“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her….” Eph. 5:25

We had a good discipleship lesson tonight with a friend, talking about how to love his wife in practical ways.

We worked off of the five languages of love; perhaps you know of these (You can look them up online if you’d like more information on them):

–words of affirmation
–touch
–service
–gifts
–quality time.

Spouses often have different languages of love. For instance my wife’s two primary ones are gifts and quality time. Mine in contrast are words of affirmation and touch.

These often work against each other, so the key ingredient in really loving your spouse is often denial of self!

For instance, I like to work not play games or watch movies or take walks. But these things speak love to my wife, so I do them. And in her family compliments and touch were almost completely absent so for her it is not easy to love me this way. But she does!

Take a look and see what your two primary love languages are, and then talk with your spouse about what his or hers is. Then practice them.

We told our disciple tonight to bring his wife a little gift each week, maybe just a flower, or an apple telling her that she is the apple of his eye! Our friend said this was hard for him to do as it’s outside of his male thinking, but he said he would try it I’m sure his wife will appreciate it.

As it says in Ephesians, if we deny ourselves and love our spouse we are actually doing good to ourselves! God is very economical in his commands, accomplishing several things in one ruling.
Let’s join Him in that!

Picture: a little gift of love.