Love The One You’re With

Posted by Megan Sullivan on Apr 6, 2011 in Daily Bread | 1 comment

One thing that I have discovered over the years is that the Christian faith is one of the few that elevates women. It’s the only one where submission is mentioned both for husband and wife, and where the husbands are extended the challenge to love their wives as much as they love themselves.

If everyone followed God’s design for marriage, physical and emotional abuse wouldn’t happen. Domestic violence would be eliminated. Men and women wouldn’t withhold sexual intimacy from each other as a source of punishment or use it as currency. Husbands would make sure their wives knew that they were cherished and desired. The more beautiful the wives feel, the more beautiful they act. Then they show more respect and kindness to the husband. Then he rises to the expectations as leader of his family. We give the love we want to get, and then often we get the love that we desperately need. It’s an upward spiral.

Sadly, in our culture, we usually see the opposite. Husbands assume their wives know that they’re loved, and forget to make an effort to tell them or show them. Wives feel unloved, and ugly; then bitterness and resentment build up and leak out in ugly ways – they begin showing disrespect, even contempt for their husbands, both privately and publicly. The gap widens between the two, and soon they go looking to feel good through the affirmations of something, or someone else.

If only we could see that God’s plan was intended to grow, deepen, and intensify the relationship between husband and wife over time. If we put our spouses first, the way we read in Ephesians, we would see a drastic decline in divorce, adultery, and abuse in the Church. And that would lead to stronger families, and a stronger witness for the world to see.