• “The very familiarity of blessings sometimes makes us insensible to their value."— J. C. Ryle

• “I’m not lost.” — Frank Churchill

• “I began my education at a very early age—in fact, right after I left college.” — Winston Churchill

• “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” — C. S. Lewis

• “The measure of a great teacher isn’t what he or she knows; it’s what the students know.” — John C. Maxwell

• “True education is not giving in the answer, it’s in showing them how to find it.” — Kelly Crawford

• “Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your own living room by people you wouldn’t have in your house.” — David Frost

• "When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy." — Corrie ten Boom

• “People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.” — Thomas Sowell

• “TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book.” — Unknown

• “Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.” — Paxton Hood

• “I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx

• “Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.” — George Washington

• “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
 — Edmund Burke

• “Self-righteousness is being more aware of and irritated by the sins of others than you are conscious of and grieved by your own.” — Paul Tripp

• “Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.” — Martin Luther

• “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” — St. Augustine

• “The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.” — La Rochefoucauld

• “People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke

• “Luther once said, ‘The devil hates goose quills,’ and, doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit’s blessing, have done his kingdom much damage.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “Non-Christian investigators of nature are as successful as they are because they work with stolen capital.” — Cornelius Van Til

• “One proud, surly, lordly word, one needless contention, one covetous action, may cut the throat of many a sermon. Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine.” — Richard Baxter

• “I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.” — Jackie Mason

• “Question everything but Scripture.” — Geoff Botkin

• “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they simply make the best of everything they have.” — Unknown

• “Drag and Drop for Windows users: DRAG your peecee off your desk, and DROP it in the trash.” — some forum member’s tagline

• “Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.” — Elias Boudinot

• “[T]he ministry of Satan is employed to instigate the reprobate, whenever the Lord, in the course of his providence, has any purpose to accomplish in them...” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.4.5)

• “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Sir Richard Steele

• “The cold water of persecution is often thrown on the church’s face to fetch her to herself when she is in a swoon of indolence or pride.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” — John C. Maxwell

• “My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “If you don’t fear God, you’ll fear everything.” — Dan Horn

• “What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.” — J. C. Ryle

• “When she married you, she gave you her life to spend. Are you spending your life wisely?” — Dan Horn

• “A lot of men have a wishbone where they ought to have a backbone.” — Unknown

• “We should never do what we cannot pray God to bless.” — James Smith

• “Some people get an education without going to college; the rest get it after they get out.” — Mark Twain

• “Paul’s life was a prophetic book for Jews to read and see how to be saved, so our lives should be an easy to read book for the lost on how they can easily be saved.” — Ken Ham

• “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” 
— Martin Luther

• “People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.” — J. C. Ryle

• “Even if you are on the right track, but just sit there, you will still get run over.” — Will Rogers

• “A ship in the harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.” — John Shedd

• “[N]ot one particle remains to man as a ground of boasting. The whole is of God.” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.3.6)

• “I will keep the ground that God has given me and perhaps in his grace, he will ignite me again. But ignite me or not, in his grace, in his power, I will hold the ground.” — John Knox

• “Heaven is eternity in the presence of God through a Mediator. Hell is eternity in the presence of God with no Mediator.” — Tony Reinke

• “Thanks, modest girls. Appreciated by a male whose time studying the ground is proportional to each degree of rising temperature.” — Unknown

• “Man does not need to know exhaustively in order to know truly and certainly.” — Cornelius Van Til

— June 28th, 2012 —

Book Review: “Reforming Marriage,” by Douglas Wilson

“How would you describe the spiritual aroma of your home? The source of this aroma is the relationship between husband and wife. Many can fake an attempt at keeping God’s standards in some external way. What we cannot fake is the resulting, distinctive aroma of pleasure to God. Most marriage books address the mere externals of marriage, without seeking to understand the heart issues. Godly marriages proceed from an obedient heart, and the greatest desire of an obedient heart is the glory of God, not the happiness of the household.” — from the back cover

 
I bought this on the high recommendation of a friend. I was not disappointed.
 
Short, witty, and wise, this really is a great book, and I profited a much from it (even though I’m not married). In discussing “A Practical Theology of Marriage”, Doug Wilson draws from the marriage of Adam and Eve and the picture of Christ and His Bride, and shows us what we can learn from each example. Wilson writes on “Headship and Authority,” “The Duties of Husbands and Wives,” “Efficacious Love,” “Keeping Short Accounts,” “Miscellaneous Temptations,” “The Marriage Bed is Honorable,” “Multiplying Fruitfully,” and “Divorce and Remarriage.”
 
Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book, from the chapter “Headship and Authority”:

In this passage of Ephesians, Paul tells us that husbands, in their role as head, provide a picture of Christ and the church. Every marriage, everywhere in the world, is a picture of Christ and the church. Because of sin and rebellion, many of these pictures are slanderous lies concerning Christ. BUT A HUSBAND CAN NEVER STOP TALKING ABOUT CHRIST AND CHURCH. If he is obedient to God, he is preaching the truth; if he does not love is wife, he is speaking apostasy and lies—but he is always talking. If he deserts his wife, he is saying that this is the way Christ deserts His bride—a lie. If he is harsh with his wife and strikes her, he is saying that Christ is harsh with the church—another lie. If he sleeps with another woman, he is an adulterer, and a blasphemer as well. How could Christ love someone other than His own Bride? It is astonishing how, for a few moments of pleasure, faithless men can bring themselves to slander the faithfulness of Christ in such a way. (page 25)

Here’s another, from the chapter “Multiplying Fruitfully”:

No greater instrument of slander is given to those who resist the truth than when adherents of the “truth” do what any fool, saint, scoundrel, wise man, or high school sophomore can do (i.e., beget a child), and who then fail to bring up that child in the fear of the Lord….The Lord said that when someone stumbles a little one it would be better for him that a millstone be tied around his neck and he be thrown into the sea. What then are we to make of a male who begets little ones he will not teach, fathers children he will not feed, and sires offspring he will not pastor? As if one millstone were not enough, he has demanded more. (pages 121–122)

There are so many other excellent quotes I could post here!
 
There were only one or two points in the book where I though Mr. Wilson may not have gotten it right, but they are for the most part inconsequential. However, he wrote one chapter, called “Multiplying Fruitfully,” in which he discusses how children are a blessing and a gift from God. That is well and good, and much of his writing in this chapter is sound—except for the section where he describes his unusual position on birth control. In short, he believes that any kind of birth control which terminates a life (everything from the “pill” to infanticide and abortion) is automatically excluded by the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” However, he does believe that in some instances, preventative birth control may be used by a couple who a) understands properly the value of children (Psalm 127, etc.) and truly seeks to raise them in a godly fashion, and b) has the proper motives (I don’t recall him specifying exactly what those motives would be). Regretfully, Mr. Wilson did not get specific with the kinds of birth control he did allow—but I very strongly (though respectfully) disagree with him. I believe any use of birth control at all is wrong. (I wrote a good bit in the margins of the book, and perhaps I will post them on this blog sometime.)
 
The above aside, this book is excellent. Mr. Wilson spices his book with humor here and there and explains graciously yet firmly what our Scriptural duty as husbands and wives are. This book is highly recommended.
 
 
 
INDECENCY: None, per se; but there is one chapter, “The Marriage Bed is Honorable,” in which Wilson deals with the sexual aspect of marriage and its sanctity. It’s a longish chapter, and definitely worth reading, but parents should be aware of it’s being in there.
LANGUAGE: None.
AGE RANGE: Mature, unmarried young men and women, at the youngest; and certainly married couples, or sons and daughters in the courting process.

Posted on June 28th, 2012 by Kyle Shepherd | Tags: ;marriage, nonfiction, orthopraxy, relationships | Permalink |

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