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HEAVEN’S PLAN for Life on Earth
“What It’s Like Living According to God’s Plan”
His Plan for the Husband and Wife Relationship – Ephesians 5:21-33
Let’s get to the husband.
v. 25 Husbands, love your wives, even as also Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her;
Now, the definition of the word “love” today is the problem. Men say “I love my wife.”
Men it’s time to define love and we’re going to define it a whole lot differently than probably we’ve been living it.
Love involves FOUR DIMENSIONS. We can’t tell our wife that we have agapé—that’s the word here—love for her.
Love is produced by the Holy Spirit, unless we have gotten involved in the spiritual, the emotional, the mental and the physical aspects of the relationship.
A lot of guys equate love with only the fourth—the physical.
It’s hitting on one cylinder and there are four:
Spiritual—Emotional—Mental—Physical.
The SPIRITUAL—we are developing a relationship that has great spiritual ramifications. The minute we start praying together, there is going to be some oil in that marriage that hasn’t been there.
Read the Word together and pray together and watch it begin to smoke. It will be fantastic!
That’s the first priority in the relationship. That’s what Paul’s saying. It’s like Christ and the church—spiritual.
What about the EMOTIONAL? The emotional is the phone calls. It’s saying, “Honey I love you. I don’t deserve someone as wonderful as you. I appreciate what you do.”
Hiding little notes, doing special things—flowers, candy—all the stuff we did during courtship. We don’t have any trouble during courtship satisfying the emotional needs. It’s only after we get them in the corral that we have problems with emotional things.
A woman is an emotional creature. And if we really love her, she expects to see demonstrations of that to satisfy her emotional needs.
Thirdly it’s MENTAL. As we think in your heart, so we are.
We have to deal with the mental. We have to reinforce ourselves with thoughts that are positive so when the conflict comes there’s constructive involvement rather than destructive bitterness that can never be brought back to a place of healing.
For some strange reason we get our minds off in left-field and the mental part is neglected.
When the spiritual, the emotional and the mental are on target, the physical is a piece of cake.
Submission will take place if we will do these FOUR THINGS. We won’t have to work at it and they won’t have to say “I’m going to do it!” It’ll happen. It’ll work.
1. Assume the SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP. Start to pray and read the Word together.
2. Learn to be a SERVANT. Jesus Christ came and He said “I came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give my life a ransom for many.” (ref. Matt. 20:28)
Start being a servant. Start around the house doing some of that stuff that was delegated totally to the wife. Learning to be a servant—SERVANT LEADERSHIP.
3. Concentrate on focusing on the wife’s needs of SECURITY and
4. SELF-IMAGE.
3. SECURITY. Let her know that no matter what happens, you’ll always be there.
4. SELF-IMAGE. Always make her feel special. Make her feel like and know that she is just indispensable.
Put those four things together. Submission will not be a problem in marriage.
WOMEN ARE RESPONDERS.
We get the idea that love involves the tyranny of CONTROL rather than the SACRIFICE of our interests for her best good.
Someone said:
Sacrifice is the thrill of giving the best we have to the one we love the most.
(source unknown)
(Taken from Don's messages in Ephesians)
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