Erich Wenis and have always had a pretty good marriage. After all that has happened thus far, I know our marriage is one of the Lord’s most awesome instruments of encouragements and a real opportunity to receive His blessings. I know one of our greatest joys is to nourish our sacred union for Him, for our children, and those who are called into the married life too. His Love, Strength, Devotion, Resilience and Gentleness can be made known through it.
I’m following a couple of devotionals on marriage on my Youversion app and these were good…
(I came across this one a few minutes after I wrote “A Love Story,” in which I ended saying “All I have to do is give up my pride.” This being the first reading I found, it was pretty cool confirmation I was right on track.)
“Marriage is hard: we’re prideful
Have you ever seen the sappy Ryan O’Neal/Ali MacGraw movie romance entitled “Love Story”? MacGraw played a character who was dying, and at her bedside O’Neal, choking and tearful, said he was sorry. MacGraw then unloaded a line that has done a lot of damage to relationships and marriages everywhere: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Apologizing is hard work. Apologizing and changing your behaviors is even harder, and what makes it so hard is pride. Dating and marriage always to some degree involve each person’s struggling for control. When your behaviors are driven by pride, you want to win every argument, always be right, see difficulties as your partner’s fault, bring up your partner’s admitted failures of the past, and explain away or deny your own sins and weaknesses.
You need other people’s input and critique to know how you sound, how you look, how your actions affect other people. In humility realize that you aren’t quite as brilliant and infallible as you think you are: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you” (Romans 12:3).
When your spouse has an issue with something you’ve said or done, listen twice and think three times before you say anything. It may just be that the best thing you can say is, “I’m sorry.”
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This one is from this morning…
“Humility Leads To Intimacy
Another key component of intimacy, as we read today, is humility. Humility leads us closer to one another as we prefer our spouse over ourselves. Too often we can think of marriage as a point-scoring game where one of us has to “win;” unfortunately, if one of you “wins,” you both lose. In marriage, you either both win or neither of you wins. This is why you must approach one another humbly and honestly, ready to serve one another. Nothing will bring you more intimacy in your marriage than humbling yourself and owning up to every flaw, frustration, and imperfection you have. Once you do this, then you can both extend and receive grace to one another. And when you do that? Just watch how deep you go.”
Ok, my share is over. Back to Zzzzzz….
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