Bill Taylor God expects a man to love his wife as Christ loves His church: Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. 28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. Ephesians 5:25-28

Jesus presents us to Himself a “glorious church” in verse 27. Every man wants a “glorious wife,” and there’s a simple way to have one – convince her he’s convinced that she’s a glorious wife. This article explains how to do that.https://successful-marriage.blogspot.com/…/what-women…

Marriage Under Threat: What Women Need from their Husbands (successful-marriage.blogspot.com)

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2023

What Women Need from their Husbands

Feel free to use this material in any way that supports His cause!  We’ve put books about marriage on our Amazon author page:

Introduction

It’s hard to build a successful bridge without a deep understanding of concrete and steel.  It’s hard to build a successful marriage without a deep understanding of the fundamental needs of men and women.  Pastors must be “apt to teach (1 Tim. 3:2, 2 Tim. 2:24)” and marriage is a vital area of teaching.  You must teach your men how to appreciate their wives, and your wives must teach the women how to explain their needs to men.

Marriage is simple: Believe in your heart that God is so good that He made men and women to work well together to build joyful marriages if we do it His way.  “Only praise,” and follow God by seeing each other, treating each other, and talking about each other as perfect (Song 4:7).  That’s God’s Simple Plan of Marriage.

The Bible puts men in charge of families so making marriages better is the husband’s duty.  There’s no disgrace in not understanding women.  King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, was bitterly confused and frustrated in marriage.  We have more of the Word of God than he had so we can do better.

Solomon owned 1,000 women (I Ki. 11:3 7/3).  They were his property.  There was no “I’m not in the mood” or “I have a headache.”  That sounds like a man’s paradise, but how did it work for Solomon?

Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account: which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not

: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.  Ecclesiastes 7:27-28

Solomon owned a thousand women, yet his soul was empty.  Why?  He could command whatever he wished, but he couldn’t make them like it.  Having made women to be smaller and weaker than men, God protected women by making sure that a wife’s unhappiness spreads throughout the house even if she tries to keep it to herself.  This gives men a reason to make their wives happy.  They need to know how to do it.

Just before our wedding, my fiancé told me why she was eager to marry.  “I like talking to you” she said.  Once we’re married, we can talk more in a day than we can talk in a week of dating.”  Her reason for marrying was to talk to me.  That was not why I wanted to marry her (Ge. 29:21).  Did you marry to talk?

The Book of Esther tells how harems work.  King Ahasuerus had an empire-wide beauty contest for a new queen.  Esther pleased him and became queen.  When Haman conspired to have all the Jews murdered, Esther’s uncle Mordecai asked her to talk to her husband to try to stop the slaughter.  Esther replied:

All the king’s servants, and the people of the king’s provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or women

, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden sceptre, that he may live: but I have not been called to come in unto the king these thirty days.  Esther 4:11

Ahasuerus “loved Esther above all the women (Esther 2:17)” but he ignored her for a month.  How did she feel about that?  What was he doing all that time?  Women can’t move freely in the Middle East.  The king’s wives lived in the palace and were the only women who could get there easily, but it was forbidden.

Wives really want to talk to their husbands.  Suppose the king told them not to come.  When a king’s wife tried to come talk to him, would a guard get physical to keep her out?  Not if he valued his head.

The only way to keep a wife from trying to talk to him when he hadn’t called her was to threaten her with death!  That is how badly wives yearn to talk to husbands.  Proverbs 17:22 teaches, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”  Not being able to talk to her husband dries her bones.

There’s a saying, “If a man loves a woman’s soul, one woman is all he needs, but if he sees only her face or figure, all the women in the world won’t satisfy him.”  That was Solomon’s mistake.  Opening his heart enough to love a woman’s soul takes so many hours and days of talk that a man can’t belong to more than one at a time.  The Bible warns 5 times that an unhappy woman is a hardship.  Instead of having one woman enjoy belonging to him, he had 1,000 frustrated, unhappy women under his roof.  No wonder his soul was empty.

Why did David want Bathsheba when he had so many wives (2 Sam. 12:18)?  Because he hadn’t opened his heart to any wife enough to love her soul.  He wasn’t satisfied, so he lusted after Bathsheba.

SUBJECT YOURSELVES ONE TO ANOTHER 1 PETER 5:5

The more a man takes his wife, the more she wants to talk.  The more a man talks to her, the more he wants to take her.  They must “be subject one to another (1 Pe. 5:5)” to make it work.  The Bible explains how:

The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. ⁵Defraud ye not one the other

, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.  I Corinthians 7:4-5

The wife not having power of her body means she should always open herself to her husband to keep him from temptation.  The man not having power of his body means that he must meet her needs by opening his heart to her.  It’s fraud if a man doesn’t open his heart as his wife expected when she married.  If he doesn’t meet her emotional needs, she’ll be tempted to seek emotional talk elsewhere.  This emotional infidelity often leads to physical infidelity.

One of the problems of women having jobs is that you must please your boss to keep a job.  I’ve seen women pleasing men bosses and men pleasing women bosses just a little too much and end up destroying two families.  Meeting the wife’s emotional needs and the husband’s physical needs helps avoid temptation.

A WIFE IS A MIRROR, SHE’S NOT A LIGHT

God made women to multiply what men give them and give it back.  Consider babies.  You give her one tiny cell.  She gathers your life force unto herself, nourishes and multiplies your seed within her, and gives you a baby with billions of cells.  Every cell of her baby has the mark of your DNA (Gen. 5:3).

If you give her joy, love, appreciation, praise, and sanctification (Song 6:9), she’ll multiply what you give her and fill your home with love and light to the Glory of God.  If you give her anger, criticism, or harshness, Satan will tempt her to multiply that and your house will fill with anger and pain.

YOUR OPEN HEART

Men know that a happy woman is heavenly and that an unhappy woman can give him a taste of the punishments of Hell.  A man’s emotions are as powerful as a woman’s, but men engage their emotions more slowly.  A man will try not to let himself love a woman unless he’s confident of making her happy.

Few women can explain their needs to men, and no man can figure it out.  I was blessed that my wife had asked God to choose her husband.  God couldn’t give her to me without teaching me about her.  The Holy Spirit led her to ask that I treat her as a treasure before dating and led her to explain herself to me.[1]

What she said made me confident that I could meet her needs and take care of her.  That made me feel safe opening my heart to her and made me very much want to marry her.  We found that what she said works for many women so we wrote it down for our granddaughter.  She used it and it worked for her.

WHEN I ASKED FOR A DATE, SHE SAID, I’M LOOKING FOR A HUSBAND, I WANT TO GET MARRIED.

God made me to be a treasure for my husband.  If that’s not you, we can part friends.  I’m not saying you have to agree to marry me before we go out at all, but I want you to agree that the reason to be together is to decide whether you and I will marry.  I’m not a toy.  I don’t want a man to play with me; I want a man to stay with me.  If you aren’t willing to consider marriage, don’t waste my time.

I was attracted to her and I liked talking to her.  I knew that God made all women to be treasures for their husbands.  If she decided she wanted to be my treasure, I’d be a fool not to marry her, so I said “Yes.”

On the way to the restaurant, I did something from Japanese culture which hurt her and upset her emotionally.  Her father had recognized the value of her God-given emotions, but he carefully taught her to think about her feelings.  He insisted that she think about what she felt before acting on an emotion.

She could have walked back to her car and left, but she thought, “This guy’s thinking of marrying me.  He didn’t offer to buy me food to make me upset.  But I am upset.  Must have been an accident.  I’ll ask him.”

When I told her why, she liked it.  Women she tells say, “Why’d you marry him after that” but decide I was a man to keep when told why.  She asked and I answered as the Bible commands (Mt. 18:15).  She thought, “This guy is strange, but if he’ll explain, I can help him” and she has.  Many wives are afraid to ask because their husbands haven’t learned to explain their thoughts.  Explaining is part of opening your heart.

I was attracted to her enough to think of marrying her.  If she’d left, I’d have been badly hurt and we would have been very unlikely to marry.  Stopping and thinking about her feelings got her a husband.

ON OUR 2^ND DATE, SHE SAID SHE WANTED TO BE A VIRGIN ON HER WEDDING NIGHT.

My friends and the culture were very casual about sex, but I knew that God forbids sex outside marriage so I agreed.  She had asked God to protect her; now the Holy Spirit led her to ask me to protect her.

We later learned that taking a woman without marriage damages her badly.  The hormones of sex make her want to be his.  This can be frightening, and it’s worse if he hasn’t committed himself to her.  She’ll think he’s a thief for taking her when he shouldn’t, and she’ll try to wall off her feeling of belonging to him.  If she let him have her without marriage, how can he trust her not to give herself to someone else?

Having her wall off her feelings and him not trusting her is a bad start.  Men are always interested so men must control their desires (1 Th. 4:3-6).  Women are seldom interested and don’t know how to handle such strong desires when they come.  The man will say she wanted it at the time.  So what?  He’s the leader; the sin is on him as it was on Adam.  He must confess to God, to her, and to her parents to start healing (1 Jn. 1:9).

SHE SHOWED RESPECT FOR ME

From early in our courtship, she’d occasionally say “Yes, sir” when I spoke to her.  Not every time, but as the spirit moved her.  I liked that a lot, but we had no idea how important it was.

Women should show respect for husbands (I Pe. 3:8) and reverence them (Eph. 5:33).  Respecting you is difficult if you don’t act respectable.  Ladies should wait for a man they want to call “Sir.”

“Sir” meant she’d respect me in spite of my mistakes.  We’re told to confess our faults one to another (Jas. 5:16).  Men don’t like doing that and they really don’t like telling wives things they’re afraid will cost them respect.  Many men ignore Pr. 31:11 which promises that a husband can trust his heart to his wife and won’t open their hearts.  Calling me “Sir” helped me open my heart to her when I realized that God wanted me to belong to her; we’re glad that she could honor me in that way.

SHE ASKED, DON’T FUSS AT ME

Weeks later, she asked that I never fuss at her.  “I want to love you very much,” she said.  “The more I love you, the more disapproval hurts me.  I won’t be able to love you as much as I want to love you if you hurt me.”

That made sense – the Bible speaks of women as “tender and delicate.”  I didn’t want to keep her from loving me, so I watch what I say.  We didn’t know it then, but God said the same thing:

There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health.  Pro 12:18

I need this too.  A man can be hurt as badly by a woman he loves as a woman can be hurt by a man whom she loves.  We’ve tried always to be sure our tongues are health to each other.  She tries to speak so that the 10-foot area near her is the best place in all the world for me to be, that’s why I like hanging around her.

SHE BELONGED TO GOD SO SHE COULD LET GOD GIVE HER TO ME

When we came together on our wedding night, she was terrified because her hormones gave her a deep, frightening desire to belong to me and to serve me.  Nobody had warned her of this, but she’d prayed for years that God would work on her heart to prepare her for marriage; this feeing had to be from God.  She clung to her faith that God was good and prayed, “Lord, You must want me to belong to him.  That doesn’t make sense, but if that’s what You want, I’ll do my best to submit to him and to belong to him.”

When she chose to let God give her to me, her happiness became my happiness.  Proverbs warns 5 times that an unhappy woman is a hardship (19:13, 21:9, 21:19, 25:24, 27:15), but the opposite is true, too.  When she was happy, life was good.  When she was happy with me, life was very good.  When she was happy in being mine and wanted me to take her, I got the taste of the joys of Heaven that I’d expected when she told me God had made her to be His treasure.  I liked this, so I started learning how to make her happy.

I had another reason to learn about her (1 Pe. 3:7).  I’d heard men complain about women, and they complained about the same things.  When I told her, she told me her friends had said, “He may love you, but he won’t like you once you’re married” and they named the same things my classmates didn’t like.

This disagreed with my theology.  I was convinced that God was good and had told her “For God so loved me that He gave me you.”  She had told me she was a gift from God, and the Bible proved it (Pr. 18:22, 19:6).  I knew that God gives good and perfect gifts (Mt. 7:11, Jas. 1:17).  Therefore, and this was an important insight, all men who dislike characteristics like emotion and talking which are common to women are wrong.  Those are not defects; God made women that way on purpose to bless men (Pr. 19:14).

SHE CHOSE TO SERVE GOD BY SERVING ME

24 hours after our wedding, she said, “I’ve been thinking about being married to you.”  I thought, “We’re married, what’s to talk about,” but she had told me talking was important to her, so we talked.  “The Bible says God wants me to belong to you, obey you, and submit to you,” she said.  I thought, “Neat!  We agree!” but she wasn’t done.  “I’ll do my best to do that,” she said, “but I’m not doing it just for you.  I’m doing it for God because He told me to.  I’m serving God by serving you because God wants me to serve you.”

I thought about that for a long time and I still think about it.  The next day, I told her, “I’m thinking about what you said.  God wants me to lead you and take care of you.  The Bible says that any man who desires to be first must be last of all and servant of all (Mk. 9:35, 10:44).  If I’m to lead you God’s way, I must lead by serving you.  You said it well – I’ll serve God by serving you because God wants me to serve you.”

Marriage, like salvation, is an undeserved gift of God.  The only way to be saved is to die to your former life and be married to Christ (Ro. 7:4).  You don’t deserve her submission, she doesn’t deserve your giving your life to nourish her; those are undeserved gifts of God’s grace.  God expects married people to die to their individual lives and serve Him by serving each other, their children, and their church.

Jesus said that husband and wife are no more twain, but one flesh (Mt. 19:5-6, Mk 10:8).  Each must die to themselves in favor of their new family in order to become one.  You must give your wife the same love and grace God gave in saving you (1 Pe. 4:10).  As Christ chose to love you regardless of your failures and your sins, you and your wife must choose to love and serve each other regardless of failure ‘til death do you part.

As God sees you as perfect, you must treat each other as perfect (II Co. 5:14) by the Grace of God.  Watching your wife love you in spite of your failures increases your love for Christ and for her, and vice-versa.  When lost people see you give God’s grace to each other, they’ll want God’s grace.

Salvation is about God giving – for God so loved that He gave.  My wife so loved God that she let God give her to me.  I so love God that I let God give me to her.  Our love for each other comes from our love for God.

Just before our wedding, I wrote a letter, “For God so loved man that He gave him woman, for God so loved me that He gave me you.”  Could you say that to your wife?  And live by it?    It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t belong to me.  I know many wives who don’t belong to their husbands, but it’s often because he won’t open his heart.  Beg God to increase your trust in Christ and in your wife so you can be hers.

This means involving her in all decisions and including your children as they get old enough.  They can’t follow you unless they know where you’re going and they can’t obey unless they understand.

A WIFE IS WHAT HER HUSBAND MAKES HER

You’ve heard and preached that God expects a man to love his wife as Christ loves His church:

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; ²⁶That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, ²⁷That he might present it to himself a glorious church

, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish

. ²⁸So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.  Ephesians 5:25-28

Jesus presents us to Himself a “glorious church” in verse 27.  Every man wants to present to himself a “glorious wife,” and there’s a simple way to do it – convince her he’s convinced that she is a glorious wife.

A woman heard that Johnny Lingo had paid 8 cows for his wife[2] when the going price was 3 or 4.  When she went to his house to ask why, she could see that his wife liked belonging to him.  Johnny explained that every wife knew what her husband had paid.  His wife wasn’t thought to be very attractive so he might have gotten her for 1 or 2, but he paid 8 cows “Because I wanted an 8-cow wife.”

A friend of mine paid 5 cows for his wife.  I suggested that he brag to his wife about outsmarting her family to get a 10-cow wife for only 5, but she might have to see the cows in order to believe he meant it.

Remember the 3 rules:  God is good, only praise, and treat each other as perfect.

Sound Bite Marriage

The Internet generation demands that everything be short so this chapter has many brief comparisons between marriage and salvation.  To start at the beginning, Genesis 1 tells us:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.  Genesis 1:3

Bible teaches that God created everything including you, your spouse, and me.  We also find “and God said, … and it was so,” over and over.  The Bible teaches that if God said it’s so, it is so.

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth

.  John 17:17

God’s word is truth.  God gave us His Word so that we’d know what He expects us to believe concerning Him and what we’re supposed to do.  Some say, “the Bible is authoritative for faith and practice.”  God tells us what to believe and He tells us what to do.  Let’s consider what God says about what He’s done:

The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein

.  The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.  Psalm 111:2, 10

God’s people should take pleasure in God’s works.  We should enjoy watching what He does for us and we should enjoy learning as much as we can about how He does His works.  Having a proper awe and respect for God is the beginning of wisdom.  If we have good understanding, we’ll do what He commands, but it works the other way, too.  If we do what God commands, we’ll get a good understanding when we look back and see how obeying His commands blessed us.  Let’s look at how we’re told to approach God’s Word:

Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the LORD.  Psalm 107:43

God says that if you’re wise, if you’ll observe “these things,” then you’ll understand just how kind God is and how well He takes care of us.  If you read Psalm 107, you’ll find that it says three times

Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!  Psalm 107:8, 15, 21

If you are wise, if you praise the Lord for His goodness, then you will understand His kindness to you.

God’s most wonderful work to the children of men, of course, is salvation.  Salvation requires that we confess our sins, repent of our sins, ask Jesus to forgive our sins, and be born again.  Being saved requires that we die to our former lives so that we can be married to Christ:

Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another

, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.  Romans 7:4

In order to be born again into Christ, we must die to ourselves and be married to Christ.  That the first of God’s wonderful works.  Marriage is another of God’s wonderful works.  Jesus explained it:

Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.  Matthew 19:6

Dying to our former lives of sin makes us one with Christ.  As with salvation; we must die to ourselves in order to be “one flesh” in marriage.  God knew we’d have trouble following His plan of salvation.  We couldn’t handle two plans so He made the same plan work for marriage and for salvation.

When we find people whose lives are being destroyed by sin, we give the gospel so that they can be saved and show the grace of God in their new walk with Christ.  When we find marriages being destroyed by sin, we’re supposed to “give an answer” so that these marriages can show the grace of God to the lost.  There are many short ways to explain marriage so that you can help your friends build their marriages.

·      Salvation and marriage are both undeserved gifts of God’s grace.  Nobody deserves salvation; nobody deserves the blessings of marriage.  A man is not worthy of his wife’s submission, obedience, or her calling him “Lord,” that’s an undeserved gift of God’s grace to him.  A woman is not worthy of her husband’s giving his life to nourish and cherish her, that’s God’s undeserved gift to her.

·      Salvation and marriage both show the grace of God to the lost.  We’re required to “give an answer” (I Pe. 3:15) when people ask why we live as we do.  Our marriages are our greatest opportunity to show we’re different from the lost.  When the lost see a wife giving her husband undeserved grace or a husband giving his wife undeserved grace, they’ll want God’s grace for themselves, and we get to tell them how to find it.

·      Salvation is based on a personal relationship with Christ Jesus.  Marriage is based on a personal relationship between husband and wife.  If your relationship with Christ is messed up, you can’t have a proper relationship with your spouse.  If your relationship with Christ is based on true, saving faith, your relationship with your spouse will be based on God’s formula.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.  Ephesians 2:10

·      John 3:16 gives all you must know to be saved.  Genesis 24:67 gives all you must know for a successful marriage, but teaching helps.  We labor to prepare children for Good Colleges but don’t teach godly marriage.  Not teaching marriage is like giving them keys without training and expecting them to drive without getting hurt.  As with salvation, “discipleship” is essential for successful marriage.

·      Salvation prepares us for the joys of living forever with Jesus and serving Him in heaven.  God planned marriage to give both husband and wife a foretaste of the joys of heaven, right here on earth.

·      Once saved, we become one with Christ.  Once married, husband and wife should become one flesh (Mt 19:6, Mk. 10:8).  We can’t become one in Christ without dying to our former life.  Husband and wife can’t become one in each other without dying to their former individual selves in favor of serving the family.

·      Saved people should glorify God in all that they do; glorifying God helps us become his ambassadors (II Corinthians 5:20).  Married people should glorify God together in all that they do.

·      Some people give money to the church to pay God for favors.  A “cheerful giver” gives to God out of love and not to get from Him.  The Song of Solomon shows a husband and wife giving to each other out of love and not in hope of getting from the other.  Works-based salvation is idolatry; works-based marriage is whoredom.  Works-based “salvation” takes you to Hell; works-based marriage makes life Hell on earth.

·      Salvation supports marriage; knowing we belong to Christ (I Co. 6:19) makes it easier to belong to our spouses.  If a woman belongs to Christ, it’s easier to accept God giving her to her husband (Lk. 17:27).  If a man knows that Christ gave His life for him, it’s easier for him to give his life for his wife (Eph. 5:25).

·      Marriage supports salvation.  As husband and wife appreciate and praise one another, and share God’s grace by forgiving each other, their marriage reminds them both to praise and appreciate God (Ps. 100).

·      Rejoicing in the Lord reminds us to rejoice in marriage and vice versa (Ecc. 9:9, Phi 4:4).  Ecc. 9:9 says, “Rejoice with the wife whom thou lovest…”  Joy in marriage must be shared.

·      Salvation is two words, “only believe.”  Satan confuses people into thinking it’s belief plus works or church so people miss salvation and go to Hell.  Marriage is two words, “only praise,” but many people think they should change their spouses instead of letting the Holy Spirit bring change.  When people usurp the Holy Spirit’s role in their marriage, they usually miss the joys of marriage and may create Hell on earth.

·      Salvation doesn’t just take us to heaven; we have duties to do for Christ in this life (2 Cor. 5:14).  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10).

·      Marriage doesn’t just give us companionship; we have duties to our spouses which God commands us to fulfill.  Husbands must show agapao to wives (Eph. 5:25-26)[3], wives must reverence husbands (Eph. 5:33).  Agapao and reverence are not products of emotion; they are acts of will which we must decide to do.

·      When Jesus’ blood washes away our sins, God sees us as perfect (I Co 6:11).  As Christians, we’re to follow after God (Eph. 5:1) and see each other as perfect.  Marriage prospers when a man appreciates and honors his wife as God’s good and perfect gift to him and she acts as God’s good and perfect gift to him.

·      The only way a man can see his sinful wife as perfect is for him to see her through the grace God gave him in saving him.  The only way a wife can see her sinful husband as perfect is for her to see him through the grace God gave her.  When lost people see couples giving God’s grace to each other, they want God’s grace for themselves.  That’s how our lights shine before men (Mt. 5:16).

·      When we give the gospel, we may hear, “God can’t save me, my sins are too great.”  When we give the plan of marriage, we often hear, “God can’t save my marriage, it’s too far gone.”  These thoughts are based on pride – how can anyone think their sin is more powerful than the God who created the universe?

·      People who reject God’s Simple Plan of Salvation spend eternity in Hell.  People who reject God’s Simple Plan of Marriage can create their very own Hell right here on earth.  Marriage can either give a foretaste of the joys of Heaven, or it can administer a foretaste of the punishment of the damned.

·      Once we’re saved, our love for Christ constrains us to serve Him (II Cor. 5:14, Eph 2:10, Phi. 2:4).  Once we’re married, our love for each other should constrain us to serve each other.  God wants us to serve our spouses; we serve God by serving each other.

·      Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;” (Mt 11:29).  A married woman takes upon herself the yoke of pleasing her husband (Ge. 3:16).  The only way to rest (Ru. 1:9) in being sure she’ll please him is to spend time talking to him and learning of him that she knows he’ll be pleased with what she does.

·      Jesus said, “for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” (Mt. 11:29)  A man must be meek towards his wife; must lead her by serving her (Mk. 10:42-45, see also Mk. 9:35).  He must talk to her a great deal in order to understand her needs well enough to lead her for her benefit.

·      Jesus said, He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it  (Mt. 10:39).  When we accept salvation, we lose our former lives and gain a new life in Christ.  When we marry, we lose our former individual selves and gain a new life as a one-flesh married couple.

·      God’s salvation covenant is forever; once saved, always saved (John 10:28).  God’s marriage covenant ends at death (Rom. 7:1-3, the book of Ruth).

If you’re truly saved, if you relate to God as He desires, your marriage relationship works because you’ll both serve God by serving each other.  The relationship between husband and wife is based on their relationships to God.

And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;  II Corinthians 5:18

Having been reconciled to God, we should be able to minister reconciliation to each other.  If husband and wife each reconcile themselves to God and relate to God by honoring, praising, loving, and obeying Him, they’ll relate properly to each other by honoring, praising, loving and appreciating each other.  Their marriage prospers, and they show the grace of salvation to the lost.

And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them

, and rose again.  II Corinthians 5:15

Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body

.  II Corinthians 4:10

As lost people see Christians giving God’s grace to each other, they’ll want God’s grace for themselves.  If either party messes up their relationship with God, on the other hand, their testimony is damaged and the marriage seldom works well even if they both have been taught how marriage should work.

This book explores what God says about marriage so that you can help heal the broken marriages you’ll encounter.  God ordains marriage; a damaged marriage means that someone isn’t following God.

Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: Psalm 127:1

No matter how hopeless the situation seems, God promises a way out, but we have to ask:

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape

, that ye may be able to bear it.  I Corinthians 10:13

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God

, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.  James 1:5

---

[1] https://successful-marriage.blogspot.com/2018/12/what-drove-jesus-11-nobodies-to-turn.html#ToldMeBefore

[2] https://successful-marriage.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-johnny-lingo-paid-eight-cows-for.html

[3] https://successful-marriage.blogspot.com/2021/06/dont-step-in-holes.html#greekHard

POSTED BY BILL TAYLOR AT 3:41 PM