Dad's Retreat '05

I attended CHEACT's Dad's retreat this weekend and it was very good. Norm Wakefield from Elijah Ministries gave a talk on the importance of having the goal of oneness and unity (not uniformity) with one's wife: so that's my challenge as I prayerfully work at implementing what I've learned.

One thought which I had a spark of an idea but far from complete: the Protestant idea of "priesthood of all believers" is misleading, since even though we all have direct access to Jesus, the priest is the husband/father of the home. Just as Jesus is the priest of the His bride (the Church), the husband is to be like Jesus and perform priestly functions, not so much to control access to God (since we are all equal before God), but to lead and guide and set examples for the family in all matters such as spirituality as well as material and time management. (The thought process started after long talks on our (men's) need to focus on Jesus and learn to identify with Him. As my identity is in reflecting Jesus, my wife's identity is in reflecting me. Submission of a wife is not so much to be a slave but to reflect (or so is my understanding) the husband who leads the family (which makes so much sense because in (traditional) Japan, when a wife joins her husband she becomes part of the husband's family rather than trying to integrate her former family with her husband's family). And then something about priest really clicked in for me with Catholic's priestly hierarchy vs Protestant's "priesthood of all believers" and how Christ's model didn't fit either model.)

Another thought is the reminder about our rewards in heaven (2 Tim 4:7,8 and 1 Cor 3:13-15) and helping to clarifying the two books described in Rev 20:11-15 (at least it made sense to me).