God can use your marriage to teach you how to
love. If you don’t run from the
challenges that marriage presents, your marriage will make you a more
unselfish, stronger, and wiser person.
Proverbs 9.10 tells us Hatred
stirs up contentions, but love covers all transgressions (Amp). This means
that when you are hateful (objectionable, abhorrent, obnoxious, unpalatable,
unpleasant, disagreeable, distasteful), strife and discord will invariably
follow. Conversely, when you
choose to love (be devoted to, admire, be benevolent towards), it covers, or literally from the Hebrew
word kacah, fills up what is lacking
in others’ lives where they are falling short.
Interestingly
enough, I have been seeing this Scripture from another vantage point as
well: when we choose to love
instead of hate, we will wipe out sin in our
own lives as well. Not only
with the way we choose to feel towards our spouses, but literally with every
relationship we have. When you
truly love someone you will not sin by judging them, criticizing them, being
jealous or envious, looking down at them, holding them captive to perfectionism
or even to a standard you have for your own life but they don’t have for
theirs, and a multitude of other sins
that enter your heart when you are not loving. Choose love:
without ceasing, fervent, extended and stretched out love. As the Message Bible puts it in 1 Peter 4.8: Most of all, love each other as if your life
depended on it. Love makes up for
practically anything.
Challenge: Love, truly love, others. You will know you have God's love abiding in you when: (1) that love covers (fills up what is lacking in others' lives where they are falling short); and (2) that love stops you from sinning because you can't speak against, about or unkind words about those you truly love.
Everyone will know that you are my disciples because of your love for each other. John 13.35
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