Dying To Self to Honor Your Wife

The command to love your wife as Christ loved the church requires that we give ourselves up for her. These are challenging words. What does it mean to have this kind of sacrificial love? We know that it is not likely that we will actually have to die for our wives. So, there has to be another explanation in the context of our daily lives.

I think that we are called to give up our lives in the sense that we are willing to forego the things we want to do and the way we want to do them in order to give our wife the attention and preferences she deserves. It also means that when we decide to do something that serves our wife's needs we do it with true joy, not grudgingly. Lets try this week to serve our wife and family with true joy.

Gerry

The Games We Play

In 1984, Charles Coonradt wrote a book called The Game of Work. In the book he asked a penetrating question. Why do people pay money for the privilege of working harder at a sport than they will work when they are getting paid? In other words, people will put more energy, focus, effort and zeal into their sports endeavors than they will at their work-place, where they are actually earning a living. The reason that the author proposed was that in the arena of sports, the rules are very clear, the path to success is well proven and the score-keeping is accurate and timely. In our place of work, we struggle with just the opposite conditions. In my experience, I have found this thesis to be true.  I have now been thinking about this in the context of our roles as husbands, fathers and responsible men of God. I have thought about the analogy of sports as it relates to families. When you hear a coach talk about what he does to prepare a team for success, he will talk about the countless hours spent in practice, game planning and reviewing films. There is a total focus on making the team successful.

A family is like a team that is getting ready to participate in the game of life. The husband and father is the coach. We should be focused on making our family a winner in this game we play every day. There is no more important contest going on around us. One of the most common reasons that men give for not being the leaders they know they should be is that they don't think they have time. They are busy with "other" things. What would fans think if Bob Stoops said that the reason the Sooners lost a game was because he just didn't have time to do a game plan that week because he was occupied with other matters. Men, we all need to reevaluate our time and simply put in the time it takes to make our family winners in the game of life.

Serving Him,

Gerry Raubach