Marriage Monday: Spiritual Fruit

I've decided to make marriage the topic for my Monday writing.

God has done a miracle in my marriage over the fourteen plus years that my husband and I have been together.

We've been through some pretty low   hellish times together, but God—in an Ephesians 3:20 way—has done a great thing in our marriage. He has truly given us beauty from the ashes of our pain.

My prayer is that, in sharing what I've learned through sticking with my man, I will encourage and inspire other women not to give up even when you want to run screaming in the opposite direction.

So, my topic for today is: spiritual fruit.




It is easy to see the sin in another person, but it's harder to see our own sin. As I've said before, we judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intentions.

This happens a lot in marriage. And I think wives are more apt to do it than husbands.

We think that we are more spiritual because we act on feelings as opposed to logic or facts. We are more verbose in our discussions on scripture (and everything else), and we tend to read more books so we have more Christian authors to "back us up" in our spiritual perspective.

I was talking with a mom recently, and she was going on about how her husband wasn't a believer.

"I just don't see any fruit," she said.

What fruit was she talking about? The fruit that is evident when the Holy Spirit is active in our lives.

"...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...," (Galatians 5:22-23 NASB).

The Lord has convicted me of making this same "no fruit" comment about my husband. It hit home for me when I read this:

"Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things," (Romans 2:1 NASB).

How can I say my husband has no fruit, when my own fruit is rotten?

Surely I do not think I appear as loving and joyful, kind or gentle, when I am grumbling about how he never puts his dirty clothes in the hamper.

And can I really expect my husband to show me patience when I don't wait a second before attacking him for leaving crumbs on the coffee table or hogging the covers at night?

What about self-control? I think it's last in the list because it's a biggie. I get the "control" part; trying to control comes easily to me. It's the "self" part that gives me trouble.

The point I am making is we are quick to squeeze our husband's spiritual fruit and expect the juice to be sweet, but we squawk when ours gets bruised.

So the next time we want to judge his spiritual condition, we need to pause and look at ourselves first.