-Transcript-
00:26 Amen, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe.
00:30 Another great day here at KJV Cafe. I’m so glad you joined me. Today we are looking at loving your wife.
00:37 Loving your wife. I preached this message not too long ago on my wife’s birthday. My wife’s birthday is 10 days after my birthday, and as the Lord would have it, I think my birthday was on a Sunday this year and we had church, and hers was on a Wednesday and we had church.
00:55 And so it was just beautiful. We both got to spend our birthday in the house of God with those that we love. And for her birthday, this verse was on my mind and I wanted to share it.
01:04 Our Wednesday service is a prayer meeting and we take that seriously. We really go through our prayers and so forth, and we have a little bit of scripture.
01:12 But that Wednesday service, we talked about this, and so I want to share here today about husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.
01:18 Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. That’s out of the book of Ephesians 5: 25. Interesting here, the Bible commands husbands to love their wives.
01:38 It doesn’t command wives to love their husbands. But the implication here, guys, is that husbands, if we love our wife, she’ll reciprocate.
01:47 And I think it’s important to think about God, not just as wise or overseer or something, but God as creator God.
01:58 And creator God puts this in his word, look men, if you love your wife, I’ve designed her, I’ve engineered her, I’ve made her to love you back, to respond affectionately and appropriately.
02:12 Now I know it doesn’t happen all the time. And I know there are some women out there that are a little bit more opinionated than others.
02:24 I think I married one, amen. I married my best friend, but she is a fire starter, a firecracker. She’s a wild one, amen.
02:34 She’s not your typical preacher wife, amen. We’ve had to try to settle her down, amen. She’s awesome.
02:42 She’s awesome. She’s one of a kind. And I’ve found this to be true, that just if I just, and it’s hard because it’s an act of faith, right? You just love your wife, you know, you sit there and you don’t want to do the dishes and nobody’s looking.
02:58 You say, I’m going to get up and do these dishes because you know what, I love her. And even if she doesn’t see it, even if you don’t tell her about it, amen, to something God will work on her heart to be like, oh wow, you know, she’s happy that you did the dishes or whatever it is. I know I’m giving a simple example.
03:12 And, you know, my wife’s a homemaker. She also works full time. She’s also a mom of three, four if you count me.
03:19 And she’s just a wonderful, wonderful woman. She’s, first day I met her, I knew I loved her. It took a while for her to come around, but we really have a strong love.
03:31 I had to hang around, amen. That was my strategy, was just hang around long enough, like a puppy dog or something. And eventually she would, she’d reciprocate my feelings and that took a little while, but she did.
03:40 And, you know, what I want to say here today is our foundation is built upon God and this command to love my wife is one I’ve taken seriously in our marriage.
03:49 And I believe here today, as I share this with anyone listening, whether it’s a young person that could be getting married soon, we have a couple of those in our church that I was thinking of when I was preaching this, or whether it’s someone that’s having marital problems or someone that’s separated from their wife or somebody that’s separating from their husband or someone that’s thinking about it or whatever, anywhere in between.
04:09 I want to express here today that I didn’t come on the radio to tell you how great everything is with me, amen, because it’s not all the time, but rather I want to come here to tell you that God is able to patch up that marriage and to put that marriage on a solid rock foundation that will never break, amen.
04:29 That God is able to bring joy to a marriage and God is able to bring love and happiness to a marriage and God is able to bring peace to a marriage that surpasses all understanding. That is the God I serve. That is the God I testify about.
04:41 That is the God that I like to brag about when I would, I remember we’ve been married, we’ve been married now 10 years, amen, that gives you an idea, 10 years, July 13th will be 10 years. We’re coming up on 10 years. We’ve been married.
04:58 We were, you know, knowing each other a couple of years before that. And I’ll tell you this, even two or three years in, I could see cracks in marriages where people were getting divorced. I’d have to see like, oh, I wonder if everything’s okay.
05:12 They, oh man, you know, I got a divorce, you know, they call me up and tell me, my best friend went through one. It absolutely broke my heart and I’m no better than him, you know, I’m no better than him in any regard.
05:22 And I’d say, man, you know, well, my marriage isn’t like that at all.
05:28 And here’s what came through. The idea is if you put God first, you say, okay, my love, my devotion, first and foremost is to God. If you just do that, okay, then everything else falls into place in the sense that you’re going to have peace with your wife because you’re going to be living under God’s standards.
05:47 And again, creator God made your wife and made you to respond to each other in a certain way when you humble yourself. I heard a preacher say one time that every single argument ultimately comes down to pride.
06:02 And I thought, wow, that’s actually pretty true.
06:07 You know, somebody always thinks they’re right. And you know what? God hates a proud look. And you put God first in your life and you say, I’m going to say that and I’m going to do that.
06:14 I’m going to make action part of that plan. I’m going to get up in the morning and read his word. I’m going to pray to him.
06:19 I’m going to seek him. He’s going to put an attitude of gratitude in your heart. He’s going to give you a love for your wife like you’ve never seen.
06:23 And it may not happen immediately, but he is going to honor your devotion and fidelity to him by strengthening your marriage. So I never actually had to get involved in, okay, how do I make my marriage strong necessarily?
06:42 I just had to focus on my relationship with God as a husband and that strengthened the marriage. And so wives out there, you’re dealing with a situation with your husband and you feel like it’s just oil and water and there’s all kinds of problems.
06:53 Encourage your husband to get close to God. And as he gets close to God, count on God to soften his heart and bring him back to you as you so desire. And husbands, if you’re having problems with your wife, you know, let’s look to God.
07:09 It’s a matter of faith. You know, Ephesians 5
07:13 So a little bit, same chapter, a little bit earlier here. Verse 1, be ye therefore followers of God as dear children. If we believe in God, we should follow him.
07:23 If we follow God, then we are to live by his commands. If we live by his commands, one of them is for husbands to love their wives. Now you’re saying, brother Clark, you already covered that.
07:33 I did already cover it. But did I say that we should believe like a child believes I got a five and six year old in the house. I have to teach them.
07:40 I’m, Oh, I shouldn’t say I have to, I’m given the opportunity and honor of teaching them in homeschool each day. And if daddy says two plus two is four, they say, yes, sir.
07:49 You know, they, they believe daddy, right? You know, if they, they ask a million questions and they, you know, crazy questions about solar systems, but also simple questions about the faucet.
08:02 Right. And I tell them, they just believe me. I’m their dad and they believe me.
08:07 Well, he’s our God. So if we just believe him, we have that childlike faith as dear children. If we just believe God, okay, that now, if we believe he’s telling us the truth and if we believe his command to put him first to love him with all our,
08:22 our mind, our body, our soul, with everything we got, if we believe him in that matter, and we seek him out because we believe he is real, we have faith in him.
08:29 Amen. He is going to take care of things. He’s going to do the miraculous in your life.
08:34 A lot of people don’t exhibit childlike faith. They’ll try to split hairs, take scripture out of context and say the women shouldn’t be subservient to the men. I’ll tell you a story, very personal story.
08:49 You know, my mom was heartbroken when she was divorced from my dad and I was just a kid, four or five years old. It broke my heart. Amen.
08:54 Absolutely broke my heart. And my mom told me a story. She said, you know, I wanted to go to the Christian therapist.
09:01 Your dad didn’t, you know, and you know, I don’t know what happened. I mean, I know my dad’s been to Christian counseling before, but they, they, at some, she said, didn’t go.
09:09 They went to the worldly one and guess what? They got divorced, you know, and whether that, again, that was a long time ago.
09:17 I was too young to verify where they went or what happened, but that’s the idea of taking something and saying, yes, God, okay.
09:26 I like some of your principles, but here the world is going to let me off the hook. And if I go to this worldly counselor, maybe they’ll let me off the hook.
09:38 And why are we doing that? You know, if you, if there’s a problem, a fracture in your marriage, don’t be going to the world for answers. Go to God and go. And if you got a pastor and a good Bible believing pastor, go to that pastor and say, Hey, we need help.
09:48 There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Amen. There’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.
09:52 I remember before I married my wife again, I mentioned she’s a hot button lady. She’s a wild one in a sense that we’re, Hey, you don’t mess with her. Her name’s Sue.
09:58 We used to call her salty Sue because she’s, she, she don’t play around. Amen. She don’t play around at all.
10:04 And I went to my pastor and said, we need to do this counseling thing before we get married. Just so I know what I’m getting myself into. And I was great wisdom in that counseling.
10:12 There was great wisdom in that counseling. There’s nothing wrong with counseling, but you know what? The wisdom came from the preacher who got it from God’s word. And so we are to love, you know, we are to love our wife.
10:22 Like we love ourself. Amen. You know, we are to love our life, our wife.
10:27 Like we love ourself. Ephesians 5:25-29 for time’s sake, I’ll try to get through this quickly here. Ephesians 5:25-29 husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with a washing of water by the word that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.
10:53 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherish it.
11:10 Even as the Lord, the church, there’s so much depth to the scripture, but right off the bat here, we see that we are to love our wives as we love ourself.
11:15 And that’s very important. If you don’t want to give your wife a money, let’s say you don’t want to give your wife enough money for something that she wants. Think about denying yourself that same privilege.
11:22 You know, if you want her to pay a bill and out of something that she has, and you’re not willing to chip in, think about doing that to yourself. You know, you want to hurt her. Think about hurting yourself.
11:33 Amen. Uh, and the Bible says nobody hurts themselves. Hey, when you, when you take care of yourself, you take care of yourself.
11:38 Good. Amen. You know, you, you want to do things upright.
11:42 And yet, when you look at your wife, do you look at them as part of you? The Bible says we are one flesh. Amen. And we are to nourish and cherish that as the Lord has cherished the church.
11:51 You know, we are the bride of Christ. This marital relationship is symbolic of our relationship with Christ. He is the bride groom.
11:57 He is the groom and we are the bride. Amen. And how Christ loves us was sacrificial and humble.
12:02 I’ve heard preachers say that to lust is to take and to love is to give. Well, isn’t that true with Christ? He gave and gave and gave even obedient unto death and the cross. Amen.
12:14 To save us and to keep us. Amen. And so that we could be with him for an eternity when we believe on his free gift of salvation.
12:23 Amen. By the shedding of blood. Amen.
12:27 We’ve been made right with God by what Christ did for us. And he views us as the bride and we are to remain, you know, holy and sanctified until that time. And so what are we to do with, with our wives, husbands,
12:36 if we are treating them like not good treating them inferior, treating them with disrespect, treating them as subservient, trying to manipulate them, talking down to them, being abusive to them.
12:49 How dare we? We’re doing that to ourselves. God’s saying, if you are with your words, stabbing your wife here, there, and everywhere, what you’re really doing is stabbing yourself and nobody wants to do that. Amen.
13:01 And so we are to love our wives. And the implication here again is when we love our wives, we will then be loved by them. Treat them as you want to be treated.
13:12 Show them kindness and love. Even when they don’t think they deserve it. Even when you don’t think that they deserve it.
13:17 Be patient with them. Bear their burdens alongside them. Amen.
13:22 Christ did this for us. He treated us as he would like to be treated with love and devotion and kindness, even though we often didn’t treat him that way. He showed us love when we didn’t deserve it.
13:32 He was so good to us. He showed us patience and long suffering. Amen.
13:39 He bore our burdens on the cross at Calvary now that we can be presented blameless before a holy God. And so what are we to do? We are to love our wives as Christ has loved the church. Amen.
13:47 As Christ has loved us, we are to love our wives. We are to be sacrificial and humble and loving and obedient. Amen.
13:58 And again, yes, you can get into the scripture. It says wives obey your husbands and so forth. But I guess the point, the reason why I’ve harped so much on husbands love your wives is I think a lot of those other things fall in line when we do that.
14:07 Amen. When we do that, when we just love them and we just treat them right and we just show them appreciation and we just help them out and we just be there for them, oh, how blessed we’d be.
14:18 And oh, how we’d see that love return to us and we’d see God bless our household.
14:23 I thank you for listening today. Take care. Tune in next time. God bless. And amen.