I got engaged a few days ago. All praise and glory to God who has brought the two of us together after we have both traversed a very long and “broken road.”
The very next day, we met with our pastor in the first of a series of marriage counseling sessions. He began by assessing which of the four main personality types we fall into. I’m “choleric,” which, in a word, means, “powerful.” He is “phlegmatic,” which, in a word, means “peaceful.” For the most part, these two personality types are very complimentary, except that as a woman and a choleric, I would have a tendency to rule the roost. Not a good thing in God’s order of things. And that is why we have put God at the head of our relationship, to help us to support, encourage and bless each other…and to remain in God’s established roles, with my future husband as the head of the relationship, and me as his helper. And for me, that’s made a lot easier because my wonderful man truly loves me much like Christ loves the church. I can trust his leadership because he puts my needs before his.
One of the things Pastor Ben mentioned that really hit home to me was that when people get married, they usually do so because they want to be “loved” by the other person. They are getting married to “get” something from the other, rather than to “give.” However, in God’s design for marriage, we get married so that we can “give” to the other person.
You see, God is the source of everything we can possibly need. Everything. We should not have to go to our mates to get what we need. We must go to God first, be filled up, and then go to our mates and give out. Interesting how this works…if you stand back and look at the design of this, you’ll see that ultimately, we still get what we need from our mates…but it’s only after you and your mate have gone to God first to “fill up.”
Pastor Ben calls it “spiritual breathing.” We go to God, and ask Him to fill us with the Holy Spirit. And because the Holy Spirit is literally translated as “wind,” we breathe Him in, then go to our mates, and breathe Him out upon them. In this way, he says we become a “life-giving spirit.” Of course, this can work not just with our mates, but with everyone we come in contact with. And if we regularly go to God and breathe in His Holy Spirit, we will become a life-giving spirit to everyone we come in contact with. The key word here is “regularly.” Like breathing, we must go to God many times a day and ask for His Holy Spirit.
That’s what I want to be for my man. A life-giving spirit. A soft place for him to land at the end of the day. So today, I’m going to start doing some intentional spiritual breathing. Praise God that all we have to do is ask and we are instantly filled with the best gift…Himself.
