Through the years of our marriage, we may entertain a mindset, which slowly fills with a series of bad feelings toward our spouse’s negative habits, hang-ups, attitude, worldview and behavior. This makes it hard to feel love for them or to cherish their place in our life.
We adopt negative attitudes toward our mate, and we allow bitterness to grow in our heart and destroy our relationship. Once we accept Jesus’ sacrifice and forgiveness for us, God does not demand punishment for our sins. He forgives us freely, and we can continually forgive our self and our spouse too (Colossians 3:13).
We learn to understand or appreciate the root causes of our spouse’s idiosyncrasies and to unreservedly forgive their lapses in judgment or behavior (Romans 3:25-26; Ephesians 1:3-10). We are human too, and we need this same consideration from our spouse as well.
Everyone longs to be special to someone else, unconditionally loved in spite of our foibles, affirmed as a person of value, etc. We all want to know that we matter, are cared about and understood, as well as appreciated and cherished. As husband and wife, we are in a perfect position to provide this type of atmosphere for one another.
A thoughtful person is always appreciated - one who is not self-absorbed, but who spends time with us doing the things that we love to do. We may not share this type of relationship with our spouse right now, but we can each decide to do at least one thing with the other that makes our mate happy, and then let that habit grow over the years.
We can also change our focus about our spouse’s irritating qualities by making a list of their positive traits and noticing and complimenting them each time they act in constructive ways. No one likes to be lectured, looked down on, criticized, etc. We all need to feel affirmed, liked, and loved above all others.
Prayer:
Father God, remind us that you are long-suffering with us, and living with this same patient attitude toward one another can help us to bond together in love and unity. Teach us that living up to our commitment to one another helps us to strengthen our commitment to You as well. You mean everything to us, and You are the center of our focus in life (Colossians 3:3-4).
Help us to see that preferring one another (Romans 12:10), rather than maintaining a self-centered lifestyle, will enable us to see the good in one another and to appreciate and delight in one another. Enable us to learn that complimenting and thanking each other is the way we can remain focused on the good in each of us, rather than to harp on the negative aspects of our spouse’s choices, attitude and behavior.
Thought for the Day:
Choosing the mate that God provides for us is imperative; if we like our future spouse as well as love them, we can be assured that we will be friends for a lifetime; love and hate are the two sides of the same coin, but when we like each other too, this helps to keep the coin flipped over on the love side, rather than on the hate side.
