So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his own wife loves himself;
for no one ever hated his own flesh,
but nourishes and cherishes it,
just as Christ also does the church,
Ephesians 5:28-29
Marriages are designed by God to make us better. Husbands are to sacrifice just as Christ for his wife and the wife will respond when she understands his love for her is genuine. The wife is a reflection of her husband’s love for her. (Precepts for Life)
Yesterday was my birthday. My man came home from work with a card and with my favorite candy (Twizzlers) and he sat down in front of me as I read the card and he said, “You have been married to me your entire adult life. You entered this marriage as a mere child.”
I didn’t just enter this marriage as “a mere child”, but also as a damaged girl, a girl who considered herself damaged. I had a wall up around my heart higher and wider than the one that encircled Jericho. I loved my husband, but I know now that for a long time I didn’t really believe that he could love me.
Then on my husband’s side… he also was a man with his own hurts and his own walls.
So you had two people who came together in marriage but we shouted at each other over and through our walls. Walls that we hid behind for our own self-protection. Walls that kept us from truly becoming one with each other in all things. Walls that kept us from really trusting each other to defend and protect and provide and share and rely and unite.
Two years into our marriage I surrendered my life to my Heavenly Bridegroom. As my Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to move in with me and prepare me for my great wedding day to Him, His Spirit began to weaken my Jericho wall.
As my Jesus circled my walled heart in His sovereign silence I watched in wonder. I watched as He marched around and around my walls. I watched in horror and fear. I watched with caution and concern. I watched because at the same time I could not turn away. I watched as terror gripped my throat in my thought of a life without these walls…
I would never be safe…
How badly could I be hurt…
I will be completely destroyed…
I can’t handle anymore plunders…
There were times that I stood at the top of my wall, as my Jesus marched around in silence, that I considered the best option would be to just jump off the top of the wall and be done before the unknown came upon me… but I never could get my feet to leave the safety of my wall. So I paced my wall, and I peered over my wall at the walled city next to me and wondered if my wall fell would that city destroy me. So I paced, and wondered, and feared, and wrung my hands, and watched my Jesus march…
Then one day my Jesus shouted a great shout and my wall shook under my feet. My great Jericho wall crumbled underneath me and I slid with stumbling feet grasping for something to hold onto but my arms just flailed wildly as the broken crumbling wall carried me and slammed me with unmeasurable force into the walled city beside me… my wall had crumbled and my Jesus had just used the destruction of my wall to slam me into the walls of my husband that needed destroyed until I came to a sliding, scratching, skiding halt into the wall of the heart of my man.
It shall besiege you in all your towns
until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted
come down throughout your land…
Deuteronomy 28:52
I feared destruction…
But instead my man lifted me up and set me within the safety of his wall. Inside this wall of my husband I was able to see him in a new light… I was able to get a glimpse, an understanding as to why he had his walls. We now, no longer had to shout at each other over and through our walls… and my husband began to see the things that my walls were hiding from him before.
Its much easier to talk with each other and really get to know one another when you don’t have to shout over walls.
Many times I would begin construction on a new wall inside his walls and many times he would begin to try and rebuild his own torn down walls… but that Jesus of ours would find a way in every time and sabotage every dividing wall and again and again they would crumble down around us.
My Jesus wanted me to know and understand that I was safe within my husbands walls. My husbands walls would protect me and provide for me. My husband had always wanted me in his wall, I just didn’t have the assurance to leave the safety of my own and I believe my husband probably feared that I would destroy his last standing wall instead of resting securely within it.
As I have gone from a “mere child” in this marriage to a maturing woman, I can honestly say that I am better today than I was the day I married my husband. In the same way, I look at my husband and I can honestly say he is a better man today than he was the day I married him. God has used our marriage to make us better.
The hard part of becoming better is that sometimes in order to make something better you have to first tear it down and break it apart. Usually it has to be deconstructed in order to be reconstructed.
Kay Arthur shared in her lesson on Ephesians that “a woman is a responder“… and that is so very true. Love begets love and when a man chooses to love his wife as Christ loved the church, as he chooses to make genuine sacrifices for her, it will eventually show in her response to him. Kay also shared that “when you look at the way a man treats his wife you’re looking at what he thinks of himself if you’re looking at it biblically.”
So wife… how does your husband treat you?
How is knowing that the way he treats you is really how he deep down feels about himself change your response to his treatment? How does it change the way you in turn treat him.
And husband since your wife is a reflection of your treatment and love toward her… take a long look at her… what does her reflection say about the way you are loving her? Do you know that you are supposed to be her savior? Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her? In manifested and practical and real ways… in deed not just in words.
A couple of weeks ago our youngest daughter and myself were sick. Our daughter came into our room about 1am with a stomach ache and so we both ended up downstairs on the couch during the night… we stayed down stairs so as not to wake my husband who had to be at work at 6am. My husband came in from work that night after a 12 hour shift on the railroad and that night, knowing that our sick daughter wanted to stay close to her mother during the night, he sent us both upstairs to our bed and he slept on the couch. The couch that he openly hates to sleep on because it is a foot shorter than him.
He made this practical sacrifice out of love for me… putting my needs before his.
He at that moment loved me as Christ loved the church… and gave Himself up for her. He didn’t have to stop a speeding a bullet with his teeth to prove his manhood and love for me… he just had to sleep on the couch… and this simple act rocked my world and caused me to love even more.
He couldn’t do these things when I lived behind my own wall trying to protect myself.
I am so glad that my Jesus would not allow me to trust in my walls. I am so thankful that He marched around the walls of my heart and shouted a great shout and sent my walls crumbling around my feet and caused me to crash into the walls of my man…
He needed me and I so needed him.
I need his walls around me and he needs my heart around him…
This marriage thing is designed by God to represent His image to the world, His love to the world, and His love to us… and within this marriage we learn to love as Christ loves. Within this holy covenant… this life commitment… this promise of “I do”… we can mature and become better when we choose to trust the Word of God and put our faith and love into action.
We now work on one wall together, this one wall that protects our city, our marriage.
So we built the wall and the whole wall was joined together…
Nehemiah 4:6
God has laid a proven path out before us in His Word… and when a man and woman come together in marriage with their lives built on the foundation of Christ and both surrender to the destructing and reconstructing hand of the Potter… choosing to obey the Word and walk according to the Spirit… the only walls that will fall will be the ones that separate, not the ones that protect.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain,
and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
having the glory of God.
Her brilliance was like a very costly stone,
as a stone of crystal-clear jasper.
It had a great and high wall…
Revelation 21:10-12