For husbands, this means love your wives,
just as Christ loved the church.
He gave up his life for her.
Ephesians 5:25
If I asked you if you’d be willing to give up your life to protect your wife, fellas, hardly any of you would refuse. However, if I tell you that you need to give up some of your life and interests to focus on what brings joy to your wife, would you do it?
Only you know how to best cultivate and guard the wife God has given you. Remember that if you want to FEEL the things love feels, you have to DO the things love does.
You know her better than anyone else. But, sometimes it helps to build off other people’s ideas in order to form your own… My prayer is that the power of the gospel would drive how and how often you date your wife and implement these ideas. Here are some thought starters. Just do some things on purpose. Start this week:
- Put a date each week on your calendar and keep it sacred. Leave work right at quitting time, go to the early movie and then dinner. At least half the time make it a chick flick. Take turns planning the movie and place to eat.
- Make a list of ten things your wife loves to do. Each new time you take your wife on a date, do one of those ten things as your date.
- Take a twelve-month honeymoon with your wife. Relive your honeymoon by scheduling a 24-hour getaway for every month of this year. Each month go somewhere new with your wife.
- Devote one hour each night for alone time with your wife. Talk about how your days went. A good way to start is asking the evening question, “What made you smile today?” Joke around with each other. Cultivate your friendship. Talk honestly about what’s going on in your lives. Help each other. Encourage each other. Pray together.
- Mark your wife’s birthday, your wedding anniversary, and Mother’s Day on your calendar every year and plan to make those days special. Find your wife’s love language and “speak” to her the way she wants to be loved.
- Write love notes to your wife. Hide them everywhere. Tell her all over again what she means to you. Leave it where she is bound to find it.
- Spend an evening reminiscing with your wife about all you’ve been through together and all God has done and redeemed in your life together. Play “I remember when…”
- Devote the next month to studying a book of the Bible with your wife.
- Visit your roots. Plan trips to visit where your wife grew up and where you grew up. Learn more about each other’s backgrounds.
- Hold your wife’s hand often, in public and in private.
- Complete this statement every day for at least a week, “I love you because___________”.
- Tell your wife that Jesus loves her more than you do.
- Take dancing lessons with your wife.
- Vacation with your wife without your kids, without your work, and without your cell phone and computer.
Reflect
Tonight is the night!
