Rock International Tribe

May 17, 2010

Today, Janet and I celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. As a grade school lad, I served punch at my grandparent’s 35th party. My lasting impression was, “Man, they are old!” Well, as you can see in this picture Janet has retained her youthful radiance. This gorgeous woman’s dark brown hair is all natural. Me, well, that’s another story. Receding hairline (we affectionately call the “peninsula”), peppered with gray, thick waist (okay, a paunchy belly), and crow feet wrinkles around the eyes. I’m thinking of starting a bedtime lotion regiment.

The aging process is inevitable, absolutely no choice in the matter. The heart issues are quite another story. We have very sobering, deep, and eternal choices to make when it comes to the health of our hearts. Our human spirits (hearts) can actually progress from “glory to glory” if we do exactly what the Bible teaches with the empowering help of the Holy Spirit. The spirit or heart can grow more vibrant even as the body declines. The cost for this heart expanding reality is very high, the ultimate sacrifice. Yet, the cost is so worth the reward. Read on.

After 35 years of having a great marriage, which has included lots of hurts and disappointments, what have I learned that could be of some help to you? The most important thing I have learned is to die to myself, so that I can live for the glory of God. When I live for God, first, its not about me. Its about Him. When its about Him, and not about me, then I can love and serve my wife as “unto the Lord”. Loving Janet is a way of loving God, my first and highest commandment. What she does or doesn’t do for me, how she looks or acts, her moods or weaknesses, are, quite frankly, not the issue. When I lose my life for God’s glory (selflessly loving and serving my wife gives Him glory), then I actually gain my life because this act of “worship” is the purpose for my existence. My heart and marriage come alive when I get out of me and into God and my wife. This is a daily choice, not based upon feelings or circumstances.

When my heart’s focus and motivation is about my needs, then there is an internal corrosion that becomes toxic to me and my marriage. I wasn’t created to be selfish. Self-absorption doesn’t work. Believe me, I have tried it. Occasionally, more often than I would like to admit, I still try living for me. But each and every time I do, disaster awaits. The wages of sin (disconnection from God due to self worship) is death!

My advice to all men and women worldwide, married or not married. Lose your life for the glory of God. Abandon yourself to a lifestyle of selfless loving, God and others. When you “sow” love, you will “reap” love. Never blame shift. No one has the power to stop you from loving God and others. Its not your spouses fault that you are being a knuckle head. They don’t have that much power. So what do you do when (not “if”, cause its just a matter of time when disappointments hit) you find yourself in a marriage relationship with someone who isn’t meeting all your needs, has stopped massaging your ego, isn’t as attractive and exciting? You get before God’s glorious face, and by His amazing grace and for His glory, you worship Him by loving and serving your spouse. Repent, get out of self-pity, self-absorption, stop whinning, grow up, and get into pleasing God which occurs when you serve your spouse.  Believe me, you will be infused with the empowering help of the Holy Spirit, and that intoxicating Presence from the heavenly realm will profoundly override your temporal circumstances. Lose your life and you will gain it.  Those are the embedded laws that govern all creation. God, Himself, lives by the “rules” He invented.  That is why He sent His Son to die our death, and pay the penalty for our sins. Christ lost His life, so that we might have ours. He is your inspiration. So pick up your cross daily, and follow Him. Walk your fallen self to the cross, deny yourself, and live for others with Holy Spirit’s help. Do it, and experience life. Do it not, and you will be a miserable wretch.

Finally, I would like to go on record confessing that my wife, Janet, has done a much better job at loving God and her spouse than I have. Each and every day, she lives for God and does her best to help me do what I am called to do. Her willingness to stick with me has resulted in moving 15 times with a current residence in an inner-city convent. When she married me, she waved “goodbye” to predictability and security, so that we could reach the lost and broken.   For a farmer’s daughter, familiar with ”steady”, my leadership has cost her dearly. As a pastor’s wife for 35 years, she has been traumatized by church conflicts and betrayal. Yet, she has fought back from the crushing blows of hurt, and has progressively reopened her heart to our now amazing spiritual family. She birthed and raise our two wonderful children, who adore her beyond words. Now as a “Nanna”, her grandchildren are the recipients of the ceaseless flow of liquid love that pours from her heart. 

I love and appreciate you my dear wife of 35 years, and girlfriend for four years before that. I was but 17 years old when we met and started love’s difficult journey. You have taught me more about selfless loving than anyone I know. We will finish well, because the glory of God is at stake.

With all my heart,

Tim Johns