Day 3 - Selfishness

Today's passage talked about how the opposite of love is selfishness. It talked about the type of person who is always consumed with themselves, their own thoughts and opinions and basically their own little world. 

Today's theme was all about thinking of your spouse ahead of yourself, putting her needs above yours and living in a way that says meeting her needs is more important than your own.

Today talked about being satisfied by meeting her needs rather than your own, and finding your fulfillment in that, rather than living in a way where your own needs must constantly be met. 

A few questions were posed to ask today, which I found helpful and very challenging:

• Do I truly want what's best for my spouse?
• Do I want them to feel loved by me?
• Do they believe I have their best interests in mind?
• Do they see me as looking out for myself first?

I found these very challenging, as they are not only checking my motives towards my wife, but also examining how I actually feel about my motives, i.e. the reason behind them.

Very often I can do things because I know Meg will like them, but if I really am honest about it, because I have an ulterior motive, or so that I can use it later as a negotiating point; i.e. "I did so-and-so for you last week, why can't you do this?..." 

That is not service based on love and unselfishness, that is called manipulation and inducing guilt.

So often I do things because I feel I should, but not because I want to. A heart of love should compel me to do these things, not a devotion to duty, like a worn-out soldier following orders. Does my wife really believe that I want the best for her? She'll only decide that based on how I've treated her and acted around her up until this point in our marriage, if I haven't given her reason to trust me and trust that my decisions are based on love for her, then she won't be convinced of my love for her...

She needs to see that I have her best interests at heart, that I put her first in everything I do.

My Dare? To buy her something that says to her "I was thinking of you today"...

I bought her some flower pots and seedlings, one for the kitchen, lounge and bedroom, as I know living now in a city, she misses the natural beauty she was so used to seeing every day. In fact, I got her to choose the flowers she wanted to plant.