Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Funny guy, that Peter. He googled  ”National Take Your Wife to Lunch Day” and couldn’t find anything.

Not to be outdone, I told him maybe I had the day wrong.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Hello Google search engines.

Friday, July 29, 2011 is National Take Your Wife to Lunch Day, and in the future it will always be the last Friday of July, from now to perpetuity.

Can I get an “amen” from my sisters across the land?

And if you need reservations, why not try Open Table. Make your reservations online.

(In Peter’s defense, he’s been wonderful and wouldn’t need a national holiday to take me to lunch. It just sounded like a fun idea and remember? I’m going stir crazy without much energy or brain power, so this is the best I’ve got for now.)

What about you?
Where will you be dining with your spouse tomorrow? Leave your comments and be sure to share this post with others via Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Creative Commons photo on Flickr by Gumption.

(For those of you who don’t know, today is not our wedding anniversary, but the anniversary of the day Peter and I met.)

Nine years ago today, I boarded a plane from Texas to Lynchburg, with a layover in Pittsburg. That destination changed my life in ways I could have never imagined.

Who knew that God would use lost luggage and a handwritten note to shape the course of my life, of your life, and the lives of our children?

Well, God, of course.

I’m so thankful for that day, for meeting you and that you had the courage to write a note asking me if I wanted to get “a” coffee.

I love you!

Jim Pace was the guest speaker at lcf and let me just tell you - he brought it! Jim is the lead pastor at nlcf in Blacksburg, VA. He’s also author of “Should We Fire God?” and blogs at Jim Pace dot org.

Speaking largely to a group of college students, Jim spoke candidly about the Biblical view of pre-marital sex. The basis for his sermon was an exploration of the Hebrew word “dod” (pronounced dode), similar to the Greek word Eros (note: erotic). Dod (dode) is physical/sexual love.

“We think sometimes (in the Church) that God made us sexually responsive, by mistake. But God made us intentionally this way.”

Then Jim made a brilliant analogy using IKEA furniture. He described the difficulty he has trying to put together furniture without written directions because the Scandinavian company uses pictures instead. Bad pictures, in Jim’s estimation. He joked, “Scandinavians are terrible artists.” At the end of the assembly process, would-be furniture makers are often left with a handful of extra parts and a lot of glue.

“We sometimes mistakenly think our neurological design is like that – God put all the leftover parts (nerve endings) in our penises and vaginas. Maybe God made a mistake.”

You should have seen the looks on the faces of a certain 13-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl! I couldn’t see the nearly 15-year-old girl who chose to sit elsewhere.

But you know what? Jim is right. Too often the Church has made our sexuality out to be a bad thing.

In fact, Jim told the (all-too-familiar) story of a pre-marital counseling encounter where the bride-to-be had heard for her entire life how sex was a bad thing, to be avoided. How would a 20 or 30-minute ceremony give her what she needed to shift into an entirely different perspective about sex within marriage.

Unfortunately, Jim didn’t expound on the beauty of sex within marriage. It’s understandable, given his audience. Instead, he offered two approaches to abstinence.

It’s God’s Will
The first was taken from 1 Thessalonians 4:3. Paul only says a total of four times, in all of his letters, “It’s God’s will…” This passage was one of those instances. Jim gave a beautiful description of how the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture. In essence, God was saying to the writer (Paul), “this is so important. This is my will. Avoid sexual immorality.”

Then Jim added, “God understands our sexuality better than we do.”

From Hebrews 4:14-16, “He also understands our weaknesses. Not, ‘you’ plural, but ‘you’ singular. He ‘gets’ you. He accepts ‘you.’”

“We look at the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5:27-28 and we say ‘Jesus was a buzz kill. But that’s not what Jesus was like. He was releasing Israel from all the laborious rules. But we should pay attention. When He’s pulling away all the rules, and tightens up one of the Ten Commandments, He understood something important. Essentially Jesus said, ‘it’s not just what you do, but what you think that is important.’”

And then, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 is not about marriage but about relationships in general. We must be connected to others before we can experience dod. Otherwise, sex becomes legal tender instead of intimacy. The marriage covenant is one person with another.

At this point, my 13-year-old boy leaned over and whispered, “This is the strangests sermon I’ve ever heard.”

This same boy was all ears when Jim spoke of Greek mythology and the tales of the sirens. Jim told how Odysseus had sailors plug their ears with beeswax and tie him (ears unplugged) to the ship’s mast. When the ship sailed through the waters, he fought and strained towards the sirens as long as their music played. Once the struggle was over, the sailors knew they were safe.

Jim suggested that straining to do the right thing is good. Sometimes, however, the church only focuses on this approach to sexuality, while society says pre-marital sex is inevitable.

You are Holy
Then Jim told how Jason & the Argonauts successfully sailed past the sirens because they took Orpheus, the musician. When the sirens started, the sailors listened to Orpheus, who played a better song.

God wants us to embrace both approaches to sexual immorality, always remembering 1 Corinthians 6:11. We were washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. You, who were understood. You (singular).

“We are holy,” is a better song our culture can sing, and it’s worth it to listen.

**

With apologies to Jim for inaccuracies and incomplete information. The sermon was refreshingly candid, and I’m thankful our children had an opportunity to hear another adult share a Christian perspective on sex before marriage. God knows they receive enough messages about sex that don’t represent His best.

This post is just in time for Michelle’s “Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday” series. To see what other bloggers heard in sermons around the country, check out the bottom of Michelle’s post and visit some other great sites linked there.

What about you?
What are your thoughts about the Church’s stance on sexual immorality?

Since my original post, thanks to the many comments here and elsewhere, I’ve learned that the issue is not with Facebook. The culprit is a third-party app developer – likely the quiz app. Nonetheless, changing the settings as described below, is still a good idea for most people.

Today is Sunday. Since Thursday, I’ve been unable to update this blog or respond to comments here (though I have responded via email). I have used my posterous account to have an additional voice. For example,

• This has created quite a stir
• Update on Facebook Ads
• Can I Get Some Webhero Love Here, Please

Thanks for stopping by. While you’re here, take a look around. You can learn more about me here.

*****

Or else your husband may just see a Facebook ad with your picture in it advertising hot singles in your area. I’m not joking. Not too long ago, my husband Peter had this ad appear on his Facebook page. Good thing we both have a sense of humor!

If you don’t want to show up in your friends’ FaceBook ads, go to:

1. Settings
2. Privacy
3. News Feed and Wall
4. Click on “Facebook Ads”
5. In the “Appearance in Facebook Ads” box, click “no one” (unless, of course, you actually want to tell your spouse to check out hot singles)

I changed that setting right away. :-)

What about you? Have you received any funny Facebook ads?

Admittedly, I sort of like hearing this complete stranger tell me I’ve arrived. It’s like Joe Isuzu all over again. But she’s wrong. I haven’t arrived. And the moment I begin to think otherwise, is a dangerous time for me and for those around me. The same could be said for you as well. For all of us.

Whether in business, in marriage, in parenting, in ministry — whatever the case – the moment we think we’ve got it all together, we’re in a dangerous place. We stop paying attention to our business environment and the circumstances of life. We become too smug to heed the advice of those around us, many of whom are far wiser than we are.

And then we’re susceptible to the inevitable fall. Proverbs remind us, “Pride comes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

But hey, I’m just one person.

What do you say? Have you ever been bitten in the butt for thinking you’ve arrived? How?

Last night after I said prayers with Sweet Pea and made my way into the hallway just outside her bedroom door, she called me back into her room. My 12-year old daughter wasn’t finished talking. I hadn’t given her enough time. So I went back into her room to hear what she had to say. WHAT she said was not really all that important. The fact that she WANTED to talk was, and I needed to listen.

This morning as Schmitty and I were starting off our day, he pointed out that in the last few weeks we’ve not been very intentional about taking care of our relationship. To be fair, we’ve had a lot going on. Work – his and mine, two trips to Canada related to his father’s hospitalization and passing. We’ve run from soccer field to softball field, to violin lessons, and appointments out the wazoo.

But he was right. We have a great relationship, so it’s fairly easy to notice when something is even slightly off kilter.

Today when my lunch appointment had to reschedule, I saved the block of time so Schmitty and I could have lunch together. We reconnected, though briefly. He had leftover chicken wings and I ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich. And it was good.

The personal cost of starting/running your own business can be great. Today I needed to remember that I don’t want to pay that cost by sacrificing the people around me. My marriage and our family are simply too important.

What about you? How do you keep track of the personal cost of doing business? What do you do when you get off track?