Loving Your Enemy?
by Dr. Gary Chapman  

Is it possible to love someone whom you hate?

My wife and I have often reflected on the early days of our marriage when both of us experienced feelings of hate.  Our condemning words to each other had stimulated hurt, and on the heels of hurt, anger.  Anger held inside becomes hate.  What made the difference for us?  We both agree it was the choice to love.  

We had realized that if we continued our pattern of demanding and condemning we would destroy our marriage.  Fortunately over a period of about a year, we learned how to discuss our differences without condemning each other, how to make decisions without destroying our unity, and how to give constructive suggestions without being demanding.   

What made all of this possible?  Basically it was learning how to speak each others' primary love language.   

Our choice to love was made in the midst of negative feelings toward each other.   

When we stated speaking each other's primary love language, the negative feelings of anger and hate abated.  Yes, you can love someone whom you are presently hating.

Article written by Dr. Gary Chapman.  Based on the book, The Five Love Languages  by Gary Chapman. Published by Northfield Publishers. For a complete listing of Dr. Chapman's books and resources, click here.     

A Commitment to Minister
by Dr. Larry Crabb 

The essential foundation for a biblical relationship is an unqualified commitment to the goal of ministry. 

Each partner must be willing to minister to the needs of the other regardless of the response. 

Although all of us will fail to implement that commitment perfectly, our responsibility is to remind ourselves continually that our highest purpose as husbands or wives is to be an instrument for promoting our partners' spiritual and personal welfare.   

Because of our stubborn inclination to pursue manipulative goals and our remarkable ability to disguise them as worthy objectives, we must sustain a determined openness to God's Spirit convicting us whenever we unwittingly shift from ministry to manipulation.  

This commitment to minister is not an option.   

We are not invited to "consider the possibility" of approaching our marriage this way.  God explicitly instructs us to submit one to another (Eph. 5:21) - to submit to our wives' needs by loving them and to submit to our husbands' needs by respecting them.   

Too many evangelicals read these instructions, acknowledge them as their responsibility, then disregard them in married life.

Content taken directly from The Marriage Builder: A Blueprint for Couples and Counselors by Larry Crabb, published by Zondervan Publishing.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Colossians 3:12-14