If you’re like me, when you exchanged your marriage vows, and if they were the traditional ones, you may have made one promise that you don’t really know how to keep. Do you remember pledging to love, honor and cherish? Have you ever stopped to think about what those words mean and what the promise is supposed to look like? Do you know how to cherish your spouse? Let’s take a minute to explore the meaning of this vow in some ways in which we can rekindle the spark in our relationship.
Cherish means to hold dear, to treat tenderly, to keep in mind.
It is an action word that is naturally combined with tender emotion in the way you hold, treat and think about your spouse. So one way you can enrich the emotional connection with your spouse is to begin thinking and treating him or her as your beloved. We’ve stopped using the term beloved today, yet it might deserve to be revived and used in modern relationships because it encourages us to see our spouses through loving eyes. Can you hear the difference between that emotionally void word spouse and the heartfelt word Beloved?
Now that we’re trying to see our life mate through a new lens of being our beloved, let’s look at how the Bible tells us that we are to cherish one another and what cherishing looks like. That phrase comes from Ephesians 5:28-30. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He, who loves his wife, loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church. So we’re to love our spouses, to cherish them, to treat them the same way we care and pamper and take care of ourselves. Or if we need an even higher, more challenging standard, we need to love and cherish our beloved the same way Jesus loves you and me, His bride. So let’s start cherishing each other today.
Have fun and be creative. Enjoy some time together. It will make a lasting impact on your marriage!
