Love Stories
05 Jun 2008
No Egos Allowed!
Do you remember when you were a kid and you hung a sign on your bedroom door that said “No Boys (or girls) Allowed”? Well today, we’re putting a sign on the “doors” of our marriages that says “No Egos Allowed” because, you won’t find an ego in a Christ-honoring marriage. There won’t be any winning arguments, no one-upmanships and no I told you sos. You won’t find pettiness or the need to always prove who’s right.
A Christ-honoring marriage will be like I Corinthians 13. You won’t be puffed up about your good qualities. You won’t envy your spouse or focus only on your own wants and desires. You will not be easily provoked in a given situation or think evil thoughts of your spouse. You will bear all things, believe all things, hope and endure all things. You will sometimes suffer, but you will always be kind. That is love and that is the focus of a Christ-honoring marriage.
I’ve seen men who take pride in showing their wives who’s boss and women whose need to prove their equality is so great that they begin publicly correcting their husbands. I see this and wonder what they think they are accomplishing by behaving in such a way. They are certainly not gaining love and respect from their spouse. They are more than likely provoking anger and resentment with their actions that do nothing but embarrass.
Proverbs 31 tells us about the virtuous woman whose price is far above rubies and it says the heart of her husband safely trusts in her. For us girls today, that means no matter how you might disagree with him on something, you won’t do it in public, especially not in front of his friends. You will honor him by loving him more than your need to be right. On the days he’s grumpy, you will simply love him instead of lashing back. And most of all, you will appreciate him for his strength, for the vulnerable side that he shows to only you and for the love that he has chosen to give you.
Ephesians 5:25 reminds husbands that they are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it and I believe that’s where us girls get the idea of a knight in shining armor. We love to think that our husbands will do anything for us. He would climb the highest mountain, cross any desert, slay any dragon and do it all for the sake of love! No guys, that doesn’t mean that we expect you to be perfect, or that we want you to pick fights for us, on the contrary. What is does mean is that we feel it to the depths of our souls when you love us as Christ loved the church.
In preparation for this article, I decided to take a look in the dictionary and thesaurus to see what they had to say about the ego and found a few things to be very interesting. First of all, two of the ways the dictionary described the ego were conceit and self-centeredness. You obviously find no love for anyone but yourself in those two explanations. Second, fitting right along with this article, my Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus made the meaning of the ego more clear by saying “Darla’s egotism will always thwart her chances for a lasting relationship”. Now doesn’t that begin to begin to put it all in perspective?
I challenge you to take a look inside your heart and see if there are any areas where you might be showing a little ego and then I challenge you to get rid of it. After that, go to I Corinthians 13, apply it to your marriage and see what happens!
Melissa Brady
http://www.jimandmelissabrady.com
Reader Comments
|
Now Playing
|
Add this entry to Your Favorites
[0] Comments
Written: 06/05/2008 
Author: 
Category:
Love Stories
Email this article
RSS
feeds
