A Good Marriage - Sandpaper Spouse

 

Over time, our spouse often turns into a "sandpaper" person who gets on our nerves…an irritation that causes abrasions and discomfort on our soul. We want to turn away from them, rather than to embrace them.

However, this only compounds the irritation, because they try harder to gain our attention and to communicate their needs. They are like the continual drip of a leaky faucet - nerve wracking, torture to our soul (Proverbs 25:24, 27:15).

We tend to avoid and ignore them or to brush them aside, taking them for granted and not showering them with love, gratitude and affirmation they are crying out to receive.

We do not want to be bothered by their neediness. We start to resent them and Satan helps bitterness and anger to grow in our soul toward them. This makes them more insecure and increases their neediness and pleas for our attention and help.

We often attempt to placate them, give them a pat on the head and expect them to go away and to take care of their own needs. Unfortunately, although they do minister to many of their own needs and the needs of others in your sphere of family, church family and friends, some of what they need can only be supplied by their spouse…and that is YOU! 

We say that we "love" them, but Agape love looks beyond their behavior or words to the cry of their soul. We access God's compassion and see His desire for us to minister to them as the spouse He created us to be. 

We start focusing on their needs, and appreciating all the little things they do for us each and every day.

Surprisingly, this loving attention will help to heal much of their behavior which irritates us in the first place. They will be more secure in our relationship with them and more content with life in general.

Prayer:

Father God, teach us that we can accomplish much more to alleviate the irritation of the Sandpaper People in our life by giving them our undivided and focused attention, taking them seriously when they share their needs, and working out with them a solution to their issues that we can fit into our regular, daily schedule.

At times, this requires sacrifice on our part. You teach us to alter our priorities to include them, to take time away from our pursuits to meet their needs, or to focus on their needs as well as on our own. We have to lay down our life for them, and we tend to resent this. Help us to gain the mind of Christ in our relationships and to cherish those You place in our life as the treasure that they truly are.

Thought for the Day:

Loving Sandpaper People in the way that they need to be loved, not in a way that makes our life easier or decreases our responsibility to them, makes them feel special and improves our quality of life as well as theirs; we stop treating them as the hired help and realize that they are the treasures that God intends for them to be in our life.

Authentic Worshipers

God is looking for authentic worshipers who will live for Him by His Spirit and in His Truth (John 4:23). He wants to raise up an army united in Christ, not a bunch of Lone Rangers doing their own thing.

As we allow the nature of Christ in us to infiltrate every area of our life, we decrease so that He may increase (John 3:30). We serve God by His Spirit moving within us and through us (Philippians 2:12-13; Act 17:28).

When we come to truly understand that we are dead, and that our life is now hidden with Christ in God, we live in God’s power, which works in and through us (Colossians 3:3; Galatians 2:20).

God will use our body, soul and spirit by His Spirit to work in the lives of people we encounter each day. He will give us His words to speak to them that we cannot possibly know in our human capacity.

This opens doors for us to witness to people and to bring Christ into their life, so that He can change their heart, lives and circumstances for their good.

We put no confidence in our fleshly abilities; and we do not boast in our own accomplishments, because we achieve all things through Christ in us (Philippians 3:3; 2:12-13).

Sinful mankind, who are lost in pride, arrogance and the exploitation of others, consider their own needs more frequently than anyone else’s (Romans 12:3). However, God brings everyone down to the same level through the grave (Isaiah 14:15).

Our eternal destination is determined by our earthly beliefs. If we live for self, we reap corruption; if we live for Christ, we reap eternal life and serve God as Authentic Believers (John 3:16-18).

Prayer:

Father God, it is not difficult to sustain a constant relationship with You as our living Lord. Every moment of our day is authentic worship to You. Living with honor and respect for You gives us a secure life with protection from lasting harm (Proverbs 19:23). Even negative circumstances turn around for our good (Romans 8:28).

You give us everything we need to live in contentment through a genuine Godly life (1 Timothy 6:6). You are our strength and shield. We trust in You with all of our heart. You fill our soul so full of joy that we spontaneously burst forth into songs of praise and thanksgiving to You (Psalm 28:7).

Thought for the Day:
Christ in us gives us joy in tribulation (Romans 5:3), hope in devastating trials and loss (Romans 15:13), and a bright vision for our future (Jeremiah 29:11).

Hoping in God

As human beings, we place our hope in many things: people, places, careers, stock markets, etc. We often fail, however, to realize that our only lasting hope is in God.

Jesus secured our hope by His death, burial and resurrection. His sacrifice touches every part of our life, even the most devastating moment we could ever experience.

At salvation, our hope in God turns to faith, which is authentic, powerful and enables us to enjoy God's company as our loving and nurturing Father.

His presence opens the door for us to enter into the citizenship of heaven, the Body of Christ, the circle of His beloved children, His Saints and called out ones. We are no longer pilgrims and sojourners (Philippians 3:20-21; Ephesians 2:19).

For those of us who believe in God, this hope is tangible evidence of the calling He gives to each one of us. We inherit His glorious riches and enjoy His great power and assurance now and forever (Ephesians 1:18-20).

Moses failed to deliver God's people when he killed the solitary Egyptian soldier who mistreated his Jewish brother. He ran from the consequences of that behavior and hid in the desert.

He forgot that God allowed Him to be raised in the king's castle and that He was actually a child of the almighty King. His self-image was polluted by Satan's lies and accusations of his failure.

This occurs in our life as well. Satan throws our past up into our face over and over in order to render us ineffective in any ministry for the Lord. We are riddled with self-doubt.

We can trade God's truth about us for the devil's recrimination and lies about our failings. Taking our journal, we sit in silent meditation and listen as God speaks His truth about who we really are and how He feels about us. ( www.theophostic.com )

We can read the back of the book, the last two chapters of Revelation, and understand that God returns to us everything which Satan attempted to steal from us in the first chapters of Genesis.

Prayer:

Father God, Your truth ignites our passion to have more of You in our life and to walk in Your Spirit and will for our life (Galatians 5:15-25). We live as a testimony of Your existence for the world to see. We read daily affirmations from Your Word about who we are in Christ, which transform our thought life from a negative image to a Godly one (Galatians 3; 2 Corinthians 5; Romans 8).

Your Spirit testifies that we are Yours and He breathes the breath of life into our spirit until He transforms us from one level of spiritual maturity to the next (Romans 8:16; 2 Corinthians 3:18). We overcome the world and our doubts and fears through the victory that overcomes the world - our faith in Your faithfulness (1 John 5:4) - and You empower us by Your Spirit as we walk in Your will moment by moment throughout the day.

Thought for the Day:

Regardless of what we view with our human understanding and vision, we live by the faith from God's promises about the unseen world, which are just as real and tangible.

A Holy God

Our human penchant is to trust in our self-righteousness, natural talents and basic good heart to earn us a place in heaven, or at least to ensure that we are reincarnated to a higher life form.

The problem with this thinking is that our heart is deceitful and basically wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Even our best day falls short of God's holiness and glory, which is the standard for residence in Heaven (Roman 3:23).

When we repent of our sin, ask for God's forgiveness and surrender our life to Him, He gives us the righteousness, which can only come from Jesus Christ.

Jesus then abides within us by His Spirit (John 15:4). He raises our spirit, which is dead in sin, to walk in a whole new life (2 Corinthians 5:17; Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12). This secures our place in Heaven.

That is why God sent the perfect Lamb, who never lived a moment in sin, to take on the sin of the whole world and to make us righteous like God through the sacrifice of His life (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Jesus willingly laid down His life for us (Luke 4:29-30). He made the choice in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before He was betrayed, to carry out God's will (Luke 22:42).

Jesus submitted to the excruciating scourging and death on the cross, not due to human weakness, but according to the spiritual strength He received while considering the glory that lay waiting for Him in Heaven (Hebrews 12:2).

The grace of God transforms us into a Temple made without hands, a dwelling place fit for a King (1 Corinthians 3:16). He uses what the world considers as foolishness to carry out the work of His Kingdom (1 Corinthians 1:27).

Our only honorable response to this is to submit to His will in our life, so that we will also be counted worthy to dwell with Him in His glorious Kingdom for eternity (Luke 21:36).

God created each one of us for a specific purpose (Ephesians 2:10) and will judge our works in this life in order to reward us in the next (1 Corinthians 3:13).

Prayer:

Father God, many people do not comprehend the elaborate tapestry You have woven over millennia of time in order to bring about the fulfillment of all things (Ephesians 1:10). They do not understand that You never send judgment without first sending warning.

The flood, the annihilation of generations of people and their possessions in Canaan, the crucifixion of Your own son and other judgments are puzzles and a stumbling block, which prevent people from surrendering their life to You. Yet, before all of these events, You gave mankind plenty of warning that You are a holy and righteous God and nothing unholy may dwell in Your presence.

Thought for the Day:

Jesus had no thought for Himself, but only love for a dying world lost in sin's degradation.