Love: A Suffered Wrong

Love pays no attention to a suffered wrong.  Yes ladies, this is really in the Bible.  This is really the love nature of God. God doesn't keep score.  When you ask Him for forgiveness and you truly mean it, the Word says He forgets it and it’s as if it never happened.  He blots it out. 

This may seem practically impossible if you have ever been truly hurt by someone.  But "all things are possible with God." (Matthew 19:26) 

Keeping score is fun when you are playing a game and it can even be exciting when your son's soccer team is about to win, but it has absolutely no place in a marriage.  Taking account of a suffered wrong by your husband and then conveniently bringing it up and lording it over his head every time you want to win an argument is not walking in God's love and it will ultimately drive a permanent wedge between you and your husband.  "But remember when you did such and such to me?" 

Proverbs 19:11 says "Good sense makes a man restrain his anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression or an offense."  The Message Bible says in Galations 6:1-3:

 Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day's out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ's law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.

Verses 4 and 5 of that same chapter go on to give further instruction for you.

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

When we realize we are also not perfect and that we would want someone else to lovingly overlook our faults, it makes it easier for us to do the same for others.  How much more we should treat our husbands right?  He is the one who offered to share his life with you for the rest of your life.  This is not someone we see once on the street and go on with our lives.  We are to bear one another's burdens, lift them up and encourage them in their growth in Christ.

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Love Is Not Touchy

Continuing on in 1 Corinthians 12:5 we see God's love in us is not touchy.  What does it mean "touchy".  Do you ever find yourself exclaiming in unbelief at a mere suggestion made by your husband? 

Are you easily upset, irritable, quick-tempered or sensitive, or all of the above?  Then you are touchy.  How about moody? Being moody all comes down to one thing.  You are being ruled by your emotions instead of by Jesus instead of your Lord and Savior.  When you get caught up by emotion and let emotion rule your life, you are letting emotions be your lord.  You are saying you have more confidence in your emotions than you do in Jesus, the Word.

When we are ruled by emotions, we think it gives us permission to say everything we are thinking and feeling.  But the fact is, moodiness is not a characteristic of God's love.  When we are up and happy one minute and angry and irritable the next, our husbands don't know how to respond to us and frankly, don't want to be around us.  And nowhere in the Bible does it say that women are just more emotional than men so it's okay to behave like this.  If God did make women more sensitive, it was so we could be more compassionate towards others and to be able to be a help meet to our husbands, not so we could use it against them and to repel them.

We teach our kids to be kind, to share, to listen and not hurt other people's feelings and then we turn around and do the opposite when it comes to our husbands.  Actions speak louder than words and our kids are watching us.  They will not only pick up your good habits but also your bad ones.

Again, we must filter our actions and words through the Word of God in order to renew our minds and change our thinking about God's love and how to operate in it.  We can do this with the help of the Holy Spirit.  We must only ask.  The Word says He is our Helper and Counselor.  How long could you do your job without proper tools?  How well could you do it?  The Holy Spirit is the tool to help us live our lives through the word.  Love only makes being married sweeter, never sour.  Love only brings blessings, never curses.  Love only builds up, never tears down.

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Your Own Rights

What does the Bible have to say about your rights?  It says to never insist on them when it comes to love.  God made us to have our own will.  He wants us to follow His will because it always brings blessing and increase, but He will never force His will on us. This is the nature of God.  So now that we are born again and have the nature of God on the inside of us, we are able to love God's way.  That's what the love scriptures in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 tell us: how to love God's way.  It wouldn't be there if it weren't possible.

Not insisting on our own rights goes against human nature for us.  But thankfully, we also have a new nature - God's nature.  It doesn't mean that the moment we became born again our old nature disappeared.  No, we must overcome that old nature with a renewed way of thinking and realize all that is within us.  The Greater One is on the inside of us.  We have to draw it out so others can see it.  We do this by changing the way we speak and think.  We must know that what the Bible tells about us is true.

Let's go to a somewhat controversial scripture in the Bible.  It is only controversial because many people take it out of context and they try to make it fit a situation that has no God in it.  Ephesians 5:22 says:

Wives, be subject (be submissive and adapt yourselves) to your own husbands as [a service] to the Lord.

This does not say "Wives, be a doormat for your husband and do everything he says even if it is vile and not of the Lord."

What this verse does say is to be adaptable to your husband.  Remember that God did not intend to have our husbands to be exactly like us and it is not our responsibility to try to make them just like us.  They are different for a reason.  If they were the same, then one of us is not necessary.  But I know if we will think carefully, we would find many strengths in our husbands that we ourselves do not possess and vice versa.  We are to take pleasure in each others strengths for a mutually beneficial outcome, not to compete or say "my way or the highway!"

Adapting yourself to your husband creates peace.  It creates an atmosphere of cooperativeness.  Once you determine what helps him best flow in life, you can adapt the household needs around it to create a better and more efficient way to get things done. 

For example, when your husband comes home from work and needs to unwind by watching the news, give him that time before tasking him with taking out the trash, helping with the kids, and whatever plans you have for him.  It seems small but it gives him time to prepare for the many things to do. 

When applying the "submit" verse, you must always review the verse preceding it, 21:

Be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ.

So the Bible never tells us it is a one way street, wives not only have to be subject to their husbands, but we must be subject to each other.  But you will never get anywhere in your marriage by trying to make your husband be subject to you by insisting on your own rights.  It is not done in love.  It can't be because the Bible clearly states Love does not insist on its own rights (I Corinthians 13:5).

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Confessions Over Your Spouse

Insert your spouse's name in each blank.  Confess over your spouse whenever you are tempted to think on negative things about your spouse.  While everyone has their own will, when you pray the Word of God over them (earnestly and sincerely), there is tremedous power made available for them to choose the Word of God (James 5:16b).

I surround ________ in faith and love.

I thank you Father that:

• I have peace in my mind and home
• __________ loves to serve You
• __________ has a call on his life and he is consistently and persistently moving toward it
• __________ has a heart for You and Your purpose
• __________ never gives up on that which is right and of excellence.
• __________ has a sound mind and has great peace (2 Tim. 1:7)
• __________ is found perfect and complete in all Your will and Your plan (Col 4:12)
• __________’s love abounds more and more in knowledge and in all judgment (Phil. 1:9)
• __________ approves things that are excellent (Phil. 1:10)
• __________ is sincere and without offence (Phil. 1:10)
• __________ is filled with the fruits of righteousness (Phil. 1:11)
• __________ is strengthened with might in his inner man (Eph. 3:16)
• You make __________ to increase his love toward me and all men (1 Thes. 3:12)
• Jesus is glorified in __________ (2 Thes. 1:12)
• __________ is rooted and grounded in love (Eph.  3:17)
• __________ has a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You and __________’s eyes are open to that he know the hope of Your calling and his inheritance in the saints and __________ knows Your exceeding power working in him (Eph 1:16-19)

Love is Not Rude

Do you tolerate complete strangers being rude to you or your family?    I know I don’t.  How about if your kids are rude to you?  You better not tolerate it or you will have a heap of trouble as they grow older.

How is it then we feel perfectly okay with being rude to our husband?  Verse 5 says love “is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly.

Look up "rude" in the dictionary and you find: disrespectful, offensive, bad-mannered and vulgar.  Now ask yourself if you would like others to be disrespectful, offensive, bad-mannered and vulgar to you.  I know, I know, it sneaks up on you.  Certainly you did not attract your husband by being all these things.  Now we just have to "catch" ourselves in the act and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit to keep you from saying the first rude thing that comes to your mind.

"But I don't want to be a doormat.  He says the same things and worse to me!” you might say.  I realize that and it doesn't make logical sense, however, you will find the less often you engage in these "unprofitable" discussions, the less often they will happen.  Your husband will start to notice a change in you.

Let's look at Ephesians 4:29 (Amplified)

Let no foul or polluting language, nor evil word nor unwholesome or worthless talk [ever] come out of your mouth, but only such [speech] as is good and beneficial to the spiritual progress of others, as is fitting to the need and the occasion, that it may be a blessing and give grace (God's favor) to those who hear it.

            So you need to always line up what comes out of your mouth with what the bible says.  Is what is coming out of your mouth beneficial to your husband?  Will it help his spiritual progress?  Does it give blessings and grace?  If not, it should not be said to him or about him.

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Love is Not Boastful

Looking further into 1 Corinthians 13, verse 4 we see that love is not boastful.  This is so important in a marriage.  Marriage was meant to be a completion of each other not a competition.  Have you ever found yourself saying to your spouse “Didn’t I tell you that was going to happen?”  In a way, this is boasting.  You may feel angry as you say it thinking why didn’t he just listen to me, but what your husband is hearing is “I’m smarter than you and I’m better than you and you can’t ever do anything right so just don’t try!”

            Now does it sound like boasting?  So many times we say mean things to each other and we don’t realize we are saying it just so we can look better than the other person.  We do it not only with our husband but can tend to do it with everyone unless we keep that in check.  It is a subconscious thing.  If you look carefully at kids, they do it all the time because they are trying to gain acceptance and acknowledgment and we have taught them they can get that by knowing a lot of stuff and knowing it well (school).

Here’s another example of boasting.  You are at work or at lunch with your girlfriends and you start “telling” on your spouse.  “I can’t believe how dumb he is.  I told him it wouldn’t work but he just had to do it!”  Here you are trying to get agreement from your friends about how much smarter and better you are than your husband.  This is not going to improve your marriage but instead just assist in furthering it down the road to divorce.  You must watch what you say over your spouse (more on that in a later blog).

I have to remind my kids about this frequently.  I tell them to not say mean things to or about each other because all they are trying do is make themselves look better so they can feel better about themselves when in reality, it just makes them look worse.  Keep that in mind the next time you want to say something to or about your husband.  Are you just being boastful?  Let’s just choose love instead.

© 2011 Michelle Serna

Love - Patience

The first thing we see in verse 4 of 1 Corinthians 13 is that “Love endures long and is patient and kind.” 

You might say “What? Are you serious?  I am way past ‘patient’ in this marriage and as far as ‘kind’ is concerned, when was the last time he was kind to me?”  Yeah, this scripture sounds great printed in beautiful calligraphy and framed on my wall in my house, but actually doing it?  That’s a whole different matter!

Patience has to be developed.  It doesn’t just come overnight.  Maybe you have children.  Do you remember as just an infant how inpatient they became if they didn’t have food right away?  But hopefully they don’t stay that way.  You teach them to develop their patience and wait for their food to be prepared and served.  What would you think to see your grown child drive up to a restaurant and just start crying and screaming for food?  As foolish as this is to imagine, we have at times become so impatient with our husbands, we don’t even try to put any restraint on it.

It takes renewing your mind with the Word of God to help you develop patience.  It takes reminding yourself of what He gave to you already when His Son died for you.  Look at Romans 15:5 (Amplified):

Now may the God Who gives the power of patient endurance (steadfastness) and Who supplies encouragement, grant you to live in such mutual harmony and such full sympathy with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus.

You must remind yourself of what our Heavenly Father gave us: the power of patient endurance and encouragement.  “Thank you Father for giving me the patience to deal with this situation and the endurance to handle other situations that arise so that I may live in mutual harmony with my husband.  Thank you for supplying me with encouragement as I am led by the Holy Spirit in this situation.”

© 2011 Michelle Serna