Acts of Service

Biblically, there are five ways God expresses his love for us. And these are the five ways that we are to express love to our spouse (and others). In this post we'll unpackage God's fourth expression of love.

4. Acts of Service 

John 13:1-4, "It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end…so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him." Through the humble act of washing dirty feet, Jesus showed his love for his disciples, and then instructed them to follow his example.

If we want a happy and healthy marriage we too should follow this example of serving.

At our house Kristin does the laundry, but she absolutely hates it. Now I hate doing laundry too, but I love my wife so I did a couple loads for her while she was out having coffee with her sister. This is an example of a practical act of service.

Andrew, our executive pastor here at New Day, isn’t just a good pastor, he’s also a good husband. And since it’s hard for Kristi to go to the grocery store with four kids, Andrew often takes care of the grocery shopping for her. It’s a practical way he shows his love for Kristi.

Though I grew up in a traditional home where my dad made the proverbial bacon and my mom cooked it, my dad isn't above helping around the house. At Thanksgiving or when we all come over his house to eat, he always does the dishes so that my mom doesn’t have to. It’s a simple, but meaningful way to express love through an act of service.

These are all examples of acts of service. They require thought, planning, time, effort and energy. And if done with a positive attitude, they count as meaningful expressions of love! Jesus wasn’t above showing us love by serving us, so who are we to be above showing love to our spouse by serving them? Why not think of a practical act of service you could do for your spouse today? 

Gift Giving

Biblically, there are five ways God expresses his love for us. And these are the five ways that we are to express love to our spouse (and others). In this post we'll unpackage God's third expression of love.

3. Gift Giving

Romans 6:23 says "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

From these verses we see another way that God expresses his love for us - through gift giving. While gift giving should never replace the gift of time, there is a place for gift giving, because it’s one of the ways that God shows his love for us.

Gift giving means a lot to my wife. In light of this, months before her birthday or Christmas I begin making a list of things I overhear Kristin saying that she wants. The gift means more to her when she hasn’t directly asked for it. She likes it when I pay attention to her and make notes on my own and then surprise her with things she’s mentioned but may not have explicitly asked for. So that’s what I do. And since gifts means so much to her, I set a big budget for her birthday and Christmas presents. Gifts don't mean that much to me (and my favorite gift is actually 100% free) so I can assign most of the money in the budget for gifts to her.

Now why do gifts mean so much? Have you ever thought about that? Well, it's because a gift is a symbol that your spouse was thinking of you. You can’t get someone a gift without thinking about them. And your spouse will probably appreciate the fact that you were thinking about them just as much as (if not more than) the actual gift.

And here’s the good news. You don’t need to spend a ton of money! Even a one dollar gift can speak a million dollars worth of love. With that said, if you have a million dollars you might not want to buy a one dollar gift.

True love gives! The Bible says that God so loved the world that he gave... (John 3:16). There’s just no way around it. At the heart of love is the spirit of giving. So from time to time be sure to express your love for your spouse through the giving of gifts.

Quality Time

Biblically, there are five ways God expresses his love for us. And these are the five ways that we are to express love to our spouse (and others). In this post we'll unpackage God's second expression of love.

2. Quality Time

Genesis 3:8-9 reveals that God took time daily to walk and talk with Adam and Eve. God showed his love to Adam and Eve by daily spending time with them. In the same way, we can communicate love to our spouse by sharing quality time with them.

You see, the greatest gift you can give someone is your time. I John 3:18 says, "Our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action." That is, love is not just something you feel, or just something you say, it’s something you do. In other words, you spell love T-I-M-E.

The greatest gift you can give someone is your time because time is your most precious resource. Your life is made up of seconds, minutes and hours. And when you give someone your time you are giving them a piece of your life. You can get money back, but not your time. That’s why the gift of love expressed through time is the most valuable, precious gift you could ever give.

We all have different energy levels, different amounts of wealth, different amounts of talents and different personalities, but we all have the exact same amount of time. All of us get 168 hours a week. And what we give our time to speaks volumes about what’s truly important to us. If we want to communicate to our spouse that he/she is important to us, we've got to carve out some time in our schedule for them (and not the left overs).

Giving someone your time says “You matter to me.” Giving someone your time says “You are valuable to me.” Giving someone your time says “You are worth listening to.” You’re saying all kinds of things when you give (or withhold) the gift of time.

In Luke 10:38-42 we read the story of Mary and Martha. Jesus has come for a visit. Martha is running around doing all kinds of stuff FOR Jesus, while Mary is content to just be WITH Jesus. Martha gets upset and tells Jesus to tell Mary to help her. But Jesus replies “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! But there is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”

From this story we learn this principle: What we do with Jesus is more important than what we do for Jesus. Well, the same is true of our spouse! What we do with them is more important than what we do for them.

The essence of loving relationships is not what we give to each other (i.e. presents/gifts/stuff). The essence of loving relationships is how much we give of ourselves to that person. Our lives. Our time! Gifts are no replacement for time.

Guys - listen up - Some of you are so busy working for your family, that you have no time to spend with your family. But this is no way to live. Your wife and kids don’t need more stuff. They need you! They need you to express your love to them through quality (and quantity) of time. Pastor and author Chuck Swindoll once wrote “Busyness fills the calendar but frustrates the family”, so don’t get caught up in the busyness trap. Take the time to show your love by giving your spouse (and family) quality time.

Be deliberate this week to think about ways to spend some time with your spouse. Remember the things that you used to do while you were dating, the things that brought you together in the first place. Whether it’s taking a walk, going for a hike, going skiing, playing a game or going out to dinner. And be sure to put down your phones and give each other your undivided attention. That just may be the thing your marriage needs to get some of its spark back. 

Words of Affirmation

Biblically, there are five ways God expresses his love for us. And these are the five ways that we are to express love to our spouse (and others). In this post we'll unpackage God's first expression of love.

1. Words of Affirmation

In Matthew 3:16-17 we read: As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

In this passage God expresses his love for Jesus through words of affirmation. He says: Hey everyone! Listen up! Jesus is my Son and I love him! He makes me so happy!

One of our family’s favorite Christmas movies is Will Ferrel’s 2003 movie called ELF. In the movie, when Buddy the Elf falls in love with his new co-worker, Jovie, he bursts into his dad’s board room spinning and shouting to everyone in the room “I’m in love! I’m in love! And I don’t care who knows it!”

Well that’s what God is doing for Jesus in Matthew 3. God’s love for Jesus wells up in his heart until it overflows from his lips in the form of kinds words. In a declaration of love he proudly tells the world: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Solomon was a pro at using words of affirmation in marriage. Here's some of the kind words he spoke to his young bride recorded in Song of Solomon...

• You are beautiful my darling. 
• You have captured my heart. 
• Your love delights me. 
• Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the young women. 

Following Solomon's lead, something I like to tell my wife is “Honey, you make that dress look good.” I don’t compliment the dress because a dress can’t give me a thank you kiss. But my wife can, so I tell her that she makes the dress look good, not the other way around. Following Solomon's lead my wife tell me "Mike, you're such a hard worker." And I love it when she says stuff like that! 

Proverbs 12:25 says “Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up.” When is the last time you shared a kind word with your spouse? 

First Corinthians 13:4 says “…love is kind”. Therefore, to communicate love verbally we have to speak kind words. From God’s example we learn that kind words are one meaningful way to express love to our spouse (and others). So if this isn’t something you’re already practicing, why not start today? 

If you don’t know where to begin, why not begin where God began with Jesus? Guys, just start telling your sweetheart “You’re my wife. I love you! You make me so happy!” Ladies, just start telling your husband “You’re my husband. I love you! I’m so glad I married you!”

Keep the Tank Full

To have a healthy and happy marriage, it's important to learn how to keep your spouse's love tank full. 

Christian author Gary Chapman, in his book The Five Love Languages writes "...inside your spouse is an ‘emotional tank’ that is waiting to be filled with love. At the heart of mankind’s existence is the desire to be intimate and loved by another. And God designed marriage to meet this need for intimacy and love. That being the case, keeping your spouse’s emotional love tank full is as important to a marriage as maintaining the proper oil level is to an automobile. Running your marriage on an empty love tank may be even more costly than running your car without oil."

So how do we do it? 

Well, Jesus gives us some insight in Mark 12:29-31 when he said: The most important commandment is this…Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

From these verses it's clear that we're to love God and love others, but what does biblical love look like? Fortunately, God hasn't left us hanging. The Bible lays out at least five ways that God expresses his love for us - and these in turn are the five ways that we are to love each other.

Here are five biblical expressions of love that we'll unpackage in the following posts. 

1. Words of Affirmation
Matthew 3:16-17 says: As soon as Jesus was baptized...a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” God showed Jesus he loved him by speaking kindly to him. 

2. Quality Time
Genesis 3:8-9 reveals that God took time daily to walk and talk with Adam and Eve. God showed Adam and Eve he loved them by spending time with them.

3. Gift Giving
Romans 6:23 says "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." God has shown us how much he loves us by giving us the gift of eternal life (through faith in his Son Jesus).

4. Acts of Service
John 13:4-5 says, "Jesus took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him." Jesus showed his love for his disciples by serving them, and then instructed them to follow his example.

5. Physical Touch
In Mark 10:16 Jesus took the children in his arms and placed his hands on their heads and blessed them. When Jesus' disciples assumed Jesus was too important to bother with children, Jesus showed his love for the children with appropriate, loving touch. 

These are five ways that God loves us and five great ways that we can express love to our spouse.

Identify Your Spouse's Positive Characteristics

God's Word gives us five steps to cultivating a winning attitude in marriage (and in life). Here's step two:

2. Identify your spouse’s positive characteristics 

Take a look with me at 2 Peter 3:1, “Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.” You see, it goes totally against our sinful nature to be positive and focus on the good - which is why the apostle Peter wrote to stimulate wholesome thinking. This blog post is my attempt to stimulate wholesome thinking about your spouse. It doesn’t come natural so we’ve got to work on it. How do we do that?

The answer is found in Philippians 4:8 which says “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”  

Below is a link to a worksheet based off Philippians 4:8 that will help you identify your spouse's positive character qualities. Regardless of whether your marriage is in a good or bad season,  go ahead and fill this out. Ask God to bring to your mind all the positive things about your spouse, and then write them down. If you can’t think of anything, then enlist the help of your children (if you have any). Say to them: Would you tell me the things you like about your father/mother, the things you appreciate and admire? This will help you to identify your spouse’s positive character qualities AND will help stimulate wholesome thinking about your spouse (instead of negative thinking).

Click here to view/download the worksheet.

Acknowledge My Negative Thinking

God's Word gives us five steps to cultivating a winning attitude in marriage (and in life). Here's step one:

1. Acknowledge my negative thinking

If we want our marriage to be healthy, we must recognize that our negative thinking must change. You see, our thinking guides our behavior. If we think negatively, we’ll behave in destructive ways. But if we think positively, our actions will be positive as well. As Proverbs 23:7 says “...for as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he...”

We are never more negative than when we complain. But Philippians 2:14 says “Do everything without complaining...” And notice the context. Philippians 2:5 says “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.” Then a couple verses later it says “Do everything without complaining.” That is, Jesus wasn’t a complainer so neither should we be!

How do you know if you’re a complainer? Well, when you get arrive home from work and your spouse says "How was work?" what does that sound like? When you and your spouse leave a friends house, what does it sound like in the car on the way home? When you report on how the day went with the kids, what does that sound like? 

I had a friend growing up that was always complaining about something. We crossed paths once or twice a week and I’d ask “How’s it going?” but I quickly learned that was the wrong question to be asking. The response was always a complaint about how bad things were. It was so depressing. So when I saw this person I started just saying “Hey” to avoid the flood of complaining that would come if I asked “How’s it going?” (So if you’re spouse says “Hey” instead of “How’s it going?” watch out! You might be a complainer! ;)

Isn’t it true that no one wants to be around a complainer? Well this is true in marriage too. This is why Solomon wrote in Proverbs 21:19, “It’s better to live alone in the desert than with a quarrelsome, complaining wife.” This is true of a complaining husband as well. So if your spouse seems to prefer solitude over your company, it might be because you’re a negative person who is always complaining.

You know - the truth is that there’s good and bad in just about every situation. And as a discipline we’ve got to train ourselves to focus on the good. Let me illustrate how I do this with my staff...

Each Monday morning the staff at New Day meet to evaluate Sunday. We ask four questions: What went right? What went wrong? What was missing? What was confusing? And the reason I set the meeting up to begin with “What went right?” is because I want my staff to learn to focus on the good.

And this is what we need to discipline ourselves to do in marriage. We’ve got to learn to look first to what’s right in our spouse, not what’s wrong. Isn't that what we want our spouse to do for us? 

User Friendly Marriage Assessment

The Bible speaks of a number of different kinds of seasons. 

1. The Bible speaks of agricultural seasons

• Genesis 31:10, breeding season 
• Exodus 34:21, plowing season 
• Numbers 13:20, grape season 
• Mark 11:13, fig season 
• Proverbs 20:4, harvest season 

2. The Bible speaks of different kinds of weather seasons 

• Ezra 10:13, rainy season 
• Job 6:17, dry season
• Psalm 148:8, seasons for lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds, and the like 

3. The Bible speaks of calendar-based seasons 

• Psalm 104:19, He made the moon to mark the seasons 
• That’s spring, summer, autumn and winter - the calendar-based seasons 

4. The Bible says there’s a season for everything

• Ecclesiastes 3:1, For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. 
• Now, “everything” includes marriage. 
• So the Bible teaches there are seasons of marriage.  

And I love how Christian author Dr. Gary Chapman (a New York Times Bestselling author) describes these seasons in his book The 4 Seasons of Marriage. Let me explain each of these to you briefly…

1. Spring 

Couples in the spring season of marriage feel exited, happy and hopeful regarding their future. This is not as good as summer, but spring is the prelude to summer, so this is a good place to be. The attitudes of couples in spring are characterized by optimism, gratitude, love and trust. In this season the couple nurtures the relationship by investing in it, planting seeds from which they hope to reap a harvest of happiness. So in this season the couple is reading books on marriage, attending seminars on marriage, etc. They know that investing in the relationship now will pay off in big ways later. Galatians 6:9 is a favorite Bible verse for those in spring. It says , “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” 

2. Summer

Couples in the summer season of marriage feel happy, satisfied and connected. This is the ideal season of marriage to live in. No couple ever lives here permanently, but the goal of each marriage is to live here as much as possible. The attitudes of couples in summer are characterized by trust. In this season the couple has a growing sense of togetherness. They resolve conflicts and enjoy a great deal of satisfaction from how far they’ve come as a couple. Couples in the summer season have come to learn the benefits of being married and are enjoying those benefits to the max. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 describes these benefits stating, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

3. Fall

Couples in the fall season of marriage feel fear and apprehension about the future because they know something isn’t right in the relationship. Their attitudes are characterized by concern and uncertainty about the future of the relationship. In this season the couple is drifting apart and disengaging. They sense that something is happening, but they’re not sure what. In this season the couple disengages emotionally and each partner begins to feel a sense of detachment. Couples get in the fall season by neglecting the marriage. And as Ecclesiastes 10:18 says, “Laziness leads to a sagging roof; idleness leads to a leaky house.” In other words, if you neglect your house, in time, it will begin to fall apart. The same is true of your marriage. You can’t neglect it and expect it to thrive. You have to work at it - like those in the spring season are doing.

4. Winter

Couples in the winter season of marriage feel hurt, angry, disappointed, lonely, and rejected. This is of course is the worst season to be in. The attitudes of couples in the winter season are characterized by negativity, discouragement, frustration and hopelessness. In this season the relationship is detached and cold. There is no sense of togetherness. This is not where you want to be! This is not where God wants you to be! In Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Marriage was God’s solution to loneliness, so when you’re marriage yet lonely, with no sense of togetherness - you’re missing what God intended marriage to be!

What season of marriage do you find yourself in today? What are one or two practical steps you could take to point your marriage in the direction of the season you want to be in?