The Pursuit of Becoming A Better Husband!

I think marriage is one of those pursuits that God felt we needed to spend out entire adult ives working on and with a goal of drawing us closer to Jesus.  

I also believe that the Lord was clear with his over-arching vision statement for marriage when he said he wanted me to Love my wife just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph. 5:25) but I must say, how I get to that level of love is going to require some work on my part.   

In my pursuit to become a good husband I have discovered the following things to be true: 

• If I want my wife to love and respect me more, then I have to be willing to give her more of me to love and respect. Meaning – have to make her a priority above the things that I personally want to do.  My career, my hobbies, my “stuff” – take back seat always. 

• If I want to keep the passion of my marriage hot or if I need turn back on the flame of desire I have to pursue my wife constantly.  Meaning – I have to date her regularly, listen to her, dream with her, remind her that she is beautiful and tell her I love her…a lot! 

• If I can’t get past something in my marriage that is keeping it from growing then I need to get rid of it and possibly get help for it.  Meaning – we all have issues, challenges, hurts, habits or hang-ups (to quote Celebrate Recovery) that can mess up a marriage; with the Lords help and others we can change and turn our messiness into a message.

• If I want my marriage to last, then I need to make God the foundation. Meaning – put my personal relationship with Christ first followed by my marriage and then my kids third. Simple formula really – just hard to follow sometimes.  Probably should have made this #1 on this list. 

• In the hard times, I need to be fight harder for my marriage.  Meaning – when the going get’s tough, the tough get going. In my case, I get going on my knees and allow the Lord to help me fight.  Satan is a jerk and defeat is not an option! 

There are many other things I’ve learned that I but for the sake of space, I’ll stop there.  Although I will never reach perfection, I know that cannot hurt to keep on trying. 

My spouse will thank me for it.  My kids will thank me for it and hopefully, their kids will thank me for it..and so on. 

Just as Christ love the church…Wow, I still got along way to go.   

Brian