Marriage Builder Series #5: He's God's Gift to You

Hey Girlfriends!  Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own little lives that we forget to appreciate our husbands. If really want to “bring back that lovin’ feeling”, though, we need to remember who they are. But first, let’s review what we’ve learned this week:

Rule #1:  He’s  A Good Guy…believe the best in him

Rule #2:  He’s Not Your Project…stop picking on him

Rule #3:  He’s Not Your Savior…let him off the hook

Rule #4:  He’s Not Always Wrong…choose to be his ally

Now, for your 5^th and most important rule:

Rule #5: He’s God’s Gift To You…don’t take him for granted

Your precious husband is God’s gift to you.  I sometimes forget this, don’t you?  If we want to be godly wives and loving mates, we need to remember that we are blessed.  God has provided for us men who love, defend, and protect us.  They selflessly work (sometimes long hours, which we complain about) to give us food and housing and comfort (and they wish they could give us more). They toil daily at jobs (which they sometimes don’t even like) to be able to support a family who depends on them for everything. They are loyal to a sometimes-hormonal and unpredictable wife (whom they don’t always understand).  And they keep coming home to us every night even when they know a sullen and unappreciative wife may greet them. They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders (for us) because they love us and they have chosen to be committed to the one whom they’ve married.

We wives don’t play fair sometimes.  We expect our husbands to love us well when we have done nothing to deserve this love, and when, in fact, we have been downright unloving.  We neglect and deny and relegate our guys to the lowest rung on our priority list, and then we expect them to serve us. Why do we suppose our lives are so much more important than theirs?  Why do we, over time, make the determination that they aren’t helping, or talking to, or benefitting us enough, so we are entitled to snub them?  Women! OUR HUSBANDS ARE GOD’S GIFTS TO US!  When we decide that they are not “good enough”, we are choosing a life of joylessness and self-pity.  It doesn’t have to be this way.

We can get up and thank God for them each day (even when they aren’t meeting our every need) and we can envision what our lives would be without them.  We can remember how they have served us in the past and all the ways they have made us feel loved.  We can rejoice in all the memories of “just the two of us” stored up in our heads and think of how those memories would be different if they weren’t in them.  We can look at others lives, those who have lost their husbands to death or to divorce or to other women, and remember that we are, indeed, very rich.  We can choose to be women of character who love because God commands it, and not just because we feel it.  We can remember who we married—a really wonderful guy.

Girlfriends, let’s choose it.  Let’s decide to really love our husbands.  They really, truly love us.  They do.  Let’s live every day knowing they could be taken from us in a moment.  And let’s thank God that he provided for us so well. 

God has smiled upon us.

Let’s act like it.

Challenge for the day:  Think of all the things that would be different about your life if your husband weren’t in it.  Find a babysitter, if needed, and go out on a date night just with him.  Then enjoy the night together and remember why you fell in love. 

To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.

2 Peter 1:1-7