Unveiled wife devotional how to#

No longer will it be what Keller refers to as a 'consumer relationship' of 'I’ll serve her if she serves me.' It then becomes 'I’ll serve her because Christ served me.'Īnd that’s where the true power of the gospel lies – 'that through marriage, ‘the mystery of the gospel is unveiled.’ Marriage is a major vehicle for the gospel’s remaking of your heart from the inside out and your life from the ground up.'īut how is this practically seen in the day-to-day? According to Keller, this remaking is seen in the continual combination of three things: the power of truth, the power of love and the power of grace. Until God has the proper place in my life, I will always be complaining that my spouse is not loving me well enough, not respecting me enough, not supporting me enough.' The power of the gospelīut once you realize that God is the one who will be fulfilling your needs and God is the one to whom you look for sustenance, you will be better equipped to serve your spouse.

'If I look to my marriage to fill the God-sized spiritual vacuum in my heart, I will not be in position to serve my spouse,' he explains. There’s a reason Keller notes that you have to serve your spouse 'in a sustained way.' The sustenance can come only from God. 'Self-centeredness,' Keller continues, 'is easily seen in the signs Paul lists: impatience, irritability, a lack of graciousness and kindness in speech, envious brooding on the better situations of others, and holding past injuries and hurt against others.' self-centeredness.' In the oft-quoted 1 Corinthians 13, Paul describes love as 'not self-seeking' – it does not put itself first. However, Keller explains, the problem is that the 'main barrier to the development of a servant heart in marriage is. It is the joy that comes from giving joy, from loving another person in a costly way.' The cost of self-centredness 'That is, you only discover your own happiness after each of you has put the happiness of your spouse ahead of your own, in a sustained way, in response to what Jesus has done for you. 'The deep happiness that marriage can bring, then, lies on the far side of sacrificial service in the power of the Spirit,' Timothy Keller writes in The Meaning of Marriage. Sacrificially submitting to and serving one another is hardly what our culture talks about when they refer to 'happily ever after,' but the proven by-product of such sacrifice is, in fact, happiness. 'Both women and men get to ‘play the Jesus role’ in marriage – Jesus in his sacrificial authority, Jesus in his sacrificial submission,' Kathy Keller explains in The Meaning of Marriage. And wives are called to submit to their husbands – just as Christ submitted to the will of His Father, and just as the Church follows that Christlike example by submitting to Jesus. Husbands are called to lay down their lives for their wives – just as Christ laid down his life for the Church.

What Christian marriage looks likeĪfter all, marriage was created by God, instituted by Him to reflect His own relationship not only between Christ and the Church, but also within the Trinity. And for those who are married, the call to serve your spouse is even greater.

Unveiled wife devotional how to#

How did they live happily ever after when happiness can be so fleeting and relative? Books have been written, movies have been made, songs, seminars and more have been created around this central idea of how to achieve happiness.Ĭhristians, however, aren’t called to be happy. The sentiment 'and they lived happily ever after' never seems to include the how.