Relentless Pursuit

Here we are on our 2nd Anniversary trip.

Neither of us knew that the picture was taken until we were home!

What do you think of when you hear the words Relentless Pursuit?

I think of a Lion running after the gazelle. Never giving up until his prey has been caught.

Relentless by definition is never slacking, but continuing at the same level.

Pursuit is an effort to secure or attain.

It overwhelms me to think that I have been pursued relentlessly. Here is a recent event of God's pursuing in my life...

When Joseph and I were married we knew that we wanted other marriages to have what God has so graciously given to us. We knew that it was there for the taking if they would just open up and let him have full control. Though we felt that we had it all together and knew how to take them there, we had no idea! There were still things that we had to learn. Our first year of marriage was awesome. We both had full time jobs , and yet somehow I always worked it out to have food on the table when he got home from work and laundry was always done. When I went to work on a second shift job, he was the one that would take care of me. He would leave lights on at night after he had went to bed so that when I got home I could find my way through the house. Joseph was the music minister and I played the piano at our church, we were working in youth ministry, and was the directors of VBS. We thought that this was the life that God had for us along with "fixing" marriages. We celebrated our first year of marriage and thought we had it together and that this next year was going to be just as blissful as the first. Boy were we wrong. Not long into our second year we began to isolate ourselves from one another. He would have his plans and I would have mine. He is adventurous and was always wanting to be outside. I on the other hand wanted to stay inside and snuggle on the couch to watch movies. We hardly ever communicated anymore. Oh sure, we would talk about the little things but we would never discuss the big picture of where we saw God was taking us. We had put on the back burner what we KNEW we were suppose to be doing. By the end of the second year we were all dried up. We had nothing left to give to each other much less be able to pour into others lives. We knew that the 'D' word was not an option in our marriage, but we didn't know how to live with each other anymore. We decided for our second anniversary we would take a trip to Gatlinburg, TN. We bought our groceries when we arrived and stayed in a cabin for 4 days. We took our Bibles and Bible studies. At that point in our marriage God began a whole new work in us. We came back revived. I wish I could say that it was perfect from there on out, but it was not. We still had our times of not communicating or our misunderstandings, but it was different. We knew that we wanted to live our marriage in such a way that others could learn from example. We had something to strive toward. We had a purpose.

Little did we know that through all of this God was still pursuing us for something bigger.

He has relentlessly pursued Joseph and myself for 9 years and we have finally surrendered to what we were made for. He has opened many doors for us to act on the calling that He has placed in our lives. We now have the opportunity to share with others and hopefully bless them in their walk with Christ and by extension their relationship with their spouse and children.

Will you surrender to a GOD who is relentlessly pursuing YOU?

ENJOY LIFE MY SWEET FRIENDS,

Courtney Cooper

11 Rules for marraige you wont learn in school.

Came across this today and thought it was worth passing along. I love Family Life.



Rule 1: Marriage isn’t about your happiness. It’s not about you getting all your needs met through another person. Practicing self-denial and self-sacrifice, patience, understanding, and forgiveness are the fundamentals of a great marriage. If you want to be the center of the universe, then there’s a much better chance of that happening if you stay single.

Rule 2: Getting married gives a man a chance to step up and finish growing up. The best preparation for marriage for a single man is to man up now and keep on becoming the man God created him to be.

Rule 3: It’s okay to have one rookie season, but it’s not okay to repeat your rookie season. You will make rookie mistakes in your first year of marriage; the key is that you don’t continue making those same mistakes in year five, year 10, or year 20 of your marriage.

Rule 4: It takes a real man to be satisfied with and love one woman for a lifetime. And it takes a real woman to be content with and respect one man for a lifetime.

Rule 5: Love isn’t a feeling. Love is commitment. It’s time to replace the “D word”—divorce—with the “C word”—commitment. Divorce may feel like a happy solution, but it results in long-term toxic baggage. You can’t begin a marriage without commitment. You can’t sustain one without it either. A marriage that goes the distance is really hard work. If you want something that is easy and has immediate gratification, then go shopping or play a video game.

Rule 6: Online relationships with old high school or college flames, emotional affairs, sexual affairs, and cohabiting are shallow and illegitimate substitutes for the real thing. Emotional and sexual fidelity in marriage is the real thing.

Rule 7: Women spell romance R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P. Men spell romance S-E-X. If you want to speak romance to your spouse, become a student of your spouse, enroll in a lifelong “Romantic Language School,” and become fluent in your spouse’s language.

Rule 8: During courtship, opposites attract. After marriage, opposites can repel each another. You married your spouse because he/she is different. Differences are God’s gift to you to create new capacities in your life. Different isn’t wrong, it’s just different.

Rule 9: Pornography robs men of a real relationship with a real person and poisons real masculinity, replacing it with the toxic killers of shame, deceit, and isolation. Pornography siphons off a man’s drive for intimacy with his wife. Marriage is not for wimps. Accept no substitutes.

Rule 10: As a home is built, it will reflect the builder. Most couples fail to consult the Master Architect and His blueprints for building a home. Instead a man and woman marry with two sets of blueprints (his and hers). As they begin building, they discover that a home can’t be built from two very different sets of blueprints.

Rule 11: How you will be remembered has less to do with how much money you make or how much you accomplish and more with how you have loved and lived.

Pass on “The Rules” to a friend who will enjoy them!