7th June, 2022.

FAMILY AFFAIRS Pt.2

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
SHE NEEDS LOVE

When I read the dailies, the family section often catches my attention. I see a lot of court cases involving families seeking to dissolve their marriages. The reasons most people give for wanting to dissolve their marriages shows that true love is lacking. The most misunderstood word in our generation is "Love." Musicians sing it in their songs, film producers produce love movies, authors write love stories and poets write love poems yet the world doesn't understand what true love is all about. If they had, most marriages wouldn't be what it is today. Almost all marriages if not all started on the note of "I love you." I don't think any man married his wife saying "babe, I hate you, will you marry me"? I doubt if any lady in her right senses will accept such proposal. Most men are at their best whenever they're wooing a lady simply because they want to show how much they are in love. "I love you" has been used to deceive many single sisters into marriage. Ladies in bad marriages are suffering the consequences of not being able to recognize true love because they perceived love wrongly. Women are emotional feelers and often, men use this weakness against them.

In any marital relationship, the intrinsic need of all women is love. How they interpret "Love" differs from person to person but the element of love must reflect in how the man relates with them daily. Women don't have much problem loving because they're wired to do so. It ain't easy for a man to love that's why the command to love is given to the man. The common love most men have is "Chemical love". They interpret love is response to hormone triggers. Often, when a man is telling a woman "I love you", he has strong erection under his trousers ready for sex while the lady thinks differently. She wants that love to translate into attention and care. Sex comes last for a woman. In the opening text, God commanded husbands to love their wives just as Christ loved the church. To understand this kind of love, the question we should ask is this, "How did Christ love the Church"? Let's check Romans 5:8, "But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners"( NLT). The love of Christ to the church is shown in His sacrifice for the church: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"(John15:3). When we didn't love him, He loved us and still died for us. His love for us isn't because we're perfect, it is an act of the will on His part regardless of our disposition towards Him. Christ didn't stop there, he took it upon Himself to make us holy: "to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word"(Eph 5:26 NLT). Now this is deep and getting more interesting. The love of Christ for the church mirror for the man how his love should be for his wife.

Men must learn how to love. The only way to learn true love is to learn Christ. Looking at Christ, His love was sacrificial and unconditional. He accepted the Church just as she is. You must learn to accept your wife as she is including her imperfections and looks. True love will not say, "She's old and has lost shape, let me go hunting". Hear this, no matter how hard some ladies try, their looks& shape will never remain the way it was when you married them. Some are genetically wired to evolve over time. That's why we emphasize that love shouldn't be built on physical features alone. Constantly, you need to always affirm to her that you love the way she looks and that you're still in love with what you see. That's not a lie because loving her despite her looks means accepting her the way she is. Men who commit adultery often say "Is it possible to eat beans and not be tired"? Wow! It is possible. You can transform beans into bean-cake (akara), bean-pudding( Moi Moi), eat beans with bread or cassava flakes, you can do wonders with beans. Same with your wife. Another aspect of Christ's love for the church is that Christ made the church clean, holy and acceptable. In the family, this translates into making the woman better. It is not enough to accept a woman as she is, love confers on the man responsibility to make his wife better. Women get better with love. The failure of wives in any ramification is traceable to the failure of husbands. A loving husband will cultivate his wife, mentor her and give her wings to fly. This is true love. If after 10 years of marriage, your wife is the same spiritually, academically, emotionally, financially,etc, you have not invested true love into her. No male man is born to love this way because our definition of love is selfish. We want hot sex quickly and move on whereas, that's not all there is to love. Until we learn of Christ, we can't love as expected. Love is responsibility.