Staying in Love

One of my favorite things about our church is their focus on small group ministries.  Anna and I are fortunate to have been invited into a small group of other young married couples.  Our small group decided to do a short study on marriage using Andy Stanley's Staying in Love curriculum.  We have met twice already and I have loved the conversations and Andy's teaching.

Love is a Verb

The first session talked about God's command for us to love one another the way the Christ loved the church.  This involves taking actions to put your spouse's needs above your own and submit to them.  We should be proactive in loving our spouse in both words and actions and take our cues from Jesus.  Loving relationships take work and sometimes force us to go outside of our natural selfish selves.  As a husband my number one role beyond loving God is to show love to my wife.  I will continue to strive to live a life in which I make love a verb in our relationship. 

Re-Modeling

The second session was much like the first in which is tackled one of the major problems with most marriages in the world - that we are selfish.  In Philippians 2:3-5, we are to put others interest first and not to act out of selfish ambition or our own self interests.  When we have strong communication in our marriage and truly understand what our spouses interests/passions are we can help strengthen each other and our marriage.  Marriage is not a 50/50 contract, but something that take mutual respect putting each other first.  We must value the other person in our marriage as more important than ourselves.  As we move forward in the next couple weeks I will try even harder to put Anna's needs/desires/interest above my own.  

We only have two more sessions left and I am looking forward to continuing to get together with other couples who share our values of having strong Christian marriages.  By coming together and sharing successes and challenges we help strengthen one another and make God the cornerstone of our marriages.