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Confession Time: I love my wife, but . . .

by Todd Horne  
4/21/2010 / Christian Living

I really do love my wife. I always have. But I am not very good at it.

I'm not alone. None of us including you are capable of loving of our wives the way we should unless we are living life in obedience to God and dying to ourselves daily as Christ showed us through his love for us.

Alone on our own we are not capable of selflessly loving one another. Think about the last time someone offended you, someone angered you, someone upset you. You're probably wondering what this has to do with your wife and your ability to love your wife. What if I told you, only everything. You see, the way we think about, consider and treat other people, those we are not close to, is actually an indicator to us of how our spiritual heart pumps. The closer we are to people, the more things we take for granted. The less guarded we are. Have you ever noticed that you give strangers more latitude, more freedom, more respect and more grace than you give to those closest to you? No matter how good or bad you think your relationship is with your wife, no one is closer to you than she is. You might disagree with this statement completely, but I am not talking about what you think or what you feel. Thoughts and feelings can be and often are misleading. They are highly overrated. I am talking about reality. God's reality. If you stood before God and man witnesses and took a marriage vow, whether it was in a church, before a Justice of the Peace, or you eloped to Las Vegas, that woman you married you became one with her. God sees you as one person. You cannot get any closer to another person than that. You just can't.

Rationally speaking, none of what I am saying here may make sense to you. I get that. But when you realize that your marital relationship is a spiritual responsibility that God has given you to love another person as He has loved you, then some things might start becoming more clear. If I live my life seeking to manifest myself, to love myself, rather than living my life to manifest Christ then I am going to have a very difficult time laying down my life, dying to myself.

When I started realizing just how inadequate I am at loving my wife, I did what any normal, self-respecting man would do I blocked it out. Ignored it. I pretended like the issue was not real. I even went so far as to blame my wife for my failure to love her like I knew I should.

Thankfully, God knew better. And even though I did not deserve it, He lived up to His promise. He set me straight. He did so in a brutally honest, painful way that was very kind, loving and gentle. I know that sounds like a massive contradiction in terms, but now I will attempt to explain.

As only God can do, he began sifting through me, through my heart. God began shining lights into my soul. There were and probably still are because I have not seen the "miners" climb out of the pit yet some pretty dark and scary places in there that I had no idea existed. Self-delusion is pretty powerful that way, but it doesn't bear up too well under the pillaging and destruction of a determined God out to sanctify and restore a child of His.

Somewhere along the way, I started feeling in my heart like I should pray and ask God to use me to love my wife the way He wants her to be loved. You see, I realized the only thing that consistently stands in the way of me loving my wife the way God wants to love her the only way God wants her to be loved is me. I was and I am the only thing standing in the way of God loving my wife the way she was intended to be loved by her Father.

It wasn't that I had a big problem. No, I was the BIG problem.

And the one person that was being harmed the most by me being so full of me was her, my wife the woman who I had vowed to love, to honor, and to cherish.

I still remember almost 20 years ago now asking God to give me the honor of Ashley becoming my wife. I remember how sincere and how pure my heart's desire was. How could I screw up something so right? How could the woman I had always dreamed about from the time I was a child well before I ever laid my eyes on Ashley have grown so distant. How could the woman who I still remember looking into her eyes and knowing without any doubt she was God's answer to my prayers not know how much I loved her. How could the person I loved more than life itself not know. Vividly I recall seeing God himself move in those beautiful eyes of hers. I remember telling her so. Yet, over time, she and I had grown apart. Life happened. She was so . . . so distant from me. So removed. My wife was so alienated . . . by my selfishness . . . that she said she no longer felt like I loved her.

At first I was angry at myself. Then, I would get mad at her. Then, I would blow it off. Push it aside. I would do anything not to deal with it. I did not want to deal with it because I did not know how. Something had to be wrong, not with me, of course, but with her.

I can't think of anything worse. You love someone, but inside all they do is hurt, and pine. They hurt because they can't feel or see your love. They pine because God created us all not only to love, but also to be loved.

As men, I believe, we have a tremendous burden placed on ourselves by ourselves, and by listening to one another in unGodly settings. We buy in to our own crap. Either we lose sight of reality at some point or we simply do not realize at all that we are here on this earth for one reason and one reason only: To glorify God.

We glorify God very simply: by being obedient. No obedience = No glory. There is no in between. You're either all in. Or, you're not in at all. Nobody knows where you stand. Except God. God knows.

God gave us two great commandments. As men, we are to love God with ALL of our heart, ALL of our soul, ALL of our strength and ALL of our mind. We are also to love one another as ourselves, as Christ loves us.

I learned the hard way that whatever God commands or instructs us to do, He also empowers us to do. I must have read or heard that at least a thousand times before it dawned on me that I did not have to depend on myself to accomplish what God wanted from me. Instead, all I had to learn how to do was get out the way. An ego is a wonderful thing to waste. We should try to waste ours every day, multiple times a day if necessary. Once we remove ourselves from the equation, by choice, God fills our empty vessel with His person, His Spirit. Love moves. In fact, the same power that allowed Jesus to endure His accusers, slanderers and murderers following an unjust trial; that same power that empowered Jesus after scourges and beatings that left His body nothing more than a pile of raw hamburger meat nailed to a cross; that same power that filled Jesus so that from that cross, as he suffocated to death, he could still pray to God the Father to "forgive them for they know what they do"; that same power is available to husbands everywhere. It is a selfless love. His will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. It requires more courage, more strength and more righteousness to accomplish than all the men who have ever lived or will live could possibly muster if they could somehow combine forces. Yet, it is available to each one of us individually, one and all, through Him and Him alone. It wasn't that long ago I did not know this. Now, I do know this.

And through Him Empty, selfless, and filled only with God's Holy Spirit, is the only way to truly love my wife the way she deserves because of God's grace to be loved. She is not really "my wife." She is the woman, the lady, that God has given me as my wife. Between those two ways of saying things and seeing things is more than a world of difference. I am the steward, the vessel, God has chosen to demonstrate His love, true love Godly love to my wife his daughter. Alone, on my own, I fail every time. In Christ, there is no failure. God, please love my wife through me. And renew in me my heart every second of every day so that I may be a vessel worthy of your love so that I can love her as you have loved me selflessly! In Jesus name, I pray. Amen!

Todd Horne is a husband, a father, a writer, editor and publisher. He lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter and is a member of Crossroads Church. Todd publishes http://www.DerDiZ.com in his free time.

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