🫖🫖🫖In his time, Moses the prophet was the meekest man on the earth (Numbers 12:3), yet he was not perfect.
🫓When he came down from a fasting retreat in the presence of God that lasted forty days and forty nights, and beheld the revulsing spectacle of the children of Israel dancing naked in worship to the golden calf, he became angry and threw down the tablets he had received from God. He did not intend such an extreme reaction, but it simply shows that our weaknesses and frailties as humans can sometimes overtake us (Galatians 6:1).
🍗Like Moses, your spouse may ordinarily be a highly disciplined and spiritual individual, but they are still prone to overreacting or even faltering badly and thereby offending you gravely. And when they do, just realise that it is not the responsibility of your mate alone to clean up the mess. God requires you to stand up and initiate a cleanup. That is what we see in our anchor scripture for today.
🫖🫖🫖PICK UP THE MOP STICK
Put more plainly, our anchor scripture is telling you that when your wife or husband offends you, do not sit down and sulk, feeling angry and disappointed with them. Instead, do the unnatural and the unexpected: go to them. Not to quarrel with them or to blame them, but to tell them what they did that was wrong. And your choice of words, attitude and body language should be such that you are not playing the role of magistrate or judge, but seeking peace and healing for your mutual relationship.
🥪Tell them their fault in an attitude of love—an attitude that shows that they are precious to you and that your intention is to gain them and not lose them.
🍞The truth is that, with this attitude, your guilty mate is most likely to respond positively.
🫖🫖🫖WE’RE CALLED TO LOVE DIFFERENTLY AND PROFOUNDLY
Marriage calls us to a life of profound and many-sided love. One of those aspects of love is to demonstrate magnanimity, maturity and spirituality, and not react negatively when your mate unfortunately shows the selfish, wild or uncultured side of themselves. That is the time to show that two wrongs cannot make a right and that no wise person uses fire to put out fire.
🫖🫖🫖DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN
God commands us:
“Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26).
🥯This means that it is okay if you are angry over the annoying, insulting, embarrassing or unjust treatment meted out to you by your marriage partner. But God says, “Don’t let your anger be unduly prolonged or degenerate into sinful verbal responses or ungodly behaviour.”
🥐Secondly, He tells you to ensure that you do not let your anger go beyond a particular time: sunset. Why? Because it is both unnatural and unspiritual to do so. Here is the reason:
🌭The misunderstanding or crisis between you and your spouse is like bodily dirt and waste because, as a couple, you are one body—one flesh. In your physical body, as a man or woman, if you refuse to “wee” or “poop” from morning till night and are determined not to do so throughout the next day because you are angry, who are you hurting? Yourself, of course! In fact, you are endangering your very life.
🍖Similarly, refusing to make peace with each other before sunset is harming yourselves as a couple. Just as deliberately refusing to “wee” or “poop” for extended hours could harm your health, so also refusing to reconcile before sunset could lead to serious matrimonial complications and entanglements that you may not be able to handle.
🧆Seemingly “simple” hostility that was not resolved before sunset, as commanded in Scripture, has led to a sudden adulterous pregnancy by a wife or to a husband putting a neighbouring teenager in the family way and being forced by her parents to marry her.
🥯Therefore, always reconcile with your spouse over your misunderstandings BEFORE it is nighttime.
🥖If you are the offended party, you need to remember our anchor scripture for today and quickly give it obedience.
🫖🫖🫖CONCLUSION: TO THE GUILTY SPOUSE
If you are the guilty party, do not sit smugly, waiting for the one you offended to come and initiate peace and reconciliation. Hear what the Lord Jesus said in another place:
“23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;
24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” (Matthew 5:23–24)
🍞This scripture is not only for when you are in church and remember that you offended someone. The point is simple: when you are guilty of offending someone, leave everything else and pursue reconciliation first because it is the most urgent thing to do.
🍗So, the responsibility of bringing about peace and reconciliation in a marriage after a crisis rests on both the offending spouse and the innocent partner.
🍳All this means that the work of ensuring that your matrimonial environment is clean at all times depends on both you and your spouse. Each of you should pick up the “broom,” “mop,” “shovel,” “cutlass,” and other cleaning tools and clean your relationship after every misunderstanding.
🧇This is matrimonial sanitation.
🫓And always do it before sunset. That is the divine rule (Ephesians 4:29; Hebrews 12:14).🫖🫖
💕♥️🩷Tonight’s Bedroom Assignment:
Re-read this devotional together just before bedtime and discuss it with open and sincere hearts.
✝️Altar Call: Jesus Christ is calling you! Come to Him today in genuine repentance. Believe in Him and be saved!
🌡️🧪⚗️Scientific Info To Boost Your Marriage:
🔬Oysters are loaded with zinc, which helps your body make testosterone. That’s a hormone that plays a big role in your mood and sex drive. Zinc may also help men make more sperm. It might also help those sperm move better. Not a fan of shellfish? Load up on other foods high in zinc, like beef, pork, fortified cereal, pumpkin seeds, cashews, and yogurt.”🔬
🎷🪘🎙️🪗 HALLELUJAH!
📢PRAISE THE LORD!