Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

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The One Thing Husbands Need to Know About Their Wives

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The following is a guest post written by my wife, Christina Im, on the one thing that she wants every husband to know. I pray that it encourages you as much as it has encouraged me.

Marriage is hard.

Marriage takes work.

Marriage isn’t always what we thought it would be.

Marriage takes sacrifice.

Daniel and I have recently entered our 12th year of marriage. During our engagement, if someone were to have had told me any of the above statements, I would have scoffed at them. “Actually, marriage is going to be amazing because I can finally have sex,” is what I would have wanted to say. But honestly, I would have NEVER had the audacity to be that abrupt.

On a perfectly sunny August day, I married my best friend. And, we lived happily ever after, right?

Well, like you always hear from those who have gone before us, the first year of marriage was difficult—we had A LOT of “iron sharpening iron” moments. However, nothing could have prepared me for the agony and the deep soul searching that awaited me.

I can recount two times where I cried out to God, “Hey…I think you’ve forgotten me.” The first time was when Daniel felt a strong calling to leave everyone and everything behind and move to South Korea. I was just entering my second year at a job that had GREAT potential and I was toying with the idea of going back to school to get my Masters of Social Work. Moving to Korea was not on my radar, and while I begged God to change my husband’s heart…God changed mine instead.

Have you ever felt put on the sidelines…by God?

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The second time I felt that God had put me on the sidelines was the moment I saw the blue double lines appear on the pregnancy test. “Oh God, we are living in Korea with no family around. We are BOTH just about to start our second semester of school. We don’t have time to be pregnant.” In the end, Daniel and I chose to put my schooling and career on hold while I became a full-time stay-at-home mom.

I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

I wanted to wear heels during the day and slippers at night while I rocked my precious children to sleep. However, with Daniel working full-time, writing part-time, and the cost of having three kids under five in daycare, it didn’t financially make sense for me to go back to work. So, life tumbled on.

A year ago, a theme began to appear in my life.

Whether it was the latest Bible study I was doing, or the new hit song that would play on the radio—the theme was “SEEN.” Slowly, God’s past whispers of “I have not forgotten you,” turned into billboards screaming, “THE UNSEEN IS SEEN.” Suddenly, through one event catapulting to another, my dormant dreams, passions, and aspirations emerged from their cocooned state.

What is unseen to you is SEEN by God.

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Husbands, I share my story with you because we have something in common.

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Top Quotes on Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller

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As many of you know, this year I’ve committed to reading/listening to as much of Timothy J. Keller as possible.

It hasn’t gone as well as I thought. Partly because I’m writing my next book (I wasn’t anticipating this), and also because I like reading broadly. So instead of one year of Keller, it might end up being a few years of Keller.

In any case, I previously listed my favorite quotes here for Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters.

I’ll do the same for Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, my latest Keller read.

  • “The Bible begins talking about work as soon as it begins talking about anything—that is how important and basic it is.”
  • “In the beginning, then, God worked. Work was not a necessary evil that came into the picture later, or something human beings were created to do but that was beneath the great God himself. No, God worked for the sheer joy of it.”
  • “The book of Genesis leaves us with a striking truth—work was part of paradise.”
  • “Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality; it is not simply medicine but food for our soul.”
  • “Without meaningful work we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. People who are cut off from work because of physical or other reasons quickly discover how much they need work to thrive emotionally, physically, and spiritually.”
  • “According to the Bible, we don’t merely need the money from work to survive; we need the work itself to survive and live fully human lives.”

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