Redeemed Marriages

“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” -Colossians 3:18-19

Recently I ran an errand to the grocery store where I witnessed an older married couple make snappy comments to each other aisle after aisle. She would start with making a snappy comment about him over something trivial, and he would return a snappy comment about her. The expressions on their faces displayed for each other and for the world a relationship of joyless conflict. 

The wisdom of God in Colossians 3 commands we Christians to put on as God’s beloved people set apart from the world “compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (3:12). Our Christian relationships, especially our marriages, are to be a place for “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (3:13). Husbands, love your wives by leading this bearing with your wives. Lead in forgiveness from a compassionate heart of kindness, humility, meekness, and patience with her. Wives, you are not to be in competition with your husbands, but in the fitting of God’s pleasure, submit to your husband with the same Spirit given character.

Our conflicts arise, not because of our disagreeable spouses, but sin in our own hearts. God told Eve after the Fall in Genesis 3 that the wife’s desire will be the competition to be like her husband, desiring to lead, and her husband’s response will be to lord it over her. The hope of the marriage of Adam and Eve which was broken by sin came in the previous verse: a Messiah will come and crush the head of the serpent. The Lord has forgiven us through Jesus whose heal was bruised to crush the serpent’s head, so wives peacefully submit to your husbands as fitting to the Lord and husbands love your wives without lording over them. 

Since the Fall in the Garden, every marriage is the fitting of two sinners in need of grace. You enter sin in your marriage as does your spouse. Worldly marriages display joyless competition and conflict, making comments of each other where they can do nothing right. No encouragement. No peace. Bitterness and preference rule the hearts in conflict. Confess your sin of competition and pride of heart to your spouse and seek Christ to bear with each other in His peace to rule in your hearts (3:15). Put on Christ’s love “which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (3:14). Anything in contrary to this command of God upon our Christian relationships, especially our marriages, is sin to be repented of.

Heavenly Father, forgive us of hearts ruled by pride, competition, and preference. May our hearts be ruled by Christ’s peace, our relationships a display of Your love, and our marriages point to Christ’s relationship to His bride, the church. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

My Prayer with Selah Joy

God has blessed my wife and I with a little girl, Selah Joy Hancock. She was born March 10th, 2015. Our first daughter.









I pray that our God would be gracious to my wife and I as parents. May He bless us sinners with His Spirit through His Word. Bless us the unwise, O Lord, with Your wisdom. Bless us the stumblers, O Lord, with the Light unto our feet. Bless us the unloving, O Lord, with Your unfailing love.
Be kind to us, O Lord, and may Your Word be on our hearts to teach our children and lead them in Your everlasting way. May we show Christ to Selah, in our instruction to her and our lives before her. Bless our marriage to display the love of Christ to His church.
You and You alone, O Lord, are our righteousness. Apart from Christ, we have no righteousness, no wisdom, and we can do nothing. We rejoice in Your grace that we are found in Christ. Jesus is the propitiation of our sins, the treasure of our heart, the delight of our life.
In Your grace, O Lord, You display Your perfect patience in these sinners' lives. Display Your glory in the life of our family, in our parenting, in our worship of You. Your Name is great and we delight in the work of Your hands. You have knitted my daughter in my wife's womb. You have been kind to Your servants and blessed us with an arrow to sharpen with Your Word. May we be found faithful to the glory of Your great Name.

May 2014 Newsletter

This month, I would like to speak directly to husbands and fathers. We men have a calling from the Lord to lead our family. 

First, we must first be trained in righteousness.

II Timothy3:16-17 reads, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” We must first believe and know the Scriptures we are to teach our family. The Bible corrects us where we fall short, trains us, and equips us for every good work, including the good work of loving and leading our wives and children.

Second, we read Scripture with our wives.

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word” (Ephesians 5:25-26).

Men, love your wives, not simply saying you love her, but from the heart of selflessness, give yourself up for her. Love your wives enough to learn the Scripture with her and allow God to convict sin and apply His grace in Christ Jesus. The Bible cleanses us and our wives; the Lord strengthens a holy marriage.

Third, we teach the Bible to our children.

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

Not simply discipline and instruction, but making our children disciples of the Lord. We are to train up our children in the ways of God from His Word, for there is no better way to prepare them for the world. All other instruction is secondary to the instruction of God.

Husbands and fathers, nourish your family with the milk of the Word of God. Yet first, you must first long for the pure milk of the Word (I Peter 2:2).  You will teach and live what you desire. Desire God in His Word, and desire Him for your family.