Day 26: Love is responsible

DARE: Take time to pray through your areas of wrong doing. Ask God's forgiveness, then humble yourself enough to admit them to your spouse. Do it sincerely and truthfully. Ask your spouse for your forgiveness as well. No matter how they respond, make sure you cover your responsibility in LOVE. Even if they respond with criticism, accept it by receiving it as counsel.

Romans 2:1 - When you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things.

today's dare is a very tough one. The good thing for me is, we have already crossed the road for forgiveness. We have already both become responsible for where we failed each other, and have moved forward from such. It is amazing that when God is control, things likes this just feel right. You can hear those around you saying NO, but hear God's voice above the others saying "do as I say and I will protect you".

But for us, this was a milestone in our marriage. We recommitted to each other and I decided we now have a second anniversary date! It can be the same for you. BUt don't do this dare because you are reading mine. If you feel you have things to take responsibility for, listen to God's voice. He knows when the right time is.

This dare is about responsibility. As time goes on, people seem to take less and less responsibility. In politics, in business, in celebrities, and in our back door, we see excuses after excuses. Everyone is so quick to be justified in their motives, and deflect criticism. In our marriages, we are so quick to blame our spouse, not accepting that we may be pushing them to this craziness. I did....my attitude affected Cory greatly. I pushed him to being someone he didn't like. Someone I didn't like and I made excuse for it. "well if he would do this, I would do this" Doesn't work that way!

We always believe we are right. We always want to blame. "well they did this!" But love doesn't make excuses. Love makes a difference in yourself and in your marriage. The Bible says "Rebuke is more effective for a wise man than a hundred blows on a fool" What would happen if the next time we are fussing with our spouse, we admitted we were wrong first? Worth a try....

Love is responsible and is willing to admit and correct its faults and errors up front. And repent of them. A real heart of repentance may take awhile to grow in you. Pride is very strong, but humility and honesty before God is crucial for a healthy marriage.

Now, this doesn't mean that we should let our spouse walk all over us. This is mainly meaning that if there is something that isn't right between you and God, or you and your spouse, we must take responsibility for it and make it right, and claim the blame for it. We will stumble not doubt, but to keep the favor of God, we must stay clean before Him. We must swallow our pride and take ownership and seek forgiveness no matter how our spouse responds. They should forgive you, but that isn't your responsibility. Your responsibility is responding to God and doing as he says. AS I have found, my sincereness when asking for forgiveness has gone a long way. God can give you strength as well to make this step. Cory and I both noticed this and found that when God was on our side...over coming anything was possible!