Are you starving your spouse to death? We all need food and water to live. Basic nourishment is a must for a healthy lifestyle. If we deprive our bodies of food for too long, our vital organs begin to shrink and eventually shut down. Starving to death is a slow and very painful process. But our bodies are not the only thing that need regular nourishment. We have hearts and souls that are hungry for attention too. So we, as married couples, need to be committed to making sure that our beloved have the physical, emotional and spiritual nourishment they need to stay healthy. Otherwise, our marriages will begin to starve to death in a very slow and painful fashion. The idea of nourishing our spouses comes from Ephesians 5:28-30, where Paul says “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 it and cherishes it“. We usually think of nourishment as providing healthy food, but Paul expands on this idea. A husband should not only nourish his wife by being a provider, making sure that she has food to eat, but he should also nourish her heart and soul, because Paul realizes that man does not live by bread alone. Paul reminds husbands that we are quick to satisfy our own needs for nourishment. We rarely neglect our own bodies. Our care for our spouse needs should be just as focused.
So how do we nourish our spouse’s heart and soul? That’s something we need to talk together about. Ask each other… How do you feel? Loved by me? And then make a list of how you can feed each other’s hearts. Then ask, “How can I help you grow in your walk with God”? Or what can we do to strengthen our spiritual intimacy? And then develop a menu plan for feeding your spiritual life together. Once you have the answers to these questions, you can both begin to feed each other the things you need to be a thriving couple.
