Tuesday, September 18, 2012

My Ideal Man

At the end of the day it comes down to this: I am called to minister to people through spoken word, through the Internet, through books, through preaching, through teaching. And as any good teacher, preacher or activist (because what is a preacher if not an activist for Christ?) knows, some days the work that is set before you is hard. And some days you come home weary, or frustrated, or just vulnerable in your soul. On days like that, days like today, I need a man whose natural inclination is to minister to me (as Christ loved the Church) by metaphorically carrying me to the Throne of God. I don’t need him to intellectualize. I don’t need him to ply me with food or sex. I need him to pray over me with a God-given strength.

If you don’t know God like that, if our spirits aren’t connected to each other and each other’s callings and purposes like that, then we can’t be an effective ministry team.

My goal is to be some king-man’s “ezer kenegdo,” his life-saver (cf. John and Stasi Eldredge “Captivating”). And for him to be to me as Christ is to the church (Ephesians 5:25), my redeemer, my servant leader, and my husbandman, my caretaker, the One who looks after me like a gardener looks after his garden (John 15).

That’s the ideal man, the one I’m waiting for, the one any man can be and any woman can have.

All of life starts, continues, and ends with Jesus. That includes relationships. That includes marriage.

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