Scripture
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34).
Marriage devotional
Sometimes we can forget that our spouse is a “one another.” We might ask for God’s help to love our coworkers, our neighbors or that person we serve with at church who annoys us just a little. But then we step through the front door of our home and take our spouse for granted.
Have you ever felt passionate about loving an orphaned child on a mission trip or leading someone to the knowledge of Christ? Sacrificially loving your husband or wife might not sound as exciting as other “love one another” opportunities. Nevertheless, God sees how you love your spouse.
Gaylord Enns knows this is true. In his book, Love Revolution: Rediscovering the Lost Command of Jesus, Enns tells a story about what God taught him as he prepared breakfast for his wife.
Enns was a busy pastor of a growing church when his wife started calling him in the morning, saying she felt weak and asking him to bring her something to eat. She had hypoglycemia and knew she should eat something right away in the morning, but she often didn’t have an appetite and forgot to do so. Later, she was so weak she couldn’t think well or get herself some food.
After she called him several times in this condition, Enns decided to rearrange his schedule so he could leave the office and make his wife breakfast at 9 a.m. He gladly did so. But every once in a while, he felt pressured or taken advantage of or inconvenienced by this added duty.
Then one day after he cracked the eggs in a bowl for his wife’s breakfast, he “was surprised by a very clear whisper: ‘Jesus came to your house for breakfast today.’ ”
“When I heard the whisper, I stopped swirling the fork in the bowl of scrambled eggs and stood motionless,” he writes. “Tears began to fill my eyes. The message was clear. In the stillness of that moment, I was fully aware that only one person was sitting at the table behind me waiting for breakfast. It was my wife. Yet in that same instant, I knew that I was about to scramble eggs for Jesus.”
After that day, Enns writes that his attitude changed. He realized that as he loved his wife and served her breakfast, he was loving Jesus and serving Him breakfast, too.
Remember that when you’re loving your spouse, you’re really loving Jesus. Matthew 25:40 says, “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’ ”
Today’s marriage devotional question
When was the last time you changed your schedule, gave something up or handled an additional task to make your spouse’s life better?
