving poor sat down to a banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold. He embraced his chosen child, Israel; he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high. It’s exactly what he promised, beginning with Abraham and right up to now.”

Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months and then went back to her own home.

Advent: a waiting place
Two women in similar situations with entirely different stories. Their stories run side by side, coming together at times, moving apart at others.
Two people whose stories are part of a much bigger story of God that neither can yet see or understand.

The Red Couch: Jesus Feminist Discussion – SheLoves Magazine

The Red Couch: Jesus Feminist Discussion – SheLoves Magazine.

Here is a very interesting interview with Sarah Bessey, author of Jesus Feminist, a book that I loved a lot.

In which hope is a radical act of faith :: SheLoves – Sarah Bessey

In which hope is a radical act of faith :: SheLoves – Sarah Bessey.

Sarah writes in this blog post about the radical nature of Christian hope. Of course, Walter Brueggemann, is a great inspiration for her in this respect.

In which there’s a new way forward – Sarah Bessey

In which there’s a new way forward – Sarah Bessey.

Sarah Bessey is another blogger that I read with great pleasure.

She asks in this post a number of important questions for women, and members of other dis empowered groups, that tend to be marginalised in our (christian) culture. Here are some of them:

‘So when confronted with the exclusion of women or minorities by people who really don’t care to change or listen from those within the religious establishment, what are my options?

Do I argue and force and campaign my way to a seat at their table?

Do I ignore it and simply move on?

Or is there a third way? is there a new way forward for us?’

In which I’m a feminist, sure, but first I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ – Sarah Bessey

In which I’m a feminist, sure, but first I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ – Sarah Bessey.

Sarah Bessey in a blogger I follow constantly.

Here is a blog post where she explains what she means when she says she is a feminist.

Since I describe myself from time to time as a ‘feminist theologian’ and I am well aware of the prejudices, most often rooted in ignorance, against feminism in evangelical circles, I though that sharing this post might be of help to those open minded people who sincerely try to understand.

In what the rest are concerned, I would not bother, but let God deal with them.

Gratefully, Disillusioned | A Deeper Story

Gratefully, Disillusioned | A Deeper Story.

Here is a sad but hopeful message addressed by Sarah Bessey to clerics, who live often way below the (mostly legitimate) expectations of their parishioners.
To be handled with care, especially by hypocrites.

In which redemptive violence is a myth for Syria – Sarah Bessey

In which redemptive violence is a myth for Syria – Sarah Bessey.

Sarah Bessey is right.

US bonginh Syria would be another example of the failed myth of redemptice violence.