Stacy Amewoyi
The promises of the Lord extend to all those who follow the model of life that builds happy and sacred marriage relationships therefore, happiness and holiness that are the ultimate purpose of marriage; particularly the marriage of a couple who invites God as the center of their lives, for they are the clearest reflection of God's love on earth.
If a husband puts his wife's needs above his, he will increase his love for her. Love your wife will require faith and humility to put her interests above his own in the difficulties of life.
You have the responsibility to provide what is necessary for the family and take care of it while serving others. That can sometimes end all your energy and strength.
Perhaps age and disease increase your wife's needs. If you still decide to put her happiness above yours, I promise you that your love for her will increase. Husbands can be a blessing to their wives if they take the initiative in family activities such as scripture study, family prayer and family home evening. Husbands can love their wives by expressing love verbally.
Do you often tell your wife how much you love her? You have to tell her. A woman improves and is greatly blessed by that confirmation. Express gratitude for what your wife does for you. Express that love and gratitude often.
One of the great goals of true love is to help each other in those difficult times. We can bear almost everything if we have someone by our side who really loves us and who eases the burden...Love is fragile, and there are elements in life that attempt to destroy it.
There is much damage that can be done if we are not in tender and kind hands. To give ourselves completely to another person, as we do in marriage, is the step of all human relationships that require greater trust.
True love flourishes when we care more about the other person than ourselves.
That kind of love is seen in the great example of Christ's atonement, and it should be seen more in the goodness we show, the respect we give, the self-denial and courtesy we show in our relationships, do not have to be florid or extensive, a husband simply must express love in a sincere and frequent way.
Husbands also show their love for the way they treat their wife. Husband must remember that saying 'I love you' is only the beginning; yes every man must say it, say it from the heart and, most importantly, demonstrate it constantly. Husband must express it and also show love.
But, practically speaking, how is it achieved? How, honestly and sincerely, can we respect and appreciate someone so imperfect? A new spouse will have their own faults, but they are also faults. This is the reality of human relationships in the light of sin. Your spouse is a human being; therefore, it fails, and not only once or twice, but many times. Some people compare their partners with a perfect ideal.
Well, the reality is that there is only one perfect person who has walked on this earth, and he never married.
During a Tv show in Ghana at AdomTv, a woman approached me and said: "I have a very difficult marriage…."You don't need to tell me that you have a difficult marriage," I told her. "That is redundancy!" My job leads me to talk regularly with thousands of married couples and I have not found a single one that told me that their marriage has been "easy."
Gratifying? Yes. Entwined in the deepest of the soul? Absolutely. But easy? Never.
This led me to meet a guy who appreciate his wife, he is willing to participate with her in such a difficult task. Although things get very complicated, his wife is there with him. they confess their faults to each other, forgive each other, and sometimes they have to learn to forget each other's actions. What a wonder it is that another human being wants to do this with him instead of running away. It took me a moment to process what he was saying, but I finally understood and smiled. Due to the reality of sin, every marriage has difficult times. We do not marry gods or goddesses! We marry people.
How could this be easy? Once you accept that marriage is intrinsically difficult, you will not resent when my marriage becomes difficult. Disappointments and disrespect often arise from unreal expectations. It is not fair to compare your marriage with something you saw in a movie or read in a novel: those marriages are not real. And even if you see a marriage in the church, you don't know what really happens in their private moments.
A good friend of mine called Jacob once asked me this question, "what does a wife do when her husband does not love her like other people love each other?" Hmmm…I paused for a moment and then I answered him with a story a woman told me after a Tv program. This is what the woman told me, "Before we (she and the husband) got married, I read many romantic novels, and I thought that marriage would be something similar. For a while it was, but then things got cold.
A couple of years later, I returned to find that exciting love to have an adventure, which also cooled.” To such an extent, she immersed herself in the church but after a while God became boring. That's when she "fell" into another adventure that-without surprises in between-also cooled down.
In the aftermath of those two adventures, before the great wound and humiliation that only a wife can cause her husband, she said to me, consumed by the lack of love of her husband as God loves everyone. Certainly this is an extreme example, but all of us have hearts that tend to belittle and excuse our own faults, while we magnify those of our spouses.
Sometimes we need an extreme example to show how dark our own hearts really are. I have seen wives who abuse food and look with disdain on their husbands who struggle with pornography. I have seen controlling and arrogant husbands who despise wives who watch too much television. Both seem to be completely blind with respect to their own shortcomings.
We were never called to judge our spouses. We are called to love them. We are not called to count their faults with the pharisaic game of "I am holier than you"; we are called to encourage them. We have not been called to accuse them for how low they fall from the glory of God, we are called to honor and respect them. Let us learn to appreciate our imperfect spouse before the reality of our own sin, asking humbly for God's forgiveness, and realizing with all honesty that we will never be required to forgive anyone else than God has already forgiven us.
The obsession about your spouse's weaknesses does not make them disappear. Maybe you've been with that obsession for years. If so, what good has it been? Author and lecturer Leslie Vernick warns us: "Usually thinking negatively about your husband increases your dissatisfaction with him and your marriage." You will have to fight against the human tendency to obsess over your spouse's weaknesses. When I urge you to reaffirm your spouse's strengths, I am not minimizing your many weaknesses. I am encouraging you so that daily you make the spiritual decision to focus on the qualities that you appreciate in him.
But for this to be possible, you have to keep in mind that there is no human being who can always be "connected". This explains why your husband can be so considerate, careful and attentive one day, and the next day be so distant, dry and critical. You have to give your spouse space to be who he is: an imperfect human being, who has "bad" and "mediocre" days, and "disconnects". The spiritual challenge is in your tendency to define your partner for his bad days. Affirm yourself in the good; begins to define it for the good; thank him-and God-for the good things; and so you will be reinforcing the favorable. All come to marriage with their own wounds, blows and spiritual "baggage". It may be that your wife's brothers have mocked her. It is possible that an ex-girlfriend of your husband has deceived and destroyed the heart. Maybe your spouse's parents were abusive or negligent. The possibilities, painfully, are unlimited.
Before a casual relationship becomes a permanent commitment, many men and women see an injured and suffering person and think, "I want to help you." But often marriage changes those things and leads us to say, "Why does it have to be that way?" Sometimes our spouse's needs caused feelings of compassion and a desire to help. Now, those same wounds drag us towards bitterness and resentment.
Before getting married we must make an evaluation based on the character ("Do I really want to live with this person's wounds?") After time, and once the wedding ceremony is over, God challenges us to maintain an attitude of interest and support, instead of resentment and frustration.
Can you keep a soft and sweetheart about the hurts of the past and pray patiently for a long-term change? Or will you freeze your spouse's weaknesses with your prejudice, resentment, condemnation and criticism? Can you maintain an attitude of support and help instead of constantly judging? Remember: this is the spouse you chose. God does not choose our wife or partner for us. You met her and went through counselling and got married. Why will you then complain and abuse your wife. One of the greatest gift God gave us is our Will.
We made our choices and then God Bless the choice we made. How can you abuse what God has Bless? Will you remain faithful in your own choice?
There are no qualifying elements, because in a sense, respect is due to the position and not to the person.
