Old lady and old man. The secret to a happy marriage
Taken from here http://emosurf.com/post/1258
The husband and wife lived a long, happy married life. They shared all their secrets and experiences with each other, but there was only one thing the wife asked them never to do: not to look into the old shoe box that she kept on the top shelf of her closet. The husband never asked about the contents of the box. He thought there was something personal, feminine...
But one day the old lady fell ill. When she felt really bad, she asked her husband to bring that box to her in the hospital - it was time to reveal the secret. The old man came home, found the box and brought it. Inside were two knitted dolls and a huge pile of money - 95 thousand dollars!
- Where is this from? How? - asked the dumbfounded old man. "Before we got married," said the old lady, "my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage: every time I get angry with you, you need to sit down silently and crochet one doll." The old man was happy - there were only two dolls in the box. In 50 years of marriage, she only got angry on his behalf twice! He hugged his wife and kissed her.
- But where did the money come from? - he was perplexed.- Oh, this? - she answered with a smile. - This is the money I earned from selling dolls.
And this is my answer: Thank you for the parable! Of course, forgiveness is very important, but it cannot be eternal without love. Only love, that is, the presence of the Spirit of God in a person, can make forgiveness eternal. A marriage can only become happy when the marriage was concluded by three people: HE, SHE AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD that settled in them.
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What is PEACE with God!?
Once, when I was standing in line and approaching the ticket office at
the railway station, one woman standing next to the ticket office,
having heard the cashier"s answer about the lack of empty seats on her
train, began to be loudly indignant to the entire waiting room,
continuously uttering curses at everything and everyone station
employees, accusing them of all the sins that they might have
committed, as well as those to which they had nothing to do. When she
moved away from the cash register and approached me, I saw a chain
with a cross on her neck and said to her quietly: "Ask God to help
you!" "Yes, all this is empty!" she answered loudly, waving her hand.
"Do you have peace with God?" I asked her. And here something
unexpected happened to me, because the woman stopped, looked at me carefully and quietly asked: "What is peace with God?"
At this time, the person standing in front of me moved away from the cash register and people from the queue began to loudly say to me: "Man, you are holding up the queue! Will you take a ticket or not? If not, then move away from the cash register!" I had no time for answers, since I had already told the cashier the name of my train,
which I had to leave on that same day, but the cashier"s answer stunned me: "There are no free seats on your train for today." I turn to walk away from the cash register, saying to the cashier: "Too bad!"
And I hear, half-turned from the cash register, the words of the cashier: "Citizen, wait! You can take a transfer: by train to Rtishchevo station, and there you will change to another train, which also goes to your city, and I will reserve a ticket for you for this train."
"I agree, thank you," I exclaimed, and the words flashed through my mind and thoughts: "Lord, I dreamed about this, to travel by train through these places dear to me since childhood and remember all my distant past connected with it." People say: "if there was no happiness, but misfortune would help," but now I already know that misfortune cannot help, but only God! The woman who asked me had already disappeared, but her words sank into my soul: "What is peace
with God?"
Years passed and, returning to these words, I found in the Bible the answer to how to have peace with God: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ... through whom we have now received reconciliation" (Rom.5:1,2,11). We receive reconciliation with God ONLY through Jesus Christ and nothing else!
What kind of faith should we have in Christ? Only with love for Him: "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6) "If you love Me, keep My commandments"; "If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father"s commandments and abide in His love" (John 14:15; 15:10); "and whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing in His
sight."; "And whoever keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him" (1John 3:22,24)
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About intimate relationships according to the Bible. Part 1
All this is very important, since love and passion largely determine many of a person"s actions in his life. Feelings are all temporary, but love is permanent, both with God and with man. It can never disappear, and many sincerely believing people know this from their own lives.
Love CANNOT BE CONFUSED with physical attraction between a man and a woman, when they like each other and there is a desire to have physical, bodily intimacy, which is very important for married life and this is laid down by God in every person for the birth of offspring. For this, God gave people genitals at their creation, and after the sin of Adam and Eve, God gave them an attraction to each other, but especially noted the woman: "He said to the woman: I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in pain you will give birth to children; and your attraction will be for your husband, and he will rule over you (Genesis 3:16). However, for living together, for the normal existence of a normal, happy family, not only joint PHYSICAL attraction is necessary, but it is very important to have LOVE, which you must have in themselves BEFORE the marriage.
If one of the spouses marries (gets married) only on the basis of physical attraction, but without the presence of love, then at the very first betrayal of his wife, the husband may say to himself, so what did I find special in my wife? She is the same ordinary woman. The wife may think and tell herself the same thing. And this is one of the reasons for many divorces of married couples. From the Internet and from our own lives, we know examples of married elderly couples, when the spouses love each other until the end of their lives, although they can no longer have sex. So love can exist without sex."
I am publishing an important article from the Internet on this topic:
"Attraction is selfish, love is not. When you are in love, it seems as if you are ready to give everything and more, just to make your lover happy. You don't keep score, you don't try to find out who is right and who is wrong. Don't fight over whose turn it is to do the dishes. Don't try to manipulate to get your way. You're just genuinely happy.
Love liberates, passion keeps you in suspense. Mutual love allows your true self to manifest itself fully, without fear of evaluation, condemnation, or criticism. The ability of loving partners to accept each other as they are inspires, helps to dream, follow dreams and change their lives.
Love is forever, attraction passes quite quickly. True love can overcome any obstacles and does not fade away over time.
Agree, if you were once truly in love, this person and warm memories of him will forever remain in your heart.
But if people are connected by passion, then after breaking up they are more likely to feel angry, envy or a sense of betrayal, depending on the circumstances. Because passion is always based on selfishness and possessiveness.
Attraction blinds, love opens your eyes. There are even expressions: "passion clouds the eyes." Those who have experienced this storm of feelings at least once will confirm: you stop noticing everything around you except the object of affection. You literally live and breathe only him alone.
Love, on the contrary, inspires and makes you notice many things in life. And mostly good things: clear skies, bright sunshine, smiles from passers-by.
Love is responsible, attraction is not. When you are in love, you value your loved one, worry about their condition and try to protect them from all possible dangers. And therefore you monitor your words and actions very carefully, assessing the consequences. Well, passion has one motive - to possess the beloved undividedly, to spend as much time with him as possible, without particularly taking into account his plans.
Love is aimed at the future, passion is here and now. People in love feel so good together that they dream of spending their whole lives together. They make plans, discuss details, fantasize and look for new furniture for the shared apartment.
NOTE G.G.: Love is from God and is born in a person by receiving the Holy Spirit. Passion is a derived feeling FROM the human BODY. The Bible states that love is the Divine state of man, the presence of God by His Spirit in us, the presence of the Holy Spirit in man. "The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (1 John 5:5). God has no beginning and no end, and love is infinite and has never had a beginning and will never have an end. There is no love without God. Love is not a feeling, but it evokes in a loving person, unlike passion, many different feelings.
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About intimate relationships according to the Bible. Part 2
It is impossible to live without love with God and with people in eternity. Many people know that it is difficult to live together without love even for one day. But you can live with someone who doesn"t love you this day, but for this you need to have patience. You can live even 10, 20, 50 years, but it is impossible to live in eternity with God and with people without love.
We must also understand: can God be with a person in eternity if a person rejects and does not love God. All this gives us the opportunity to understand the importance of the existence of love among people. But what is passion for?
Passion is born on the basis of the ATTRACTION that God imparted to man after the fall of Adam and Eve, which contributes to the reproduction of a large number of people pleasing to God.
"Wikipedia: Attraction is a mental state of a person. This is the desire to satisfy an unconscious or weakly conscious need and therefore the primary source of any mental movement and behavior. Sexual desire is a complex of desires and associated experiences, which is based on biological instincts aimed at reproducing life.
Passion is a strong human feeling that dominates others, characterized by a strong attraction to the object of passion. Objects of passion can be both people and objects or ideas. Most often, the word "passion" is used to denote a high degree of sexual arousal combined with emotional attraction to a partner."
Passion has nothing to do with love, since love is not a feeling, but is the presence of God's Spirit in a person. The optimal solution for a married couple to have love and passion together. Passion is associated with feelings of upcoming sensations. Love is not a feeling.
Passion is short-lived, maybe for one night, maybe a little more, but the day will come when one (one) will say, what exactly did I find in her (him), and therefore all relationships between partners end and often develop into hatred, and there will always be reasons for this.
A good example in the Bible is Amnon's relationship with Famar 2Kings13. My opinion is that Amnon had no love for. There was a passion of intense carnal attraction based on her attractiveness. Love never turns into hatred, but passion very often does. And therefore Amnon had no love for Famar. There was a passion of strong carnal attraction based on her attractiveness, as well as a warming up in the thoughts of the imagination of sexual possession of her body, which later turned into hatred.
Here are some more very interesting verses from the Bible (Genesis, chapters 39-40-41), which tells about the passion of a woman, the wife of a courtier, for her husband"s servant Joseph, who was "handsome in stature and handsome in face," when this woman, MADNESS with passion for Joseph commits meanness for the death of Joseph because of his disagreement to enter into sexual relations with her. So passion can become the source and reason for a person to commit meanness.
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What forbidden fruit did Eve eat in Paradise and what does a bitten apple mean?
Apparently, the Lord did not specifically name the fruit of the tree, since it does not have much meaning. However, many people, without knowing the Bible, believe that apples grew on the tree. The tree was intended mainly for salvation, but before salvation it was also intended to remind the first people of the danger of disobeying God, the danger of not believing His Words, since this would bring death to them.
The tree was a sign that they always saw in paradise, warning about the death of refusing to obey God (Genesis 2:16,17): "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat, for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt die."
Salvation lay in the fact that the tree, through its fruit, gave (for people who followed after committing a sin) the opportunity to make the right choice between good and evil, and for those who wanted to do good to become with God. This made it possible to identify His future Children (believers) for God, as well as to weed out those who would commit evil (evil) that is displeasing to God.
As soon as people, after their creation, committed a sin (did not believe God), the knowledge of good and evil would immediately be inherent in their essence. In addition, after committing the first sin, Adam and Eve also received a conscience, but this was already a consequence of their fall and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had nothing to do with it.
So: "Let us hear the essence of everything: fear God and keep His commandments, for this is all for man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Unfortunately, not everyone understands this. Sometimes you can see a bitten apple on a computer or other company product.
Some people claim that this is a symbol of knowledge. However, believers know that the tree gave only the knowledge of good and evil and did not give any other knowledge, and therefore a bitten apple is a SYMBOL ONLY OF SIN.
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Happiness, what is this?!
"The horrors rushed towards me; My greatness was scattered like the wind, and my happiness was carried away like a cloud" (Job 30:15).
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Yes, happiness is not permanent for everyone. Adam and Eve, during the Fall, lost their happiness of being with God in Paradise, in which they lived happily. But here's an interesting question: did they know about it, that their life was happy during that period? Of course not, because they didn"t know what happiness was then. It turns out that in order to understand that such happiness one must experience the misfortune that they soon experienced after committing a sin.
For a normal, healthy person, the presence of air in which he is always located does not bring happiness from this person until a disease of his lungs, heart or something else arises. But when a person begins to choke from lack of air in the body, a breath of clean air makes him happy and joyful. Happiness is what we lack and we receive it, recognizing its absence as unsatisfactory or even dangerous for us.
In eternity with God there will be no unhappy people, and they, unlike Adam and Eve, will already know what misfortunes are from their past life. They will feel the joy of their salvation and eternal presence with God and will receive complete happiness.
Joy is the sister of happiness. They are always together, where there is joy, there is happiness. Changes will occur through the perfection of spirit, soul and body in people. Their needs will change, which will be satisfied in the process of their creativity, which will lead to new joys and happiness in their lives.
The entire infinity of people"s existence with God will become the infinity of their finding happiness. Real, complete happiness can only be with God in His eternity, in contrast to the short-term happiness of people on earth, when they know that at the end of their lives they must find death, and during life they find sorrows and misfortunes, illnesses, betrayals and much more, including worries about your children and loved ones.
While living on earth, people understand happiness in different ways, here are two examples.
1) Two people decided to gain their wealth by dishonest means, and to do this they robbed a bank and killed one of the guards and wounded the other. After that, hiding from persecution, they arrived at their hideout, where, sitting at a table with a bottle of wine and a snack, while talking about what had happened, they were overcome by the joy and joy of a successful robbery. "Well, our luck has befallen us!" says one to the other. "Yes (says another), we are still happy!" The fact that they killed a man who quite possibly still had a wife and small children - all this turned out to be insignificant for them compared to the bag of money lying next to them.
2) Here's another example. Once, I casually asked an acquaintance: "What is happiness for you?" His answer was simple, without any philosophy: "Happiness is when I go home after work, where my children and wife are waiting for me, who love me and are always ready to share with me my failures, grief and joy in life." The understanding of happiness in these two examples turned out to be different. What do you think, reader, what is happiness for us in our life on earth?
Once, I was asked the following question: is it possible for a lonely person to be happy? My answer was: "It"s possible, but only under one condition: you must have love for people, have God in you. God is love and he who is in love has DIVINE in himself, has a particle of God in himself, and this makes us happy. Happiness is real only when we share it with other people, but special joy always comes to a person when he makes a loved one happy!"
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The meaning of people's lives. Short article
According to the philosophy of human life, the meaning of life is a philosophical and spiritual problem related to knowledge of the ultimate purpose of existence, its PURPOSE as a biological species, as well as as an individual, one of the basic ideological concepts that is of great importance for the formation of the spiritual and moral image of an individual. In this case, it is implied the need to understand what is the purpose of life, that is, why does a person need to live?
Meaning is associated with purpose, and is a consequence of an external cause - a phenomenon that is primary and intentional. So, before a person begins to do something, he determines the meaning of it in his head. When a person in his practice encounters some phenomena and objects through perception and sensations, then with his mind he comprehends the meaning of their existence, although this meaning was not determined by him.
Is it possible for a person to know why he lives on Earth? When an artist or designer just starts working on his future creation, he first makes sketches and draws up a general drawing. And to a stranger who sees this, much will be unclear: what it will be and what it is for. That is, creation is always secondary and determined by the CREATOR.
Why we live on Earth, only the one who created us knows, only God knows. And we can only get an answer to our question from God. The Bible is a book from God. In the Bible, the Apostle James, addressing the first Christians in Israel, speaks of their future on earth and in eternity, this is the meaning of people"s lives. "When God desired begot us by the word of truth, that we might be some firstfruits of His creatures" (James 1:18).
The meaning of people's lives on earth: to find KINSHIP with God, which gives them a joint existence with God in eternity to fulfill the plans of God, which in their life, being on earth, cannot be understood. But eternal life is only a consequence of this relationship. Kinship with God is achieved by the communion of the Holy Spirit, which every person can receive through faith and love for the Son of God Jesus Christ. One must not confuse the meaning of a person"s life, that is, why he should live, with how he should live: love children, do good to people and benefit them in his work and in his creativity for them, and much more.
The meaning of life cannot be for those people who do not have a future (eternal life). Non-believing people do not have the meaning of life and cannot explain it. The meaning of people's lives is connected only with the presence of a FUTURE for them. There cannot be a meaning to life for people whose life is a short time on earth and their life is aimed at the conditions of their existence, survival, although at the same time they demonstrate creativity in technology, art, science, in understanding the world and after all this die.
If people's lives are meaningless, that is, stupid, then why do they need to live on earth? Is it good to continue a stupid life? Reasoning, we come to the conclusion that life without God has no meaning. It is meaningless, that is, stupid and inappropriate. Only believers have the meaning of life and realize this meaning in their lives on earth and in eternity. But on earth this is just the beginning. The purpose of people's lives on earth: gaining faith and love for God and love for each other. The purpose of life in eternity will be revealed to people after their resurrection.