Loving As He Loves Me

Today's Daily Soap {Scripture | Observation | Application | Prayer} FOR TODAY'S FULL READING, CLICK THE TITLE LINK ABOVE.

SCRIPTURE:

Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ's love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They're really doing themselves a favor—since they're already "one" in marriage. Ephesians 5:25-28 [MSG]

OBSERVATION: 

I am not only to provide for and protect my wife, but to love her so must as to almost elevate her above myself.

APPLICATION:

Christ showed His love for the church -- for His followers -- by serving them. He didn't put Himself first, but rather put us above Him. He washed the feet of those who followed Him. He broke bread for them and served them. He even died for them -- for us.

What kind of love do I show to my wife? Do I serve her, or expect her to serve me? After a long day at work I come home and expect to be able to relax. But my wife has worked all day, too. Do I give her a chance to relax? Why does it have to be a special occasion for me to whisk the kids away and give her a break?

I could do a much better job of loving my wife the way Christ loves me.

PRAYER:

Father, help me to learn from the example You provided some two thousand years ago. I want to love her like You love me.

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All Bark, No Bite

Today's Daily Soap {Scripture | Observation | Application | Prayer}

• S: You can't pick and choose in these things, specializing in keeping one or two things in God's law and ignoring others. The same God who said, "Don't commit adultery," also said, "Don't murder." If you don't commit adultery but go ahead and murder, do you think your non-adultery will cancel out your murder? No, you're a murderer, period. ... Dear friends, do you think you'll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, "Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn't it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense? I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, "Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I'll handle the works department." Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove. Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That's just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands? Wasn't our ancestor Abraham "made right with God by works" when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? Isn't it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are "works of faith"? The full meaning of "believe" in the Scripture sentence, "Abraham believed God and was set right with God," includes his action. It's that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham named "God's friend." Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works? The same with Rahab, the Jericho harlot. Wasn't her action in hiding God's spies and helping them escape—that seamless unity of believing and doing—what counted with God? The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse. James 2:10-11, 14-26 [MSG]
• O: Faith without works is dead.
• A: Good deeds don't earn us a place in Heaven. We are saved by faith. But what is faith? Defined as "belief in something without proof," faith requires us to accept as fact that which we cannot provide evidence of. But what of good deeds then? If good deeds don't earn us a place in Heaven, why bother? If it's just enough to believe, what does it matter what we do? ANSWER: Real faith changes you. How can you have faith in God -- believe in God -- and not believe in His Word, or not want to follow the example He set through His Son Jesus Christ? If you just don't care what God says, what kind of faith do you have? By the same token, if you do have the kind of all-encompassing faith that makes you want to please your Creator by following His examples and obeying His direction, how then can deeds not matter? If I truly love my wife and am devoted and committed to her, it stands to reason that I would want to please her. And if I want to please her, then, would I not please her by doing things that make her feel good and happy and loved? Does my love for her alone please her? No! To just say that I love her isn't enough. I have to show her my love by doing something. My deeds are the acts that validate my love for her. It is just so with God. Although he knows my heart, and doesn't need to see proof of my faith, others are not omniscient. It is my faith and love for God that make me want to share Him with others. If I share only His Word but don't live an example of it through my actions, what is my faith worth? It is by setting an example through living the kind of life that God would be pleased with -- by these acts or deeds -- that others can see His Glory. Without those deeds, it's just words. Words without action are meaningless.
• P: Father, I want to please You in all that I do. Use me as a tool however You see fit so that I might reflect Your Glory upon others.

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God Provides Our Needs

Today's Daily Soap {Scripture | Observation | Application | Prayer}

• S: Don't be obsessed with getting more material things. Be relaxed with what you have. Since God assured us, "I'll never let you down, never walk off and leave you," we can boldly quote, God is there, ready to help; I'm fearless no matter what. Who or what can get to me? Hebrews 13:5-6 [MSG]
• O: God will provide.
• A: It seems that there is always something I need. Scratch that -- something that I want. In fact, I can see it in my whole family. There are several books I want. My wife wants new furniture for our formal living room. My son wants just about everything he sees. And it sure would be nice to have a newer car (but without the car payment, of course). But we don't really need all of those things (my wife would argue that we do need new furniture for the living room). Everything we need, God has provided. Food, clothing, shelter, transportation, friends and loved ones, etc. Even after doubling our house payment and taking on the practice of tithing ten percent of our income, God still gives us more than we need. Sometimes, I think we just don't see the difference between want and need.
• P: Lord, Thank You for your constant provisions. Help us, Father, to see the difference between want and need, and to remain thankful and obedient.

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Communication

Today's Daily Soap {Scripture | Observation | Application | Prayer}

Today's SOAP inspired by the Men's Devotional Bible

• S: Song of Solomon 2:3-13; Psalm 85:10-13; Proverbs 3:1-6
• O: Love, faithfulness, and communication are interdependent characteristics of a lasting relationship.
• A: My wife and I sometimes run into a communication barrier. When she's busy, I want to talk. When she wants to talk, I'm busy. This morning as I sat down to read through this daily devotional, she started talking to me. I got frustrated. I was trying to spend some time with God, and my wife was interrupting us. When I complained, she was frustrated that I was sitting in the breakfast nook, where everyone could see me and be tempted to interrupt me. I explained that the kids weren't interrupting me, it was just her. I tried to remind her of my commitment to conduct my own personal devotional time every morning, and how easy it is to fall back on a commitment when you don't force yourself to build a habit of it (I have, after all, missed the past two days here and felt that getting through the process today was critical). In frustration, I closed up my laptop and stormed out of the room, pretty much resigned to giving up on it for the day. Then, without the barrier of the computer between us, we talked a little bit. When I told her the only other table convenient was in the dining room -- where I thought she wouldn't want me to set up at -- she suggested I do just that. So here I am, in the dining room, reading through a devotional that is all too fitting for the situation this morning. Relationships take work. Marriages, being the toughest and (hopefully) most enduring of all relationships, take an even greater effort. More work. They do not last without love. They do not last without faithfulness. They do not last without communication. Just as I mentioned on Average Joe American recently, communication is the cornerstone of any civilized society -- which includes any loving marriage. It can become too easy to spend all of our communication time talking about money, and bills, and the kids, and what needs done around the house, and all too easy to not spend it telling each other how we feel and what we need from each other. We must communicate. Both ways. All the time. About more than the mundane.
• P: Lord, help me to keep this realization of how important communication is to the success of my marriage. Help me to open my ears when my wife speaks and to remember that she is more important than whatever else is vying for my attention at the time. Help us both to open up the lines of communication and to share with each other what we think, how we feel, and what we need from each other. And help us to just put the mundane issues out of the way for a while.

READ TODAY'S DEVOTIONAL:

FIDELITY means a stubborn dedication to growth in personal relationship. A marriage partnership must have room for individual growth; but at the beating heart of any marriage is the delicate, fragile -- often painful -- but potentially joyful relationship of two persons face to face in personal encounter. The vital core of marriage is the special kind of sexual communion that vibrates on every level -- physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. All the institutional dimensions are only the framework for the dynamic center. And if partners are faithful in the complex ways mentioned above, their fidelity will mean a steady dedication to the growth of an honest and open relationship in every dimension. Fidelity is best practiced with an implicit understanding that the relationship happens within a permanent, lifelong structure. But within the structure of permanence, relationships are constantly shifting: they are never stagnagt, but grow deeper or become shallower. To be faithful means that we can never lazily accept the present as our fated destiny. For relationships never have to be what they are; they can change. The future has possibilities wherever two willing human beings affirm its possibilities for them. No one can make a claim to faithfulness in marriage if he does not keep the door open to the possibilities that his relationship can be better tomorrow than it is today. Personal relationships are nourished only through communication, and communication between two people enmeshed in daily preoccupations with jobs, budgets, diapers and new math can be very difficult to maintain. For one thing, it takes time . . . And, above all, it takes desire. Personal communication is difficult because it is painful for us to talk about what we are feeling; it is much easier to discuss the unbalanced checking account than to discuss how we feel toward wach other. But more, it is difficult because when we talk we are not sure what becomes of our message after it is filtered through the receptive apparatus of the person who receives it . . . Fidelity will give us the job of finding out what the other person is actually hearing from us and of patiently probing what the other person is acutally trying to say. --From the Men's Devotional Bible by Zondervan (link above)

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A Strong Woman

Today's Daily Soap {Scripture | Observation | Application | Prayer}

• S: Proverbs 31:1-10, 1 Peter 3:1-6
• O: A man is called to do many things. He is appointed to be the spiritual leader of the house, to be the breadwinner, the protector. Traditionally, anyway.
• A: It's sad that many women today would argue the role that a man is supposed to have in the family. Many women will tell you that the idea of the man being the spiritual leader, chief breadwinner, and protector of the family is wrong. Many women would say that's a chauvinistic attitude. That's sad, really. Because when a man is in his proper role, and a woman is in her proper role, anyone that's going to be honest with you will tell you that the woman really is the strength of a household. There is truth to the saying that behind every man is a good woman, or however that goes. In today's society, in families that take on the traditional roles, a strong woman in the household is of vital importance. I have told my wife a million times that I'm a Store Manager and she's the Home Manager. When asked by people where my wife works, I always reply that she works at home, and that her job is harder than mine. Raising two kids, maintaining the house, keeping the bills straight, and planning our activities are just a few of the many tasks on her To Do List on a regular basis. My job, though sometimes one of high stress, is basically the same old dull routine day after day. My wife is the First Responder when one of the kids gets hurt, having to take whatever action necessary to comfort and bandage as needed; she is the educator working daily to teach our son to read; she -- like my mother -- is the glue that bonds this family together. As much as I might bellyache about my job, I can truly say one thing -- in the words of Bill Cosby, I've seen my wife's job, and I don't want it!
• P: Lord, Thank You for the wonderful woman that shares my life. She is truly a blessing beyond that which I could ever deserve. Help me to someday be worthy of such a wonderful gift as her.

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Patience, Understanding, and Selflessness

Today's Daily Soap {Scripture | Observation | Application | Prayer}

• S: Ephesians 5:25-33
• O: The Bible says that a husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the church: by giving, not getting. Also, that a wife should honor her husband.
• A: It seems that it should be so easy for a husband to be lovingly selfless with his wife (his entire family, for that matter). It seems that any husband would be happy to sacrifice -- to give his wife the best seat in the room, the last slice of cake, to let her watch the sappy chick flick instead of getting caught up on the latest news, even to give her the shirt off his own back. That's chivalry, after all, right? But so many people today have come to believe that chivalry is dead, and seem to have chosen to live those words (that chivalry is dead) instead of the words of God (that we should love our wives as Christ loves the church). It's an easy trap to fall into, thinking of yourself first. Sometimes, after a long and stressful day at work, I pull into the garage, looking forward to a fresh hot cup of coffee and dinner, just knowing that all of the stress is going to melt away the minute I walk in the door. But it rarely happens that way. Not because my wife doesn't love me. Not because the coffee isn't always fresh, or dinner isn't always ready. But because my wife has been home with two toddlers all day long, and her day has probably been more stressful than my own. And rather than being disappointed that my haven from stress is not there, I should be prepared to help my wife achieve her own relief from stress. Yesterday I came home from work to a sink disposal that was clogged with a potato (why do most women not know that you aren't supposed to put potato in a disposal?), new curtains to hang in the dining room, and the coffee wasn't made. My wife was making potato soup for dinner, but she had originally planned something else, and I was a little disappointed to see that she had changed the menu. We ate, I fixed the sink, and hung the curtains. The whole time, we kind of griped at each other. Why? Because I wanted to relax with a hot cup of coffee, but had work to do instead. Because my wife had changed the menu to hot soup on a cold night, and I seemed more disappointed than grateful. Was I loving my wife as Christ loves the church? I love her, sure. And I did unclog the sink, and I did hang the curtains. I was selfless, right? One might think so. But one would be wrong. I may have done what seemed to me to be some selfless acts, but my attitude about the whole time was one of me, me, me -- selfish. I was disappointed because I didn't get my cup of coffee. I was disappointed because my dinner menu had been changed. I was disappointed because instead of relaxing and letting the stress of the day melt away, I had to unclog the sink and hang some curtains. But you know what? I'm sitting next to those curtains in the dining room right now, and it's kind of nice having those windows covered finally. My wife did well, as she usually does, and I need to be a little more mindful and appreciative of that.
• P: Father, help me to better express my love for my wife and my family as Christ shows his love for the church. He died on the cross for us, and while I would unhesitatingly die to save anyone in my family, why do I sometimes hesitate to do much smaller things to please them? Help me, Lord, to be the selfless, loving husband and father that you would have me be. Help me to be more giving, more understanding, more patient, and more appreciative.

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