It’s amazing to me how easily my husband can fall asleep. What a blessing that he can stretch back in his chair for a ten minute nap and be asleep in 30 seconds. He gets the benefit of the whole ten minutes! When I try to take a nap, it takes me nine minutes to fall asleep and leaves me with one minute to rest!
However, falling asleep quickly at the wrong time or at the wrong place can be disastrous! If a person falls asleep at the wheel, the consequences could be deadly. If one were to fall asleep when seated in a classroom or auditorium, humiliation is sure to follow! A picture of Gomer Pyle snoring in church pops into my mind!
A long-distance friend on Facebook is engaged. She wrote on her fiance’s wall this week,
“You are so easy to love!”
Anyone who has been married for a month or two, knows that husbands AND wives don’t STAY easy to love; both need grace at times in order to love the other as we should!
We need help and encouragement to keep loving our husbands as God loves us and for that reason, our wise and loving Father put instruction in His Word to help us when the love doesn’t feel so natural anymore.
That they (the older women) may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands,
Why isn’t love a natural response?
Sin – Two sinners make up a marriage! We stand shoulder to shoulder before the cross. One is not better than the other!
Selfishness and pride
Our focus gets misplaced – We focus on the irritants instead of the blessings.
I smile at the wisdom of God to tell the older women to encourage younger women about loving their husband. How encouraging it is to know that the older woman struggled to love, too! What a testimony a divorced woman can also be to a younger woman about the important truths she learned in a very difficult time in her life and how God can help the younger woman keep her covenant of marriage. Again, we see how much we need one another!
The word for love that Paul uses here is “phileo – This is the friendship kind of love, not the romantic, passionate kind. It’s the love that says, not only do I love you, I like you! It conveys the idea of being a friend to our husband. We enjoy time with him. We enjoy being with him.
When we’re dating, all those things seem easy. We count the minutes until we get to be together again!
My husband and I lived three hours away from one another for a good part of our dating and engagement period. I could hardly wait until he would come visit for the weekend. I would put everything on hold so I could just spend time with him! After marriage its’ so easy to get too busy with life and busyness to stop and spend time together. When we put everything before spending time with our husband, we’re not loving him well.
Elizabeth George encourages wives to have a positive word she can use when he suggests an outing. I chose “sure!”
Want to go up with me to wash the car? Sure! Want to just go grab a hamburger for lunch? Sure!
bike riding
Nancy says,
Marriage, at its heart, is a sacred covenant between a man and a woman, designed to display to the world in Technicolor the covenant-keeping character and faithfulness of God Himself. …Human marriage is a story intended to draw people toward the gospel, showing them the love of God through two imperfect individuals whose lives become one in Him and who are devoted to one another for better or for worse…for life.
It’s good to remember that Adam needed a helper. Your husband – my husband needed a helper. They needed a companion, a friend to do life with them. It takes effort, but we need to intentionally pour into our marriages. Take time to “travel the scenic route.” That means finding time to talk, to share, to be together. We need to continue to develop interests as we age. Find things you could do as a couple. Find ministries where you can serve together. Keep on being One – not two individuals doing your own thing and bumping into one another on the way to the garage where you’ll get in your own cars and continue in the fast lane!
What is a wife to do about the irritants and the things she thinks her husband is doing incorrectly? PRAY. Ruth Graham said it well – It’s my job to love Billy, and God’s job to change him.
It’s not our responsibility to point out his faults. He’s well aware of them. It’s our job to be his cheerleader. To believe in him when all the world is against him.
You can go here and listen to the podcast on this chapter of Adorned. You will hear four practical encouragements regarding ways to love your husband well.
Let me end by asking, two questions – Do you have a word that lets your husband know you’re happy about spending time doing what he suggests? What could you do this week to be a friend to your husband?
If your marriage seems hopeless, please read this post. If you need some practical tips on demonstrating love to your husband, here are some simple suggestions.
I’m posting later in the day, but we just returned from an evening away. Read on and you’ll see what we did and what a special time it was!
It was early evening and we had just finished a simple supper of BLT’s, a summer favorite. My husband pulled his Bible out of his book bag and told me he had something he wanted to read to me that he had read earlier that morning. We were spending an afternoon and night away at a lake cottage, just to have some quiet time to study, pray and be together on his day off. A boat or two rumbled past on the not-so-far-away lake as he opened to Ecclesiastes 9 and read about 6 verses, concluding with this verse:
Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity, but that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.
When he finished reading, he closed his Bible, nodded and smiled at me. As I looked at him I thought about how well he does that. He lives joyfully with me every day!
I saw it earlier when we were preparing to travel to the lake. He was coming to pick me up from my dentist appointment and sent a text to tell me he would be late.
When we stopped to pick up a salad for lunch, he brought the beverages to the car – a water for himself and diet Lemonade for me (my favorite).
As we made our way to the lake, he chatted, telling me the reason he was late – the opportunity to share Christ with a man. I love it when he shares his day, his burdens and his life.
He reached over and took my hand and said, “I sure love you!”
Later in the afternoon as we sat overlooking the lake, he said how thankful he was we could spend an afternoon together. Tears welled up in his eyes as he said, “Sometimes I just miss you so much.”
Even after our simple BLT supper, no fuss, no special recipe, he said, “That was so good; thank you, Sweetheart.”
Live joyfully with your wife – that’s what he does every single day. I am so blessed.
Why am I sharing this with you today? To boast? No. Even as I write out this list of only some of what he did in just ONE day, it is a stern reminder that I could make it so much easier for him to obey that Scripture if I was also living joyfully every day. There are days I just feel cantankerous! I’m often Fussy, griping, and complaining instead of joy-filled.
If I would laugh at his spontaneity, smile at disruptions, appreciate kindnesses, and live as though there was no tomorrow, I’ll bet it would help him to live even more joyfully with his wife. And maybe I couldn’t even believe there could be so much joy, and wouldn’t that be awesome?!
What do you need to change to help your husband live joyfully with you?
MAYBE:
Take the drive he suggests, even though you know you’ll be motion-sick on those curves.
If he initiates a kiss in public don’t push him away.
Leave the children with a sitter for an hour or two so you can sneak away for a date.
Hold hands, rub his back, smile at him, send him a loving text message, ask him questions about his day, and really listen when he talks to you,
Be understanding of his need for physical love.
Tell him thank you for the ways he provides for your family.
Pray with him before he leaves home.
Be waiting at the door for him when he returns home in the evening.
Get up and spend time with him before he leaves for work, if possible.
Surprise him with a night away for just the two of you.
Decide with God’s help not to fall apart when the next disaster strikes.
Let’s help our husbands obey the admonition to live joyfully with his wife by being joyful, too! Now, put a smile on your face and in your heart, and go share that joy with HIM!
RefreshHer 