Happy Wife, Happy Life!  Isn’t that what they say?  Sounds straightforward, right?  But is it?  Of course, we all want to love our wives as Christ loves the church.  But that comes at the expense of some of our notable tendencies.  It means we must realize that conversation requires both our mental and verbal participation.  It means we must stop actually “thinking about nothing.” Or as one friend called it, “thinking about the empty box.”  And as one dear saint once chided, “A good husband keeps his wife’s knives sharp!”  I thought it was a metaphor.  But no, she meant the kitchen knives.

And it is no small feat to keep a good, sharp edge on a knife.  Every stroke has a dulling effect.  Both sharp knives and sharp lives require vigilance, intentionality, and skill.  As knives and lives age, both feel the effects of a growing dullness.  The mental and physical edge, effortless in our youth, requires concerted effort as we age.   We join a gym, we get serious about eating the right things, we work crossword and sudoku puzzles, we develop rituals and build memory palaces to help us recall things that should be familiar and important.

What is true of our knives and our lives is no less true of our faith.  Of course, we understand that faith is a gift.  The effectual calling of the Holy Spirit imparts faith to men incapable of grasping spiritual truths or coming to faith through unaided reason or experience.  And yet the Bible speaks often of a growing faith. And warns us against allowing our faith to become dull.  

While reason and experience can never produce faith, they are important channels for the means of grace used by the Holy Spirit to give and grow our faith.  Which is why we are exhorted to be disciples – followers who are disciplined in the “diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption.”  We are told that faith comes by hearing the word of Christ.  That we are to study to show ourselves approved, rightly dividing the word of truth.  We are counseled in anxiety to go to the Lord in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.  Faith is given and grown as a gift, but are called and enabled to be active receivers, guarding, contending for, and growing in our faith.

Is your faith dull?  Have the strokes of life taken the edge off?  Have you become complacent, callous, enfeebled in your faith?  Without spiritual care, without intentionality, without spiritual discipline our faith can become dull.   As the Gospel of Mark unfolds, Jesus wraps up his Galilean ministry and prepares to move toward Jerusalem and the cross.  At the same time the faith of the disciples grows increasingly dull.  The men who spent three years with Jesus, who heard with their ears, saw with their eyes, and touched with their hands the incarnate God struggled with spiritual dullness.  If this was true for them, how much more of a danger is it for us?

Join us as we examine Mark 8:1-21 and consider the dullness of the disciples’ response to Jesus’ warning to be vigilant against the chilling effects of religious formalism and worldliness.  But the warning was not for the Twelve alone.  For we too are warned about the causes, consequences, and cure for a dull faith.

We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.