Your Husband Won't Always Be Jesus

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...
husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself."

Ephesians 5:25, 28

Christian gals, we know that God commands our husbands to love us deeply and unconditionally, to love us like Christ.  We expect our Christian husbands to channel Jesus to us 24/7, to always understand us and never hurt us.  And really, I think most Christian husbands would love to do just that, but in reality no one is perfect and, gals, our husbands will mess up.  The question is, what will we do when they mess up?

Here's a foundational verse from the lips of Jesus: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31).  When we feel our anger rise when our husbands fail us, do we treat them the way we want to be treated?  Let's be honest.  None of us are perfect wives.  We fail, too.  When we fail, how do we want our husbands to react?  Do we want them to yell or dredge up a list of our problems?  Do we want them to call a friend to gossip about how bad we are and what mistake we made again?  What do we want?  My guess is, if you're like me, you want to be told, "Look, I forgive you and I still love you.  I'll always love you, no matter what.  You're a great wife and a great mom."  That kind of response would encourage me to get back on my feet and not dwell on my failure.  If we want to be treated this way, then women, we need to treat our husbands this way.

Truth is, our husbands are striving to be like Christ just like we are, but it isn't always easy.  We will fall and the awesomeness of God is revealed when our spouse gives us grace, helping us stand back up.  We are blessed to have someone walking next to us in this sinful world.  Instead of getting angry when our husbands' aren't Jesus, we need to remember that we aren't Jesus all the time either.  At that moment, we need to make God's grace real as it works through us and is lavished on our husbands.  They need to feel that we still love them and we'll stand by them no matter what.

Check out this great post by a Christian woman who challenges wives to make sure their husbands know they are winners: "I Married a Winner."