A Vision for the Home.

"The home and children are not in the way, keeping women from 'ministry'.  They are the ideal vehicle for a ministry to families, and every woman in the church has the opportunity for this kind of full-time work.  Family ministry is badly needed in the West with the breakdown of the family unit.  So many young people have never experienced a loving family and have no models."
Miniskirts, Mothers & Muslims by Christine A. Mallouhi, married to an Arab Christian, having lived in many different Muslim cultures, with a heart for the gospel.

Don't let the devil do the defining.

Here is an exciting (Biblical) definition of marriage from So Much More by Anna Sofia Botkin and Elizabeth Botkin:
"Marriage is about dominion.  It's about filling the earth and subduing it.  Marriage is about two people of different abilities and roles becoming one flesh, sharing one life and one vision, so that the two will complement each other and complete each other....Marriage isn't where your ministry stops so that you can play house and play family.   Marriage is where your new ministry starts, where you become, in a sense, the queen of a little kingdom where you rule with your husband as God's vice-gerents, working together extending the kingdom, subduing the earth, properly managing its resources, and discipling the nations."

Toward Delicious Prayer

In 1974 Banner of Truth reprinted Austin Phelps excellent book on prayer called The Still Hour or Communion with God.  They said it was the best they had found on the subject.  Phelps longs for prayer to be delicious to his readers.  If it is not, it is not God's fault.
Be ready for some self-examination.  For example, Phelps says:
  
Many of the prime objects of prayer enchant us only in the distance.  Brought near to us, and in concrete forms,...they very sensibly abate the pulse of our longing to possess them, because we cannot but discover that, to realize them in our lives, certain other darling objects must be sacrificed, which we are not yet willing to part with. The paradox is true to the life, that a man may even fear an answer to his prayers.


For example, a Christian who is a lover of ease  prays for a "spirit of self-denial; that he may endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ; that he may take up the cross and follow Christ....."   But, says Phelps, conscience pricks him.  He is not willing to be like Him who had no place to lay his head.  And so his prayer "collapses."

This book is less than 100 pages. If you long for prayer to be delicious, consider letting Phelps be the tool to plow your heart toward that sweet end.