When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. – Romans 5.6-8
I was thinking about my post on encouraging your spouse. The point of the post was : Notice when your spouse does something good, and comment about it positively (most of the time we notice and comment only on negative things).
I was imagining the person reading that post who says…‘but my husband (or wife) NEVER does anything good!’
I would love to have a conversation with that person. To ask them some questions.
First, I would ask – What made you fall in love with your spouse? There has to be something that they do well that you can notice and encourage. However small. However trivial. I don’t think your looking hard enough.
Second, I would remind them of the verse from Romans above. Why? This verse is an awesome reminder of what God did for us. When we were unloveable, still screwed up and far away from Him? Guess what he did… Yeah, he died for us…out of love.
He sacrificed himself out of love.
I have heard it said that God actively loved us into the future… BEFORE WE WERE LOVEABLE.
If that isn’t enough reason to see past a shallow “They never do anything good” argument, then I don’t know what is.
photo by Leo Reynolds
The Marry Blogger has Moved!
I wanted to let you know that I am still writing about marriage and relationships It just happens that it is at my personal site: StuGray.com
Please hop over there and keep up to date with our writing about marriage and healthy relationships!!
Again, the website is StuGray.com. You can sign up (if you haven't already) for blog updates here.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Good Question! It does take courage to look for the postives lots of times. I find myself sometimes WANTING to stay upset…and look for reasons to hold a grudge.
I also believe that what we focus on grows. Positive or negative. So its in our best interests to really try and find positives to encourage in each other!
What a beautiful post. “loved us into the future.” That sounds so much better than getting kicked into next week! I'm going to go crawl into bed right now and snuggle The Sailor!
Thank you so much for this post. It's amazing how easy it is for us to see the negative things our partner's do and dismiss the positives. When we do this we actually change what we focus on. When we look for the bad we ensure that we will find it because truly neutral behavior is interpreted in a negative light. In addition, anything positive is discounted as either not real or being done for negative reasons, eg., to make us look bad or our partner look good to someone else. The good thing is that we can change this by changing our focus. We can start looking for the positives. The question we have to ask ourselves is, “Do I have the courage to look for evidence that will change my mind about my partner?”
{ 4 trackbacks }