LOVE IS AN ACT OF WILL AND NOT A WISH

Bible Texts: 1Cor.13:4-7, Jas.2:18, Php.2:13, Jn.3:16, Rom.10:10, Jude 1:3, Rom.5:5, Dan.1:8, Gal.4:19, Lk.18:1, 1Jn.4:7-8

In the little time I have spent in this assignment of raising godly husbandmen, I have observed a disconnection between reality and desire. When you ask the husbandman who is having challenges with his wife and children if he truly loves his wife and children? He would tell you, yes but…. What is that but? It is reality check. This is why the Person of the Holy Spirit is reminding you and I that living the kind of life that demonstrates God’s love toward our wife and children is neither a wish nor a desire but an act of our will.

You don’t wish to love your wife and children. You deliberately, consciously, and committedly give them love, irrespective of whether they deserve it or not. When it comes to what God expects you to do to your wife and children as regards loving them, it is not time based nor is it situation based. It is unconditional. So, you cannot love them today and hate them tomorrow.

But what is this love that I must demonstrate to my wife and children?

1^st Corinthians chapter 13 provides the answer.

Love never gives up, love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head. Doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first”, doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back but keeps going to the end (1Cor.14:4-7) MSG.

As the good and godly husbandman, you don’t wish that any of the demands of love would jump on you. You have to willingly, dutifully, and wholeheartedly resolve in your heart that it must be done and can be done. The Scripture says that works are proof of our faith. When we believe God for anything, we demonstrate it by our actions (Jas.2:18). So, the proof that you love your wife and children is by your actions. Therefore, love them as an act of your will and be motivated by what Christ has done for you.

However, for you to empower your will to act out the demands of Scripture for your wife and children, you must take the following practical steps.

First, you must purpose in your heart that you are a love bearing and love sowing agent (Dan.1:8). Secondly, you must ask for the grace of God to act out His will (Php.2:13). Thirdly, you contend for it by faith (Jude 1:3). Fourthly, you must keep declaring that you are a lover and not a hater (Rom.10:10).

As the husbandman, you have no excuse or justification why you cannot love your wife and children. Love is of God and if you are not in love, you are not in God (1Jn.4:7-8). Decide today that you will and must love your wife and children, and the grace of God that makes loving them as Christ has loved will be made available to you (Rom.5:5).

Love drawn from the word of God which demonstrates how Christ has loved the church is enough to make you function as the good and godly husbandman.

SPIRITUAL EXERCISE

• Father, in the Name of Jesus, empower me to love my wife and children as You would.
• Father, in the Name of Jesus, deliver me from every form of carnality.
• Father, in the Name of Jesus, let my life be ruled by the Spirit of God.

FAITH CONFESSION

I have decided to love my wife and children irrespective of time and conditions because that is what makes me the good and godly husbandman in Jesus Name. Amen.

The devotional IN TUNE WITH GOD© is published by The Husbandman Mission International, Headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria.

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Bro. Ebenezer O. Igure

Head of Mission

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