Loving Your Husband

For the next few weeks we will be highlighting God’s purpose and plan for women found in Titus 2:4-5. Contained in these 2 verses are 7 qualities, 4 of which we will consider. Loving Your Husband; Loving Your Children; Being a Keeper of the Home and Submission. Regardless of the season of life you may find yourself in God’s Word gives clear instructions as to how we are to conduct ourselves in each season of our lives.

We will begin this series talking about our highest relational priority: our husband. We will learn that this love Paul was exhorting the older women to teach the younger women was a warm, tender, compassionate, sweet love towards their husband.

As wives we are faced with this challenge; getting caught up in the day to day responsibilities of serving our families and loving our children to the neglect of cultivating this special kind of love that Paul is referring to. This love is not a dutiful kind of love rather it is a love full of pleasure and enjoyment.

Joe and I have been married for 29 years now. I was barely 21 and very unprepared, yet very prideful, independent, self-sufficient, and spoiled to say the least. To my shame I felt as if the world revolved around me and life became all about me. Boy, was I ever in for a rude awakening.

Perhaps, this is why the apostle Paul thought it was of paramount importance that the older women teach the younger women how to love their husbands. I remember hearing someone say, “The Bible is radically counter-cultural to the self-centered worldview we have perhaps bought in to”. How true. This self-centered worldview has been spoon-fed to young girls through fairy tales and force-fed to young women through movies, magazines and music. And at some point, hopefully, sooner than later we have to learn to step out of the princess spotlight and learn how to love well in the way God defines love. A wedding isn’t the kick-off to Happily Ever After. It’s really only the beginning into a new season, with new and different opportunities to demonstrate Christ-like love that wasn’t present before we were married.

Author Douglas Wilson writes in his book Her Hand in Marriage, “Problems in marriage are always the result of self-centeredness.” You see, well before getting married one should spend time in preparation for marriage, even if he never gets married.
Why? Because preparation for Christian marriage is basically the same preparation for Christian living. As Christians we are to prepare for marriage by learning self-denial, subduing our pride, and putting our neighbor first. We all bring expectations into our marriage, right ones and wrong ones.

The better way is to glean from the wisdom and experience of those who have gone before us. The better way is to benefit from the training and instruction the older women with Godly character have to offer. And it is this better way we see highlighted in our Titus passage as well as John 13:34-35 and I Corinthians 13.

So please join us tomorrow as we kick off this segment on Loving Our Husband.
~ Rhonda Calabello