Preparing To Love Your Wife
Paris Reidhead once said in a sermon entitled “The Will of God for You”, “We have found it very difficult to stand valiantly for Christ, not against swords that would be aimed at our heart, nor a whip at our back; nor stocks for our feet or hands, nor shackles that would bind us to a galley seat… We’ve had to stand valiantly against a raised eyebrow, or a curled lip, or a sneering word. And sometimes that raised eyebrow, or curled lip, or sneering word has sent us mortally wounded into the dungeon of our regrets that we ever identified with Christ.”

A husband and wife are not just friends – they are brothers and sisters in Christ, if they are in fact right with the Lord and saved. If I get angry with a friend, I can de-friend them and we can go our separate ways. But even in the natural, my biological brothers and sisters are my siblings no matter what happens or how I feel towards them – they’ll always be my brothers and sisters. Therefore, in the spiritual, it’s different for us, too.

We're tied to one another by the blood of Jesus Christ. This is just like being brothers and sisters by blood – we’re brothers and sisters by the blood of Jesus Christ (Matthew 12:50). Marriage is also a spiritual gifting of God to the church (1 Cor. 7:7). If we ever become mad with one another it has to end and end in forgiveness. The nature and pleading of Christ through the New Testament for His beloveds to love one another deeply from a sincere heart, to honestly fellowship and love one another, is too strong for us to disregard this. We must forgive one another. There must be great forgiveness in marriage. Ephesians 4:32 says, “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” How many times in one day can you forgive your spouse?

How long should you be patient with their faults? Peter essentially asked Jesus this same question in Matthew 18:21-22, “Then Peter came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’” This doesn’t mean that we can stop forgiving and being patient after 490 times like some religious law, but that Jesus wanted to teach us that we’re to be wholly compassionate and patiently interested and concerned in forgiving and loving the marriage partner past their faults even to the point of forgiving them so many, many times, because God has forgiven us with the shedding of His own blood (Rom. 4:7, Col. 2:13).

The girl I had originally written the letter from which this writing is based wrote back to me: “I also wanted you to understand why I would shy away from talking to you. You see, every time I talked to you about some issue I was having or something I just wanted you to listen. Talking is my way of letting things out and not letting it build up and depress me or make me uptight. It was really hard/hurtful when you would always try to find a solution or Godly advice. Nothing wrong with these things and I know you meant well. But you didn't listen to me. I just wanted you to understand where I was coming from and why I behaved so. I just hated arguing. Perhaps at those times you weren’t the right person to come to. Anyways, I thank you for your concerns and your advice. My prayers are with you and I hope we can move on as friends.”

I never listened to her but I tried to be “Mr. Fixit.” Many times God just listens to me in prayer and I know He will always listen to me. As a husband, apart of “nourishing and cherishing” the wife (Eph. 5:29, 1 Thess. 2:7) is listening to them, not attempting to solve their problems. Lets have the same gentle, loving tender care that Jesus has for His Church with the wife God’s called us to serve.

It is so exemplary of the relationship that we have of Christ. C.H. Spurgeon, the great preacher, once said, “…your relationship to Christ is that of a spouse, and you must pour out your very heart to Christ. No, don’t go and pour out your heart to your neighbors, nor your friends, for, somehow or other, the most sympathizing heart cannot understand or share all of our heartaches. There are sorrows, which the stranger cannot help us with; but there never was a heartache or pain which Christ could not help us to overcome.”

Marital Intimacy
Joshua Harris said in one of his sermons, “…Sex and our sexuality as men were created by God. It was His idea. He’s not embarrassed by it, He’s not ashamed of it - He made us men by every sense of the word. And He came and He lived a life of holiness and demonstrated for us what’s possible now for us as we’ve been reclaimed from the power of sin to serve Him in holiness…

The world’s mindset and their opinion of Christians and many Christians is this idea that sex is something Christians can’t talk about or that we’re embarrassed about or that we are ashamed of in some way, and that’s not true. Christians are the ones who can truly understand sex because we understand who created it, and we understand its purpose in the context of the covenant of marriage… we understand the value and the beauty of what God has made for us. “

Thank you so much for your attention to this study. God bless you and keep you.

Cheers,
Isaac D.