The dictionary says that intimidation is an act of forcing action by inducing fear. What intimidates you? Is it sickness, the fear of major loss, your boss, a teacher, a bully, or a neighbor?
The Bible does deal with this subject when it states, “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” (II Timothy 1:7) God has not given us a spirit of intimidation. In other words, intimidation is not from God.
I was in my teen years and hearing a military drill sergeant scream and yell profanities along with multiple threats in boot camp for the first of many times. I am not going to lie; it was intimidating, and it was purposefully meant to be. Fear was used as a weapon for personal change. We were leaving civilian life behind to enter into military life.
In time, however, I discovered it was all a bit of a game. Intimidation was used excessively, but I can still recall the conversation that same drill sergeant had with us after successfully graduating from the torture of “becoming an airman.” He said, “Our training was all very calculated. We knew how far we could push you in order to create the soldier we were looking for.”
How far have you allowed the enemy of your soul to intimidate you? Has he said this sickness will kill you? Has he spoken that you’ll never reach your boss’s expectations? Has he used intimidation to keep you from fulfilling God’s purposes in your life?
“Don’t be intimidated in any way by your enemies. This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved, even by God himself.” (Phillipians 1:28 NLT)
Our confidence and our outspoken boldness is through the power of God who is not and will not be intimated by anyone or anything. Keep your head up and walk in His truth!
Dear parents, I recently wrote a booklet about the inordinately high use of pornography within our culture. It was a summarization of a lengthy, thorough and statistically backed (all noted with resources) online article that I wrote. You can access the first of this two part article here.
Part of what provoked the booklet and the article was the story of a friend of mine. He first encountered pornography at age 7. By age 12 he was acting out what he saw in the magazines with female friends in his tree fort.
It’s startling, but for most boys’ pornography exposure occurs around age 11. By age 17 they are the highest users of porn – 85%. Unfortunately, in recent years young girls are also increasingly using porn. In that same age group, nearly 57% of young girls are viewing pornography. While boys are visual, girls are turning to porn so they can learn what boys desire of them sexually. Pornography is a 12-billion dollar industry in the United Staes. Eleven thousands “adult” films are produced per year. That is twenty times the number of regular media films produced in Hollywood!
Children cannot process what they are seeing and reading. They do not understand the real gift of sexuality and so they are being inundated with false images of something that is not real and not connected to any sense of love, commitment or marriage. Pornography is a counterfeit, a fake, a lie. Its images are addictive and the more one feeds themselves porn, the more they desire.
When I was a counselor, it was not abnormal for me to see clients whose brothers or father abused them sexually when they were young girls. Pornography was typically a part of that abuse.
I once worked with a private school where a teacher was touching his students inappropriately. I frequently heard clients’ first sexual encounter was with their cousins in sexual exploratory games. Just last week, one of the leaders I oversee asked me for help. A close friend of his just found out that his fourteen-year-old son has been molesting his younger female cousins for several years. I had a pastor’s daughter in my counseling care who was date raped on her college campus. I have dealt with multiple leadership failures in which there was adultery. And I am presently serving on a team that is helping to provide care and input to an organization in which the leader was sexually abusing woman for over 40 years. I would guess that in most cases pornography was a part of each of these horrific stories.
So, I am asking you to be vigilant and protective of your children. Do not leave them with persons who could be unsafe. Do not openly and without caution trust any adult in their life, even their teachers. Do not give them free rein with cousins and friends without warning them of the possibility of abuse, pornography and childhood sexual exploration.
Sadly, you must even be aware of library books these days. Material that is X-rated, explicit, that promotes unhealthy same sex, opposite sex and deviant relationships is finding its way into our public libraries, public grade schools, middle schools and high schools today. This is an evil, grooming tactic to expose our innocent children to explicit material and to sexual acts which they are not mature enough to engage in or are even capable of understanding.
Protect your children by telling them and reminding them often of the “bathing suit” rule. No one touches them, asks to see or exposes oneself in these private areas. They will understand that language and you will be equipping them with a vital and useful tool.
Do your best to help your children stay pure and innocent. Today’s phone technology provides easy and immediate access to soft and hardcore pornography. With the push of a few buttons, they can have access to unspeakable images. It’s almost unimaginable, but there are over 400 million pages of pornographic material available on over four million websites. Having a phone without data access is a help as are software programs like Covenant Eyes which allows you to see every website they access.
In today’s highly sexualized culture, it is possible to help maintain your child’s innocence and not have them exposed to explicit sexual material. They will trust your caution. Remember, sex in and of itself is not a dirty word or act. Within the right context of marriage, it is a wonderful gift from God and your children need to have full knowledge of God’s goodness found within this gift.
Devotion is a positive attribute. It comes with commitment to something or someone. Being devoted means you are being loyal.
We can be devoted to many things these days: a certain restaurant, a car company, a computer company, our children, and even ourselves. But can we be overly devoted? I mean, can we be giving misplaced devotion to something or someone that or who does not deserve our devotion?
The short answer is yes – we can. Romans 12:10 says, “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.” This scripture relates that our true devotion belongs more to God and others than things or ourselves.
Do you remember reading in the Old Testament about the soon-to-be king David, and the current King Saul? Saul was chasing David in order to kill him. Even as Saul showed total disregard for David, David showed honor and devotion to his king. Respecting others is easy when they respect us, but it sure can be difficult when we feel no respect.
Do you have a “Saul” in your life? Someone who is treating you with disrespect or treating you unfairly? Become that person of integrity and devotion to the truth of God’s word found in Romans 12. As you treat others with honor and respect, God will honor you!
Have you suffered with an illness for a long time? Perhaps you’ve seen numerous doctors only to still have multiple symptoms. Twelve long years a woman, who is described in the Bible, dealt with a bleeding disorder.
One day she heard the news that Jesus was coming her way. She caught wind that this Jesus was a “healer” or something of the sort. All else had failed her; why not try to get near Him? This woman, with forceful determination, pushed her way through the crowd, and with certain faith got close enough to touch Jesus.
The Gospel of Matthew relates this true story in chapter nine. It records that she came up from behind Him and simply touched the edge of His outer garment thinking to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.” (verse 21)
Jesus immediately turned and caught her hopeful eyes. Rather than rebuke her for touching Him He said, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you.” Can you imagine? Twelve years of suffering gone in an instant of reckless, yet relentless faith. When Jesus turned, she knew that He knew who touched Him. Such a powerful moment recorded for us to have similar faith for healing.
It happened to me
It was 1976, my second year of marriage. I was leaving the military and applying for a job with a military contractor. I got the job but had to qualify by passing a medical exam. I failed the exam!
I thought I was a perfectly healthy 22-year-old who would fly through any medical exam. Not so. I had a low white blood cell count and had to subject myself to multiple blood drawings. Each time my white cell count became lower. Finally, a bone marrow test was ordered.
My newly married wife, a nurse, had fears of the worst – leukemia. The night before the bone marrow exam was to take place, the elders of our local church prayed for me. (You will see this in the scripture recorded in James 5: 14-16.)
My marrow was tested and no disorder discovered. From that point, I had to endure blood drawing two times a week, but every time the results came back my white cell count was improving. It improved to normality.
I had touched the edge of that same garment and was healed!
Recently I read an article on what 90-year-olds regret the most. Their answers included:
Not cultivating closer family relationships, their children in particular.
Not putting their children on the right path.
Not taking more risks including sharing more of their feelings with others and not being more affectionate.
They also regretted not being better listeners, which included being more empathetic.
They regretted not spending more time with the persons they loved.
When asked when in life they were happiest? Happiness was strongest in their late 20’s to early 40’s, when they were raising children and then, again, steadily increased after age 50. Their secret to happiness and living regret-free was to savor every second they could when spending time with those they loved.
In other words, accomplish more? No, love more.
My wife and I were recently spending time with some friends of ours who have five years of age on us. They shared, “We’re now counting all the losses in life. We’re the next generation to pass. We’re the oldest of our families. We’re experiencing or will experience multiple losses. We’ll face the loss of our driver’s license, perhaps our home, our health, losing our friends who are passing ahead of us, and possibly a decrease or loss in finance.” It was sobering to listen to and then to realize my wife and I face many of the same potential losses.
There is an ongoing accumulation of losses. Psychologists call it “compounding loss.” We’re living longer but we can experience grief after grief in this stage of life.
What to do?
Age gracefully:
Stay active and healthy – exercise, walk, talk and pray a lot, doing things that stimulate us. Colossians 4:2:
“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.”
Prioritize your mental health; manage stress in your life. Receive personal input from your leaders. Ask questions and seek answers. Be positive about aging. Keep reading God’s word alongside encouraging books.
Philippians 4:6-8:
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Embrace change – don’t get stuck, adapt accordingly. Change is here to stay, even at our age.
Be thankful – it will help our attitude. Constant complaining does not help anyone. 1 Thessalonians 5:18:
“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
Colossians 3:15:
“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”
Stay in fellowship and keep company with believers who are also positive and thankful. Do not become disillusioned with Jesus’ church, He will not disappoint. Stay close to your biological family and the family of God.
Cultivate hobbies and interests.
Stay focused on the gains and not just the losses. What are some of the gains?
Wisdom
Influence
Truth–filled experience
Time – more available
Love
Being able to look beyond faults and seeing potential
Grandparenting and great grandparenting
Forgiveness and keeping disappointments at bay
We’re older than most of the professionals in our lives. We can use this to our advantage – dentist, doctor
Young men and women with an active faith in God and His word, the Bible, are long-term men and women who take saying “I do” seriously. They share similar moral beliefs and deeply held values. They possess a higher commitment to sexual fidelity. And those who regularly attend church have about a 40% less likely chance of divorcing. (See this Harvard study.)
Marrying when young often means less relationship baggage primarily because there are less exes. Maturity in a relationship is not measured in chronological age. Maturity is measured in one’s ability to think of their spouse or future spouse first and not themselves.
Cohabitation is precarious, uncertain and shaky because it undermines the quality of your marriage commitment. While marrying Corrine, you may find yourself thinking about your years with Heather and then comparing your new wife’s sexual responses to Bekah’s. It will increase the instability of your marriage foundation. Cohabitation is pretending to be married with a widely open back door. There is no need for commitment in sickness and in health; there are no vows spoken to one another and to God. There are no community of believers helping you to remain committed to each other without the bond of a legalized marriage.
And then this
In a Wall Street Journal article dated Saturday, February 5, 2022 Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox wrote, “[In surveying] 50,000 women in the U.S. governments National Survey of Family Growth, we found that there is a group of women for whom marriage before 30 is not risky: women who married directly, without ever cohabitating prior to marriage. In fact, women who married between 22 and 30, without first living together, had some of the lowest rates of divorce in the National Survey of Family Growth.” Now that says something which majorly contradicts the former conventional wisdom of trying it to see if you like it.
One of the reasons couples are marrying later today is hope against hope that they will not encounter divorce. They are vying for a lower risk rate. But along the way as they give themselves freely to various sexual partners and/or cohabitate they are actually decreasing their chances of marriage without experiencing divorce. Research is now growing and concluding that to cohabitate prior to marriage and to experience multiple sexual partners, couples are less likely to be happily married. The pretest thought simply does not work.
It has been God’s word of truth
The word of God has revealed this truth for centuries. Social science is now only catching up to the truth written in the Bible about relationships and marriage. God’s word is more current when it comes to marriage and pre-marriage than tomorrow’s scientific study found within academia.
For example, did you know that sexual pleasure between husband and wife was God’s idea? Solomon wrote these inspired words, “May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer–may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.” (Proverbs 5:18, 19)
Paul the Apostle wrote:
But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (I Corinthians 7:2-5)
God is not embarrassed by sexual intimacy, He is not a prude or naïve when it comes to His wonderful gift, but He did place very strict, very safe and very loving boundaries around it. Paul also clearly warned us when he wrote, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.” (I Corinthians 6:12)
Sexual pleasure is God’s intent for marriage and procreation is not the only purpose of sex, but sexual fulfillment within marriage is a process, a learned experience.
Concluding with married sex is better sex
Married couples have better sex for numerous reasons. They are committed to one another. They desire to please one another and give versus taking to meet a need. Intimacy is not filled with lust, but rather love. The married partners are monogamous. Sex within marriage is the safest sex. It is sex without worry, without thought of being caught, without fear of disobeying God’s command and sex within marriage is the best sex because you know the desires of your life mate.
For all of these reasons and more we can conclude that God was right all along. His written word and His commands were all for our good and our pleasure. Boundaries are an important part of life and so it is also true of sexual boundaries. May you find this truth for yourself and then experience the pure joy of obedience and God’s gift to you.
In my many years of studying, researching, writing, interviewing and counseling in the pre- and postmarital realm, I had little hope I would see secular research come to agree with so many of my findings and beliefs. But the proof just keeps showing up in article after article.
My belief, without waver, is that premarital experiences directly relate to our marriages and that pre-marriage sexual experiences harm the marital experiences of life as a married couple. In the recent past the typical sequence to marriage went something like this: dating, sex, cohabitation, maybe children and then marriage.
Sex and cohabitation before marriage
Psychologist Galena Rhoades PhD and Scott Stanley in an online article titled Before “I Do,” What Do Premarital Experiences Have to Do with Marital Quality Among Today’s Young Adults, now questions this contemporary view of how family life begins in our society. She believes that every serious relationship has certain milestones, like the first kiss to actually coming to a definition of where the relationship is going. She unequivocally states that about 90% of couples are sexual before marriage according to one study (Diner, 2007). She also states that most couples live together before marriage (Copen, Daniels, and Mosher, 2013).
But then she writes this, “Many of them have sex with multiple partners before finding the person they will eventually marry. Do premarital sexual relationships relate to later marital quality? Yes and no. It depends on who you are having sex with. Men and women who only slept with their (future) spouse prior to marriage reported higher marital quality than those who had other sexual partners as well. This doesn’t mean that sex before marriage will doom a marriage, but sex with many different partners may be risky if you’re looking for a high-quality marriage.”
Dr. Rhoades makes this eye-opening conclusion, “We generally think that having more experience is better [in life] but what we find for relationships is just the opposite.”
Multiple experiences with multiple partners sexually is now actually linked to marriages that are worse off and that having a long history with cohabitating may actually cause you to devalue your spouse.
Marrying young
Brad Wilcox, a director of the National Marriage Project and Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia wrote an article on how marrying young (by young I mean early 20’s) and without cohabitating “seems merited.” He wrote, “Our analyses indicate that religious men and women who married in their twenties without cohabitating first–have the lowest odds of divorce in America today.” Read that last sentence again, please.
What is it that the author of this study suspected as to why the success rate? “We suspect one advantage the religious singles in their twenties have over the secular peers is that they are more likely to have access to a pool of men and women who are ready to tie the knot and share their vision of a family-focused life.”
It has been believed and practiced for decades that a college education with a lot of dating, partying, fun, one-night stands and living together and then finally career all came first before settling down with a commitment to marriage. The statistic of living together (70%) before marriage is scary high. But Professor Wilcox wrote this, “But the conventional wisdom here is wrong: Americans who cohabit before marriage are less likely to be happily married and more likely to break up.” In fact, he says that couples who do cohabitate have a 15% more likely chance of divorce than those who do not.
Milestones in dating and pre-marriage days in a couple’s life means something because decisions mean something. We can remember when our spouse first spoke the words, “I love you.” We can recall where we were when we became engaged. We either loved or endured premarital counseling, but it was another milestone, a decision we made for us and our success in marriage.
Fifty years of marriage
Over 50 years ago my wife and I abstained sexually out of total love, commitment and respect for one another–keeping for marriage what belongs only to marriage. We did not cohabitate because we knew this one act reduces the chances of a healthy lifelong marriage. We had a large wedding because we wanted others to celebrate with us, hold us accountable and enter into our joy of oneness. We went on a two-week honeymoon dropping out of life as we knew it to simply work on becoming one. We did not know one another intimately (sexually) prior to marriage, but we discovered the joy of purity meeting purity night after night.
It was not a college education, financial security, sexual experiences or age that helped to create these milestones, it was love for God and a desire to obey His truth. We were married in our early twenties and we continue to celebrate milestones in our marriage. We are celebrating the milestone of half a century of marriage throughout this year and we are thankful for a godly foundation.
We were just kids, as they say. Mary was fresh out of nursing school, and I was in the military during the Vietnam war. We had a small two-bedroom apartment and worked different shifts the first two years following our wedding vows.
Learning each other’s nuances, family cultures, likes and dislikes was fascinating. With virtually no premarital counseling we were finally married and living on our own five hours south of our families.
While we had been in semiserious relationships prior to ours, we were virgins, having saved the best of ourselves for one another. It was heaven on earth as we discovered new things about each other, learning to cook, and all things that go into making a newly formed family.
Our first apartment.
Following those two years we set out to serve as missionaries to adjudicated teenage boys and did so for eight years – not heaven on earth. This mission tested everything we knew in life, marriage and the pursuit of happiness. It was tough believing for our needs, not fighting over who spent the last dollar and living in a facility with other staff members and the delinquents themselves. Through lots of trials and pain we grew stronger in our faith, our resolve, and our marriage.
So here we are at 50 years. How does a couple keep it together that long? How does a marriage make it through severe losses, great financial needs, disagreements, differing financial values, and (one of the most challenging) raising children into adulthood? Let us (my bride helped with this part) take a stab at answering that question.
Choose your battles wisely. You just can’t agree on everything, but that does not mean you live disagreeably. Face the fact, even though you are one, you are two different individuals who see things differently. That is not a negative, it is something to be valued. Seeing things differently helps each of us to see what we’re not seeing. And that makes for a better team.
Speaking of team, work together at serving and honoring each other. How can you out serve and out honor your mate? Also important, honor one another’s extended families.
Keep dating a priority. Never stop prioritizing fun, weekends away, rest and laughter.
Know why you are called together. Know your marriage mission, write it down and keep updating it year after year. It is the “why” of your marriage relationship.
Pray and worship together. Nothing is more intimate, connecting, or communicative than praying together. You will hear each other’s hearts and know one another’s deepest needs and desires. Worshiping together includes having a home church; one in which you are both comfortable in and are fed spiritually nourishing food. It’s a place where you can serve and be served by a godly family who cares about you, your marriage and your family.
Proverbs 31 reminds us, “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.”
We have lacked nothing of value these past 50 years. There is no greater, no deeper love than our heavenly Father’s and that love enables us to love and cherish each other through every day, every month and every year.
Reaching this milestone has made every mile we have traveled, every faith step we have taken, and every prayer we have prayed worth it. If we can make it, so can you.
So many Americans (and persons from other nations) have become disappointed in their political leaders, especially in the last several decades. There has been a lot of discouragement with government figures and that goes for any side of the aisle you find yourself on.
And it’s not just their political decisions, but their integrity as well. There has been enough lying going around, scandalous affairs, stealing, misappropriation of funds and the like to become disillusioned with almost all politicians. It’s heartbreaking really. Who can we trust?
A major result of all this is voters become apathetic and stop trusting anyone who runs for office. We lose faith in their vision and in the leaders themselves. Another result is that we tend to give our favored candidates a pass or the benefit of the doubt, even when doing wrong (which we purposely fail to point out). To the opposing side, we let them have it on social media and anybody who will listen. We can be so busy tearing them apart that we don’t know how to speak words that affirm.
Here’s a truth: wrong is still wrong and right is still right. There is no double standard. When politicians say wrong things publicly, they should be held accountable publicly. When they take wrong action, their party should hold them accountable. It is as simple as that. Instead, each party defends the wrong in their party and then accentuates the wrong they identify in the opposing side.
Losing faith in leadership is detrimental to the good of our or any nation.
What do we do?
For those of us who follow a Savior, we must get back to putting Him first. We must look to Him before we look to a politician. He is “the author and finisher of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:2) Jesus is The Leader, our leader who first cared for us. No politician can save you, only Jesus.
Secondly, season with salt your conversations. I frequently travel to a nation where it is illegal to criticize the government. How do believers respond to this requirement? They stick with Jesus. Our nation could use some of that wisdom. (See Colossians 4:6.)
Third, please remember we are light because He is Light and light dispells darkness. You cannot be light and at the same time offer snarky, meanspirited, dark answers about political persons or those who support them. Let your conversation be seasoned with salt AND light. (See Matthew 5:13-16.)
Lastly, pray for your leaders. If you pray in one breath, it is pretty difficult to criticize with the other. If you take issue with a certain position, feel free to write a letter to the appropriate person, but then pray. (See I Timothy 2:1-4; Romans 13:1.) Your critical attitude helps no one. Your prayerful attitude blesses everyone.
Politics has become extremely divisive, but you don’t have to be!
Writing anything and then publishing or posting online places you in a position for targeted criticism. What you write will most likely be helpful for many (if that’s your aim), but there are those who were born to be your personal critic.
I wrote an article on pre- and postmarital counseling for a national magazine once and the following month the only letters to the editor they printed about my article were negative ones. I asked the editor of the magazine if there were any positive or affirming letters about the article and they replied, “Oh yeah, but that doesn’t sell magazines.” Thanks!
Write anything on social media and you’ll have the critic police letting you know everything you said was incorrect and you should be stopped immediately. Never mind that they are under the delusional thought they’re always right and their opinion is the only one that counts.
It’s disheartening to work so hard on something, to be assured that your facts are straight and noted and that you incorporated multiple pre-readers only to have someone tear it all to pieces.
And reviews? Forget about it! Having books listed on Amazon opens you to all kinds of inaccurate cruelty. I once received a one-star rating on a book because they looked at one appendix and then judged the whole book on why you shouldn’t buy it based on that information only. And there is no chance of fighting with Amazon about misleading reviews. Seems they love the controversy as well.
Jesus was criticized once for healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. They said He was “working” on the Sabbath. No matter what you do you’ll find critics. Even if you change something to suit them, they will find something else to criticize.
I have some good news for you. You do not need their approval. You are not required to change for your critics. Can there be some truth in what they say? Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are not your cheerleaders. Keep your focus on what God has called you to and work as unto Him.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men. Colossians 3:23 (NIV)
Everyone has a right to their opinion, and you have the right to either listen to it or not.
Steve Prokopchak 