Youth Ministry Tip #4: Love your Spouse!
Why is it that when our husband/wife doesn’t do something the way we want, when we want we feel angry and frustrated? Why is it when someone forgot to take out the trash that instead of thinking, “I know they must of just forgot, if I ask them nicely I am sure they will do it as soon as they can,” we think, “I can’t believe they didn’t do what I asked them. It wasn’t a hard request.” Why is our first reaction to not trust the motives of the one we have chosen to love as a husband or wife?
One of the things we as Godly men and women need to have an attitude of is Grace. I can promise you that your husband or wife will forget to do something you want. They will not get to doing something as quick as you want. They will not do something as well as you want. They will even sometimes not feel like doing what you want them to do. The question is how will you respond to this in your life. Will you be one to quickly get angry, or frustrated that the expectation you placed on your husband/wife is not met. Or will you extend Grace to them and trust that if you lovingly ask them to do it that they will more likely do what you need and do it with a great attitude?
How about take things a step further and when someone you love doesn’t meet your expectation, that you realize that your expectation being met should not be more important than how your spouse feels. What is more important, getting your husband/wife to act and do what you want or to think and feel like a loving spouse should toward you? Why do we often show our spouse we care more about the tasks in our lives that need to get done than the relationship that we want to build together.
Take this and apply it to our relationship with God. Do we put those same expectations on God? Do we look to God and get frustrated when He doesn’t meet our expectations and do what we want? Or do we realize that God does love us and wants what is best for us. What is more important to you: 1) God giving you what you want out of life, or 2) Your relationship with God growing more intimate? Do we realize that our perception and expectations we place on God and others directly shapes the ability for us to have an intimate relationship with God and with our husband or wife.
I dare you today when your husband or wife doesn’t meet your expectation to not get angry and frustrated but instead go tell them how much you love them and then find a way to serve them!
Ephesians 5, ” 22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31″For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
