A Little Consideration

When I return to the Word it is easy to see why a Christian is called to be humble and selfless. We have done nothing right and yet have everything good.  I have done nothing right and have everything good, so I have nothing to boast in and everything to give.  I have been able to tell, most of the time, when Laura or I have been out of the Word for a time because we begin to veer from these traits.  We both become selfishly focsed and desire that the other would meet our needs and be attentive to us.  We both begin to draw attention to ourselves to build ourselves up.  In this moment we begin to crawl back onto the throne of our hearts and deny the Lord glory so that we might receive it for ourselves.

This realization has fleshed out a truth that I knew, but did not fully understand. I agreed with, but could not give a satisfactory answer as to why.  This truth was presented to Laura and I during our premarital counselin- The most important thing that we can bring to our relationship is our personal relationships with the Lord.  By falling more and more in love with the Lord and understanding more and more of who he is and what he has done I lose sight of myself.  Once I lose sight of myself, the Lord can do anything He wants through me. The moment I resist sanctification and the Spirit’s prompting to act is the same moment I become aware of and consider my own desires again.

I always seem to maintain a level of skepticism toward an idea as long as it remains theoretical. Once it is tested and proven on some level, an idea begins to gain my allegiance.  This is the same way I felt at first with the book Love and Respect. This was not because of the content, but just because I am empirically minded and skeptical.  My skepticism has almost subsided since I realized something and that something is that the one thing that melts my heart more than anything else is Laura's consideration for me.  She maintains an awareness of the things that she says and the attitude that she maintains towards me and she does not wait for me to address something for us to talk about it.  Her consideration of me shows me respect and it comes through selflessness that can only be maintained by a proper mindset fixed on Truth. Her respect for me transposes to respect for our relationship.  When we both place value on our relationship we both take ownership and we become teammates.  Laura does not wait for me to address an issue hoping that it will pass by. She takes ownership as well and we talk about it.  One reason that this means so much to me is because there is a lot of truth in the fact that a man can be crushed and nobody ever know.  Even the most masculine and solid men have a hard time talking about the things that, in some way or another, hurt their feelings because we are not taught to be, much less how to become, vulnerable.  In my mind that is to victimize myself, but when Laura wants to know how I responded to something she said it gives me freedom to explain without being a victim.  When Laura considers and respects me there is a level of love that wells up inside me that I cannot anticipate.  It is a self-feeding cycle, either for intimacy or for distance.

When I show Laura that I love her and she shows that she respects me, I long to be with her. I thoroughly enjoy being with her because it becomes a safe place for me.  I have also noticed the opposite to be true.  The only times that I have been resistant to Laura (spending time with her or meeting her needs) are when she becomes selfishly focused because of time spent away from Scripture.  I become the same way.  When I am apart from Scripture I become selfish and demand respect and recognition for what I am doing at the present time.  Left to ourselves we resist each other. This is because whatever gets our attention is the only thing that will keep our attention. 

Ephesians 5:33

Ephesians 5:22-33-> thoughts on love and submission

A good friend of mine that I highly respect once told me over lunch that if he ever writes a book pertaining to Christianity he would open by saying "there is nothing new in the book that you are about to read."  In the spirit of being creatively (or not so creatively) repetitive I want to start by saying that there is nothing new in this or any post that you will read here.  Laura pointed out again tonight that there are some people that learn by reading or being taught and others learn by processing, writing things out or teaching and I am the latter.  With that being said most of what I say will probably just be repeating Scripture and trying to wrap my mind around it.  I am sure it will be painfully nonlinear at times but just hang in there with me, I will try to bring it full circle.  So here we go :)

I learned a while ago that there is no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to Bible teaching.  We do not need to look in the most obscure of places to try and pull out some creative presentation of the Gospel.  There is nothing wrong with the thorough simplicity of John 3:16 and further more I have grown to love the simple, straight forward texts.  In my reading on marriage I started with the classic marriage text of Ephesians 5:22-33.  When I have read this part of Ephesians I have always been left thinking in a cycle; husbands love your wives, wives submit to your husbands, and then husbands will be better able to love their wives and wives will be better able to submit to their husbands.  As I have continued to think about this text I have found two main flaws in my thinking: first, there is not an initiation within the cycle, second, one of these actions does not lead to the other.  Let me try and explain.

There is not an initiation within the cycle.  The more accurate way to put those two actions is "Husbands, love as Christ loved" and" Wives, submit as unto the Lord."  A man cannot love his wife until he has learned how he is loved by Jesus and in the same way a woman cannot submit to her husband until she has learned to trust the Lord and fully submit to him. These things are personal to the husband's life and personal to the wife's and then they bring it to their marriage.  I feel as though we, as Christians, try to impose the outward signs of Christianity on ourselves when we have no source for those signs to come from.  For a long time I would read  texts that say " do this and don't do that" and I felt like I had to make myself conform to those things.  This never works.  I have come to understand that these actions will only come from a heart that is in love with Jesus and humbled by what He has done for us.  That love and humility then naturally brings about the actions that resemble Christ and his ministry only causing to love him more, the beginning of a beautiful cycle.

Actions lead to another.  This may not seem incorrect at a quick read through but I believe it is.  If the husband is to love ad Christ loved then he is to love unconditionally.  There should be nothing that can cause him to love his wife more but rather only cause him to fall in love with her more/again.  CS Lewis makes the distinction in Mere Christianity in his chapter on "Christian Marriage" that being in love is an emotion that we do not have control over but loving someone is a decision that is made every day to love them and to put their well-being first in all of your decisions.  In light of that concept there is nothing that a woman can do to make her husband choose to love her more but rather only have him be deeper in love with her. Wives are instructed to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord and to that I would ask is there any situation or point in time that we, as Christians, are not to submit to the Lord?  I don't ask this in an overbearing, authoritative tone but if we love the Lord as we should there should be nothing but a desire to do what he asks because we have perfect trust in the person of God.  This same concept applies to the marriage relationship, the only thing that is different is that God is perfect and therefore will never let you down while a husband is a fallen man so somebody is going to be hurt somewhere along the way.

Marriage seems as though it is a pretty simple equation but this basic arithmetic has turned into a sort of differential equations due to the fall and the effects of sin.  I trust Laura with everything that I have and I know that somewhere along the way she will hurt me, possibly deeper than anybody else because she will be closest to me and because of the fall.  I know that she is not perfect but I am in love with her and if for some reason that stops I have made the choice to love her until my final breath.

T