Choosing Self Sacrificing Love in a Selfish World
God launched His plan to train the women of Christ's Church using the godly older women He was already at work inside, and allowing their Spirit-led walk as they grew day-by-day, to flow out into the lives of younger women.
Paul told them that the Lord asked every believing wife to decide and surrender to these twin concepts contained in the very first word of this list:
· that they were going to seek by the power of their Creator and Redeemer to rekindle, renew, and deepen the love-filled, respect-reflecting, best-friend-in-all-the-world relationship God called them to have with their husband;
· and that friendship-love would be their aim to live out until their husband felt their wife's love.
Practical Steps for Wives to
Express Love that can be Felt
Learning to be a close knit, best friend with your husband is like starting a dating relationship with him even though you are already married. It is a conscious, intentional focus on him as a person, and as a man that you pursue. There are three simple attitudes that you need to consciously choose in your heart, pray over, and then with God's promised help—cultivate and deepen a little more each day.
1. Decide that you will make your own husband your number one most important human relationship of life over all others, including your parents, brothers, sisters, and friends. And mothers, even more importantly—your husband is to be more important to you than your children. In God's list of your priorities husbands are first, children are second. Look at v. 4 and think about that. Have your children, your relatives, or friends become more important to you than your first and highest earthly priority given by God: YOUR husband?
2. Start to seek your husband's friendship and love ahead of all other human relationships including your friends, relatives, and children. Almost all romance flows from closeness. This means that you make choices to set aside time to surprise your husband with wanting to spend time with him. Tell him yes, you want to go and do whatever it is he is interested in. That may shock him but if you persist, it will thrill him.
Men want and deeply need to have the emotional friendship of a caring, accepting, seeking, admiring, and pursuing woman in their life. If you doubt that just ask yourself why so many men leave beautiful wives for less than beautiful women who chased them at work.
Yes it is sin to commit adultery, but much adultery starts in a man seeking the admiration, respect, friendship, and closeness that his wife is often showing to her close girlfriends, mother or sisters, and children—but often not to him. God commands wives to love their husbands in a way that HE can feel.
3. Begin examining your lifestyle, and weekly schedule, to see if you are intentionally pursuing your husband's love, his interests, and his attention.
Any man will notice after a while, the interest that is shined upon him by an adoring woman. If you are expressing love that can be felt by your husband as a chosen way of life, then you can be sure that you are becoming his best friend and are truly "loving" your husband in the way that God has designed and commanded you to be.
When the younger women of Paul's day saw how the older women loved, respected, admired, and were best friends with their husbands—they were encouraged that such a marriage was possible, and they drawn to see that close and intimate friendships with husbands were very profitable for daily life.
For more resources from Dr. John Barnett visit our website at www.DiscoverTheBook.org
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