I was recently asked by a young man who I have been working with this question: "What are some ways and practical things you do to love your wife as Christ loves the Church?"
I responded with 4 things for him to consider. I will post one a day.
1. Consider her needs above your own.
This is a hard one. We all want to be selfish and think our needs are more important or else we wouldn't have them. This is not true. Her needs are just as important as mine, but I don't always see it that way (read selfishness). This is where I must lower "self" and raise up my wife. You will find that meeting your wife's needs above your own will be a key component to happiness. Once you start being selfless, you will reap the benefits of a wife who truly wants to meet your needs in return. It is like a cyclical reward system in which you both benefit. You would do well to implement this no matter how hard it gets or how much you feel you are getting the shaft. I think we all have a tendency to think that we are doing what we should to meet the other's needs and they are not holding up to their end of the deal. I bet though if you were to ask your wife, she would say the same thing but with you being the culprit. Key point: Always consider her needs above those of your own.
I will post another tomorrow.
Some questions:
-Do you find this to be a tenet of your marriage?
-Do you agree with the point of the advice?
-What would you tell a young man about to enter marriage in regards to advice?
Links to the other three posts on this topic: 2, 3, & 4.
5 comments:
A piece of advice I've sorta adopted that goes along these same lines - give 100% to the marriage. Too often people will say that each spouse must give 50%, but that's not total commitment. Christ was not "partially" committed to the Church - he was wholly committed.
I think it would be a good thing to compile a list of things that we do and things we should be doing to exemplify Christ's relationship with His Church in our marriages. I think after finishing out the week with the final 3 posts I will send him a link and let him look over the suggestions made here and on subsequent posts.
Thanks for sharing misawa.
j razz
"What are some ways and practical things you do to love your wife as Christ loves the Church?" is a fairly loaded question.
My wife and I are not Christians, so this is a meaningless criterion for how our marriage works.
Gordon
Gordon,
Would you care to comment on what you consider makes a good marriage?
j razz
Great discussion!!! A great book for married men is "How to Love You Wife" by Dr. John Buri. It changed my life!!
Here's the short description of the book: Some people have suggested that a successful marriage requires tremendous insight to understand and super-human effort to achieve. Others contend that happy marriages are the purview of a lucky few. In this ground-breaking book, How To Love Your Wife, it is revealed how thriving marriages can actually be achieved through sensible effort by reasonable people. But here's the catch. Since the majority of marriages in this country consist of unions in which wives are more heavily invested in marital success than are their husbands, much of this sensible effort by reasonable people needs to be consistently initiated and maintained by men. In fact, men often hold the keys to bringing about the type of loving marriage they had hoped for when they first said "I do." In How To Love Your Wife, these keys are made clear, understandable, and accessible.
John Buri's website: http://personal.stthomas.edu/jrburi/
The book on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Your-Wife-John-Buri/dp/1598864858/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216440988&sr=8-1
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