“She Trusted Her Heart to You”
Short Article by Gary Yagel

Husband, have you ever considered that when your wife said, “yes” to your proposal to marry you, she took a huge leap of faith.  She entrusted her heart to YOU.  She chose to trust YOU ALONE to be the one human in all creation to meet the deep yearnings of her heart that only her husband can fill—the craving for a soul mate with whom she can share all the secrets of her heart and know she is still loved—the yearning to know that despite her flaws she is the delight of her husband’s heart, cherished, enjoyed, needed, desired by him—the need to feel protected, provided for, secure, so that her beautiful feminine nature can flourish and bring beauty to your world.  She trusted the deepest yearnings of her feminine heart to you alone.  Have you proven worthy of that trust?

As her husband, you have one of the highest callings there is.  You are actually to show the world Christ’s sacrificial love for the church by the way you love your bride.  Think of it—your Lord wants a concrete picture of his great love for his people in front of the world every day.  That picture is the way you sacrifice daily to meet the needs of your wife. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”   Eph. 5:25.  So, how are we to model our love for our wives after Christ’s love?  Here are 3 ideas.

First, Christ’s masculine love initiates.  It starts with his heart.  Redemptive history can be summarized as the story of our Lord pursuing and rescuing his lover, his bride, his church.  Similarly the starting point for shaping the quality of your marriage is your heart.  You are to initiate sacrificial love.  God created your wife to be a responder to the love you initiate.  You are to pursue her and envelop her in agape love.  Have you studied 1 Cor. 13:4-8 to know what such love looks like?  When there is a problem in your home, or when there is a rift in your relationship, do you realize that your masculinity is being tested?  Will you take the initiative to pursue reconciliation, to address the issues, to ask for forgiveness?  Or will you wimp out and be passive?

Second, Christ’s love for us caused him to sacrifice to meet his bride’s needs.  We needed redemption from sin and that redemption required the atonement.  Christ died on the cross to meet this need of an atoning sacrifice for our sin.  A husband who devotes himself to living up to his high calling to love his bride as Christ does the church will become a lifetime student of his wife’s needs and an expert at meeting them. 

Third, Christ-like love sacrifices whatever is necessary to meet our wives’ needs.  There is no question that we Christian men would take a bullet for our wives.  But the big challenges of life are usually easier to handle successfully than the every day, small ones.  Christ-like love is unselfish and considerate.  It puts your wife’s needs ahead of your own.  It is relentlessly committed to discovering and meeting her needs, no matter how hard that may be for you.  So how are you doing?

When you asked that beautiful young woman to be your wife, she joyfully TRUSTED YOU enough to say, “yes.”  God gave her a feminine heart full of needs that only her husband can meet but a heart ready to respond instantly and powerfully to agape love.  WHAT KIND OF A DEAL HAS SHE GOTTEN?