Day 299: My Gratification

While you were out of the house on Monday (7/23), I washed the dishes for you. It was your turn and, as I’ve discussed before, you hate washing the dishes. This act made you very happy. You kept thanking me over and over. Of course, seeing you  happy made me happy. Serving you gratified me. May that happen as a rule.

Day 298: Weekly Prayer

This time around, I couldn’t use The Power of a Praying Husband for my weekly prayer because I lost it. So, I “resorted” to using the Bible as my guide. I turned to Romans 12:9-21, which says that

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

What a wonderful but impossible standard for living! I prayed that your life would accord with this standard through the power of God’s Spirit.

Day 297: Household Project #7

For this act, I completed a household project that you asked me to do over a year ago. It’s embarrassing to admit that I let something go that long, but at least it’s finally done. It wasn’t even hard and took me like 30 minutes.

Day 296: Sex

I don’t think I ever committed in this blog to doing something on a weekly basis to educate myself about marriage. Still, I’ve been reading up on marriage every week for a while now. I think I’m committed to doing so until the blog’s done. So then, one act of week will be prayer for our marriage and one act of week will be educating myself on marriage.

A while back I wrote a post claiming that prayer and the gaining of truth about the nature of marriage are necessary for a successful marriage. Such is my reason for making these commitments.

Anyway, let’s talk about sex. For my 296th act of love, I read the chapter on sex and marriage from Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage. What an excellent chapter! Keller claimed that it’s a wife’s duty to have sex with her husband whenever he desires it. I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Actually, he claimed that even sex is an act of service and not primarily about pleasing oneself. That is, sex should be used to please one’s spouse as an act of love for one’s spouse, not (primarily) to gratify one’s own desires (I say “primarily” because being personally gratified by sex is a good thing, not bad). I really struggle with this. When it comes to sex, I am very selfish and typically think only about what I can get out of it. But Keller says that

sex is perhaps the most powerful God-created way to help you give your entire self to another human being. Sex is God’s appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another “I belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you.” You must not use sex to say anything less.

I think my emphasis for 365 Acts of Love has been to change from being a person who is self-focused to being a person who is others-focused. This others-focus needs to permeate all aspects of my life, including my sex life (though that life should only be you-focused!).