What Your Spouse Needs Most

By Gary Thomas

Your spouse may not realize what he or she needs most, but if you want a sacred marriage, you have to focus on what he or she will profit from the most. Jesus didn’t always give people what they wanted or asked for. He gave them what they needed.

If we want to love like Jesus, we have to do the same. I want to be so bold as to tell you what your spouse needs most.

It’s not a regular date night (though I’m a huge fan of these).

It’s not even a satisfying sexual relationship.

It’s not love notes placed around the house or office.

It’s not morning coffee or monthly flowers or dark chocolate or a new grill.

Shame

Why do we feel uncomfortable when somebody on the subway or the elevator looks at us? It is because we feel ashamed of something about us. When we were children our parents told us not to stare at others in respect to them. Is it because we don't want the others to feel uncomfortable?

When Adam and Eve sinned they ran and hid when they heard God walking in the garden. One day I had my parents over for a barbecue and my daughter was indoors playing. As I called her to come eat she said that she wasn't hungry and went back inside to continue playing (or so I supposed). Later, I went inside to persuade her to come to eat. Both my wife and I looked around calling her. As you know parent's voices get louder and impatient quickly. After the third time calling her name I heard crying behind the pantry door. There she was, mouth full of black licorice, the licorice I stored way up on the top shelf where I thought she wouldn't be able to reach, crying out of shame and fear. I could tell that she knew right away what she had done was wrong but she made the choice to do it anyway. See, the first impulse of the "innocent child" is to hide in shame. We have the knowledge to know what we are told not to do, and out of guilt, and disgrace to the one we are to honour, we run and hide.

Evidence From Life

The surprising implication is that even if scientists succeeded in coaxing all the right chemicals to link up and form a DNA molecule in a test tube, that would do nothing to explain where genetic information came from.
- Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

In all of human experience (and science is supposed to be based on experience), the source of encoded information is an intelligent agent. Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that an intelligent agent was necessary at the origin of life.
- Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the for Intelligent Design

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
- Romans 1:18-23