Randy Hemingway's Blog

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,” — Ephesians 5:25, 26

If you would like to see this passage in its context, visit dynamicbible.com and type Ephesians 5 in the search bar.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been hammered at church with one message on marriage after another, and I’ve come to the conclusion that all God wants us, as husbands, to do, is simply love our wives. Then, as we do that (choose to love our wives), our actions – and our motives for those actions – will be deeply affected.

As I’ve sat in church (and also in my car, listening to 91.9 and 91.5, here in St. Louis), listening to the many sermons, I’ve heard over and over, “Husbands, love your wives. Husbands, love your wives. Husbands, love your wives. HUSBANDS, LOVE YOUR WIVES.” Now, I know some men (me, included) will say, ”Oh, man, she’s always dropping these subtle hints and I never pick up on them until it’s too late.” Well, God knows we (husbands) are idiots (sometimes…ok, most of the time), so he made it real simple, plain as day, “HUSBAND! LOVE. YOUR. WIFE!”

At this point, you might be thinking, “Ok, I get it! But how? How do I love my wife?” Aha! That is the question! And, hopefully, you’ll read along as I try to use the Bible to answer that question. To be honest, this series of posts is simply the process I’ve gone through in my thinking to understand how I should love my wife. Fortunately, God has given you and me an awesome resource that explains it all very clearly — the Bible. I’m going to do my best to keep myself out of the way and let the Bible — let God — speak for It-/Himself. I hope what God has taught me from the reading and preaching of His Word will be a blessing to you, too.

Question #1: How do I love my wife?

In Ephesians 5:25 (seen above), the Bible says, “Husbands, love  your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.”  We love our wives by giving them the same type of love with which Christ loves the church. Therefore, we are to exemplify Christ’s love in our marriage. Now, we all know that, as Christians, we are to be growing to be more like Christ. So, we should already be trying to show Christ’s love to everyone around us, and showing love to our wives should be a natural outgrowth of our pursuit of Christ-likeness. Well, then, let’s take a little bit closer look at Christ’s love. To be honest, if this were some deep theological study that required Greek and Hebrew scholarships, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it. However, the Bible is filled with simple illustrations of Christ’s love that even I can understand. Hence, I’m able to write about it.  

<aside> The ability to truly show Christ’s love in your marriage is only possible if you have a personal relationship with Christ and, therefore, have the Holy Spirit within you, to “guide you into all truth.” (Jn. 16:13) This relationship with Christ is not the result of being the member of a church or teaching a Sunday School class or any “good” thing that we, as humans, can do.

The Bible says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Eph. 2:8,9) You see, God loves us (Jn. 3:16) and wants to have a relationship with us. That’s exactly why He created Adam and Eve and gave them the Garden of Eden: so He could spend time with them in the Garden.

However Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God’s command. ”Wherefore, as by one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” This sin is separating us from a personal relationship with God while we live here on the earth, but it has also doomed us to an eternity of death — separation from God — in the literal place of fire and damnation, called Hell. (Rom. 6:23) But God did not make Hell for us, He does not want us to go there.

He wants us to spend an eternity with Him, in Heaven. He wants this so much, that He made a way that you and I could have our punishment (of eternal judgment in Hell) taken for us. This is why Jesus, God the Son, came to Earth, lived a perfect, sinless life, was nailed to the cross, and willingly gave His Blood and His life for you. He took your punishment on the cross. (Rom. 5:8) You don’t have to pay your way into Heaven. The debt is already paid, if you will simply accept it by faith.

Will you accept this free gift of salvation? Will you confess that you are a sinner, worthy of judgment? Will you believe in your heart that Christ died on the cross for  your sin? If you will, then pray to Jesus and confess to him that you are a sinner, that you believe that Jesus died on the cross and gave His Blood for your sins, and that you will receive His gift of salvation.

 If you truly believe on Christ, you are given the power (right, authority) to be called a child of God (Jn. 1:12), and, as a child of God, you can show His love to others, especially your wife. If you reject Christ’s gift of salvation and try to obtain Heaven your own way, you will only be able to love others as much as is humanly possible. The task of loving your wife, as with all other endeavors, will be an empty, hopeless feat. You may attain some measure of success, but “what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mk. 8:36) I hope you will surrender to God in humility and reap the benefits of His Love.</aside>

See Part 2 of this series of posts to see the Question #2 that came to me as I was thinking about how to love my wife.

Quote I heard on the radio: “Freedom is not having liberty to do what you want, but to do what you ought.”

This country has an awesome heritage of freedom-loving men and women. Unfortunately, our freedoms and our heritage are under attack from inside the fort, so to speak. This morning, before I went to church, I turned on the TV and NatGeo was doing a show on George Washington. “The REAL George Washington” or something stupid like that, was the name of it. I only watched it for maybe 10 minutes and the whole point of the little bit that I saw was to chop up George Washington’s character into little pieces and feed it to the birds.

It was terrible! They suggested he married Martha because she came from a wealthy family (the implication being that he was a power-hungry freemason doing whatever it took to get to the top) AND they accused him of being in love with a friend’s wife before he married Martha (true? who knows). Also, there was something else wrong with him, he liked war (this was probably the farthest thing from the truth, but he recognized that war was an essential tool for preserving freedom).

There were a few things they couldn’t deny though. It made me smile when they said (paraphrase but pretty close), “He married Martha to get into the upper echelons of society but (they had to add for the sake of historical accuracy) their marriage eventually became a deeply loving marriage.” Now, seriously, how many marriages that start out as power grabs turn into deeply loving relationships? It had to have been that way from the beginning. Oh, and they had to admit through gritted teeth that although he was a war-mongering, power freak, he was pretty courageous in battle. The whole thing was just one jab at Washington’s character after another. Disgusting. Perfectly timed, too, when everyone’s celebrating those who’ve died in service for the great country Washington helped to found, the media’s pouring acid on the foundations of our precious heritage.

All I can say is, be the one who sings those patriotic songs the loudest. Be the one who holds the flag highest during the parade. Be the one who gets a tear in your eye and a lump in your throat when you hear “The Star-spangled Banner.” Be the one who tells your kids about the great men who’ve lost their lives serving this country and its people. Be the one who prays fervently for our country and its leaders. Be the one who stands for what you believe in. After all, isn’t that what our forefathers did before us? Isn’t that what you ought to do?

I just wanted to give all the Vets out there a huge THANK YOU!!! Thank you for serving our country. Thank you for caring about the freedoms we hold dear in this country. Thank you for being willing to lay down your own life for the preservation of our freedoms. Words cannot express the depth of the sacrifices that our soldiers make and the depth of the gratitude we, as citizens of United States, feel toward you for making those sacrifices. Again, thank you so much. Even though there may be talk in the media that might try to play down your efforts and try to make the battle seem futile, you have millions of us supporting you, cheering you on, as you risk your own life for the sake of others. May God bless you for your excellent service for our country and may we never forget those who paid the Ultimate Price for our great Land.

All right, now if someone could help me with this map, I think I was supposed to take a left a couple intersections back. I’m not really sure…What’s that? Oh, yeah, no, I’m not from around here. It was the accent wasn’t it? Yeah, everyone says that…

Ok, enough of that. Well, Faith and I have been telling each other that, when we make our millions, our ship comes in, and pigs fly, we’re going to shop for clothes at Banana Republic. Some of you might be thinking, “pfft! Banana Republic?! I shop at…” such-and-such a place. Well, frankly, I don’t care where you shop. We usually try to find decent deals on the clothes we buy. Don’t get me wrong, we wear nice clothes. We just try to be thrifty about what we buy.

So, anyway, the other day, we wandered into the Banana Republic outlet store. I wasn’t really wanting to go in, because I can never find anything at a decent price. Anyway, so we went in and looked around for a little bit. Then, I stumbled onto a bunch of stuff for 50% off! Sweet! So, we finally did the unthinkable. We bought clothes at Banana Republic! Whoo! Yeah! All right, it’s not that big of a deal. It was just kind of cool because that’s been the place with stuff just out of our reach for so long. It just makes me feel a little wealthier to know that I own BR clothes.

I did a study. Hypothesis: Excessive donut intake makes people fat and lazy. Findings: Excessive donut intake makes people fat and lazy.

My sister in AZ posted this on our family’s blog. Please pray for the families of these young men!

“I think most of you have heard me at least mention the Bible college in Tempe, AZ named International Bible College. We have had a couple of their students work in our church for summer internship, and one of the girls from our church goes to school there. Anyway, they had a group of 30 people from the church and school on a trip to the Grand Canyon. Apparently they have done this same trip for several years, but this year there was tragedy. Three of the boys in the group jumped into the Colorado River and were swept away. They have found the body of one boy, 16 years old. His older brother, who was an intern here two summers ago, is missing as well as a 15-year-old boy. It is not at all clear why they jumped into the water, and the search is still on-going for the two still missing. Please pray for the families and the college/church body. I can’t even imagine the grief that they are dealing with. The college’s final exams start next week. I am praying specifically that they find the other two boys. It is hard to believe they could still be alive, but God is still working miracles. I will let you know as I find out more details. There is a page on facebook too with updates and much more information. I think if you search for IBC in Tempe you should find the page.”