I feel a little like Jude.  No, not Judas—though I’ve had my moments, God knows!  Jude—he wrote a brief letter that comes just before Revelation.  Location, location, location.  Jude begins by saying he had wanted to write to his dear friends in Christ about the joy of salvation, the joy of faithful living together in Christ.  But recent events had instead made it necessary for him to write a word of caution (Jude 3).  I had wanted to continue walking with you through the Acts of the Apostles on our way to Pentecost.  Especially because it’s Mother’s Day, today I feel the need to speak with you about another matter.

Men, brothers in Christ, be faithful to your wife.  Being faithful isn’t really primarily not cheating on your wife, but don’t do that, either.  Cheating on your wife isn’t primarily about finding euphoria in another bed.  The cheating I mean, the cheating I think Malachi is warning against, is doing violence to the one you should protect.  I’m not talking about physical violence.  We aren’t cads, here; we aren’t animals.  I’m talking about cheating your wife of what you owe her: mental, emotional, and spiritual support.  Help her always know you are there for her, her rock and refuge.  The violence about which I’m speaking is doing violence to the covenant love God requires from you, just as He requires it from your wife.  I’m not letting the wives off.  Today, though, I’m talking to the husbands.

“[T]he Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth” (Mal 2:14).  In the church, we have expectations of one another: reasonable, biblical expectations.  Christian husbands and wives have reasonable, biblical expectations of one another.  The last three years have not been easy on any of us.  Everyone has been under a lot of pressure—economic, social, political, and mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual.  All along also, there has been the pressure we put on ourselves, trying to better ourselves, do more for our families, keep them safe when the dangers can feel hard to name and even harder to keep away.  There is the pressure of the sacrifices we make, willingly, while also hoping to be met halfway by those we love.

No one is in love with compromise.  Healthy, flourishing, fruitful human relationships depend upon compromise.  Compromise is particularly necessary and particularly hard when we are under pressure.  We have a vision, not always an unreasonable vision, of how our lives ought to be.  It matters, tremendously, what we do when the life we are living is not fulfilling that vision.  We must think carefully, reflect prayerfully, and listen lovingly.

We’re starting to see some of the effects of all we’ve been through.  These are also the result of situations that have been in disarray for a much longer period.  There come times and seasons in our lives when we fail, directly and indirectly, intentionally and unintentionally, to honor the covenant love we owe to God, one another, and our spouse.  Maybe there are unresolved, old hurts from before we even met our spouse.  Maybe the failure comes out of current, trying difficulties.  Each of us carries into every relationship a history of hurts as well as happinesses, coping strategies that work, more or less, and those that really don’t.  No one enjoys conflict.  Marriage ought to be one place where there is blessedly little of it.  That would be great!  We each have a vision of how our life ought to be.

You don’t directly, intentionally have to take your frustrations out on someone for her or him to start feeling hurt, forgotten, unloved and unvalued by your words, choices, and actions.  There is also time yet for repentance, confession, and reconciliation.  Let none of us ever be too proud for such things.  Men, within the last year, one of our own has left his wife of nearly forty years, the mother of his children.  It’s not the first time such things have happened, either in our experience or in the history of Bethel—including among its pastors!  A broken and contrite heart God will not refuse.  A broken, contrite heart is the offering most acceptable to God.  He can do something with that.  He can bless, with that.  He can pour out grace into hearts broken open for Him.  Guys, a broken heart isn’t always signaled by those tears we fight against.  More often and most deeply, it’s signaled by you and me saying to ourselves, “My God, what have I done!?”

I wouldn’t share this most recent disaster if word hadn’t spread.  I’m stating what is already known.  Every marriage has its ups and downs, highs and lows.  No one here, or not here, is a saint!  We are each and all of us more than a bit of a mess.  The miracle and the grace is that our spouses put up with us at all, and that we do the same.  Why?  Habit?  Maybe there’s something to that.  Part of holiness is habit, too.  But habit, routine, doesn’t completely explain this tolerance.  Habit is what we don’t often think about.

How is it that we tolerate and even accept one another?  Love?  Yes, when understood in the best sense, but love is one of the least understood emotions out there; it seems people always have misunderstood.  Adam and Eve heard the Word.  They didn’t take to heart what they heard.  We’ve suffered ever since.  An old comic strip has been around for more than fifty years, The Lockhorns.  Leon and Loretta have been bickering longer than I’ve been alive, yet they’re still together.  Well, it’s a comic strip: fiction!  It wouldn’t be so funny (and it often is funny) if there weren’t an anchor in our own experience, this world of fictive nonfictions in which we carry on.  Looking at those sad, silly Lockhorns, any outsider would say, given all the available observable evidence, that it would have been best for those two to separate long ago.  The wisdom of the world.  It can feel like strong wisdom; our hearts incline.

This keeping together is more than habit.  It’s something even beyond love that has kept that comic couple together.  What the insider knows is that the two would actually be miserable without each other, incomplete.  Each would feel the someone missing from their lives with ache, sorrow, and loneliness.  It’s not that they put up with each other, just tolerate each other, or “graciously” ignore one another.  The secret here is that they love one another with covenant love; they take covenant love seriously.  They know God witnesses.  That can make them tremble, but mostly it encourages them to keep going, keep trying, keep talking, keep praying, especially when it gets so very difficult.  And it does.

That husband and wife acknowledge what Malachi reminds us of: we belong “body and spirit” to God.  We exist for God, to glorify and enjoy the Lord forever.  We do that as we remain faithful to our covenant love, giving one another what we owe: listening, sacrificing, sharing, nurturing, protecting, upbuilding.  We never much mind the taking: we’ll take as much as we can get and then some.  God at work in our hearts reminds us that we’ve also got to do some giving.

God gives grace to keep going.  Might we do likewise?  We live the covenant we made as we bear with one another.  Covenant love is not an emotion: it is a choice; it is resolve.  Acts of love do not necessarily begin with the feeling of love.  Acts of love may happen more often, and for the Christian perhaps most often ought to happen, from the grace-full decision to be loving: committed, patient, decisive devotion.  Malachi reminds us that God expects godly offspring (2:15).  Those in covenant are expected to produce godly offspring, the fruit of faith, which is loving one another and living together on God’s terms.

It’s not always some long, bitter slog through unending arguments and difficulties.  There are also the tender moments, moments of unspoken understanding, intuitive communication, knowing your spouse maybe better than anyone, and knowing you also are known.  God does not give a requirement without means or encouragement to meet it.  Grace, mercy, compassion, steadfast love—which is another way of saying committed love, which is another way of saying covenant love—what God gives He requires in turn from us.

Malachi criticizes husbands for failing to cherish their partner (2:14).  The word also gets translated as faithful partner and as companion.  The Hebrew verb has to do with being joined together, as an alliance: stronger together, better together, there for one another.  Our wives are not there to obey our commands or submit to our rules, or just keep away while we play.  Your wife is the helper just right for you.  Our wives are gifts from God.  As with all of God’s gifts, we seem to have a built-in knack for taking them for granted.  In church, we have a name for that built-in knack of taking things for granted: sin.  You and I, we have sinned against the covenant we made with God and our wives when He joined us.

Love desires the best for the beloved.  We’re all working on that.  The best is God: life in, with, and through God.  Not my terms for her; not her terms for me.  God’s terms for us.  Your wife is not just along for your ride.  I don’t get to decide what is best for my wife; that’s God’s job.  By grace, I get to desire the best for her.  Then I pray to God to help me to do and be my best for her by His wisdom, Word, and guidance.  Then I strive to give her the best of myself as I strive to help her perceive the best of God.

That also means I am always, for God’s sake and her sake, sacrificing what is not the best of myself.  If something is doing real damage to my relationship with my wife, I’ve got to sacrifice it.  Christian husbands and wives live Christ’s way not only for their own blessing but for the blessing of their spouse.  This is mutual.  Oh, it can get unbalanced, unequal, we know!  I give everything, and you—what do you give?  Remember those are words spoken from hurt.  The world would have us respond with hurt.  “You hurt me, I hurt you, we’re an unhappy fam-i-ly.”  Christ would have us respond with prayerful listening and words of healing.  The Spirit is available to rebalance and reconcile; let us seek the Spirit.

Men, are your choices, words, and actions helping your wife know and feel you value her, or might some of what you say, or decide, or do, cause her to feel or think otherwise?  Guys tend to deal with what they regard as facts more than feelings.  It’s an oversimplification to say it’s the opposite with women (all feeling and no facts), but, guys: remember what you say and do makes an emotional impact, too.  Feelings matter: even we know that.  We thrive in our relationships when we feel valued, appreciated, when, in my candid, prayerful assessment, I am holding up my end of the covenant and I feel that my spouse is doing the same: faithful partners, allies; the help that is just right.  We’re not born knowing how to give that help; we grow into it by grace and by love over time, together.

When trouble arises, as it will and must in these broken lives in this broken world, look first at yourself.  Listen to your Father in heaven.  Get right with God, and I suspect the rest will begin to fall into proper place.

Men, you and I have to learn to communicate with our wives in the way suited to who they are.  Words are fine, as a start; remember too that love looks like something.  It’s more than flowers once or twice a year; it’s more than bringing home the bacon; it’s more than calling them over to the couch to watch the Cowboys, Texans, or Astros with you.  It’s more than taking them out when you want to go out.  Yes, these are ways in which we try to show we care, that we want our wives with us.  The women in our lives are amazingly obliging and accommodating!  They figured out, a long time ago, that this is how we show our love, and they accept it.  But our good-intentioned gestures might not be communicating with them in the way just suited to who they are.

Before the sun goes down on you today, men, I want each of you with a woman in your life not only to tell her one thing you appreciate about her, I also want each of you to pledge yourselves to show her how important she is to you in a way that’s suited to who she is rather than who you are.  Knowing her as you do, what do you know will make her heart happiest?  And for those who no longer have a woman in their life, get on your knees and thank God for all the goodness He has given you, and ask Him to help you to be a better man for your family and your church family.

Husbands—try a compliment every now and again, not just, “Dang, you look good!”  Maybe something like “I see what you do for us, and I don’t know how to thank you for it.”  Sometimes we stop spending time together.  Make the effort to make some time for the two of you: reconnect—share memories, stories, hopes—go for a walk; hold hands; remember something she likes to do, and ask her if you could do that together.  Yes, some ladies are especially fond of gifts—especially those “just because” gifts.  I can’t list them all for you; I don’t know your wife like you do.  Maybe the best gift would just be giving yourself—your time, talent, attention, love, on her terms, her way; try serving her!

Help out around the place.  Fix that pesky thing she’s been asking about or bite the bullet and pay to have it fixed.  Paint that room.  Load that dishwasher.  Do your own durn laundry.  (But not hers!)  Be a helper, a giver.

Lastly—most guys’ special favorite—hug her, hold her; let her feel secure and special.  Love changes over time, thank God!  Love also remains, abides, grows, matures, ripens.  Stick it out, tough it out, love it out.  Treasure the wife of your youth, your ally and faithful partner.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.