Dear Christian spouse, do you treat your spouse like they’re a child of the King?

Dear spouse, what would your marriage look like if you treated your spouse as the son and daughter of the king? 

You might say, “My spouse cheats on me. My spouse beats me. When my spouse hurts me, they cuss me out. He, or she, neglects me. I call him a loser and a failure. I call her all sorts of things.”

What if the reason why interactions are so bad in your marriage is because you don't see your spouse through the lens of Jesus? What if we would see them the way Jesus sees us, which is forgiven, free, covered by his love, redeemed by his blood? 

Would our interactions be different?

Most likely!

Truth is, the reason why we MUST CHOOSE to see our spouses differently is because God did the same for us.

 Otherwise, imagine the following image. If every single one of us treated each other based on how God saw us before Jesus came into the picture, the only thing we would have going for us is death.

You might say, “Well, that's all I want. I just want to wring my husband's neck. I just want to run away from him. I just want to tell my wife how bad she is, and I want her to suffer.”

 Sure, that might be the case before you experienced Jesus, but once you accepted and experienced His love, it would be really hard for you to say so. You would no longer be able to say, “I want her to suffer,” because when you look at the cross, you would notice just how much Jesus suffered for you both already. You’d understand and say, “I don't want anyone to suffer that badly.”

If you’re reading this and find yourself saying, “But you don't know my story…” let me share the following with you. I don't know your story, but I know one thing, I grew up hearing curses, I grew up abused, I grew up in so much pain and naturally, did the same thing to my spouse for the first several years of our marriage. I destroyed my husband on every single level until God convicted me and said “Ilona, you're treating my son the same way your dad treated you, you’re continuing the cycle and sin of abuse. After everything I've done for you on the cross, you have no right to treat him this way.”

God was right. I started therapy and took my pain into my own hands. I could no longer blame anyone but myself for choosing to hurt the way I’ve been hurt.

Since then, there's been a lot of healing and trust-rebuilding in our relationship. It took God knocking on my door and saying, “Ilona, you have no right to treat my son this way,” that made me realize this is not just my spouse, first and foremost, my husband belongs to the King. 

So dear one, what would it be like if you treated your spouse the way Christ treated you when he died on the cross for your sins?