Authentic | More Than A Feeling – Ephesians 5:21-33

More Than a Feeling | Ephesians 5:21-33

Love within a marriage is not based on feelings.
Love within marriage is based on commitment and sacrifice.

Here are 3 Lies that Are Told About Love:

Lie #1. Finding the right person guarantees your marriage won’t fail.
Lie #2. You can change someone if you try hard enough.
Lie #3. Love is a feeling.

Ephesians 5:33 “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

Three Stages of Love
(1.) Romance
(2.) Tolerance.
(3.) Mature Love

Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Ways for a Husband to love his Wife:
1. Sacrifice for her.

2. Overlook her faults.

Ephesians 5:26-27 “to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

3. Nurture her.

Ephesians 5:28-29 “In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church.”

Here are 3 of a wife’s top needs:
1. She needs affection.
2. She needs conversation.
3. She needs trust.

Ephesians 5:33b “The wife must respect her husband.” 

Ways for a Wife to respect her Husband:
A. Acknowledge his leadership.
Ephesians 5:22-24“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Ephesians 5:21 “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

submit
“make an offer and wait for the response.”

 B. Respond to his needs.

3 of a Husband’s Top Needs:
a. Sexual fulfillment.

1 Corinthians 7:5 “Don’t deprive each other…Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”

 b. Recreational companionship.

 c. Admiration.

Jack Dempsey’s wife “I didn’t marry a boxer. I married a champion.”

C. Be committed to him.

Ephesians 5:31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”