Now “pursuing in romance” does not merely mean sex and sensuality.  It means something more foundational.  To pursue our wives in romance means to show them and help them to feel that we value them.

Does your wife feel that she is cherished by you?  Does she feel like she is special to you, more special to you than any other person or activity?  Does she feel that you treasure her above all else (except for Jesus)?  I keep using the word “feel” because that is how most women receive communication within relationships.  If they do not perceive that we love them by how we seek to make them feel, then it almost doesn’t matter how much we really do love them.  Our wives might know that we love them, but do they feel it?  Only she can say this for sure.  Maybe it would be good to ask our wives when they feel the most pursued or valued or cherished by us.

What have you done lately to purposefully help her to feel that she is worth spending your time, energy, money, and creativity pursuing her?  I don’t just mean being nice to her, but actively doing something with the clear intention to show her that you enjoy spending your life on her.  We might have relatively less time, energy, money, and creativity to spend on anyone or anything, but the more demands on us just means that we must make a more disciplined effort to help our wives feel cherished by us.

You don’t have to try to go out and buy her a yacht, but you should try to think of at least one or two practical things you can do this week, today even, to purposefully help your wife feel like she is the precious gift from God that you believe she is; that she truly is.

Since that day, I’ve been spinning that phrase around in my head and wondering just what sort of ‘home face’ I have and what the family members in my household would say about my countenance and presence when I’m at home. I think every spiritual leader of a household needs to reflect on and recognize with humility the influence they have over the home, not only through their own actions, but also through their countenance, presence, attitude and demeanor. The effects of this are far reaching, as you might imagine. How is my ‘home face’ when I arise in the morning? Is it set on Christ or on the pains of the day? Does my family see my face in the morning? As I come home into my house after a day’s work where God has provided, do I see it that way and does my face look that way? Or rather, is my face and spirit downcast because of my perceived misery in my cushy job?

How is my face to the outside world? Meeting and greeting friends, entertaining, working, going to church, what do those people see? Do they see a whitewashed tomb? Something that is white and clean and perfect on the outside and yet dead and decaying on the inside? When I come home and things have been “rough” at work (I seriously doubt sometimes that the majority of us here in America know what ‘rough’ really means) do my children see a man with a face defeated or a face of a man whose hope is in Christ Jesus who died to satisfy God’s wrath set aside for my sin?

I’m ashamed that there are far too few times I am that last man described. But sometimes I am worse, because the initial greeting is joyful and jovial, but moments go by and sometimes things darken as I think about the things ahead and they overwhelm my thoughts or take me down because I have taken my eyes off my Savior and put them on things of less value or less importance and essentially made them into something to fear or worry about.

As parents, we are always teaching, intentionally or unintentionally. Our children are always watching us, looking to us, reflecting us. You hear it in their speech, in their play, in their joy, in their anger. Throughout the Bible we are called to teach and bring up our children and to impart to them the things of God. We see this in Deuteronomy 6, Psalm 78, and in Jesus as He warns against anyone hindering a child in coming to Him. We are called to teach them to put their hope in Him and His work and His salvation. And yet, if that is not where OUR hope is, they will see right through it. Then unknowingly they will be tempted to follow that which they see and not that which we meant for them to learn from our active teachings. We tend to think about the ways that we are actively teaching our children, whether it be Bible knowledge, Godly character, Bible memorization, prayer, praise, or worship. But we fail to see that we are always teaching because they are always watching. It is not we who will save our children, for only God can do that, but we are a vessel of Grace that the Lord uses to teach and bring our children to Himself. This is an incredible miracle; that He would welcome broken sinners into His work.

Another thought on the ‘home face’ we have in our households that only our families see: For those of us with spouses, how is our ‘home face’ to them? And for those of us with both spouses and children, think how much impact and influence we possess in our times at home. For our actions and countenance at home with our spouses and our children sends waves into the future. The way that I treat my wife at home is impacting how my daughters will view men that they might consider for a husband. Likewise, the way that I love and cherish my wife (or not) is shaping the way that my son will look at and treat women and it will impact how he acts in his marriage and how he treats his wife. And the way that I treat my daughter or son at home is shaping how they will then go forward into the future and treat their own children. Will our children repeat a cycle of parenting in relational sin or will they break a cycle of messed up parenting by God’s grace? We, as parent, are a piece of what God uses to impart that grace.
The greatest two commandments, we are told by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39, is,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

I contend, here, that our closest neighbor would be our immediate family, and the first of those, our spouse, and then our children. They do not mysteriously sit outside this commandment as people we can mistreat or withhold grace from. We must actively love them as we would love ourselves. But without first truly loving God, fearing God, and hoping in God and the work that Christ accomplished on the Cross, we will have nothing but a downcast ‘home-face’ and a lack of hope with which to lead our family. We must constantly return, again and again, reminding ourselves that our hope is in Christ and His work and not ourselves and not in the things of this world. Then with that knowledge and our face turned towards heaven, we can share that same hope with our family. May God have mercy and grace on our homes and may He shine through our faces.

First I was a wee bit annoyed by how my wife was expecting me to do so many little things for her, even though I knew she appreciated them (me).  But then, after writing the post, I realized (and told her so) how thankful I really am that she takes me for granted.

She counts on me.  She trusts me.  She knows that I love her.  By taking me for granted in how I open doors for her, check the house in the middle of the night when she hears a “strange noise”, etc…, she lets me know that she knows that I love her.  She has grown to expect certain things from me (at least partly) because I just always do them.

Not that I am perfect or perfectly consistent.  No, not at all.  The point of all of this is how thankful I am that my wife knows and expects that I will treat her a certain way.  She keeps me accountable for it. I am glad and thankful to the Lord that my wife knows how she should be treated, expects to be treated as so, keeps me accountable for treating her so, is humbly thankful for such treatment, and lets me know that she knows that I truly do love her by treating her so.

Really this is not confined to marriage relationships.  Friends, co-workers, employers, parents, children, and in countless other relationships, taking others for granted or being taken for granted by others is all too common.  However, the marriage relationship is one of the (if not the) easiest of relationships for taking one another for granted.

Most wedding vows do not contain this statement, “I promise to never take you for granted.”

Why not?  Surely we should not take each other for granted, right?  Right.  We should always appreciate the acts of kindness, faithfulness, and love given by our spouse, right?  Right.

However, when looking at what the word granted means (that something is a given, an expected thing, or even an obligatory and owed thing), we can see that it is not always wrong in every sense to take someone, especially our spouse, for granted.

I expect my wife to be faithful to me.  It is an owed thing that she tell me the truth.  I am obliged to take care of her.  It should be a given that I would not lust after any other woman.

All of these things and more are expected and even commanded (not by the culture, media, or what is most common, but by God in His Word and because of the promises we’ve made to each other).

If I go out of town for a weekend, it should be taken for granted that I not cheat on my wife and vice versa.  It is true that we should always be appreciative, humble, thankful, and proud of our spouses.  But if we cannot take our spouses for granted in some things, then unconditional, sacrificial, and faithful love has no meaning.  Christian marriages should preach the Gospel (Eph. 5:15-33) and display the standard of what kind of love should be present in marriages in the Church and in the world.

Should we take our spouses for granted (meaning be unthankful and arrogant and demanding)?  Of course not.  Should we take our spouses for granted (meaning count on and expect them to be faithful in their love for us)?  Absolutely.

May God be glorified by how our marriages (and all of our relationships) display and boast about Jesus Christ and His unconditional love.  It is granted that He is always steadfast in His faithful and sacrificial love to His Bride.  Thanks be to God!

I don’t think so. Oh that we would judge wealth by the Lord’s standards. Let me tell you why I am rich, although I do not have the above-mentioned things:

I have an excellent wife!  (Prov. 12:4a; 31:10)

I have been rewarded, by God’s grace, with two precious boys!  (Ps. 127:3)

I have redemption and forgiveness in Christ, by the kindness, mercy, and grace of God, with an everlasting inheritance guaranteed by the Holy Spirit! (Rom. 10:12; Eph. 1:7, 18; 2:7; 3:8, 16; Col. 1:27)

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.”
- 2 Corinthians 8:9

I told you I was rich.