How To Make Your Marriage Work: Love, Like Truly Love, Your Spouse

DAILY VITAMIN

- How To Make Your Marriage Work: Love, Like Truly Love, Your Spouse

“And you husbands show the same kind of love to your wives as Christ showed to the church…” (Ephesians 5:25 TLB)

Love is a duty you owe to all whom you hold dear and also to those who you don’t. The scripture advises us to love without dissimulation (Romans 12:9), and here it tells us to love our partners that way specifically as Christ did with the church. The question then becomes “what did Christ do?”

First, He sacrificed for her; gently corrected it, and meekly put up with her till she fully learned the correction. He understood her weakness and in the midst of it all, stood as her strength. Like He said to Paul, my strength is made perfect in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). But today I’d like us to focus on understanding.

Love is understanding; and understanding is the only way we can learn to tolerate each other. I have always said that there is no perfect marriage with perfect people, just a marriage blessed with compatible and understanding partners. No one is perfect, except God. For instance, even when God personally tailor-made a wife for man, the blame game still came up in no time. And that was a squared peg in a squared hole model. But sometimes, all we need for a relationship to thrive is to be able to round when we need to be and to be squared when we need to be. So, believe me there is no perfect partner, but if we truly love each other, there can be a close to perfect union. That is exactly how our relationship is with Christ. We are not perfect; we make mistakes every once in a while even when we don’t want to; yet He calls us perfect. Not because we are but because His love makes us so. His love hides our flaws, covers our nakedness as He did with the first men; and as such when the outsiders look at us, they see glory, failing to notice that before all that shining all there was was a glowing darkness.

You see, love wins, when despite the shortcomings and deserved chastisement, we don’t focus on the lowlights of the other, but on what we like most about them and breed that into greater fruition. People are like trees, and with each season a new flaw shows, but love covers these flaws if we are willing. It doesn’t heedlessly criticize, it affectionately corrects; it patiently tolerates in hope that out of this character debris will rise the beauty of divinity. Note, I’m not telling you to enslave yourself to someone who doesn’t want to change. No; but I’m telling you to love them regardless, because that’s the only way they’d ever change. It’s how God changed me, and how I’m sure He changed you too. And that’s the kind of love He wants us to shower on our spouses.

So, are you one of those who rain insults on your spouse based on how they look or act? Stop it now. Bad seeds never yield good outcomes, even though it’s only as meagre a thing as words. Speak good to—and of—them and let God do the rest. Love isn’t love if it only breathes in the good times. Therefore, be kind to them even when they don’t supposedly deserve it. (But remember they always do, because love is a debt you can never truly balance. It must be given at all times.) Treat them as you would the person you hope they learn to become, and in doing that you’d bring out the best in them eventually. See it as a hen does: she heats up her egg with passionate affection because she knows there’s new life in it even if she can’t see it at that moment. But she knows. And in time, that life breaks forth. That’s what love does. It causes all things to break forth. Hence, know today that new life lies in your relationship with that partner of yours and love them in light of that; love them completely.