Standard of Beauty?

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO (OR DID YOU DO) TO START MAKING YOUR WIFE YOUR STANDARD OF BEAUTY, SO THAT YOU'RE NOT JUST SAYING IT, BUT IT BECOMES REALITY?

As many things do, in love and marriage, this is also a choice that we make. For me, personally, I was convicted one day of not treating my wife as I should. I wasn't serving her but felt that she should always be serving and giving to me (as well as a bunch of other things...I get convicted by God A LOT).

In the process of this conviction I realized that much of my problem was that I placed many things of worth and value a head of my wife in terms of value as well as beauty. Realizing this was not right I started to, very consciously at first, make a decision that everything (except Jesus) would pale in comparison to her. Anything that popped it's head up, first went consciously through the filter of my wife in my mind. Any picture, any person, any object was first set up next to and lower in scale to her in my mind and heart.

At first this was hard because our culture tells us to value things that it considers valuable. The problem is that our culture is temporary and things it once thought was attractive no longer are (mullets, parachute pants, eating arsenic to give you pasty white skin, powdered wigs, and boy bands just to name a few). As people we must have a constant that never changes, this is why scripture constantly points out (in places like Hebrews 13:8) that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. He is our constant, in theology we call this immutability. See also Malachi 3:6; Exodus 3:13-15; 2 Timothy 2:13; James 1:17

In the same way we are to see our spouse as our beauty.

This doesn't mean that we overlook sin or flaws, but when it comes to our value of beauty all things will filter through them, in our minds, first.

-Aaron