“Don’t you wives realize that your husbands might be saved because of you? And don’t you husbands know that your wives might be saved because of you?” (I Corinthians 7:16)
Food For Thought: What would happen in our marriage relationships—in all of our relationships, for that matter—if the primary motive was to introduce our significant other to Christ?
I am not talking about badgering a spouse into the kingdom through a non-stop, hard sell verbal witness. I’ve known spouses who do that—and it rarely leads their mate to Jesus! It often leads them to bitterness and greater resistance to the Good News.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “It is right…that we should be much concerned about the salvation those we love. But we must be careful not to…demand that their salvation should conform to some ready-made pattern of our own.”
I’m talking about showing them the real Jesus. I’m talking about offering them authentic salvation. I’m talking about living every dimension of your life so that Jesus can be seen. That’s really what Christians are meant to do, after all. We are to make the Savior attractive to those who are far from him by the way we live—how we respond, how we serve, how we give, how we navigate disappointment, how we suffer, how we love proactively and unconditionally. Who wouldn’t be attracted to Christ when we’re living that kind of outstanding witness.
And even if our loved one already knows the Savior, our assignment is no less. We are to be Jesus to them. Our living witness to a loving Savior should be the very thing that makes them want to go deeper in their own relationship with the Lord.
That’s our job—to be Jesus to the people we love. We may be the only Savior they’ll ever see!
Prayer: Dear God, my prayer this morning is simple: Help me to so live that my spouse sees you when she sees me. When I speak, in my body language, in my actions, in my attitude, help me to be the Gospel in the real world of my everyday relationship with my wife.
One More Thing… “When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now…. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.” —C.S. Lewis
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