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The Love Habit of Marriage: Growing the Gift

Isaiah 40:31
but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.

“Oh, Lord! Don’t take her now!” He raced to the side of his bride.

Fifteen wonderful and difficult years together. For better or worse. In year two, the worse happened. And his teary eyes gazed as the skies ferried her away, not to Heaven, but with the lifting of a helicopter. The flight saved her life.

The Lord granted that the wife stay…for now…partnering through the ups and downs…through the difficult and the deliverance.

How may one express the habit of love shared between two united as one? Two who held their girl together while her soul left her body to join Jesus forever. Two who rationed in times of lean. Two who celebrated on days of undeserved blessing. Two souls knitted together in Him with fibers bound and twisted such that one is not distinguished without the other. The inexplicable agape gift of the eros of marriage.

Nothing fashioned the heart of the wife with healing more than the husband reading the Word. He poured into the life of another and cherished her in the sweet and simple moments of life with a little verse shared or a gospel truth taught.

God vested a mighty picture while the husband lead an untamed bride with a heart like a tiger on the prowl. By the bedside in the darkest of days, he fed meat into the heart and mind of a ravenous beast of a woman filled with questions and uncertainty. He answered not for God, but loved by the grace of God. And the Father melted the mara rising within her as the living and active words of the Savior rolled over and into the brittle bones of a woman in the spiritual desert. God breathed peace into the heart of the woman while the husband nurtured with the Word.

Continuously, God reaches me through the arms of my husband. The spark is rarely magical and electrifying, but it is always supernatural. Simply a gift from above that renews the heart of an egoist like me to allow self to die and display the love freely given by the Father to me. With repeated fumbling and unjustified wounding of the tongue, only the Lord is able to set two hearts ablaze for one another year after year.

You can give without loving. But you cannot love without giving. — Amy Carmichael

Love is unselfishly choosing for another’s highest good. –C. S. Lewis

Moment by Moment in Jesus,
Brooke

Growing the Gift: The How-To’s of Togetherness in Marriage

1. Select a Scripture verse for your marriage. We have two: Isaiah 40:31 and Matthew 5:16. Memorize it. Write it down in several places or have the verse framed. Return to this verse and pray it back to the Lord.

2. Talk daily. Listen daily. Pray for one another daily.

3. Meditate on the Scripture together, even if you may not have time to sit and read a lengthy passage or devotion on that day. Either of you initiate prayer…maybe in a phone call. “Honey, let’s pray.” Share with each other Scripture and spiritual truths regularly.

For more on the Practice of New Habits, visit:

 

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