The Preacher's Wife

Worth a listen... Celebration and family time

Pastor Stovall Weems and his wife Kerri pastor Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida.  They are personal friends of my husband and I.  They are an amazing couple with an amazing ministry.

Kerri is working on her first book.  I may or may not have read the first few chapters and it is amazing.  But more on that later this fall.

Pastor Stovall is an amazing preacher.  He recently did a series called Fam vs Wild.  There were two messages in this series that really blessed me.

The first was a message called Dinner with the Fam. The message is so encouraging.  He talks about quantity time vs quality time.  It is excellent!

Pastor Stovall and Kerri also did a message together called, Love and Respect.  In this message you can hear them discuss a variety of topics on marriage and the family.  My personal favorite is when Kerri talks about having an intentionally unbalanced life.

I hope you will take the time to listen!

 

Worth a listen... How to fight fair

As I have said before, I am a huge fan of Focus on the Family's daily broadcast.  It is a wonderful sorce for great teaching on marriage, family and spiritual growth.

A few months ago I listened to this message by Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott on fighting fair.  While directed at married couples, the truths they share about dealing with conflict are valuable in every type of relationship.  They talk about using conflict to your advantage by allowing it to shed light on your relationship.

Here are the links to listen.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

How to Fight Fair Part 1
How to Fight Fair Part 2

Worth a listen

This weekend I am preaching at Elevation.  Eeesh!!  I have been spending time every day preparing my message.  Our current series is called Mr. and Mrs. Betterhalf, it is a series on marriage and relationships. I am excited to get to teach on the topic.

I am lucky because I get to watch the greatest preacher alive prepare and preach a message every week.  One thing I have learned from him (I'm talking about my husband by the way :)) is that part of preparation is just listening to other teachers.  I picked up this series by Pastor James MacDonald (also known as the head Elephant to Elijah and Graham) today and popped in the message on marriage (see here).

Wow. The message was encouraging and convicting at the same time.  He talked about how, in marriage, women have the tendency to nag and men have the tendency to neglect.

The part that stuck out to me the most was when he talked about speaking words of grace to your mate.  He explained grace as giving something to someone they don't deserve.  There comes a time in every marriage where you are faced with the opportunity to speak words of grace to your to someone you love, words they may not deserve, or, words of death, that do nothing but tear down the other person.  It takes a lot of humility to speak words of grace, but those who have received grace, know how to give grace.

Jesus talked about this in Luke 7:41-43...

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

   “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

You can listen to more of Pastor James' messages here.

I hope today, when you are faced with the opportunity, you will speak words of grace to someone you love. 

 

Worth a listen

Because I have a newborn, I spend a lot of my time in our rocking chair these days.  Whether feeding, burping or rocking Abbey to sleep, it seems as though a large majority of my day is spent sitting in the chair.

We recently got Apple TV.  This allows us to access Netflix, Itunes, YouTube and more, all on our TV.  We have enjoyed watching some of the video podcasts.  It's pretty great.  The greatest preachers in the country at my fingertips (Oh you know Steven Furtick is in heaven).  And while I still watch regular TV shows (I am a big reality TV fan), I love have the option to renew my mind while captive in my chair.

I watched Pastor Judah Smith preach a great message a few weeks ago called Partially Fulfilled.  In the message Pastor Judah uses the story of the Shunamite woman to discuss what happens when we encounter situations in our lives that we just can't understand.

The message is phenominal.  You can watch the video podcast, or on the City Church website.