One of the most helpful things I’ve done as a writer is import quotes I collect through my reading into Roam Research where I can then sort them by topic. I was recently going through quotes on marriage and thought I’d pull together a few that are meant to challenge husbands.

First, De Witt Talmage makes an observation and offers a warning: “The fact is, that many men are more kind to everybody else’s wives than to their own wives. They will let the wife carry a heavy coal scuttle upstairs, and will at one bound clear the width of a parlor to pick up some other lady’s pocket-handkerchief. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men—namely, husbands in flirtation. The attention they ought to put upon their own wives they bestow upon others.”
J.R. Miller then calls men to be worthy of their own wives:
Every true-hearted husband should seek to be worthy of the wife he has already won. For her sake, he should reach out after the noblest achievements and strive to attain the loftiest heights of character. To her he is the ideal of all that is manly, and he should seek to become every day more worthy of the homage she pays to him. Every possibility in his soul, should be developed. Every latent power and energy of his life, should be brought out. His hand should be trained under love’s inspiration to do its most skillful work. Every fault in his character should be eradicated, every evil habit conquered, and every hidden beauty of soul should burst into fragrant bloom—for her sake! She looks to him as her ideal of manhood, and he must see to it that the ideal is not marred—that he never falls by any unworthy act of his own, from the high pedestal in her heart to which she has raised him.
He also calls men to appreciate how their wives are a means of divine kindness to them. “So it is in the dark hours of a man’s life, when burdens press, when sorrows weigh like mountains upon his soul, when adversities have left him crushed and broken, or when he is in the midst of fierce struggles which try the strength of every fiber of his manhood—that all the radiance and glory of a true wife’s strengthful love shine out before his eyes! Only then does he recognize in her God’s angel of mercy!”
Then, finally, Talmage praises men who are love and respected by their wives. “If a man during all his life accomplishes nothing else except to win the love and help and companionship of a good woman, he is the garlanded victor, and ought to have the hand of all people between here and the grave stretched out to him in congratulation.”

Good morning. Grace and peace to you.

I am waiting for Crossway to come back with more of their weekly batches of Kindle deals. Crossway, let’s have them!
(Yesterday on the blog: We Love New Zealand (10 Reflections))
Greet with a Holy Kiss? Applying an Uncomfortable Command
David Mathis looks at one of the more uncomfortable commands in the Bible and helps us apply it to today’s church.
On Fearing the One for Whom You Live
“There is something striking to me about the idea of fearing the one for whom I live.” That is, indeed, an interesting thought.
Grief and Our God
“Counseling often looks like shining light into the darkness of someone’s life. Helping them see Jesus more clearly, tracing the outlines of his face when the dark shadows of sin and suffering and death have left it unrecognizable. How do we reconcile the deep darkness of this life with the promised kindness of God?”
Living Wills
Andrew Kerr offers some of his thoughts on living wills—something I suppose Christians ought to be thinking about.
The judgement of getting what we want
“I have long been of the view that one way the Lord gives people over to sin in the church is to give them what they want.” Stephen considers the way God sometimes gives us exactly what we want, even when it will harm us or lead us away.
The Christian’s Responsibility to Pray for Rulers
Blake helps us actually pray for our rulers as the Bible commands us to.
Flashback: Nurture Your Children
Through disciplining and instructing your children, you are helping them understand the sinful motivations of their heart and their failure to trust God. You are leading them  away from a destructive path and toward knowing, trusting, and obeying the perfect, heavenly Father.

God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus. —Elisabeth Elliot

Like a River

Not too long ago a friend asked me, “Hey, did you hear that Granger Smith is now a student at Southern Seminary?” “No, I hadn’t heard that,” I replied. Then I surreptitiously Googled “Who is Granger Smith?” I learned that he is—or was, at least—a country music singer, and apparently a tremendously successful one. But he had chosen to leave touring behind to focus instead on becoming a pastor. It seemed like there must be a story to tell, but I didn’t think much more about it until last week when I saw a book with his name on the cover listed among Amazon’s daily Kindle deals. I bought it, read it in a day, and was glad that I did. There was, indeed, a story to tell—a story that was tragic but inspiring and encouraging.
In 2019 Granger Smith was flying high. His career was booming, his albums were selling, and his fan base was building. He was filling concert halls and performing in stadiums. It was all he had ever dreamed of. And it was just then, at the height of his success, that he encountered a terrible tragedy. One day he was playing outdoors with his children when he suddenly noticed that his three-year-old son River had disappeared. He sprinted to the pool and found his son face down. Despite his efforts and the efforts of paramedics and doctors, there was nothing that could be done. River was gone.
River was gone and his father soon realized he was not equipped to deal with such a loss. A self-professed “Dog-Tag Christian”—someone who was just Christian enough to have it stamped on his dog tags if he was a soldier being sent to war—Granger quickly turned to a rigorous regimen of self-help techniques and life on the road. “The truth is, I had no idea how to deal with this kind of pain. It broke into my world like a thief and stole my joy, my passion for life, my sanity, and it replaced them with something far more sinister: guilt.” He found some comfort in marijuana and alcohol, but only some.
It did not take long before the sorrow and guilt caught up with him. One evening, drunk and high and alone, he got within moments of taking his life. A gun was in his mouth and his finger was on the trigger when suddenly he became aware of the presence of evil around him. “There was an intruder in my presence. I was paralyzed by this new realization—I wasn’t alone in the room that night. I had been hunted, ambushed, flanked, surrounded, and put under attack by an enemy far beyond my ability to defeat.” He ripped the gun from his mouth and spontaneously cried out to Jesus. “My God, my Jesus! Save me! Save me, Jesus!” And that was the start, the prequel perhaps, of a whole new chapter in his life. 
In that moment I was reborn! Right there in that truck on a small county road in Texas, the old me died.Granger SmithShare
A short time later he was listening to a message by John Piper—a message about God’s love for his people—when “my eyes were opened to see things like never before. I was loved! I felt it. Not because of anything I had done. In fact, I certainly didn’t deserve it, yet He had adopted me as a son. That revelation while hearing the gospel triggered a flood—not the hopeless flood I had felt after losing River but God’s covenant flood of His Spirit to live in me and walk with me. … In that moment I was reborn! Right there in that truck on a small county road in Texas, the old me died.”
The old me had died and the new me had much different passions and desires. That transformation equipped him to come to peace with his loss and eventually led to the decision that my friend had asked me about in the opening words of this review: “Did you hear that Granger Smith is now a student at Southern Seminary?” 
I will leave it to you to read Like a River and learn why and how he stepped away from touring to prepare for pastoral ministry. And I’ll leave it to you to read his reflections on God’s purposes and comforts in grief. I’ll leave it to you to read about how God blessed him and his family in the aftermath of their great loss. Whether you’ve heard of Granger Smith before now or not, and whether you know him as a multi-platinum recording artist or a Greek-memorizing seminary student, I think you’ll be blessed by reading his story.