RUN LIKE A CHAMPION

Communicating with Your Wife
Today in our devotion time, I want to speak to you about Communicating with Your Wife. When I think of God’s love, I think of his great communication of that love to us. In fact, the Bible says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church…” Now how did Christ love the church? Well, one of the things we discover about Christ’s love for the church is that he manifested his presence. He came to this earth, and he showed us who God is. He communicated with us God’s love.

The Bible says (we know that great verse), “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…” Well, what does that mean? God himself came to this earth, clothed himself with human flesh so we can know who he is, what his character is, how he works, what his love for us is. God loved us so much that he communicated with us.
Now this is important. If you’re going to love your wife the way Christ loved the church, then you’re going to have to communicate. One thing I’ve learned about communication… By the way, this was a hard thing for me to learn. Communication is a two-way street. Communication is not just telling my wife something. So many times we men say, you know, “Oh yeah, I told you that.” But we didn’t listen. Our wives were trying to say something to us, and we never heard what they had to say.
There’s a two-way communication here. We share with our wives what’s on our hearts, but we listen to them about what’s on their hearts. One of the things I’ve discovered as to what makes a good marriage is having time to communicate. One of the things my wife and I did early on in our marriage (and we still do this occasionally) is we’d go out for a walk. We get exercise. It helps us with our health, but it also helps us to just talk and visit.
Now that I’m doing a lot of running and we’re not walking, what I’ll do is when I come in from the office, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to take that remote control. I’m going to turn on the TV and watch some kind of television program. Instead of doing that, what I’ve done is I’d say, “Let’s go get a cup of tea or cup of coffee. Let’s go get a Coke or something.” We’ll go to Barnes & Noble or we’ll go to McDonald’s or somewhere where we can just kind of sit down.
I just get out, get away from the TV, get away from everybody else, and sit down and say, “Tell me about your day. What’s been going on?” I let her just talk and share what’s been on her heart and what she has gone through all day. Then I share what I’ve gone through and that kind of communication.
Then if there’s any kind of thing we’re dealing with, we talk about those things. Sometimes we’ll go out to a park, and we’ll just sit on a bench there at a picnic bench in a park. We’ll just sit down and talk for an hour, an hour and a half. You need to practice this. I know it’s hard. We guys are goers and doers. We come in, and we want to watch the news and all this. But stop. Stop! Take some time, and begin to communicate with your wife.
Christ loved the church so much that he communicated. You take time to communicate with your wife. You’ll be blessed by it. Your marriage will be built and encouraged and strengthened, and you’ll become more like Jesus.