Kimberly Dimick's Response to
Ron Carpenter's
2-Minute In-a-Nutshell Teaching of Marriage 101
(Link to Ron's 2-Minute Word Here)
YES and yes! We LIVE this and I can testify….God's truth works! I am MOST taken aback by how easy and peaceful it is. I have the most amazing marriage because Joshua loves God's truth. He knows I am his mirror every second of every day. He believes God's design that GOD decided he needed an EZER….a helper (just like the Christian needs a HELPER TOO; to lead and guide into all truth). It keeps gping back to the breathtakjng picture of Christ and His Bride. Joshua is in absolute amazement how far he has come by just loving a Bride and listening to his helpmeet. This has taught him HOW to love and about God's love for him as a Son more than any thing else.
This is God's beautiful plan. We learn to love by loving. How simple and profound at the same time. He knows his wife is Gods glory who teaches him His WAYS…. to walk in them. She surrounds and protects him because it is not to God's glory to be alone….(a straggler in an army easily picked off by an enemy). He learns day in and out to die to anything that opposes Christ, and he is freed to depths he never imagined was possible. It isn't any longer an elusive truth but one God meant to be lived out.
Whatever our focus is will become magnified in our eyes. When he has a single eye and a single heart of devotion toward His Bride, God naturally fills up his whole view and being. All by loving a wife the WAY God said. Joshua believes every Word that comes from God's mouth as instruction for godliness and causes life and more life. He also develops a heart set like flint toward God's face. He pursues a Bride and understands what it means to seek His Kingdom. He learns God is jealous and longs for a pure heart of devotion by loving one woman fully and singularly. God doesn't want a man to go after "OTHER" in a marriage or lessor "gods" any more than the Christ follower goes after idols. What a beautiful picture of faithfulness and loyalty.
God has done him a great favor! His crown is the crown of learning to love like Jesus. There isnt any more trying to figure out marriage. There isn't a million ideas to process, a million things to learn because it falls into place without a long, drawn out struggle. As soon as a husband hears her correction or encouragement…all is right with God within him. He learns more about himself and sees the path ever clearer in front of him. There is no constant struggling or needing lessons on communication skills because relationship is meant to come naturally. He hears her and acts and the channels of communication naturally are wide open to God! It is simply obedience and humility in loving the one in front of him.
Before it was war and turmoil but now he knows he is the Gardener and when his Garden is alive and growing, he beams with holy, purified pride before the Father. He has loved Jesus by keeping his Garden watered and healed and safe. He has been faithful with God has given him. it's so EASY. It's pure love and rest.
Yes, there are burdens and trials all around us but they don't touch our marriage. We fight and stand together but not against each other. I am blessed with a man who loves me and the Lord like this. I am so convinced of this because what God has revealed is the truth. I must defend God's heart because a Bridegroom died to deliver God's truth of His love for a people, a Bride who would respond to Jesus.
This is why abuse and denying the truth brings so much devastation. A daughter of God KNOWS in her heart and spirit that love means being believed no matter what the subject matter of her heart comes up. It can seem trivial to others but the Spirit knows what to reveal and when. Some of what apoears to be inconsequential to a man is the root of sin keeping him from all his heart longs to know about God. I trust God to help me help Joshua.
A wife needs to be known, understood and believed because God created her to respond and to reject what is not of God. When her husband hears her and believes her…her heart is safe because she knows he does not want to ever hurt her again.
A man NEEDS to BE HONORABLE. He is creatwd by God to show forth a heart like Gids which can be trusted. Most men don't even get this is their deepest need. A man will know God is teaching him deep truths about her, himself and God by loving in real time, keeping his own Garden. What a joy to know the Father through Christ as the Husbandman and Vinedresser.
A helpmeet has his best interest at heart even when she must stand her ground. Sin does not die easily at times. She is not wanting to oppose him but instead that he would learn to surrender and give up the fight quickly. As he dies it becomes second nature–Gods nature in him at work. Joshua cant imagine going back to where he was delivered from.
When she is denied that man has wounded her and stopped himself from ever understanding God or His love. A man who has chosen to marry is held to the truth of being a husband and to walk in that truth. He can not even understand the inner workings of his soul and stop the war that rages inside him against love unless he believes the Word to give up his life for anither. God does not rake ir lightly. The only thing that can wake him up is a heart broken before God…that he is poor, naked, wretched and blind without God.
God's love has a focus and object of love that Jesus invested His very life and death into. God is love and he teaches us in a picture of marriage what this IS and looks like. If a man refuses to love the one in front of him he has refused God altogether as well. He has also starved his very own body and no.longer has the help or support he needs. He goes astray and loses everything.
Kimberly Dimick and her husband, Joshua Dimick, know how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and careers, and so much more. Together and separately they have walked the path of Love, a narrow path, a path that is lonely and not well-used.
They intimately understand the soul-shattering pain of separation and divorce and they also know "The Way Home" to a life of choosing unconditional love. The surprising answers to a happy marriage are shared in their posts, articles, and a book-in-progress.
As you venture on this journey with Kimberly and Josh you will experience how God shines His most brilliant light in their darkest hours. Today their mission is to provide a voice to women suffering in silence, shining the Light of Truth into the dark places of marital and spiritual abuse.
{ 0 comments… add one now }