Author Archives: Michael Dennis

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About Michael Dennis

I live in Austin, TX, married, two kids, and starting a new church

First Church Experience?

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Do you remember your first memories of church? Maybe it was when you were a child and you remember your parents getting you up early on Sunday for church. Quickly your parents would pull you out of bed, get you dressed, and hand you a pop-tart as you unfortunately walked past the television and morning cartoons to get in the car to go to church. Why were they in such a hurry?

Maybe it was when you were a little older. Maybe elementary age? Church was different. People you didn’t know started asking you really personal questions. You remember waking up every Sunday with this knot in your stomach because people might find out all the bad things you had done that week and they might tell God! It was if they had some hidden spiritual x-ray machine that could read your mind. Why did your parents start going to church? Where did this come from? Had things been so bad that your parents were actually turning to God for help. This can’t be good.

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Why marriage is frustrating?

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Sometimes in our marriages we get so frustrated, however, if you look in Genesis 2 we see that God didn’t intend for marriage to be frustrating. He created it us to be in a loving relationships with one another, intimate, fruits, naked, however, in Genesis 3 we see sin enter the equation and distort the relationship of marriage and it brings frustration.

Specifically for the husband when God created Adam He created Him to cultivate and care for the garden. He had a job, a responsibility, and it was a divine responsibility of stewardship, however, when sin enters into humanity it results in frustration. Look at Genesis 3:17:

17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread,
till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust,and to dust you shall return.”

Verse 17 starts off and sounds a little offensive, but who were Adam and Eve suppose to listen to? God. Yet, Eve listened to the serpent, and Adam listened to Eve and it resulted in disobedience. As verse 17 continues it explains that which was originally good has now become broken and distorted, and the land that was previously a blessing has now become difficult.

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What is the gospel?

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In Genesis 3:15 it tells us a seed is coming in the future, a seed that will crush Satan on his head. That is a foreshadowing of what is ultimately accomplished in Jesus’ work on the cross. That is in Genesis 3. Galatians 3 teaches us that seed is Jesus Christ who enters into human history to save us from Satan, sin, and death and Genesis teaches us Adam responded in disobedience but 1 Corinthians 15 refers to Jesus as the second Adam, and the second Adam responds in obedience.

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Types of healthy conflict

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We all know how to have unhealthy conflict. Below are a few tips on healthy conflict:

Avoid Reacting to Conflict: All of us are going to find ourselves at a place in our marriage where we are tired, depleted, tense, and we are going to say something that hurts our spouse. It doesn’t make it acceptable, but it is going to happen and often times when it happens we can just react. When we react in conflict we are mirroring the offense that was made toward us. It becomes like a tennis match going back and forth. It starts with a comment, then a slamming door, then walking out, then crying, then yelling, and then throwing things. It is exhausting. Sometimes it goes back and forth so much that it just becomes a tangled mess of Christmas lights that you just want to throw away at the end of the year.

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How do husbands love their wives?

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Ephesians 5 teaches husbands to love their wives and often times we see this in Scripture and we can get easily discouraged because husbands get distracted by work, friends, hobbies, and end up doing a poor job.

We see this echoed in 1 Peter as it calls husbands to love their wives in an understanding way, however, this is going to end in frustration because husbands don’t naturally do this. We naturally treat them like a younger brother and try to wrestle with them, like a co-worker and bark orders at them, like a friend and make sarcastic comments, but we don’t naturally love them and live with them in an understanding way.

It is only when we experience someone loving us and living with us in an understanding way will we be able to share that experience with someone else. How could we possibly give to someone what we haven’t experienced. Therefore, husbands loving their wives starts with Jesus.

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Types of unhealthy conflict

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Some see all conflict as bad and unhealthy, but until heaven we are going to have conflict and through Jesus we can have healthy conflict. To help us identify healthy conflict I thought I would start us off looking at unhealthy conflict. Which one best fits you?

There is the avoider: This person avoids conflict at all costs. Adam does this as he is hiding in the bushes. If conflict happens they avoid the subject, what are you talking about, I’m fine, and if pressed they will literally start to walk the other way. They are usually peacekeepers, generally optimistic, and in the midst of conflict just assume it didn’t happen.

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What does repentance mean?

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Repentance is a big Bible word that sometimes we think of as feeling sorry, bad, guilty, shame, and much of that is a misunderstanding of repentance. We ultimately have a misunderstanding of repentance because we see want to see ourselves as perfect people that sometimes make mistakes.

When we are wrapped up in perfection repentance of any kind becomes very difficult because we are working and trying so hard to maintain our image of perfection. It creates this constant pressure we live under. We are afraid we might disappoint God. We are afraid we might let someone down. If we are honest with ourselves many of us struggle with this skewed repentance because deep down we want to be perfect. We live under constant duress that every offense, every sin, every conflict is traumatic, unnatural, and horribly threatening because someone or ourselves might find out that we aren’t perfect. If we do finally admit fault then we beat ourselves up, tell ourselves we should have done better, wring our hands and emotions and tell ourselves that it won’t happen again. We think this is repentance, but this is a misunderstanding of repentance.

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Where does conflict come from?

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7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

In chapter 2 Adam and Eve were in a loving intimate relationship with God and with one another eating fruits and berries, naked, unashamed, and yet after they eat from the tree it says in verse 7 “the eyes of both of them were opened”. Before verse 7 they were in an age of innocence and Satan whispers into their ear that God can’t be trusted, that God is holding something back, God is trying to keep them from experiencing life, which is what Satan whispers into our ear today. He tempts us to do it, try it, God isn’t real, He doesn’t matter, and it will be so much fun!

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Pornography / Sexuality

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Our sexuality is created by God to be a good thing, take place within marriage, serving one another, but in our culture today it has been distorted.

1. How did our sexuality get where it is today?
Scripture teaches us that when we take sexuality out of the fireplace, outside of the marriage, that it will bring pain. This pain started in Genesis 3 when sin enters into human history. In Genesis 2 God looks to Adam and tells him that all of creation is for him to enjoy, but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead of responding in obedience Adam responds in disobedience and sin enters in and it takes all that God created for good and taints, distorts, and corrupts it.

It was created by God to be a good thing and to take place within marriage, however, because of sin the devil has taken it and distorted and corrupted a good thing. God created it for good, and Satan corrupts it. The clearest example of this in our culture today is pornography.

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Talking about sex within marriage?

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Our desire as a church is to have strong marriages and we think if we have healthy sex lives in our marriages it will lead to strong marriages. Maybe talking about your sex life is a normal every day experience for you as a couple…great! Sometimes couples won’t talk about these kinds of things because they feel embarrassed, don’t want to hurt feelings, not sure where to start, so we want to help open some lines of communication to get the ball rolling. Consider this a starting point:

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Biblical Understanding of Sexuality

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Our sexuality is one of those topics that people don’t like to talk about. People will talk about it socially, medically, scientifically, but we tend not to talk about it in our marriages and especially in the church. As a result we are left with a completely negative connotation. If we avoid talking about it we will ultimately create our own conclusions and instead of creating our own conclusions we want to look to Scripture.

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Are you convinced of your sin?

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30 The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” 31 And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.

There are a couple of observations we can make about this passage. The first is how the Pharisees respond. The Pharisees are the religious leaders of the day and they respond how we might think Jesus would have responded. “Grumbling, complaining annoyed, eating and drinking with sinners.” They had just seen him heal the sick, cure the diseased, and then claim to forgive sins, which are all claims of His deity, and yet now Jesus is sitting with tax collectors. Who does Jesus think He is?

Jesus didn’t claim to be a good person, a good teacher, a prophet, or a religious leader, but God who comes and walks among the lowliest of low and brings a message of forgiveness and purpose. This was completely different than what the religious leaders expected. It was completely different than merely adding religious behavior.

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Finding Romance

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When you first meet someone it seems that romance is naturally in the air. So excited to be on a date, hold hands, get to know one another, but sometimes romance can start to fade.

Below are a few points of application to keep the romance alive in your marriage:

Relationship With Jesus: We have to have a relationship with Jesus if we are going to make it in marriage. Until Jesus is central it is going to be an uphill climb. You have two people going in two different directions. We need to start with a relationship with Jesus.

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