How to Live in Love With Your Wife

You may have a better-than-average marriage, but Matt Jacobson says that should not be the criteria by which you measure how well your marriage is doing.

We have to look at the word of God is the standard for what's normal. But what we intend to do is we look at what we see is what what's common even in the church is not what is normal biblical Christianity in a normal Christian marriage is a beautiful loving open giving close fun and enjoyable relationship. It's rich and it's good. This is family like today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson about looking find us online@familylifetoday.com no matter where your marriage is today. It can be better tomorrow.

Talk today about things we can do to move our marriages in the right direction. Stay with us and welcome to family life to.

Thanks for joining us with a little love coaching this week. I need some love coach. We all need a little low you yeah I remember Mary and I've talked about this when we got married. I loved her because she loved me what I really loved was her loving me absolutely do not understand exactly why I just liked being with her because when she was loving me. I was like yes this is what I got married for free to just keep doing this on our marriage will be happy. So it was all about what I'm get not love. That's why I think we need little love coaching because that's not the biblical understanding of love and we got some coaches who are with us this week. Matt and Lisa Jacobson guys, welcome back to family life today. Thank you again, Matt and Lisa have written two books, one for wives, called 100 ways to love your husband, the mother for her husband called 100 ways to love your wife. You wrote separate books and we we talked about this already, a little bit but are we that different as men and women that when it comes to how we love one another. We have to approach it differently does a wife need to think more masculine only about what love is. Does a husband need to think more like a woman to understand how to love his wife actually there is a lot of writing about out there, but what we find is that people in a marriage are individuals and you really have to seek out the individual that you're married with to understand them to have an understanding of what is desirable to them. What is fulfilling to them what speaks love to them as a person, so we don't really think of it in terms of a gender issue. Oh, I'm a man. Therefore I need to be loved this week. Now I'm mad. Jacobson and this is how I need to be loved and this is Lisa Jacobson over here and I need to seek out and understand her. Her heart as a person as an individual as a woman, so might there be things Lisa, the wife would read hundred ways to love your husband, and she would go.

I don't think that would work, and she'd be right, absolutely just ideas and get you thinking about when you met my husband like what does make him feel loved and most the time that involves communication and conversation.

Ideally, but it also can happen to observation look at what did I got this is my love language which you not that's also a good way to think across the board, your husband or wife is and can be someone that touched that the only thing that says love to me. I doubted I bet all of those things will contribute to you feeling loved. So then you kinda gotta get down to that personal way of what does this person need from me. Even in this season because none about you guys but we've we've changed in seasons so the beginning of our marriage and that was trying to love me was the first year of marriage we lived in this little pink apartments member. This is really funny actually and I was I was pregnant and saw the little bit maybe a little irritable, not feeling that great kinda getting used to the whole sensation of pregnancy and that is intuitive, so he sensed that I wasn't super happy so he just started he started scrubbing floors and vacuuming even clean the toilet and he was just working working working I'm sitting in the catch getting madder you're getting angry that he's scrubbing the soul. I know not bear with me super husband. I'm knocking my brains out for weeks on end and I'm going I am going to lay down my life for this so that crush the hands all of the listeners. If you would get angry if your husband, scrub the floors just depends on what my needs are well listen. So, I'm exhausted.

I am totally exhausted because Drew fits right in the house is exhausting right so it's good to know that as a member anyway so I'm sitting on the couch and I'm looking at her and she's in the kitchen and she's working on the dishes and you just rub them really hard and she's getting madder and I go and what is her problem because she's married to Sue and she's matter and I said okay so what's wrong and so then I said gently and lovingly like that member that part. Maybe not super lovely maybe is the love was in my heart. So maybe the flames of the ones coming out of her eyes turned on me and she's mashes down the plate on the counter and I didn't shatter, but she snatched it up and she goes, I just want you to love me and I'm going okay. You have got to be kidding me, I do. I don't care about all that stuff and I said what you mean you don't know that's doesn't even matter know it is going well, then what of my I just want you to want to be with me. I just about you just take me out for a cup of coffee more than once in a blue moon about you just desire to be with me and I'm going oh well, that's all it takes to clean toilets but nobody but you can take me out to coffee and end here when I'm thinking it's a new wife of an apartment. We only had one car so I wasn't really getting out and I was just as your lonely. I was looking I didn't want to watch him clean my toilet changed just like changed women you never really saying is we need to become experts at our spouse absolutely and not thinking that once I know it to be the same forever. It may change in time and see we also have to be careful about loving our spouse in the ways that say love to us right because if you're thinking that way than what you're doing is you, loving herself, but you're not loving her in a way that says love her and that's why it's important become a real student of your spouse and understand what matters most of us have heard about Gary Chapman's five love languages you are doing acts of service, she was looking for quality.

Sure, I'm Mary and I have talked about the fact that over a marriage. What we thought was each other's love language has changed what used to be X of Psalms is now is different and and when you have eight kids under the age of 18 run around the house, acts of service was a priority now. It deftly got bumped up significantly under the age of 12, but what 812. I know mathematically impossible, but I can attest and and now you're in a different season to some of those kids are out of the house. You still got some at home but now all of a sudden the priorities are different and how you love one another shifts and changes, doesn't it does and the main thing about loving your spouse is just being purposeful every day to love your spouse.

It's not something that happens by itself.

It's not something that happens just because your day is unfolding. It happens because you purposeful about it and it's not rocket science. It's not about the person who has a PhD in loving his wife and that's the person that knows how to do it know this is something for every one of us to do.

We were at a wedding and the this couple's young couple got married and I walked up to them.

We just can relate. I just sent you know, I just want to speak a blessing over you.

I pray for you that you have a normal Christian marriage, and he looked at me goes what what is a some like curse of what normal Christian marriage and she said that the wife knew me. She's just hang with them and he's going somewhere with a seat. We have to look at the word of God as the standard for what's normal. But what we tend to do is we look at what we see is what's normal what's common even in the church is not what is normal biblical Christianity, a normal biblical marriage. I mean, how did the book start to naked people running around the garden right okay I mean God wrote the book all right. And then the song of Solomon year of remove the euphemistic references to fruit you got a solid R rating will read the song of Solomon sometime a normal Christian marriage is a beautiful loving open giving close, fun, enjoyable relationship. It's rich and it's good and it's something that just gives you a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. That's normal biblical marriage, and for every single couple.

I don't care where you are in this journey.

It doesn't matter if you been married for five or 50 years. It doesn't matter if you have a terrible marriage date doesn't even matter if you have an okay functional marriage and a good marriage. God has an excellent marriage for absolutely every single couple who will look at the word of God and say I'm with you my heart what it says and I'm going to move forward. According to the instructions. I find it a beautiful normal Christian marriage is waiting for everyone. As I listen to inspired matching that wasn't always easy with eight kids that were close together. Did you ever struggle with S so everything about life conspires against God's best. Absolutely everything, even the good things.

All right, Satan doesn't go out to the barn yard pick something up off the ground as they let me tempt you with this right. He wants to take you down with the good things all right and kids. That's part of the goodness of God's blessing on your life but in order to avoid the pitfalls of the struggle. Even if your family with with young kids is you have to understand something, and you've got to yield your heart to it. God did not give you if I'm talking to men. Right now he didn't give you a wife and children for you to look at them as equally competitive relative to the scale of priority. Your wife is your number one priority and your loving your kids by loving your wife. Well, and so if you can keep that understanding that priority in mind and you don't get confused with all of the other things and then after the family. All the other noise in life and recognize doesn't matter how busy we get. It doesn't matter what life throws at us and frankly folks.

We've had some things that life is thrown at us and you don't know our personal journey, but it doesn't matter what is in your life if you keep the priority that God established love your wife like Christ loved the church that central relationship and responsibility. Keep that in forefront and you know you work through the hard days but everything falls into place and remember we always have time for our real priorities just to get back so our child had a massive stroke in utero and was born with severe severe brain damage and it was devastating and unexpected nobody to the state knows why her watch and she still with us today actually beautiful 19-year-old and when she was born there was just a big scramble of the hospital and all the experts every try to figure out what happened then is this little baby can make it and what it is for the family had set out in five kids six and under and what they can do when it was devastating and the neurosurgeon offered to solve the problem for not giving you just said no identified everyday for this little girl's life and the stress of that time was significant. I was at the hospital for most of the next two years with her in the hospital often on the first six weeks solidly in the NICU and that was at home. He just started a new company that was when he said well publishing and so you dislocate at home.

I was at the hospital so yeah there was a huge strain on your marriage and then the head of the hospital, met with us one day of the significant over the next few weeks just to kinda help us get our heads wrapped around that we are to be dealing with and he told us he said just so you know most marriages end up in divorce that have a little baby like this. The strain is too great and it was sobering to us and it helped the state. I think even recommit to okay with whatever work in a walk-through.

It's just do it together and what I was thinking about I just remembering that drive one of those drive to the hospital because I come home on the weekends to visit my addict. My other little kids and we are driving back to the hospital. I stayed at the Ronald McDonald house there near the hospital. Can we just give a shout out to the room that is the most amazing blessing to families because they let you stay there for next to nothing. When you have these months long stays at a hospital and we did. We stayed at the Rome McDonald house four months was really really a gift. Driving back and I was course overtired and grieving, and all of that in an postpartum and down, and I think I sent to you something like you're not involved because I felt like I was carrying the weight of this little baby and she just about drove off the road. I totally lost it. I have a lawsuit in my life. It's not one of the things I do this one times ended and I started hitting the dashboard so hard and yelling. I was so mad because of the strain and the stress and the pain and and I've lived hospital to you work there or you're by yourself. You were a lot of the time but I was living there as well and back and forth with the kids at home and thankfully my mom quit her job and was looking after the kids and helping but but the anger of that moment of her and it wasn't her perspective. It was just in the moment of the stress saying that I wasn't involved in the wasn't engaged in. I was furious and just it was. Not a godly moment. I will say that now I look back I think the strain he must've been under to try to keep this new business we had going and take care the kids at home and take care of me but I was so wrapped up in my own world and pain that I wasn't aware that we work through. We had a hard conversation.

We were able to sob together, which we hadn't taken enough time probably done that and CH helps each other's pain.

Each unique way.

We are carrying it so it doesn't mean that you have a perfect marriage and just never never have hard moments or are hard things. I guess that with thing I wanted to pass upon that evenness as life throws you these difficult moments you can still lock together, you can still do it in love and work through the tactics when life forces you to tighten your grip. Just remember not to let go of each other. So when you're walking through some like that and another's couples listening right now there there. How do you love and 100 ways to not like how you practically because I know you did it but it's probably a little different then kissed her passionately. You know cannot feel it, but yet he comes back to small little decisions, choices are going to lead you to a different marriage to talk about how you do it in in the darkness. Okay so right because there are some dark days absolutely. So first off I want to speak to the men there's a verse in the Bible that says act like men. All right, here's the thing you're walking through this darkness. This challenge together and just in the case of our situation. I can tend to minimize hard things. It makes my wife so mad, but I go, hey, I was tough, but will keep going will get there and so one of the things that we had a deal with is our daughter's heart stopped or she stopped breathing multiple times every night and so I'm going yeah it's a tough season yes and were just like our energy is going down every night we can. We have to wake up and get going again shaker and breathe interface move her head a little bit to get her started again. So the back sleep. The monitor go off again so don't do that for 18 months and again I kind of early on looked at it as a it's not that bad risk and keep going or going to go so one day because I had this way of being.

Lisa goes yet will help me time to think. The monitor went off last night is not a no 15.

She was yeah well here's the print out and it was 40 times in one night. It was so brutal, so what I want to say about this is guys. You are the one that gets to be the soldier in the circumstance all right and you have to look at this as the person that is principally responsible for caring as much of the weight as you can. In those days of challenge in those days of darkness and's stop out yourself on the back to say hey I've worked really hard know it doesn't matter.

You're the man in the Bible says act like a man. Conduct yourself like a man and we are called to nurture love, cherish, and to lay down our lives and it's in those moments of darkness.

Those moments of life's worst challenges where you get to walk that out and don't you want God to say you know what you did well son well don't think of it as though you're having such a hard time. Your job is to protect look after. Nurture your wife you're walking through it together but you get to carry the heaviest load. Let me go to the phrases that are around that phrase that you mentioned act like men in first Corinthians 16 because if a husband wants to love his wife. Here's how you do it first.

Be on the alert, which means you're paying attention.

Your eyes are open your your look around and you're saying what's going on here and what do I need to be alert doing is there danger is there need. How can like your alert be on the alert stand firm in the faith is the next thing it says which means you're anchored in. I worked really biblically remember where you live according to God's word and I'm a start.

With that in my life and then were gonna do it as a family be on the alert stand firm in the faith, then it says act like men. Some translations also be courageous, which I think that Andrew to my word that the use there in the Greek is a word that means men should be courageous. That's at the heart of masculinity and then it says be strong and and that's the next thing good that you're saying yeah you're the soldier. So when everybody else is weak. You be strong and then what's the last thing Celeste was due everything love yeah let everything you do be done in love. And I think for a husband to say okay I need to be alert and I need to be anchored in God's word and I need to to be courageous and I need to be strong, but I need to make sure that is I'm doing that everything is done in the context of love sacrifice for another person, and that's a call to men for what loving your wife that that's another passage informs us what that's supposed to look like I'm super grateful, that is Dave and I have walked through some valleys and some dark places in our lives that Dave hasn't shouldered it alone. He's had other men partnered with him that if prayed for him and if really held him up at times and held his hands up. Sure, I think that's a big part of it as well.

We were never intended to just be our strong little islands out there were to walk together and others great strength and we were upheld. Certainly in our dark days by the prayers of the saints, and so that's a supercritical part of it. Don't just go it alone and Lisa, what is it look like for you to love Matt to really like. He's kinda given us this picture, but several woman do. That's a good question as well. So from that. I think some of the categories for him are things like loyalty, respect, honor and just and I'm behind him. That speaks powerfully to him.

So for me to communicate I'm behind you when he's going into something that means a lot to him and also that I'm beside you so were doing this together. He sexing very together oriented. He said he's a leader and a pastor but he doesn't want to do it alone. He's not actually made to be that way.

So I want to do all I can to let him know that yeah I'm in this with you. Even if I'm not in that particular meeting. Even he knows I'm home praying for him. Or maybe I'll send them a text just letting them know that my heart is with you you all and if you set important here V siding.

I think to know that she's beside you but that you believe you she she looks at you and says I believed in the man God called you to be on. I believe in what you're trying to do and doesn't mean that you doesn't step in the times and saved.

This doesn't seem wise to me. It's not blind belief but but for you describe the cheering on your husband is is huge for us as men to know that we got somebody whose journals on especially somebody that knows us well as you can fake other people up congregation also means a man I trust you. I'm file follow you anywhere and I just sort of smile. I don't really know but when my wife says that it means everything and at the end of a Sunday when everybody says that sermon was great whose opinion you really care about the woman sit in the front railing and I think there's so much power that woman has it she probably doesn't realize in communicating to her husband what she believes he could be and should be and I say that anyone ever say that the Nizam of the law to tell a lie. That's not what he is right now. I know I get that.

But think about your children if you're a mom, do you have any troubles communicating to your young son hate you can it be a great man someday or you are a truth teller and I love that about you like a woman will say okay so it's so important and so impactful, why would it be any different in thinking that way to your husband so you actually are speaking truth and power into his life. Even if the he's not quite there yet but you can see in him and it actually brings out that in him overtime.

Absolutely. I just am grateful for the way that you guys again, practically press.

These truths home in the books you've written, and I would hope our listeners would would give each other copies of of these books and all for a wife to say to her husband here.

Here's a book that tells you how you can and maybe should go strewed before she gives it to them and she just folds back a few of the pages and the husband cannot do the same thing with his wife and then just got copies of method leases books 100 ways to love your husband 100 ways to love your wife there in our family life today resource Center because thank you for being here, and for sharing all of this with us. It's been awesome to be with you and I have to think couples will be listing your conversation this week our thinking you know we we could use a little practice in terms of how we apply some of what's been talked about because it's been a stressful season for our country and I think for a lot of marriages with everything that's been going on working to make your books available to any of our listeners who would like to get a copy and can help support the ministry of family life with a donation go to family life today.com, make whatever donation you're able to make an requester copies of Matt and Lisa Jacobson's books hundred ways to love your husband 100 ways to love your wife will send them to you as a thank you gift for your support of this ministry and keep in mind your investment is really an investment in the lives and the marriages and the families of not only fellow blisters in your community, but people all around the world who are coming to family life to the listing to this program is a podcast screaming out on the after listening to it on the local radio station. There, benefiting from our website.

Our resources are events, people who are looking for help and hope are coming to us and you are making the help and hope possible as you support this ministry. So thank you in advance for whatever donation you're able to make go to family life to.com to donate or call one 800 FL today to make a donation again will be happy to send you upon your request copies of Matt and Lisa Jacobson's books hundred ways to love your husband hundred ways to love your wife again requested when you make a donation online@familylifeto.com or call to donate 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today, not tomorrow morning to talk about how husbands and wives can maintain a strong marriage love one another well when you have a special part of the family. Joe and Cindy for reading their story and share that with us tomorrow. You could be here as well like our engineer today along with our entire cast on behalf of our host state animals. See you back next time for another family life, family life to days of production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. Accrue ministry help for today hope for tomorrow