Love Generously

Do you want your marriage to be blessed by God? Do you want it to thrive? Do you want to find happiness and fulfillment with the one to whom you have pledged your love for a lifetime? If you are married or hope to be, the sensible answer to those questions would be a resounding YES!  In 43 years of practicing marriage, Dana and I have learned the secret and I am going to share it with you in this blog. (If medical doctors who train for decades are still “practicing” medicine and taking lives into their hands, then we can still be “practicing” marriage and teaching how it’s done, right?)

This month at church we are hearing a series on living generously. I want to bring that home by telling you that the secret to a happy, blessed marriage is to live generously. To give generously. Your time and your attention and your effort to bring joy into the life of your spouse are ways that you can give generously and receive a blessing.

You may be thinking, I have done that for a long time and I get nothing (or very little) in return. Why should it always be me on the giving end? No judgment here! I lived with those thoughts for several years. And I was not a very happily married woman. I thought I was living generously by giving him what I felt he wanted, but the blessing wasn’t returned. It seemed he was happy with my offering and enjoyed the benefits without ever realizing I was sitting in a puddle of self-pity waiting for him to reciprocate. My motives were not entirely selfish. I wanted to bless and please my husband, but there was something in me that was waiting for the volley to come back to my side of the net.

Jesus addresses this sort of “what about me” attitude in Luke 14.

“But when you give a banquet, invite those who are poor.

Also invite those who can’t see or walk.  Then you will be blessed.              

At a glance, that doesn’t look like marital advice, but looking deeper you can see that He is teaching us that the purest generosity is when we give our very best without hope of gaining anything in return. What’s the end game of living generously? You will be blessed. Giving with the expectation of a return on your investment, is business, not marriage. So the attitude with which you give directly impacts the blessing you will receive. And that blessing comes from the Supreme Giver of blessings, not from your spouse. Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong place.

The lesson I learned a few decades back was that I should not look for a blessing from my husband who doesn’t know what I need, unless I tell him… and drop that absurd philosophy of, “If he really loved me he would just know.” My blessings come when my heart is pure and my giving is drawn from the well of God’s love inside of me. This practice only works when God is the source of my love, not my own self-sacrifice or determination. Walking though life holding the hand of my Savior, knowing Him, listening to Him, following Him, meditating on His Word, seeking, asking, growing, living for Him and with Him will bring me to a place where I am truly blessed. The blessing comes from living the love that He brings me, not receiving the love someone else has for me.

Don’t get me wrong… I love being loved the way my husband loves me. I love the way he looks at me and smiles like I am still his bride, the way he provides for me, listens to me, holds me, makes me laugh, patiently teaches me… and that list goes on and on because he, too, has learned to love out of the overflow of God’s love in him. It is a blessing to do life with an imperfect human who is growing and learning and loving better all the time. But, the blessing of a godly husband does not compare to the blessing God gives in response to my unselfishness.

I am still a work in progress, but I have walked with Jesus long enough to know that giving of myself, without expectation of a return, provides me with the blessing of the God who sees into my heart and uncovers my motives. Loving to receive love is selfish and selfishness is actually the opposite of love.

“For God so loved the world that He GAVE…”

Will you take the challenge to love generously? Will you be willing to give and expect nothing in return? Can you devote yourself to sitting at the feet of the Author of Love and learn what it means to love your neighbor (or your spouse) as you love yourself? If so, be prepared to experience the joy of His blessing. If you feel drained and done with loving sacrificially, check your motives. You may be resorting to your default setting of loving in order to be loved. Ask God to show you how to love generously. That is a prayer He loves to answer!