Imagine living in a house with 20 people when you don’t enjoy entertaining people. Yikes!<\/p>\n
The Generous Husband<\/a> writes…<\/p>\n A few months ago my bride and I attended a meeting on “new monasticism” – living in intentional, multi-family groups. Yeah, that can be a commune in all the ugly ways, but it can also be something good. But I only mention it here because of something said to me by the man who owned the house in which we met. This fellow, a bit older than I, said he did not like entertaining – and I commented on how odd that was given that he regularly had a group of 20 or more in his home. He then said “I am learning to die to my preferences.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think that’s a lot of what we as followers of Christ are called to do. It would be my preference to say, “I’ve had a hard day – I don’t want to fix a meal for another family.”<\/p>\n It would be my preference to say, “You’ve wronged me too many times – so I’m off the hook – I don’t have to love you anymore.”<\/p>\n It would be my preference to say, “Honey, I don’t care what you want anymore – it’s all about me and what I want.”<\/p>\n But I think Jesus asks more of his followers… even when things aren’t going the way we’d prefer.<\/p>\n If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously. <\/em>– Matthew 5:39:42<\/p>\n If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care\u00e2\u20ac\u201d then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.<\/em> – Phil 2:1-4<\/p>\n Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.<\/em> – Romans 12:9-10 <\/p>\n or the New King Jimmy puts it this way:<\/p>\n Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another.<\/em><\/p>\n What preferences do you have trouble dying to?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Imagine living in a house with 20 people when you don’t enjoy entertaining people. Yikes! The Generous Husband writes… A few months ago my bride and I attended a meeting on “new monasticism” – living in intentional, multi-family groups. Yeah, that can be a commune in all the ugly ways, but it can also be … Continue reading Dying to preferences<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,19],"tags":[1499,2330,1500,2334,2331,2332,2329,2333],"class_list":["post-4644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-reflections","tag-generous","tag-generous-husband","tag-give","tag-matthew-5","tag-monasticism","tag-philippians-2","tag-preferences","tag-romans-12"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1cU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nIt would be my preference to hoard all my money and say, “I worked for it. I’m not giving you a dime. You go out and earn your own.”<\/p>\n