Day 1: The Bible Speaks
Welcome to a completely different kind of reading plan. It’s so different I refrained from uploading it to my website, thinking few would read it. Not that the content is shabby or something for which I am ashamed. On the contrary. I believe in the message. It’s the AUDIENCE. While I generally (and I mean, 99.89 times out of 100) speak to women — this message is straight talk to men. There was much hesitation in writing. In fact, I cried my eyes out wavering on whether or not to push “submit.” No matter who or how many read it, the message is worth sharing. Marriage is sacred and your wife, valuable. This is not the messaging reverberating from society. The Bible still speaks and speaks in ways we can understand today. I pray you receive it and that the Holy Spirit moves in your heart and mind to give you a genuine understanding of your wife that is life-giving.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Genesis 2:24
He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD. Proverbs 18:22
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8
Devotional: The Bible Still Speaks
Your wedding might be captured under blue skies on the seashore with sandcastle beaches for posterity, but it doesn’t take long for the waves to wash over those temporary mansions and the clouds to gather. The days and years that follow can be tumultuous.
Chad and I started out in a tiny blue house working five part-time jobs between us suffocating through the Texas heat with nothing more for cooling than a ceiling fan. We chose the hard ground over our secondhand couch to eat countless bowls of raw cookie dough underneath that fan. About most things marriage and life, we didn’t know diddly!
There were zero aspirations for bigger houses or corporate successes. The path was not set toward all the degrees or even establishing a family. No. Our ambitions were more basic. We simply wanted our marriage to make it when so much was failing around us.
Marriage is a covenant commitment. We wanted the service in a sanctuary (Logsdon Chapel) officiated by the Godliest man thinkable, Dr. James Shields, wearing the most solemn attire he possessed (his scholarly robe). More than anything, we were aiming for a marriage that honored God and endured until death do us part. We just didn’t have a clue what to do when we marched out of there, husband and wife.
Clueless are We
Let’s face it. Most of us are completely CLUELESS about how to love our spouses when we enter marriage. We don’t have any idea how to love one another earnestly. In fact, a good number of us remain dumbfounded far too long.
Granted, marriage still holds its conundrums, but after more than a quarter of a century under my belt, and countless conversations with brides of all ages, commonalities surface when it comes to what a wife really wants from her husband, but can’t say.
But where your wife can’t speak, the Bible does, because the Bible speaks. So, to any man confused about what his wife really wants, what follows are five BIG ONES she can’t tell you.
Before we move any further, take a moment today to pray. Ask the Lord to reveal the following:
- His Truth for your relationship
- Your heart in relating with your wife
- The strengths of your marriage
- Weak places that need to be strengthened
- Sin that needs to be forgiven
- Any celebrations that can take place for progress in the hard places.
For His Glory,
