Friday, 21 May 2021
“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” – Ephesians 4:15 NIV
With the way things are going these days, we try to find bargains wherever we can. In the same spirit, I come as Santa giving out specials, get two for the price of one. As we dive into the above Scripture we also going to touch a bit on marriage as well (two for the price of one). By God’s grace, I’ve been happily married for more than a decade. This is not because of my obvious charm or wisdom but because of a secret I learned navigating this maze called marriage. You must learn the art of fighting with your spouse. Fighting is an art and those who haven’t perfected it struggle in marriage, you need to fight in a loving manner (oxymoron). Most couples get very personal in their fights and very hurtful things are said that can’t be taken back. Though the recipient of the abuse pretends everything is forgiven, they still reflect on the words from time to time.
This is where speaking the truth in love comes in. In everything, you say you must always remember and ask yourself a couple of things:
1) Do I really need to say what I’m about to say?
2) What is the motive of my statement?
3) What am I trying to achieve by saying it?
4) Is this going to build the person on the receiving end?
5) Is what I’m saying motivated by love? (theee most important of them all).
The first four points are pointless if your answer to number five is no. Like Paul said in Corinthians if I have all these accomplishments but I lack love then it’s all pointless.
In life, we interact with different people from different backgrounds with different personalities but one thing that is universal is that we all want to give and receive love. Even a hardened serial killer on death row still wants to be loved by someone. So as Christians we are held to a higher standard than everyone else because our Father aka our Maker is the Author of love (It’s like being a pastor’s kid in a nightclub, everyone knows you shouldn’t be there). In everything that we do we always need to question our motives and re-evaluate our love walk when interacting with everyone (Our love batteries need to always be charged). Our words need to be motivated and inspired by love.
Going back to marriage (still extending the special) we always need to treat our spouses with love. There should always be love in our fights. Our focus is not avoiding fights (it’s inevitable), but making sure love is always present in the fight. It’s like we are in a boxing ring and the umpire is love. He’s there to make sure that there are no low blows. We need to fight in a way that we can laugh about it minutes after the fight. It sounds strange but it’s very possible if you choose your words very carefully. This is the area where most couples miss the mark. Fights become heated and competitive as everyone wants to prove that they are right. The problem is when it’s all said and done you have embarrassed your partner, the same partner you took vows to love unconditionally. This is why GOD forgave us before we asked for forgiveness, we also need to forgive our partner before we even fight. The “fight” is just to make them realize where you believe they made an era, it’s not to assign blame. This can only be done when we speak the truth in love. Truth is useless if it’s not said in love, it’s just noise that no one wants to hear.
In everything that we do we always need to question our motives and re-evaluate our love walk when interacting with everyone (Our love batteries need to always be charged)
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