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" we are privileged to help our husbands, serve our family, love the church, and practice all the one anothers with the people around us by God’s grace. We are all called—we are called to love, respect, and obey our husbands as they lead with servant-leader, Christlike humility. If we have children, we are called to love them and make a home for them. We are called to love the lost, make disciples, and serve the suffering. "
― Gloria Furman , The Pastor's Wife: Strengthened by Grace for a Life of Love
15
" Yes! Tell me how. I mean, I feel like I’m barely surviving. I can’t even imagine your life. There’s the kids, ministry, marriage, and showering. Do you even get to shower anymore?” I figured she was a prime candidate to answer my burning how question because she was the mother of nine children, pregnant with her tenth, and married to a busy minister. They were traveling through our city as they investigated ministries in our region of the world, and I knew I had a brief window in which to get the holy-grail answer I had been looking for My newborn squirmed in my arms for effect as I leaned in to hear my new friend’s wise words. “We both live and serve by God’s grace. God gives you grace for what he’s given you to do. I look at your life, and I can’t even imagine. God is the one who gives.” It was as if the wise King Solomon was sitting at my dining table. I was astonished at how profoundly true her words were. God is the giver of not only the gifts we use to serve but also the service opportunities themselves. Those are wise words from a woman who has been there (and remains in the middle of it). Grace turns our obsession with our abilities into a God-centered vision for ministry in which we see that “from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36). We look to God for direction and strength in serving his church: “For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7). "
― Gloria Furman , The Pastor's Wife: Strengthened by Grace for a Life of Love
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" On days when my husband’s work in pastoring or my role in helping him does not seem very meaningful, I remember Christ’s explicit goals for his church. Those goals are why we are still here and not in heaven. The privilege of participating in Christ’s fullness, filling all in all as more and more people across the globe worship him as the one true God, is why you are here. This is true whether you are in Iowa City, Bangalore, Abu Dhabi, or Juarez. Even on a mundane Monday morning our hearts can be thrilled with the prospect that included among the gifts Jesus gave to his church are your pastor-husband to serve and you to help him serve—for the building up of his body. It throws everything into perspective of the big picture when we remember that Jesus ordained that this body building has a massive, Christ-centered goal: that the church would attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of him, to mature manhood, and to the measure of the stature of his fullness. "
― Gloria Furman , The Pastor's Wife: Strengthened by Grace for a Life of Love
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" And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Heb. 10:24–25) We are created—finite and helpless without God—yet he enjoins us to strengthen one another. It must be that we do this through him, for there is no other way. We’ve seen that being a member of Christ’s body, the church, is a defining aspect of who we are. Lest we adopt an overinflated or a diminutive view of who we were saved to be, the Bible describes a believer as a brick in a building, a sheep in a flock, a priest in a priesthood, and a member of a family and of Christ’s body. Remembering the context of our faith as part of a community and a cloud of witnesses does a number on our prideful independence, doesn’t it? "
― Gloria Furman , The Pastor's Wife: Strengthened by Grace for a Life of Love
