Love Believes the Best

“I am ready to believe the best of my husband.”

There are two parts to this.  One is the obvious and seemingly the most difficult.  When we are full of hurt and pain – “believe the best in my husband? But you don’t know what he does behind my back!”

But the other part is really the most important – “I am ready!”  How do I get ready? How do I prepare to believe the best of my husband?

We “ready” ourselves with the Word.  As we begin to get the Word in us and the love of God, it causes love to bubble up in our hearts.  But we have to let that love bubble up and all over our husband.  As mentioned before, what do we say over our husbands?  How do we talk to our husbands?

“My husband is strengthened in his inner man.  My husband makes right choices.” We can’t magnify his faults and imagine all the things he could be doing or secrets he could be keeping.  No, we say “Greater is He that is in my husband than he that’s in the world.”

“I make tremendous power available to my husband to choose the Word, to choose life!” Pray in the Holy Spirit as you lift him in prayer.  You don’t know what he may be going through at work or how the enemy may be attacking his mind.  Are you going to join sides with the enemy and attack your husband too with your own words and a spirit of anger?

Colossians 3:12 says “Clothe yourselves therefore, as God's own chosen ones (His own picked representatives), [who are] purified and holy and well-beloved [by God Himself, by putting on behavior marked by] tenderhearted pity and mercy, kind feeling, a lowly opinion of yourselves, gentle ways, [and] patience [which is tireless and long-suffering, and has the power to endure whatever comes, with good temper].”

This is great news! While the above instruction from the Word may look impossible, God said it and He never gives us instruction that is impossible.  We only need to realize it is not in our ability that we can be tenderhearted.  It is not in our ability that we can give mercy and have gentle ways.  It is not in our own ability that we have tireless patience and a good temper.  No.  These things all come in   His ability. 

We need to remind ourselves of Philippians 4:13, “I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency].”

I can be a doer of His Word not in my own strength but in His.  As we continually look to Him and remind ourselves where our strength comes from, that His nature is in us and as we develop that nature by reading His Word and praying in the Holy Spirit, it becomes easier and easier to be a doer of the Word.  But if we approach His Word as if it were impossible, you will be right and you won’t have that change in you or in your marriage that you desire.

© 2011 Michelle Serna