If you’re married—read this.

For the man who chooses to marry, there is no greater gift that God can give him than his wife.

To clarify, Jesus is God’s greatest gift to mankind, but specifically to married men, I can’t see a greater gift on this earth than your wife. To view her any other way would diminish the value of God’s vision for men and women to live in harmony in the world.

Genesis 2:20 says that, out of all of creation, no suitable helper could be found for Adam. God’s perfect plan was to take something out of man and fashion it into someone who would complete him physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

It is a strange way of doing things--physically removing something to fill an emotional void that was already there. However, in doing so, God increased man's need for unity with another being.

Adam recognized that, unlike the rest of creation, Eve was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.

He saw that she complimented him in every way, and was someone he could find true union and fulfillment with.

The bottom line is:

The future of mankind depended on that relationship succeeding.

And it still does.

Perfect love requires putting the good of another before our own. Paul says in Ephesians, that husbands should love their wives like Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. To illustrate the point even further, the church is often referred to as the bride of Christ, and the value for the bride was so extravagant that Christ sacrificed his life to see her prosper.

Can you imagine what would happen if the world saw us loving our wives this way and we were able to tell them that we learned it from Jesus?

Our world today would encourage us to live for ourselves at all costs, but that is not love.

True love looks like laying down one's life for another.

God calls us to love everyone in this way, and that starts with those who are right in front of us.

So married men, I encourage you to practice showing your wives the self-sacrificial love that God has modeled so perfectly for us. You may not be able to perfect it, but we are covered by the one who has, and this great gift is one that needs to be seen by the world around us.

Blessings,

Dean