Papa Glenn was a careful, meticulous, and skilled gardner. I know this because he was my grandfather. I’m not sure if a weed stayed in his garden for more than 24 hours. He knew his business and he was good at it. While I am not saying he was obsessive, I am saying that he cared about gardening. He took it serious and it was obvious.

The fruit of his hands was on full display, especially when it was harvest time. While he kept one eye on the needs of the day, he kept the other eye on the future fall harvest. With the end in mind, he did the daily work that was necessary to fulfill his future hope and expectation.

It is an old adage, but well worth saying here: He got what he paid for.

In Ephesians 5:25-27 we read about another person who did similarly, but more profoundly, what Papa Glenn did:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. – ESV

Christ worked very hard to “present the church to himself.” In short, he will receive in some future day the work of His hands. You could say it this way: He will get what he has paid for. Paul pushes this Gospel truth right into the heart of our marriages by giving us an exhortation about how we husbands have a responsibility in the overall sanctification and care of our wives.

What if my wife is a difficult garden?

Our first retort should not be about the difficulty and challenges of the garden. It would be too easy to say that our wives have problems that leave us at a disadvantage. That’s a no brainer. Who is not messed up? The truth is that none of us was a prize worth saving when God redeemed us from destruction. (Romans 3:10-12) Thankfully Christ did not glance upon us and then choose to pass by because of the difficulty and challenges of the task at hand.

While there may be some merit in your argument about the difficulty and condition of your particular “garden” it is really a feeble and anti-Gospel argument and you cannot truly use it as an excuse for not doing your duty. If you have been married for five years or less, it is understandable that your garden may need more work than an older garden. However, if you have been married for 10 years or more, then your wife is a clear and objective representation of your past love and care for her.

The old meaning for the word husband is husbandman, which means a gardener. You are a gardener and your wife is your garden. How does your garden grow?

If your wife has a lot of weeds and you are not sure how to proceed, then I encourage you to get some help. Ask your small group leader or your pastor to give you some help. Please call me. It would be a great joy to teach you how to tend your garden. By all means, do not be angry, frustrated, apathetic, or disappointed if your garden is not meeting your expectations. That kind of response will not help your circumstances at all.

Papa Glenn knew how to grow stuff. Though he may have been perplexed from time to time or occasionally stumped, he always persevered with hope and sweat. And the bountiful end was worth the labor involved. He used to tell me,

Ricky, if you want a garden like this then you need to get out there and weed it every day.

I hated it when he would say that, but I knew he was right. Gentleman, we need to take heed to Papa Glenn’s advice. Let’s be weeding our garden every day.

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Bill comes to me for leadership assessment. He wants to know some areas where he needs to grow as a leader. It is extremely rare for anyone to come to me and ask for such an evaluation. Typically, the people who see me want to know if I can help them change their situation or change someone related to their situation.

At some level they know they need to change and, at times, they will ask about areas where they need improvement. But it is extremely rare for anyone to come to me and say something along these lines,

Hey Rick. My marriage is not going well and I was wondering if you could give us some advice on how to fix things. I realize now that I’ve not done a good job and would like for you to tell me what areas I need to grow. I’m sure my spouse needs to change, but that is not what I’m after here: I know I need to change and I want to change.

Honestly, I think I would fall over on the floor if that was the gist of our first conversation. Jesus said it in a more direct manner:

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye, when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. – Matthew 7:3-5 ESV

Bill is a rare breed. He seemingly has lost interest in anything his wife has done. His primary objective is to have someone speak into his life. The first thing I want to tell Bill is that he had better get ready to be surprised by God. Because James was very clear in 4:6 that though God will oppose the proud, he will most definitely give grace to the humble. And Bill is incredibly humble.

So get ready, Bill. You are modeling humility. Be prepared for God’s favor in your life. Because you came to me with a desire to fix yourself and your wife seems to be more of an afterthought, you can expect God’s favor to be poured out on you. You are a humble man.

First Point of Leadership Assessment

The first thing I would look at regarding Bill’s leadership ability is his wife. She represents his “first fruit” so to speak. She is Exhibit A, as it pertains to his values, priorities and overall leadership ability. He has spent more time-in-grade with her, wooing, dating, courting, marrying, cherishing and nourishing, than anything or anyone else. They are one flesh. She is a reflection of him.

If you are about to hire someone to do a job for you, don’t you ask for references so you can get an assessment of his work? That is what I do. Though I trust the guy who wants to work for me, I’ve found it not only wise, but more objective to look at the fruit of his labor, rather than listening to the words of his mouth. I’m sure he will tell me the truth, but I’m also aware that if I’m self-deceived to a degree, which I am, then my friend can also be self-deceived. Therefore, I have found it to be wise to look at his work. A man’s work will reveal a lot about the man.

Every Gardener has a Garden

The word husband comes from the word husbandman, a tiller of the soil. A husbandman is known in our day as a gardener. A husband, in this sense, is a gardener. If you want to know if a gardener knows how to garden, don’t ask him. Go and take a peek at his garden.

Look at his wife!

• Husband = Gardener
• Wife = Garden

If you came to my house and we began talking about my garden and I told you how much I loved gardening, you would expect to see something wonderful when you looked at my garden. What if you walked out back and saw nothing but weeds, fallen vines and rotten fruit? Would you have questions about my gardening ability? Maybe there could be a good reason for such a mess. Maybe.

However, it would certainly raise questions about my ability, care, skill, concern, desire, knowledge, passion, expertise and love for gardening. You would have questions.

A friend of mine was recently commenting to me on how she rarely sees couples, who have been married for awhile, “obviously” in love with one another.

• They are more snippy than playful.
• They are more critical than encouraging.
• They are more hopeless than joyful.
• They are more business partners than lovers.
• It feels more like an arranged marriage than a passionate romance.
• Gardening has become a chore to be endured than a passion to be enjoyed.

They have forgotten the Gospel. Their greatest problem in life has been resolved at the Cross, assuming they are Christians, and the weeds of this world are now choking the life out of their promise to God.

10 Garden Variety Application Questions

1. Husband, how does your garden grow?
2. Is your garden full of weeds? Is this something only Round Up can cure?
3. Is the fruit rotten? Does it taste bad?
4. How would you feel about showing-off your labor at the Farmer’s Market this Saturday?
5. Have you asked an horticulturalist for an honest assessment?
6. Are you more apt to blame the fruit for being rotten than addressing your weaknesses in tending the garden?
7. Ever thought about talking to the plants? Caressing the plants?
8. Did you think your job was done when you planted the seed in the Spring?
9. Do you not have the tools for gardening?
10. Do you not like gardening?

In This Series:

1. Warming Butterflies: How to Treat Your Wife
2. How To Warm Your Butterfly
3. How Does Your Garden Grow?
4. Co-Co Dependent: A Biblical Role for the Wife

Photographs courtesy of Expressions by Bev

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I received this note from a friend who read the blog post called Warming Butterflies: How to Treat Your Wife. His questions are relevant and needful in light of the blog post. My friend understands he needs to be a better husband, which is an expression of the grace of God in his life as well as the gift of humility that God has granted him. So he asks…

I don’t think I have ever felt so dull and dumb after reading one of your posts. Grow and warm, great, what does that looks like? What are my twelve steps?? It’s almost like I want someone to do it for me so I don’t have to do the hard work of figuring it out. – Blog Reader

The thing I appreciate as much as his humility and God’s grace in his life is his desire to wrestle with the post. He is not “just taking it lying down.” But he is asking questions. He is challenging me to make it practical, to bring it into his living room to make it clear. Let’s be functional. Teaching is great. Teaching is needful, but teaching must be practical. To be eloquent and inspiring will not cut it alone. Please be eloquent. Please inspire me, but please make it real. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer and I need your “iron sharpening my iron” in real practical ways.

So how do I warm my butterfly? I love the analogy. It is cute. It leads me to my responsibility. But it does not show me how. So here I am staring at your blog post, but a bit dumbfounded. Help!!

At this point I’ll give you one piece of practical advice. And this could change your world. It could put you in a place that can set you up for a lifetime of adventure with your wife. Here it is:

ASK YOUR WIFE! Ask her how to treat her. Ask her how to “warm” her.

That’s it! Ask your wife. Be amazed. Listen humbly. Be prepared. Listen as the biggest sinner in the room so you won’t be offended, because if you really believed you’re the biggest sinner in the room then you won’t be offended no matter what she says or how she says it.

I can’t speak for you, but I know that I put Christ on the tree. Therefore, there is nothing you can say to me that is worse than what I have done. Therefore, listen with the Gospel informing your heart and mind. If you do, then you can listen with humility as God’s grace is empowering you and your marriage could change.

My counsel to you is from my personal experience with my wife. I had to do this a few years ago.

Lucia, my adorable wife, and I have always been the best of friends. We are buddies, partners, friends, and complementing lovers for life. And though we have nearly always enjoyed one another it was apparent a few years ago that there was a dynamic element missing in our life. And as the “fix-it person” at our church I was perplexed and doubly frustrated that I could serve others in their marriages, but couldn’t fix mine.

It’s a long story, but the end of it went like this:

I got sitters for the kids. We then went on a date to a Krystals Hamburger Joint. Krystals is pretty low on the food chain. And this particular Krystals was beside a truck stop. That should inform you as to the ambiance. The reason I chose it was because I didn’t want to be distracted. We had serious talk time to get into and if there was going to be romance on this date night it would be fueled by our undistracted face time, not by the artificiality of man-made accouterments.

If this was going to be a romantic date night we were going to have to make it happen. (Of course we are aware that it would be God empowering us by his grace.) So there we sat. No kids to distract. No good food to talk about. No atmosphere to get jazzed about. The smell was a blend of gasoline and burgers.

There we sat staring at one another and for the first time in our marriage we were not only not distracted, but we had nothing to talk about.

At that point I told Lucia I did not know what to do. I was not sure what to say. It all felt a bit wooden or mechanical. Therefore, the obvious thing to do was ask her forgiveness for my lack of leadership in our marriage, particularly as it worked out in my lack of communication and Christ-modeling. I asked for forgiveness and I was not surprised by my wife’s humility. She is a far better Christian than I am. She forgave me quickly and completely.

She then pursued her humility by asking me to forgive her for her lack of “complementing” in our marriage. From there we began. The deck was cleared and now we could talk, though it was still a bit stiff.

I then asked her how I could be a more effective leader in our marriage. To my surprise she had a very long list of things in her head that I could think about and possibly apply. She had a list!! My, my. And her list was not tossed to me like a grenade. She humbly gave me some things to consider.

We began considering those things together and it wonderfully changed our marriage.

Here is my advice: Just ask her!

Butterfly Pics Courtesy Expressions by Bev

In This Series:

1. Warming Butterflies: How to Treat Your Wife
2. How To Warm Your Butterfly
3. How Does Your Garden Grow?
4. Co-Co Dependent: A Biblical Role for the Wife

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Back in the summer of ’08 my wife bought 13 caterpillars and 4 Milk Plants for the kids. It was a science experiment. And, per usual, God had additional thoughts for us because he never leaves us alone in our simple lives, but always wants to engage us in our mundane moments. It is in our “moments of the mundane” where we see his daily kindnesses to us.

For example, Jesus showed extreme kindness to us by giving us his mundane life. This is what we see in the Gospel. Christ lived in the splendor of the glory with his Father, but chose to come to our dirty and defiled earth to live in the moment with us. Eventually he died on the tree to save us from worthlessness. God is not afraid of the mundane and seemingly prefers it.

Jesus taught what he modeled!

He showed us how God is interested in the seemingly disinteresting things. And from these teaching moments we learn so much about our great God. For example, Jesus taught his boys in Matthew 6 as they were walking along the path contemplating the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. The Savior moved his disciples from the concrete animal kingdom to the abstract spiritual world and they were amazed all over again as they learned more great truth from their awesome God.

I was similarly affected by these caterpillars and Milk Plants

The caterpillars survived on the milk plants and except for one small situation they stayed on the plants until they spun into their private chrysalis. They stayed in their chrysalis cocoon for several days and then began, one by one, to come out into the most beautiful Monarch butterflies. They were gorgeous, bright and full of life.

However, what stunned me were the 30-minutes between coming out of the chrysalis and taking flight. During this interim the butterflies were actually slightly shriveled, wrinkled and damp. They were not quite wadded up, but they were diminutive compared to God’s final design. And Lucia was prepared for this. She had placed a four-foot fluorescent light over the milk plants. When the butterfly came out of her chrysalis she was greeted by the light and it was the warmth of the light she was drawn to and the warmth of the light literally smoothed out her wrinkles, warmed her up to where she could spread her glorious silky wings and take flight.

It was in this mundane moment in my kids bedroom where God pointed me to his Word. Just as Christ pointed his disciples to the birds of the air and began to teach them wonderful spiritual truth, my God was with this husband, in that moment, and taught me spiritual truth regarding my marriage.

Paul told us husbands in Ephesians 5:29 that we are to nourish and cherish our wives. The word “nourish” means to “grow.” The word “cherish” means to “warm.” BAM! I saw it. I saw my responsibilities before God and my wife. I am to grow and warm her. I am to provide for her a context where she can grow, mature and take flight. Earlier in the text Paul talked about how the church had no wrinkles or spots and he was using this truth to guide us into the glorious possibilities and adventure of loving our wives.

The butterfly came out wrinkled, damp and not quite all God intended. Our wives came to us similarly. And it is our job to love, warm, grow, teach, lead, serve and present to God the work of our leadership. We have the opportunity to cause her to infold worse than she was before, or unfold and take flight for the glory of God.

In marriage counseling one of the objective evidences of a man’s leadership is the countenance, attitude and overall “warmth” of the wife. Does she bask and flitter in the warmth of her husband’s leadership or is she gnarled into a confused, twisted, angered and hopeless bride? We husbands, when we’re getting it right, can be used mightily by God to display one of his greatest gifts to us. That is, our wives.

In This Series:

1. Warming Butterflies: How to Treat Your Wife
2. How To Warm Your Butterfly
3. How Does Your Garden Grow?
4. Co-Co Dependent: A Biblical Role for the Wife

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Hopefully, at some point in our lives, we recognize that our pursuits were not necessarily wrong pursuits, but only in the wrong direction. We had the right information—there is something wrong with me—but we took off the wrong way. We were trying to connect to the wrong thing. God wants us to be connected, but typically not in a way that we think. Jesus is anti-cultural. Truthfully, he is supra-cultural. Rather than choosing God, we selected false lovers or God-replacements and created a dualistic false-self in place of the person God wants us to be. We became imposters, something like a fish on the bank, alive, but extracted from its life-source. The fish is lost, confused, dangling, flopping, searching, while losing hope for what is really life-sustaining. He needs water! We need God! Jeremiah put it another way when he said,“for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2:13)

We have desires but few clues as to how to get to the right place. We dabble here and dabble there. We begin to cut paths in our mind. It is a trail blazed without a compass. In time, it becomes comfortable. We now have habits. Like the examples above, we create a world and have convinced ourselves that this is the real me. The path we carved, however, is fraudulent. It works. But it doesn’t really work; because it is not authentic. We are not the people God intended us to be.

In God alone, we find reality. He alone is the answer to our most penetrating questions. He is the warrior/poet and we are made in His image. Therefore, when the heart of man is riveted to the heart of God there will be true rest for the soul.

If you feel yourself in this perplexing place between two worlds and do not know how to get out let me encourage you to find help. Find a friend. Do not try to extricate yourself from this alone. If you are part of a local church, then go to your small group leader or pastor. Let them serve you. Go to them. Ask!

If I can serve you in any way, please let me know. The gospel is the answer, but sometimes we need to encourage one another in how to live in the good of the gospel. Please seek out a friend.

In this Series

• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 1
  
• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 2
• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 3

Do you think this is true for most for us:

• Aren’t we all impostors to varying degrees?
• Isn’t it true that our inner thoughts, doubts, and condemning accusations are a bit different from the way we present ourselves to others?
• Don’t we often live in some sort of surreal double world, oscillating between what we are and what we want to be?
• In our most fluid and right moments don’t we at times flounder?
• Isn’t there a gap between who we know we are and the carefully edited version we put forth in order to be liked?

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. –Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets, P. 3.

I wonder if most people who are in search of their ideal of success whether it is biblically right or not typically resign themselves to a lesser life of false “lovers” that can never completely satisfy. False lovers are our “God-replacements” that we hope will fill the seemingly insatiable and un-scattered darkness of the soul.

In such cases we are tempted to heap many false lovers upon ourselves as we search for this missing piece. For example, the pornographer is an impostor who has resigned his life to lurking in the shadows in an attempt to create a world he can control. It is his world, where he can control the knobs and make the ladies answer his most searching questions. These ladies make him feel good about himself. He writes the script and tells them what to say, and they say what he wants to hear. It is the perfect fantasy world: total control, private, pleasurable. But it is not the real world, the world he must contend with day to day. Therefore he is living, battling and standing and falling in both worlds. He becomes a poser in both. In his fantasy world he has created an image of himself that he wants to believe, but is not real. And in his real world he puts forth a carefully crafted image of who he wants others to think him to be. At some level he is lost in both worlds.

Marriage can be another attempt to find a false lover to bring us our most coveted longings in life. This false lover comes in the form of someone who gives me attention and makes me feel good about myself. My false lover praises me, exalts me and fills my always craving but never full love cup. “She thinks me to be a man! She makes me feel good about myself.” This poser, who is typically frustrated and overwhelmed by life, will first seek out his wife to fill his cup. If that doesn’t work he contrives other schemes in order to find something that makes him feel good in a bad world. This man is all about himself. He is not only a poser, but a user. He uses people and things to create a mirage that at times lifts him to his created pseudo-reality just long enough to help him forget the mediocrity and drudgery of life. This life works well, up to a point, which is typically when the other spouse realizes she is a God-replacement. She prayerfully hopes (sometimes not so prayerfully or God-pleasing) that he’ll realize that marriage is not what you get out of it, but what you put into it. His selfish, fantasy world has collided with reality.

Work is one of our more common false lovers, particularly among men. (Many moms would find their children in a similar category of false lovers.) Men tend to gravitate toward their raw strengths and natural abilities in hopes that it will propel them toward their niche in life. And when they find their niche they praise God for his provision. This unguarded strength can be a double weakness. We can be self-deceived. We give God the glory for his provision and now our unguarded cravings are masked and off we go into a full-orbed workaholic lifestyle. We justify this because, as we say, God gave us the job and we’re good at it. At the end of the day, our work fills our desire for greatness, because our home life does not. But we know it’s filling a false-self. It’s a self that is craving respect, acceptance, significance and more. We know in our innermost being that we are still trying to escape this low-grade awareness that something is ringing hollow in the soul.

In this Series

• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 1
• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 2
• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 3

To paraphrase Braveheart, the perfect man is a Warrior/Poet. This is a simplistic way of getting at a good definition for biblical manhood. The warrior is bold as a lion, courageous, braced, protecting, secure, and undaunted by the roughness of the journey. The good warrior is also a man of character, integrity, respect, honor and above all else, humility.  The poet, on the other hand, is compassionate, tender, loving, spontaneous, vulnerable, adaptable and, well, above all else humble.

Oh yeah, he also laughs a lot.

This is a good working model for the Christian male. The only man, born of woman, who has this perfect balance, is Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, he is our model for biblical masculinity. He was fierce as a lion and tender as a lamb. He confronted what needed to be confronted (Mt. 23) and wept with those who needed compassion (Jn. 11). He seamlessly moved in and out of situations perfectly, walking in a manner that pleased the Father, while drawing people to him in order that he could serve them (Mk.10:4).

Once a person is converted to the Christ-life and begins living in the good of the gospel a growing process toward this kind of God-glorifying humanness begins. Christ is the glorious physical expression of who God is; he is the image I am to imitate; he is the Life and the Light and that Light is the Light of men (Jn. 1). At salvation he hooks his light to us and the darkness begins to scatter.

Christ is logical. He makes sense. He rewrites the wrong. He brings order to chaos; a new man is born when the former old man accepts Christ.

There is an implication here and it has to do with my angst, my true self and, therefore, my heart struggle. You ask, “What do you struggle with?” Allow me to be vulnerable: I’m not Christ. My life does not make sense all the time. I have remaining, lingering chaos in my soul. Simply put, there is tension in my soul between what is right and what is wrong and sometimes I choose the wrong.

And you say, “But if you have embraced the Christ-life, why the struggle?”

At the risk of exposing myself for what I am, I will tell you: I’m an impostor. I would love to be consistent, complete and non-dualistic. I would love to live in an authentic kind of biblical manhood way, inside and out rather than living in some kind of dualistic humanness. I do wonder sometimes if this is true for others.

In this Series

• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 1
• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 2
• Confession of an Impostor, Pt. 3