Date Your Spouse!

Laura and I on our annual marriage retreat.

I love the book, The Meaning of Marriage, by Tim Keller.  Everyone should read this book whether you've been married for 25 years, or you're just thinking about getting married some day!  Keller says, "Only if you have learned to serve others by the power of the Holy Spirit will you have the power to face the challenges of marriage." He then goes on to say that,  "Whether you are a husband or a wife, we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage."

You see marriage is God's way of of remaking our heart from the inside out.  It's through marriage that we learn to become more like Jesus, setting aside our own self-centeredness and looking to the interest of others, more specifically our spouse.  

If we are to become the Spiritual Parents of our home, it begins with loving and serving our spouse!  Kurt Brunner, in his book It Starts at Home says, “I can learn about Jesus when I read the Bible and feel close to Jesus when I pray.  But, I become like Jesus when I give my life to my spouse, a child, a grandchild, and others whom God places in my home.”  These are the specific people for whom I am called to turn the Word into flesh amid the day-in and day-out reality of life.”

“It is much easier to sit in church listening to a sermon than to bite my tongue during an argument with my wife. The first nourished my spirit, the second humbles my pride.”  “I love listening to worship music and reading inspirational books, I hate apologizing to my children after losing my temper. The first reminds me who God is, the second reminds me who I am, a sinner in need of repentance.

“Spiritual formation occurs most effectively in those moments when I obediently submit to the sculptors’s chisel and follow the apostle Paul’s admonishment to become like the One who,” “made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant...He humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8).

If you are serious about your marriage and you want it to grow, date your spouse!  Get time alone with no children...just the two of you.  Don't just talk about business or the weather or even your children. Dig deeper into their soul and their heart, and listen and learn about the one who is helping make you more like Jesus.