A Peaceful Marriage Starts Outside of Your Marriage.The root of all peace is God.But not the God that most of us imagine.The God that I am referring to is the one who has laid aside the rules to keep you out and has embraced you through sacrificial actions.First, He sacrificed His position and became like us.He became human.He wanted to be intimately involved in the human experience.Second, He took our place and accepted the responsibility to establish a relationship with us by redeeming us from our fallen condition.1 John 4.19 is one of those critical truths that becomes the foundation of a peaceful relationship with others."We love because He first loved us.".The beauty and power of that short sentence is astounding! As I realize that I am deeply loved by God, I am empowered to love others.The root of a peaceful marriage is in discovering and emotionally experiencing the love of God.This love is not a mere academic or theological fact.It is a real, practical, and powerful fact.When I realize how much God loves me and experience that love personally I will find myself loving my spouse with a love that transcends my fickle emotions and unstable swings from day to day.For example, your wife says something that sends you into an emotional torrent of self-defense and irritation.Your first reaction is to verbally defend yourself and prove your point and jab back with a few critical comments of your own.You counter her attack with a verbal left jab by reminding her of a few of her mistakes from a few weeks, months or years back.The whole situation escalates from there.We've all been there and done that.But as you spend time meditating and pondering upon the awesome fact that God loves you so much that He died for you.That He believes in you and in your wife.As you become emotionally established in how much He loves you, you find that the approval or disapproval of others, including your spouse, doesn't have as much power over you as it used to.Now you are free to love.From the foundation of a consistent love from God you are able to consistently love others.Your love is now based on an eternal and supernatural source rather than a human and unstable source.
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