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Couples for Christ "Couple Talk"

January 19, 2021

To Have and to Hold
From Rico Manianglung

Submission is something a wife does “as unto the Lord”. Loving is something a husband does “even as Christ also loved the church”. Our Lord Jesus Christ laid down His life for us; that’s something to submit to! Husbands, the question we must all ask ourselves is this: What am I giving my wife to submit to?

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish but holy and blameless. In this way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church. However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” (Ephesians 5:25—29,33)  

“Husbands often find it difficult to stay on confines of marriage. The pressures of lust, frustration, irritation, discontentment and miscommunication drive against a man’s ability to stay. If he listens to his will, he will seek to break out of the boundaries imposed by marriage. It is only if he is willing to submit to and trust the Lord that he will find the strength to commit fully and love his wife. A husband’s sacrificial love is to be a voluntary act of his will. God is the one who commands us to love in this way, and sometimes we just don’t feel like it, (but) we have to make ourselves do it.

The husband loves his wife just as Jesus loves us; to sanctify and cleanse his wife from the world and its evil system and cleanse her mind and heart by speaking the Word of God over her and to her. He is to pray for her, pray with her, study God’s Word for her and with her; continually speaks God’s words of praise and esteem and value and love over her and to her. The more a husband speaks words of love and value over his wife, the more he cleanses her of any doubt, unbelief and low self-esteem that she may have. She grows in confidence and faith as he reinforces her identity in Christ and as his special, precious, one-of-a-kind, one-and-only lady.

When a husband fails to esteem his wife by speaking and behaving toward her in a way that conveys her value and preciousness, he also erodes her ability to submit to him. He gives her nothing to submit to! Talking with your wife doesn’t mean that you lay down the law to her; it means speaking out of a motivation of desiring what is best for her and the family – not only what you desire, want and need. When a wife truly understands what a husband desires and sees that he loves her completely and sacrificially, she is usually eager to respond and quick to do all she can to meet her husband’s desires.

When a husband opens up to his wife, it is extremely important that she listens. Many women do not seem to know how difficult it is for a man to trust a woman with his heart. A man can give his body to almost anybody but he’s very particular about (whom) he gives his heart. The trust that a man feels about matters of the heart is so fragile that it can be destroyed in an instant by one insensitive comment or response.

Knowing who we are in Christ Jesus, husbands, means we know we have been made the heads of our home. God has given the husband the privilege of taking care of a precious treasure, one of His children. When a man takes a wife to himself, he takes her into his total life. They are one; the degree to which you love your wife (is how) you love yourself. A wife produces a harvest from what her husband sows. In the physical, when a man sows seed into her womb, she produces the harvest of a child; in the emotional, when a man sows anger into his wife, she produces a harvest of anger, distrust and rejection. And it is the husband who reaps the harvest.” (T.D. Jakes, Celebrating Marriage)

“Adam named his wife Eve.” (Genesis 3:20)

Back in the day, giving a name connotes having authority over the one named. In Genesis, God brought all the fish, the beasts and the birds to Adam to name them; God gave him authority over them. In marriage, the husband gives the wife a new name, his name.

Godly authority is always balanced by responsibility. What we have authority over, we are responsible for. Both the husband and wife are deeply challenged. It is no less difficult for a husband to love his wife, and to do so in a genuinely sacrificial way, than it is for a wife to submit and reverence her husband. We know that no wife will ever submit perfectly, nor will any husband love with perfect sacrificial love.

Only by God’s grace.

Prayer Starter:

“Lord, I thank you for giving me your precious son/daughter to be my spouse, your greatest gift for me. You have made your way in us, we entrust our life, our love, our marriage, our family in your most gracious hands. Continue to guide us as we submit to your will. Teach me to love You more than I love him/her so I may love him/her more. Having you in our midst, we pray unite us with your grace and make us one as we take yet another journey with you until death do us part. Amen.”

God bless our marriage. God be praised!

(For more information about Couples for Christ, please contact Decenio M. Torricer at 808-385-7024 or visit www.couplesforchristglobal.org/home.aspx; for CFC Parejas Para Cristo, please visit www.ppc-latinamrica.org )