Equip your Marriage | Tag Archives: servant heart

Marriage Intimacy Meter

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Marriage Booster .

Intimacy in marriage is one of the most important indicators of your relationship’s health. If you and your spouse are not bonded spiritually, emotionally, and physically, you become far more susceptible to conflict and division. Quality time, vulnerable communication, and generous affection knit your hearts together into a beautiful union. Fortunately, there’s not much going on in your life to get in the way of these essential aspects of your relationship. Right?

Intimacy Killers

Stress
Work
Financial strain
Kids activities
Hobbies
Health problems
Family drama
Moving
Home maintenance
Life

With so many obstacles, it’s important that you periodically take time to evaluate your level of intimacy and determine if sufficient priority is being given to your relationship.

Gauging Your Marriage’s Intimacy

While couple’s build intimacy through a wide range of methods, there are a handful of classic elements you can evaluate to gauge your current level of marital intimacy.

Just like we describe in Chapter 11 of The Phoenix Marriage:

Marriage is your most important earthly relationship. When you marry, the two of you become “one flesh.” If you starve your marriage, you starve yourself. Nourishing your relationship and prioritizing your mate is one of the most important things you can do each day. The only thing more important, is your relationship with God.

Commit today to taking one or two concrete steps to invest in building more intimacy in your marriage. The rewards you’ll reap will last a lifetime.

Is Your Love Unreasonable? It Should Be.

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Marriage Booster .

Throughout time, humans have elevated reason – our ability to rationalize and make judgement calls regarding good and bad decisions. In Aristotle’s Ethics he describes human beings as rational animals and identifies reason as a uniquely human characteristic. Our ability to justify and rationalize our decision-making is God-given. But dependence upon reason can also get in the way of God’s call for us to love unconditionally.

Human reason is great, but God’s wisdom shames the wise (I Corinthians 1:27). Where we see only failure, He sees a future. Where we see destruction, He sees destiny. In the middle of our mess, He begins a miracle. And so, He calls us to love like He does — unreasonably…[read more]

[This is an excerpt from a guest post over at Husband Revolution. You can read the full article there.]

Father’s Day Contest 2014

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Holiday .

On June 15th, we celebrate fatherhood and the loving sacrifices made by the men in our lives. In honor of Father’s Day and the men that serve our families so lovingly, we are hosting a contest. We’re giving away two $30 Visa Gift cards. If you win, use it to go out on a date with your special man or to buy him something extra.

– There are two ways to enter –

1) Comment on Facebook – We have a post where you can add a comment to answer the following question:

“What does your husband do to pursue your heart?”

As comments are posted and LIKEs are accumulated, the community will vote for the winner. The comment that receives the most LIKEs will win a $30 Visa Gift card.

2) Join our mailing list – We will randomly select one name from our Monthly Marriage Booster subscriber list. That lucky individual will also win a $30 Visa Gift card.

How is your serve?

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Marriage Booster .

Want a better marriage? Learn to serve.

The Kingdom of God is full of paradoxes. The first will be last. The humble will be exalted. The wise will become fools. To save your life, you must lose it. To receive, you must give. Then it should come as no surprise that this holds true for your marriage as well. Do you want a better marriage? Do you want your needs met and your relationship to be fulfilling? Learn to serve your mate.

In this guest post for Square 1 Ministries, I share How is Your Serve? [click to read the full article].

My wife is a terrible investor

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Holiday .

I have an investment proposition for you…

Each day I want you to invest every dollar available into an account. Every day.
Some days you may only need to invest a few dollars, but most days you’ll need to set aside 10-12+ dollars.
Like most investments, I need you to be patient and leave these daily deposits alone to grow and mature.
Over the course of each year, you’ll have invested upwards of $4,000 or even more.
In exchange for these deposits, one day a year, you can withdraw a few dollars from the account.

Any takers?…….[Yeah, that’s what I thought.]

My Wife Must Be A Fool

My wife has got to be the worst investor on the planet, because she pours into this non-nonsensical venture year after year after year. Crazy, right?

Now, imagine that instead of investing money every day, you were investing time (after all, time is money). My wife invests her precious time every day of the year. Day after day and week after week, she invests in our marriage and in our family. She gives countless hours (oh wait…I already did the math – 4,000+ hours annually) selflessly to our family. It’s a thankless job and she certainly has her work cut out for her (we are a blended family of 8).

Motherhood – An uncertain, long-term investment

Motherhood has got to be the most foolish investment available. Pour time, money, and energy into a bunch of thankless heathens. Do this every single day. Then, one day a year, mothers get a place of honor. One day a year they get the recognition that they deserve. That’s an awful return on investment.

The real payoff, won’t be seen for years down the road. The outcome is uncertain. The path of a child’s life cannot be predicted. But eventually, the reward for years of loving deposits is experienced in seeing a child reach his or her potential and follow their dreams.

More than “Thank You”

“Thank you” doesn’t begin to do justice to what my wife deserves for her constant sacrifices for our family. One day a year of special honor and gratitude is a meager return on her tremendous investment.

What about the women in your life? Beyond the cards and flowers and meals that you will no doubt shower on the mothers in your life, make it a point to convey to them your genuine gratitude and respect in an authentic way. Thank them today. Honor them today. Then find a way to step up your game the other 364 days a year and shower them with the love and respect that they so richly deserve.

Love your spouse like broccoli

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Marriage Booster, Our Story .

My wife is an incredible woman that has taught me so much about faith and unconditional love. She has a huge heart, and an infectious personality. I used to love her like creme brulee, but now my aim every day is to love her like broccoli, the super-food.

Romantic Love is Like Creme Brulee

For most of my life, I have had a skewed view of love and marriage. Love is about romance, poetry, showering my bride with tokens of love, walking hand-in-hand, and making-out so passionately that it drives our kids crazy.

Romantic love is exhilarating and its fun. It’s also not sustainable.

Romantic love is a lot like dessert. It’s delicious and its enjoyable, but too much of it can make you sick to your stomach (ok, at some point every analogy breaks down). But the point is that you simply can’t eat dessert constantly. It gives you a quick burst of energy, but it won’t provide the fuel you need to support sustained activity. Eventually, the high will wear off, and you’ll crash…hard.

Unconditional Love is Like Broccoli

Love in your marriage shouldn’t come and go. The love you have for your mate shouldn’t vary based on how you feel that day or how strong your communication has been lately. Love should be based on who your spouse is, the commitment you have made, and the awareness you have that God’s love for you never wavers (Romans 5:8 and I Corinthians 13:7).

What a marriage needs to be grounded in is a steady diet of unconditional love.

Unconditional love is a lot like vegetables. It’s not as thrilling, but it also won’t rot your teeth. It’s packed with life-sustaining nutrition that gives you lasting energy. When you love your mate this way, it gives them the spiritual and emotional energy they need to deal with life. Loving your spouse with no conditions is to love him or her like Jesus does. It means that their actions and your feelings aren’t a relevant part of the equation. It’s a love of commitment, not convenience. It’s a covenant love.

My Wife Deserves Better

For the first few years of our marriage, I loved my wife with a cheap and unpredictable version of “love”. Romantic love is exciting, but it’s not reliable. It creates a lot of heat and enthusiasm, but it fizzles out just as readily. Romantic love is GREAT, but she deserves so much more than a shallow, emotional love. She deserves a mature, unwavering love. She deserves a husband that honors her and serves her regardless of how he feels on any particular day.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. – I Corinthians 13:7

I’m not giving up on my romantic notions of marriage and my desire to spoil my wife with emotional creme brulee. I’m just committed to nourishing her mind and soul every day with an unconditional broccoli kind of love.

I finally realized – marriage isn’t for me

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Marriage Booster .

Ideal couple dancing on the beach Academic knowledge has never been an issue for me. I have loads of useless information in my brain and a keen ability to memorize new data. Common sense, on the other hand, has typically alluded me. All too frequently I am the last person to recognize something obvious or come to grips with a fundamental truth. Recently, I have woken up to a critical, life-altering reality – marriage isn’t for me.

I grew up with an idyllic view of marriage. I would meet the woman of my dreams. We would experience a romantic, storybook courtship and fall madly in love with each other. The perfect complement to one another, we would fulfill each other’s every need. Our leisure-time? Exhilarating. Our conversation? Captivating. Our love-making? Epic.

As it turns out, marriage doesn’t really pan out quite like that after all. It’s imperfect, messy, and raw. Consequently, I was left with an immense sense of disappointment. Bewildered, I began to question my wants, needs, and motivations. This led to my recent epiphany. Marriage just isn’t for me! I thought it was, but I was wrong.

Why marriage isn’t for me:

It isn’t about what I want.
It isn’t about what I think I need.
It isn’t about completing me.
It isn’t about how I feel.
It isn’t about me at all.

On the contrary, I’ve come to understand that marriage is about being a servant. Serve your spouse daily

What marriage is really about:

It’s about serving God.
It’s about serving my wife.
It’s about our shared mission of serving and blessing others through our partnership.

I should have realized it sooner. It was right there, under my nose, in scripture this whole time:

Jesus was the epitome of embodied love and he spent his entire life on earth in service to his father, to others around him, and ultimately all humanity through the cross.
Ephesians 5:21 says that married couples are to “submit to one another.”
I Corinthians 13:5, among the litany of qualities that characterize love, we find that love is “not self-seeking”.

It’s taken me years to finally understand the purpose of marriage – to love my spouse daily with a servant-heart. But now that I know it, I’m wasting no time in putting my new found knowledge into action.