Love Your Husband – Day Four

by Deb Weakly

“There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.”

-Martin Luther

 

1. Call your prayer partner for your 10-minute prayer call. If you are having trouble connecting, keep trying! Done:______

2. It’s a brand new day to spend time with Jesus! He is longing to meet with you and teach you how to love your husband well. Pray for God to give you wisdom to help you understand today’s study and apply it to your life.

3. Grab your Bibles and Read Ephesians 5:21-33. If you have extra time, read the whole chapter. Write verse 33 of the amplified Bible version (found below) in your journal.

Respect: One of Your Man’s Most Important Needs

 

Not too long ago, my husband and I were on a date at a local restaurant in our town. I was looking over the menu when I noticed a man and woman, both in their 50’s, about to sit in the booth next to us. They sat down next to each other on the same side of the booth. The woman looked cute and classy, but the one thing I noticed about her (after I saw that she was married) was the way she turned her body to where she could really look into her husband’s eyes and listened intently to every word he said.

This went on the whole time they were together. It impressed me so much to see how she was completely paying attention to him and would put her hand on his every now and then. I loved that! Here they were, a bit of an older couple, still in love, and she was still showing him respect by truly listening to him and looking into his eyes.

After being married for 25 years, I become more and more aware of how much my husband really needs me to respect him.

God teaches us about respect in Ephesians 5:33: “However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

The amplified Bible says: “and the wife [must see to it] that she respects and delights in her husband [that she notices him and prefers him and treats him with loving concern, treasuring him, honoring him, and holding him dear].”

Isn’t that beautiful? God wants us to respect and delight in our husbands; to notice him, prefer him, treat him with loving concern, treasure him, honor him and hold him dear.

Wow! How romantic!

I know that, in some marriages, it may be challenging if we do not feel truly loved by our husbands. Pray for him. Pray for your marriage, for the love to return, and then do your best to respect your man. Ask God to help you to talk sweetly to him and to encourage him. Our husbands need us to believe in them and their dreams.

Our husbands also need us to be their cheerleaders; they need to feel that we think they are the smartest men on the face of the earth. In our home, we call it “Feeling their muscles.” It means that we praise the guys in our home (our sons need respect too). It’s not fake; it’s real. There is always something good to praise someone for.

If you truly can’t think of anything good to say about your husband, ask God to help you to see his heart and to praise him. So often, people will rise to our expectations of them.

Does your man go to work every day? Does he come home every night? Does he pay the bills? Does he spend time with the kids? When our children were growing up,  I always used to tell my husband “thank you” for taking our family to church every Sunday. I know that there are a lot of men that would rather watch football or sleep in, but my man takes us to church.

Another thing that I have noticed is that our men need us to affirm them in front of other people. Don’t bash your man in front of others or behind his back. It’s no fun to be put down or made fun of. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Ask God to help you to be the “Wise woman that builds her house and not the foolish woman that tears it down with her own hands.” Proverbs 14:1.

Accept your husband and your own puzzle. Our men need us to appreciate them and to bring life to our homes.

That’s what we do as women–we bring life.

Ask God to help you to love your husband, respect him, and be content with who he is and your life together.

4. Questions to Ponder: Write the answers to these questions in your journal.  Done:______

  • Pray and ask God to show you any areas where you haven’t been showing respect to your husband.
  • Ask God to show you ways that you can show your husband love by showing him respect. Write them down in your journal. Pray for God to help you to respect your husband.

5. Faith-Filled Idea:  Done:______

Write your husband a love note telling him 5 things you most appreciate about him and mail it to your home.


 

Love Your Husband – Day Five

by Leslie Leonard

“When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.”

-C. S. Lewis

1. Grab something hot and delicious to drink, your Bible, journal, a pen and a candle and go to the place where you meet with your Jesus.

2.Read the following beautiful scriptures: Hebrews 13:5Psalm 139:17-18, Psalm 147:3,Psalm 147:3, Romans 8:39, and John 3:16.

Pray and ask God to teach you about His great love for you.

Jesus is the Only Perfect Love

Kent, my husband, and I did not really go through premarital counseling. Instead, we received 30 minutes from the Southern Baptist preacher his parents flew in to perform our wedding. One thing Tommy, our preacher, said to us has stuck with me. He said, “There are going to be times in your marriage when you are not going to be in love with your spouse. But if you are in love with your marriage, you can get through those tough times.”

What wonderful advice!

A simple way to be in love with your marriage is to fall in love with God. God desires to be the first priority in our lives, even above our marriage. When we put God first, it increases our faith in every area of our lives, especially in our marriage, and helps us through the many phases and seasons of our lives together.

We all go through seasons as couples. There are joyful as well as challenging seasons in every marriage, but the nature of our marital relationship should not change. The nature of Christian marriage involves two people committed to each other who strive to put God first in their relationship, in good times and bad.

Putting God first means that we only expect God to be the perfect One, and He alone is able to meet all of our needs in a way that no human being can. By keeping God in the proper place in our lives, it helps us to love more unconditionally and without borders, thus allowing our husbands to fail and be a fellow human being.

I love what Ruth Bell Graham says about only expecting God to meet our needs:

“I pity the married couple who expect too much from one another. It is a foolish woman who expects her husband to be to her which only Jesus Christ Himself can be: ready to forgive, totally understanding, unendingly patient, invariably tender and loving, unfailing in every area, anticipating every need, and making more than adequate provision. Such expectations put a man under an impossible strain. The same goes for the man who expects too much from his wife.” (Ruth Bell Graham)

God loves you perfectly and His love for you never changes. He alone loves you completely, with an everlasting love. God loves us with our faults, bad days, and shortcomings. Our husbands can never love us the way God loves us, so it’s really not fair to expect them to love us like He loves us.

When we put God first in our marriage, we spend time with Him. We read His Word and allow the truth of His love to change us.

In the Bible, we read things like:

Hebrews 13:5 tells us “Never will I leave you; Never will I forsake you”. What a promise!

Psalm 139:17-18 “How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!” God is always thinking the very highest and best of you.

Psalm 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” God is gentle when you need it most

Romans 8:39 “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God promises nothing will come between you.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God’s love for you was so great that he was willing to die so that he would not have to live one day without you.

In contrast, when we expect our husbands to meet our needs, we can place unrealistic expectations on them and store up bitterness and unforgiveness if they fail to perform.

The best realization that we can ever come to in our marriage is to know that only God can meet our needs.

This blessed understanding allows us to love our husbands with mercy and grace and to see them as fellow Christ-Followers, who are walking this road to heaven together with us, keeping our eyes on the only Perfect One- our Savior, Jesus Christ.

May the Lord richly bless you as you follow Him and allow Him to meet your needs.

3. Questions to Ponder: Write the answers to these questions in your journal. 

  • Are you seeking God first in your marriage?
  • Are you remembering to place God in the seat of honor in your home? If not, pray and ask God to open your heart to Him.
  • If you need help, pray 1 Corinthians 13 4-8 and ask God to etch the words upon your heart.

4. Faith Filled Idea:

Choose Joy with your spouse this week. When you are tired, annoyed or downright angry, choose to be happy with your husband. Let the light of Jesus shine through you. Take 10 minutes to journal about your spouse today.

Write down all the different things you love about him, the character aspects that make you proud and the hopes you have for your future together.

Pick out a bible verse to pray specifically for your spouse. I chose 2 Corinthians 4:8 for Kent as he is transitioning between work assignments.


 

Love Your Husband – Day Six

by Heather Doolittle

“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.” – Stephen R. Covey 

 

1. Grab your journal and a pen and find a cozy place to sit. Relax and enjoy this peaceful time with God. Pray that the Spirit will speak to you personally today.

2. Read 1 Peter 3:1-6. Write verse 1-2 in your journal.

A Gentle & Quiet Spirit

Neither my husband nor I was following God when we began dating. I encountered God and became a believer about a year into our relationship. Mike and I began attending church together, discussed our beliefs, and even met with a pastor a couple times before we married. However, it eventually became apparent that we were not on the same page spiritually. I desperately wanted to share my faith with my husband, but everything I said and did only pushed him away. I wanted him to agree and connect with me on a different level, but my words came across as nagging and criticizing. The doting newlywed phase didn’t last long before we grew frustrated and distant. The topics of God and the Bible consistently brought contention.

I spent years trying to convince my husband that he should love and follow Jesus before I realized that God has a better way. He clearly told me (and reminded me often!) that Mike “may be won over without words [by my behavior],” (1 Peter 3:1b). I listened to God and stopped using the Bible as a tool to change my husband. I did share with him the lessons I was learning, but they were about how I was changing and strengthening my relationship with my Savior. I read Proverbs 31 so many times and focused on becoming the woman God created me to be.

It took humility to step aside and wait for God to do His work. It was in this time that my faith in God grew drastically. I realized that God sees me; He knows my heart. He sees my struggles and is eager to help. God taught me to believe the best about Mike and see him through his Creator’s eyes. I learned to wait on the Lord and trust that My Father is building a strong foundation for our lives and our marriage that cannot be broken. He comforted me and gently whispered to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10a). God’s words “will not return to [Him] empty, but will accomplish what [He] desire[s]” (Isaiah 55:11a). I needed to hold my tongue and wait for the few powerful Spirit-led words.

This struggle blessed me and our marriage as I grew in faith and maturity. I learned to pray fervently, lay my own pride and sin at the cross, and cling to the hope that God would do the rest. And He did. In His own time, and in His own way. My husband did not come to a deeper relationship with God because of me or through me. He formed his own personal relationship with His Savior, and through that everlasting bond, our relationship as husband and wife is infinitely stronger.

A few months before Mike confessed Jesus as his Savior, I was praying fervently for him when a line from “I am Redeemed” came to me and brought me to tears. “Stop fighting a fight that’s already been won.” My Heavenly Father was telling me that He had already answered my prayer. He had already placed a deep yearning for Truth in Mike’s heart. He had already provided the godly friends, mentors, and books that He knew Mike would need. God formulated His strategy long ago and had been moving slowly and deliberately for years. He let me be part of that plan by simply waiting and praying with a gentle and quiet spirit so that I could witness His victory.

3. Questions to ponder: Answer these questions in your journal.

– Give thanks for your husband, and remember that he is God’s gift to you! Remember why you married this man, and look at him through the eyes of the doting fiancée you once were. Write down your favorite qualities about your husband and thank God for him.

– Pray that God will help you see your husband and treat him as the man he can and should be. Ask God to reveal to you any ways in which you are not giving your husband grace.

4. Faith-Filled Idea

-In Revelation 2:5, the Church is reminded to “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” The same charge can be given to spouses, as our marriages are intended to be a reflection of Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:24-25). This week, find some way to bless your husband. Maybe do something special you used to do that has fallen by the wayside over the years. Maybe just take a few minutes to write a note, get his favorite snack, or speak to his love language. You are building a strong foundation on biblical truth so that when (not if) the storms come, your relationship with your husband as well as your relationship with your Creator will stand strong.