Loving Your Husband - Saturday February 12, 2011
...as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. I Peter 3:2
To me, loving your husband and respecting your husband are synonymous. I've learned, and continue to be reminded, that respect is the foundation of love. If a man feels respected, he feels loved-period. The all-familiar Ephesians 5 passage suggests this, as it instructs husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands.
As a young wife, I wanted to know what respect looked like, so in the early days of our marriage, I turned to 1 Peter 3:2 in my Amplified Bible and found some action verbs to chew on: "You are to feel for him all that reverence includes-to respect, defer to, revere him; to honor, esteem, appreciate, prize, and in the human sense adore him; and adore means to admire, praise, be devoted to, deeply love and enjoy your husband."
Wow! I could stop right now and let us wives mull over and apply each of these verbs for a few weeks and watch our husbands' faces light up and our marriages sizzle!
Honestly, though, it is so easy to get distracted with life and all that it holds and not admire, adore, praise, and deeply love our husbands. Selfishness comes so easily, and with it dissatisfactions. Admittedly, one of my biggest tendencies as a wife has been to want to change my husband. You know, tweak him in all the spots where I think he may be deficient.
My husband often shares an insightful joke, a warning for engaged couples. "What are three things that are always present at a wedding? The aisle, the altar, and a hymn. Put them together, and what do you get? Aisle, altar, hymn"-translation: "I'll alter him!" Not the best plan!
Submitted by:
Dawn Bovenmyer
Stonebrook Community Church
Ames, Iowa
One-Year Reading Plan:
Exodus 34:1-35:9
Matthew 27:15-31
Psalms 33:12-22
Proverbs 9:1-6
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