Based on Deeper Discipleship, from Chasing the Sage, by Bud Lamb (Pages 113-115)
…seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:33 NASB
Learning to love like Jesus doesn’t come naturally for most of us. After a few years, most marriages have found a rhythm. It’s familiar but all too often it’s flawed — often in small areas…sometimes in major areas. Left unattended, the heart of your marriage can atrophy and become lifeless.
The good news is your marriage can be better! It’s not easy…but possible. God is on your side and will meet you where you are.
So, a few hard-won lessons of husbandship (and wives these apply to both sides of the street).
Principles to learn and apply:
Renewing the heart of marriage begins with you. You and God actually. Typically though, we want to avoid dealing with it at all costs. Blame is usually the way boy-men make sense of the way things are. Blame and/or denial. Denial settles for the status quo; imagining there is no way out.
These are not for you to read and then go tell your wife she needs to join you in learning and applying them. Boys do stuff like that. You need to focus on these principles and learn to live them so love leaks out of you by your style of living — not the words you profess. Your wife has heard your words and has learned that your words are mostly hollow.
Your marriage is not a 50/50 proposition – it is 100% up to you to learn to love like Jesus. And, it’s 100% up to your spouse to do the same. Whether they do or not is up to them. All you can do is work on yourself. Learn to love your spouse like Jesus, and entrust the whole enchilada to God.
Love. God’s standard of what love is can be found in the Bible. We can learn to love like Jesus. Your journey to a healthy marriage begins and ends with your ability to love like Jesus.
Broken. This journey is deeply personal and begins with being broken; i.e., clear self-acceptance that you have not loved your spouse, and that on your own you cannot. An honest reflection will reveal how poorly you love it like this. Read 1 Corinthians 13:12-14 and Colossians 3:11-14
…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23 NIV
Unless you accept your inability to love like God, you will remain loveless and your marriage will atrophy.
Grace. Your relationship with God is grounded in grace, and so must be your relationship with your spouse.
As you learn to accept God’s forgiveness, you will learn to extend almost limitless grace to your wife and welcome it from her. This is where you, like Jesus, learn to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and forgive without being asked; i.e. let it go.
Unless you learn to extend grace (whether or not she reciprocates) your marriage will be based on You owe me.
As you work through all this, you will find God at work in your life to make you more like Jesus, rather than just being a better husband or having a better marriage. Like most spiritual lessons, this is counterintuitive…to become a better husband you have to work on following Jesus’ way of living. As you grow closer to God, over time, you will grow closer to your spouse.
Each day you will find yourself at a fork in the road — you can either blame your spouse or others for your current situation or accept that you don’t love like Jesus and seek from Him the grace to extend grace.
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PRAY
Lord God, how I want to avoid looking at my side of the street and instead blame my spouse, my family of origin — anything or anyone but myself. I fear deep reflection that will expose my character defects. Meet me where I am, help me pick up this cross, and follow You daily out of desperation, trusting that You will make all things right as I surrender to Your will.
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