Day 23: Love always Protects

DARE:Remove anything that is hindering your relationship, any addiction or influence that's stealing your affections and turning your heart away from your spouse.

CHECK!! Accomplished this dare already! God has changed our hearts and our love for each other is not hindered by any addiction or influence! Thank-you God for bringing our hearts to you!

"Love always Protects" I Cor 13:7

"Marriage is made up of many things, including joys, sorrow, successes, failures....and battles." Battles are what today's dare is about. Marriage is a union that is of God. Satan hates marriages that are of God and he hates it when people learn to understand God's love by showing others. Satan knows our weaknesses, especially mine. Cory and I must protect our marriage....and constantly! Some things the book mention to be aware of are below:

Harmful influences. Internet and TC, work are all things that can be enjoyable additions to your life, but they can also bring a destructive corner. The can steal your time away from your spouse and drain hours from your family. You must be there to protect your home. You can't if you are rarely there in flesh or not. I'm struggling with this a lot this week. With the choir and the race coming up, I've been gone three nights this week, and I can tell my little girl misses me, and me and Cory have not been able to be there for each other. Even though what I am doing is a good things, I miss my family.

Unhealthy relationships: This is pretty simple - ANYONE who undermines your marriage does not deserve to be give the title of 'friend'. Stay way from those. And stay away form or be on guard for those opposite-sex relationships at work, the gym, and church...without knowing it, they can draw you emotionally away from your spouse!

Shame: Because a marriage has a way of exposing everything to your spouse, you know all there is to know about them. The book says to never speak negatively about them in public. I used to this all the time about Cory, and to be honest, IW as wrong on two levels. one, it was my selfishness that made me look at him that way when he really was the right one, and two - you should never speak ugly of the one you love. LOVE hides the faults of others. I think I can use this in my marriage and friendships. It covers their shame!

Parasites: Parasites are things which promise pleasure, but end up destroying your marriage. Things like, drugs, gambling, porn, alcohol, etc. Marriages have trouble surviving when their are parasites around. (you must remember - don't focus on your spouse's parasites - they are reading this dare - this is about your parasites) You must destroy them, or they will destroy you!

God warns in the Bible "My flock has become prey...food for all the beasts of the field." We are that to Satan. He knows our buttons, and he will push them, daily! You can't feel your own desires daily, without looking to feed your spouses. Here is the command:

WIVES: Guard your heart from being led away through novels, magazines and other forms of entertainment that can blur the reality and put on unfair expectations of your spouse. Make him feel strong! "the wise woman builds her house, but the foolish tears it down with her own hands." I am going to use this as my dare today. I am going to BUILD HIM UP!

HUSBANDS: YOU are the head of the home. You are responsible before God for guarding the gate and protecting anything that would hurt your marriage and your wife. This is not a small task, but one to be taken seriously. "If the head of the house had known what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on alert and would have not allowed his house to be broken into." Know your spouse. Know how to protect her. That's what women want! I have to say that I felt Cory's protection when he stood up for me last week during a crisis in our marriage. For him to reach out and say, 'she is my wife' and emphasize that he wants me and wants to protect me when people try to hurt me....made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Never felt that kind of protection before. Almost like God...I don't care what she has said, what she has done, she is my wife, and I stand by her 100%! THANK-YOU!