L.O.V.E.

L= Living for the Lord (First)

     Living for each other (Second)

O=Overlooking each others faults

V=Viewing each other in the light of Gods word and way

E=Expectations - Don't set them to high and give them to the Lord

I am not at all an expert on marriage.  I learn from my mistakes, and I listen to the biblical advise given to me and my husband by those that I have come to trust.  So begins this post on L.O.V.E.

Our pastor and his wife celebrated 40 years of marriage this past Sunday...40 YEARS!!!  I could only say WOW, as is my reaction almost every time I hear of long lasting marriages.  I have a hard time seeing my husband and I married that long.  I pray that we are, but as I have mentioned in previous post, my husband and I have gone through hell and back in a hand basket in regards to our marriage.  So what makes a marriage work?  What causes couples to fight the hard fight to save their marriages from the grips of the enemies hands? I hope I can answer those questions, using my experience and looking at Gods word.

Today I am looking at that all familiar passage found in Ephesians 5:22-33.  I know its that dreaded passage about wives submitting to our husbands.  I will be totally up front and honest with each of you reading this...I am not at all the submissive wife.  Those who are reading my blog that have counseled me and my husband, and those who know me well, know that I am far from being submissive.  I speak my mind, I speak from my heart.  I am very vocal.  I hold back nothing when it comes to telling someone how I feel.  I will say here now, that this is an area in which I have come to ask Christ to work with me on.  Do I think that as wives we need to live under the thumb of our husbands...NO!.  Do I think that as wives we need to live under the direction of our husbands...YES!  This passage of scripture talks about what a godly marriage is suppose to look like.  This is what I want for my marriage!  So many people stop at that word "submissive" and fail to look any further at this passage.  A wife can only be submissive as long as she is married to a godly man, who tries to love his wife as Christ loves the Church.  Marriage is a description of how Christ loves, protects and leads the Church.

So while looking at this passage in Ephesians and the above acronym let's begin to explore how the two fit together. 

L= Living for the Lord (First),Living for each other (Second) 

First and for most our individual lives, and the life of our marriage must be living for the Lord.  We can not have a marriage, that reflects a godly marriage if our own lives don't reflect that we live according to the will of God.  If we are not living a life that reflects the love and will of God towards others then our marriage will not reflect that either.  If we ourselves as individuals are not spending time growing our relationship with Christ, then our marriage suffers and we can not have strong healthy marriages.  We have to choose to live for the Lord daily, and once we do that then that will begin to reflect in our marriages and our marriages will be able to handle the storms that come.  Once we begin living for the Lord, then we can begin living for each other.  This will reflect in our marriages as a respect for each other, no matter the trials.  If we don't respect, we don't love.

 

O=Overlooking each others faults

 

To overlook means to fail to notice.  I am horrible at this on my own.  I notice every mistake my husband makes.  So how do we "fail to notice" each others faults.  We focus our eyes on Christ.  We begin to look to Christ and not look at our spouse standing in front of us.  We have to choose to look to Christ for our everything.  Why?  As long as we look at our spouse standing in front of us, and expect them to meet every one of our needs they fail.  No amount of anything, yelling, ignoring, whatever will keep them from failing us. We must first choose to focus our eyes on Christ.  David tells us in Psalm 121 to lift up our eyes because that is where our help comes from.  So if we are focusing our eyes on Christ, we can overlook the faults of our spouse.  This is something you must choose to do daily!  Guess what...If we are living for the Lord and choosing to make this decision daily, the ability to overlook our spouses faults will be easier.  Why?  Because our eyes will be focused on what they need to be focused on from the time we get up to the time we go to bed, and that is on our Lord.

 

 

V=Viewing each other in the light of Gods word and way

 

This is something that all couples must strive to do daily.  Marriages can not survive the attacks of the enemy as long as the marriage is not grounded in the word of God.  Just like your individual relationship with Christ, your marriage needs to have a relationship with Christ as well.  Marriages are only as strong as the word they are built on.  If your marriage sees attack after attack from the enemy, maybe it is time to begin to start building your marriage on the word of God.  Get into the word!  Once you begin to view each other in the word and the way of God, then you can begin to do battle with the enemy.  The enemy is busy at work, destroying marriages and families.  This is an area in which he knows he can easily win.  Why?  Because so many couples just throw up their hands and say I am done, I no longer want to do this.  You want to know something...I believe that if your marriage begins to seek the word of the Lord daily, the battles you face will not overcome you.  The enemy is scared of Gods word.  Begin to seek God's word for your marriage together, and see the battles that have plagued your marriage begin to subside.  I know that this is an area that my husband and I certainly need to work on.

 

 

E=Expectations - Don't set them to high and give them to the Lord

Boy do I have expectations for my husband as he does me.  Does he meet my expectations? Not by a long shot! Do I meet his?  Nope I fall short every time. Does anyone meet our expectations? How about our children?  We set expectations for everyone.  God only expects one thing from us and that is to serve Him with all of our heart and soul.  Expectations are those things that we set up for our spouse to fail at.  I know that there are good expectations and there are bad expectations.  However, we always seem to set our expectations so high that we set up our spouse for failure.  We play games..He/She met that expectation so lets set this one up just a little bit higher, and eventually the expectations are set so high no one can meet them.  We need to set expectations that are realistic, and more importantly we need to give them to the Lord, so that our spouses can have the help they need to reach them.  How do we do this?  We get into the word of God, we give our spouse to God, we give our marriage to God.  When we do this, then expectations won't be an issue because God is control.

I know I have a lot to work on.  My marriage is far from perfect.  We have our daily struggles, and seem to go through the same fire over and over.  I took the acronym that our pastor gave us before his sermon and prayed about it and asked God to show me how to apply this in my marriage.  This is the product of that prayer.  I hope it will encourage you. 

Ephesians 5:22-33 is not just about wives being submissive.  It also tells the husband to love his wife as Christ loves the church.  Wives being submissive and husbands loving their wives is only do able as long as we are daily building our relationships with Christ individually and as couples.  Don't beat yourselves up when you fail, we are human, and far from perfect.  Don't give up either when we fail to keep our eyes focused on the One who matters.  I drop my eyes down often, actually more times then I care to mention.  However,God in His awesomeness, loves us unconditionally, and gives us the the opportunity to keep on trying.  Begin to rely on Christ to strengthen your marriage, and strengthen you.  I know that marriage is hard, Paul even tells us in 1 Corinthians 7:28 that we will have trouble in our marriage, but as long as we are building strong marriages that are grounded in Gods word we will have the ability to stand and fight when the enemy attacks.

My prayer for each of you who reads this blog is that it will encourage you to fight the hard fight.  This is also a prayer for myself and my marriage.  Hang in there, don't give up, God wants to see marriages strong and healthy.  I will say it again...My marriage is far from perfect, but we try daily, and know that God wants our marriage and our family together.  The enemy is busy trying to destroy marriages because of what they stand for.  So stand and fight, for your marriage and all marriages.  Know that I am praying for all of you!