“He who finds a wife finds a good thing, And obtains favor from the Lord.” (Proverbs 18:22, NKJV).
In the beginning as God created the heavens and the earth, day by day he looked at what he had made and declared it to be good. But it was not good that man was alone. Man was made in God’s image, but he was alone, and it was not good. So God brought all of the animals to Adam, and as you would guess, there was none found that could be a suitable companion. So God did what I think he was planing to do all along: gave Adam the gift of a wife. And when God saw all that he had made, male and female, he said that it was very good.
Every day I learn more about myself, about who God is and the nature of love, because of my relationship with my wife. Ephesians 5 begins by telling us to be imitators of God and to “walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us.” And it goes on to say to husbands specifically, “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (vs.25).
Day by day I learn about grace and mercy, sacrifice and compromise, passion and commitment. I see the shortcoming in my own character, and I see the grace with which my wife doesn’t see. We learn about our love languages, how we best give and receive love. We see how Christ gave up all he had for us while we were his enemies, and we understand sacrifice. We see the emotion of Christ, our example, weeping over Jerusalem, enduring the cross for the joy of being with us, and we understand passion and commitment when things get hard.
It’s not all roses and candles every day. We are still human, after all. But we are learning and loving and growing. And we’re finding that when both of us have the attitude, “everything I am and have and will be is yours,” expecting nothing in return, our marriage seem to do pretty well.
As Christians we read God’s word, and we take in his instructions for us about relationships, and how we show His love, both as married believers and as single Christians, to our spouses, to our co-workers, to the person behind the counter in the checkout line, to the stranger in traffic.
“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, NKJV).