To love like Him
October 9th, 2009 | 
Author: When Sara told me this month’s theme, I got chills! It just happens to be my favorite topic! I love~love! I love falling in love, being in love, movies about love, books about love and cute little hearts added to anything is just fabulous! I love all the frills and thrills that encompass this word!
But my dear sisters above all else, I get most excited about God’s love! Sometimes when I try to wrap my brain around just how much God must love us, it overwhelms me. Tears quickly rush to fill my eyes, chills surge all over, and my heart is full. To think that God loved me so much that He would sacrifice His own pure and holy son for me, takes my breath away. It makes Ephesians 5 almost incomprehensible.
In Ephesians 5, it states that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the church. Let’s ponder this for a moment… Christ came to this world for the sole purpose of redemption through laying down His life for us…the unlovable. Can you imagine? The unseemly people that populate this planet at any given time are exactly who Christ loves so much. So is this verse implying that no matter how we look, act or love that he loves us and our husbands are to do the same? I believe so. It means that their love is to be unconditional of our person. I don’t know about you, but I like that idea! When I am being difficult, he has to love me. When I am 5 pounds heavier, he has to love me. When my hair is messed up and I don’t have my make-up on, he has to love me!
But wait! What does that mean for us? It also says wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. As to the Lord… wow… not sure I ever read that part before today. So what it is saying is that my submissiveness is not based on my husband’s actions, appearance or my feelings that particular day. This is real important to us military wives. When they are away from us, we are to submit. When they are not being kind to us due to all the stress of deployment, we are to submit. When we are angry that they are packing their bags again, we are to submit.
I have always hated the word submit, so let’s just play with it for a minute. What happens when God tells you to do something you really don’t want to do? You submit. What happens when you are in circumstances that you don’t particularly like and you feel like God is why you are there? You submit (perhaps after many conversations). What happens when you don’t “feel” like He is there? You search for Him. What happens when you feel like there is a break in the relationship? You work feverishly to restore it. You begin removing the sin in your life through repentance and communication. We may get angry at God for our circumstances, but we would never be disrespectful to Him. We would always have in mind that He is God and He knows what is best for us. We don’t want to have a broken relationship with Him. So could we conclude that submission is respect? Respect for the direction, relationship (no matter how rocky) and love that you share.
This verse makes our love and actions independent of our mates love or actions. This is a hard concept for us to swallow, but it is there in Ephesians 5. I don’t believe I have put this much thought into these verses before today. I read it. I understood it on a surface level. I liked it. But now when I read with a fresh pair of eyes, I see so much more than ever before!
I see that my submissiveness is not based on his love for me. It is just what it says: submit myself to him as I would to Christ without reservation, without stipulation, without limit! What an awesome love is to be between to people! Imagine if we all took these verses and applied in the true context of the Bible what might come of our marriages! Imagine the families that would be affected by the waves of God’s love that would be coursing through our communities.
How would it change you if your husband loved you like this? How would it change him if you respected him the way that God has asked us to? Perhaps this is why God gives us this picture of love and respect that is not based on the behavior of the other party in the relationship.
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I love where you said: “When they are away from us, we are to submit. When they are not being
kind to us due to all the stress of deployment, we are to submit. When
we are angry that they are packing their bags again, we are to submit.” I definitely needed to read that today! I’ve been having a difficult time with this — especially because he is deployed. Thanks for sharing.
I read this and I immediately smiled and felt a surge of that love He gives. My husband and I are newlyweds and he’s been gone about 2 months now and it has been nothing but heartache and pain. And I keep pushing through and I look for things in the Bible to keep me motivated and every day I just keep loving the Lord because I know my love for Him will reach my husband. And every day the Lord shows me a new passage to take and understand and to use in my marriage and I am thankful to see this today. It really is a powerful scripture. Thank you so much for sharing.