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Labor to Exhaustion

The whole temperament of the world is to get away from our bodies making any kind of sacrifice. Our goal is to make our bodies comfortable. The health and wealth syndrome is predominant in our world today. We want to take care of the body and make it last forever. While we are making the body comfortable, Paul tells us to make our body a living sacrifice. Do we know what it is to labor for God until we are exhausted? To work and sweat in his kingdom until we have laid some kind of reasonable and sensible sacrifice on the altar to him? I submit to you that we need to move out of the realm of the superficial and into the realm of the sacrificial. We have an awful lot of superficial saints right here. Instead we ought to be sacrificial saints. We are, as George Elliot said, willing to make any sacrifice for him so long as it is not an inconvenience.

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Paul W. Powell - www.PaulPowellLibrary.com

Today's Devotional

What a Husband Owes His Wife

The Bible is the greatest textbook on marital relations ever written. All other books are but amplifications, illustrations, and applications of the basic truths in the Bible.

In many places the Bible sets out the duties of a husband to his wife. Here they are as a good reminder to every husband.

1. Love her. The first and most often–mentioned responsibility of the husband is to love his wife (Ephesians 5:25). The kind of love that the Bible talks about is the kind of love that Jesus showed when he died for us on the cross. Real love puts the interests, desires, and wishes of the other person first. This is the way that husbands are to love their wives.

2. Be understanding. We are to be reasonable, sensible, and understanding of our wives (1 Peter 3:7). We are to try to see things from their point of view. We are to try to put ourselves in their place. There is no substitute for sweet reasonableness in marriage.

3. Support her. The Bible says that if a man does not provide materially for his family, then he has disowned the faith and is worse than a nonbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8). 

4. Live joyfully with her. Marriage is to be a joy and a delight. The Bible teaches that the man is to enjoy life with the woman he loves all the days of his life (Ecclesiastes 9:9). There are no more valuable qualities than laughter, humor, and good-naturedness in the marriage relationship. Learn to enjoy every day together.

5. Avoid bitterness. An irritable, quarrelsome, fault-finding nature can destroy any relationship. It can change a marriage from made in heaven to hell on earth. It is so easy to become a sour, bitter, and sullen person. Don’t let it happen to your marriage (Colossians 3:19).

6. Assume leadership of the family. The husband is to be the head of the wife. This is not a privilege to be abused. It is a responsibility to be assumed. It means that the husband is to lead his family in all things, including spiritually.

At least one-half of the marital problems could be solved if husbands would treat their wives right. Our duty is clearly set out in the scriptures. Now let’s do it.

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