Before I set fingers to keyboard, I asked my wife if I should write this article—one requested by Ligonier’s Tabletalk magazine. Before I so much as typed a single word, I asked her if I was at all qualified. She pondered this for a few moments and said, “Yes, I think you are.” I was grateful for her affirmation, yet we both had to acknowledge that many parts of the Christian life are easier to say than to do, easier to describe than to live out. And this one is no exception. It’s easy enough to plan and pledge and pray to live selflessly, but it’s difficult to actually do it moment by moment and day by day. That’s true even of living selflessly with the person in this world I love the most.

I have often pondered one of the strange paradoxes of the married life—that the person I love the most is the person I will sin against the most. Because of our proximity, because of our intimacy, because we have pledged to live our lives together “till death do us part,” I will have a lifetime of opportunities to love my wife but also to hurt her, to bless my wife but also to sin against her. Every day I will have the opportunity to live with her selflessly but also to battle the temptation to live with her selfishly.
God’s Word makes it clear that it is the responsibility of every husband to live with his wife in an understanding way—a way that shows her special honor (1 Peter 3:7). God makes it clear that while a husband is called to lead his wife, he is to lead in a way that is marked by love, not control, and that is shown in sacrifice, not dominance (Eph. 5:25–31). If a wife’s calling is to submit to her husband’s leadership and to show him honor, the husband’s calling is to lead in a way that makes it easy for her to follow and to love in a way that makes him worthy of her honor. It is to think more of her than of himself, to consider her good ahead of his own, to love her even at his own expense. It is, in short, to live selflessly.
To live selflessly is to live with an awareness of complementarity, to understand and embrace the differences between men and women. There is something deep within every man that tacitly believes that marriage would be easier and his union stronger if his wife were only more like him—if she thought like a man and reasoned like a man and felt the desires of a man. Yet God has chosen to display His glory in two genders that are wonderfully different and wondrously complementary. A husband who truly loves his wife is a husband who embraces the differences rather than battling them, who sees them as a feature of God’s design rather than a mistake. He listens to his wife attentively; he comforts her lovingly; he provides for her willingly. He understands and accepts that she is fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image every bit as much as he is, both in her similarities and in her differences.
To live selflessly, then, is to live compassionately. When writing to the Colossians, Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them” (Col. 3:19). Surely he would not have included that particular exhortation if it did not reflect a common temptation. And every husband must admit that he can so easily stoop to harshness, to treat his wife brusquely, sharply, or unseriously. Yet the husband who means to honor his wife will treat her with kindness and dignity, with care and compassion. He will be sobered that God has provided him with a wife at all, be honored that God has entrusted this particular wife to him, and be eager to extend to her all the love and affection that God has extended to him. He will be gentle and forbearing and will always be quick to repent, quick to seek forgiveness and to restore the relationship when he has sinned against her.
To live selflessly is also to live as a companion. It is to “enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun” (Eccl. 9:9). A godly husband enjoys the freedom and intimacy of the marriage relationship and relishes his wife as his dearest companion and closest friend. Though any marriage is at times difficult and though any relationship will at times demand effort and require work, he is committed to enjoying his wife and delighting in the unique joys and wonders of the marriage relationship. He embraces the unique strengths that come with his wife’s femininity, appreciates the unique insights she brings, and learns to enjoy what she finds pleasurable. As he sets aside his natural selfishness, he awakes to the wonders of the closest and dearest kind of human companionship.
Any good man would be willing to die for his wife—to take the bullet that would have struck her, to welcome the pain that would have afflicted her. But it is the rare man who is willing to live for his wife—to set aside the selfishness that is always so close at hand and to instead live for her good and her joy. But then no husband is behaving in a more Christlike manner than the one who considers his wife’s good ahead of his own, who puts to death his natural self-importance so that he can live truly selflessly with the wife whom God has given him.

This week the blog is sponsored by Moody Publishers and is written by Steve DeWitt.
The story of human loneliness has its roots in the character of God and God’s purpose in creating us. 
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. (Gen. 1:27–28)
The roots of our present-day experience of loneliness are all found right here. We were made in the likeness of a relational, communicating, and triune God. His social nature is hardwired into our nature. We were designed for relational fulfillment vertically with God and horizontally with other humans. Like God, these relationships are fulfilling by design to the extent that they are harmonious. God’s threeness is the paradigm for our social needs, and His oneness is the paradigm for human relationships marked by love and peace.
You know, like the old song says: “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Loneliness is first theological before it is existential. Loneliness isn’t the opposite ofrelational fulfillment. It is the absence of it. Loneliness is an experiential void and vacuum. Its pain is a backhanded compliment to the pleasure of what God originally designed.
Loneliness isn’t the opposite of relational fulfillment. It is the absence of it.Steve DeWittShare
We are on a crucial truth that I urge you to consider carefully. I know this is hard, as I have had seasons where I was drowning in loneliness. Ask God to renew your mind so that you may think differently about your loneliness. Our feelings generally flow from our knowings, at least what we believe is true about loneliness. Lou Priolo connects these dots:
You see, in order to change your feelings, you have to change your thoughts as well as your actions. So, I would like to suggest (as have others) that loneliness starts as a state of mind before it becomes a feeling. The way you think about being alone affects the way you feel about it. If, for example, you believe that to avoid being lonely you must always have another human being at your side, you are likely to be a very lonely person indeed. 
The depth of your loneliness signals the opposite height of your potential joy. Think of it like a swing. My young daughters love to swing and love me to push them as they swing. The higher, the better. I do a run-under to get them as high as possible. They squeal in delight as they swing to the opposite side equally high. 

Let’s be honest. Loneliness pain is acute. It can be overwhelming. Debilitating. Even life-threatening. Yet the pain can be part of the cure if we understand the pain like a swing; the greater the pain, the greater the potential pleasure. God made us to feel emotionally the absence of the presence of His purpose. I am convinced this is why we feel lonely in the manner we do.
The absence of a reconciled relationship with our Creator is spiritual pain, and the lack of meaningful relationships with others is social pain. It is intended to prod us toward what is best for us. This is God’s grace, and it applies both vertically and horizontally. In this way, loneliness is a gift from God.
To continue reading an excerpt of Loneliness Don’t Hate It, or Waste It Redeem It. 

My thanks goes to Zondervan for sponsoring the blog this week to tell you about a new book titled What It Means To Be Protestant. Sponsors play a crucial role in keeping this site going and I’m thankful for each and every one of them.
Today’s Kindle deals include a nicely varied selection. Be scroll down to yesterday’s deals to take a look at Rob Ventura’s Expository Outlines and Observations on Romans which is a really good deal at that pricing.

I found Bryan Schneider’s explanation of sanctification very helpful. I suspect you will also. “There is a danger in sanctification—a false pride that can creep in. The old enemies of legalism and self-reliance can make the cross fade into a distant memory. This often happens when people see sanctification as a stairway upwards. They imagine that they were saved at a certain point, and as they climb the stairs of holiness, they become increasingly aware of their progress.”

My understanding of cessationism might vary a little from Ryan Denton’s, but even with that being so, I share many of his concerns about what he calls “hyper-cessationism.” “For some time now, I have been deeply troubled by some of the assumptions that the term ‘cessationist’ now seems to carry. Cessationism has morphed into something dark and suffocating. It has become a thick, wet blanket used to smother anything that smacks of the supernatural.”

Sarah Walton: “Some seasons are like that. They aren’t just overwhelming. They aren’t just hard. They aren’t just exhausting. They’re paralyzing, and from a humanity standpoint – they feel unbearable.”

Brad Littlejohn considers how the younger generation may fail to respect the older generation (and in a way that may be different from the past). While he writes primarily about the political context, the same can be true within the church.

J. Drew Tillman tells how Spurgeon defined a healthy church. There’s lots we can all learn from him!

People who struggle with consistency in personal devotions may find some help in this article from TGC Australia. “Yes, we should set time aside to do daily devotions. But let’s not forget that Christian living is more than that. It is continuous devotion, where devotion is an attitude, rather than a task. It is more accurate to say we are ‘being’, rather than ‘doing’, devotion.”

…the brightest of the blooms grow only in the places that have been prepared by the heavy hand of the Master.

Walk humbly—you have far more to be humble about than you realize.
—D.A. Carson