Weekend Wrap-up
Theme of the Week: How Mutual?
Saturday, May 15, 2004
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If you are married, God took two very different people and in some singular way made you one. "But as sure as you share your differences," writes psychologist Neil Clark Warren, "there is bound to be conflict. This … gives you the opportunity to expand your marriage." Think expansion as you respond to Paul's teaching about being one. Interact with God's Word
Ephesians 5:21–33
- Verses 22–24 spell out how wives submit to their husbands. But verse 21 calls for two-way submission. How are husbands to submit to their wives?
- Who pays the bills at your house? Coordinates the family calendar? Creates the menus for the week? Makes vacation arrangements? Are we ready to delegate responsibility to each other according to our unique abilities? As we do, can we expect control issues to become less dominant?
- Have our wives had bouts of depression? If so, could it be because we've unintentionally suppressed their potential?
- To become one with your wife in body refers to sexual enjoyment of each other. But what does becoming one with your wife in spirit (refer back to Malachi 2:15) involve?
Spend Time in Prayer
Thank God for the ways He uses the differences between you and your wife to make you a complete whole. Ask for His help to express your love by honoring those differences.
Ephesians 5:21–33
21And further, you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. 23For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior. 24As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything.
25And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her 26to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God's word. 27He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife. 29No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church. 30And we are his body.
31As the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." 32This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
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Thank you, God, for granting me a life partner. Help us to realize the oneness You intended for us—in spirit as well as in body.
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