Don't stop me if you've heard this. "My wife won't have sex with me anymore and I don't know what I'm going to do." Don't stop me because I'm pretty sure you have. You've heard it on TV, heard it in the papers and the journals, heard it from friends and/or family, maybe even said it yourself. If not "wife", it might be "husband", but I'm pretty sure most of us have heard it at one point or another. There are variations, of course. Maybe it's not "sex". Maybe it's more general like, "He just doesn't make me happy anymore" or "I want more than she's willing to give." One I heard recently was, "I just want some 'me' time." They all come from the same root -- "I'm not getting what I want out of this marriage." If we haven't said or at least thought it, we've certainly all heard it. And we all understand it.
Here's the problem. This is the way we act and think -- all of us at some time or another -- but this is not the way we were designed.
We have a lot of information on how we are supposed to work based in input from the Designer. We know, for instance, that wives should expect ... to submit to their husbands (Eph 5:22-24) and husbands have a reasonable expectation ... that they should be sacrificially loving their wives (Eph 5:25-29). Now that's strange isn't it? Not what we normally think. We are commanded ... get this ... to "with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves" (Php 2:3). That is not what we're told by those around us. That is not what our friends are telling us, not what our society is telling us, not what our own minds tell us. "Looking out for #1" -- that is the right thing to do. But Scripture says otherwise. You are instructed to love God and love your neighbor without a single command to receive love from either. And Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). It's all outward, you see? We naturally look out for our own interests, but we're supposed to look out for the interests of others (Php 2:4).
Well, you can see where this is going. Considering the quite standard complaints in the first paragraph, can you see the fundamental error? They all come from "I deserve" or "I want." But we were designed for something better. We were designed to look out for what others need or want, what is best for those around us. We're not doing that very well. And I think we can agree that to the extent that we fail to do that, we fail as followers of Christ and as a society.
It comes down to this, then. What direction are you headed? Are you operating in that fundamental error that it's all about you -- your needs, your wants, your desires, your comfort, your rights? Or are you aiming outward? We all know the complaint, "My spouse isn't giving to me ...", but how many have heard, "My spouse is all about me"? Can you imagine a world in which everyone is counting on their needs to be met by God, so they're functioning in a "looking out for others" mode? Well, of course, that would be the fabled "year-round Christmas", only better. It's only possible, of course, if you know Christ, but if you do, does that describe you? If not, why not? (Those are rhetorical questions; I don't need or expect answers.)
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