Day 17
Love promotes intimacy
He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. —Proverbs 17:9 NIV
Who are you the closest to in life? With whom do you share your secrets? It may be a good friend you’ve known since childhood or college. It may be a sibling, parent, or coworker. But nothing rivals the closeness that can be experienced between a husband and wife. Marriage is designed to be the most intimate of all human relationships—emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
That’s why it is so beautiful and why we need it so much. We long for a best friend with whom we can share our hearts. A safe, loyal companion who gets us, understanding who we are. Someone who knows our deepest secrets and yet still accepts us in spite of them. Intimacy is described as being “fully known and fully loved.”
But sadly, many marriages lack the intimacy that God desires between a man and his wife. For this great blessing is also the site of its greatest danger. Someone who knows us this intimately can either love us at depths we never imagined, or can wound us in ways we may never recover from. This is both the fire and fear of marriage. It’s why creating a very safe place for one another to open up is fundamental for intimacy to thrive.
What are you experiencing the most in your home right now? Are you open books, or more like closed vaults? How much do you two really talk? How much do you trust each other with your secrets? Would your mate say you make them feel safe, or scared? Especially if you’ve wounded one another in the past, you will tend to be guarded and hide from intimacy.
If home is not considered a place of emotional safety, you will both be tempted to seek it somewhere else. Perhaps you might look to another person, initiating a relationship that either flirts with adultery or actually enters in. You may look for a safe escape in work or in outside hobbies, something that shields you from intimacy.
But regardless of your situation, love can help you rediscover intimacy with your spouse. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). Your mate should not feel pressured to be perfect in order to receive your attention and approval. He or she should not walk on eggshells in the very place where they ought to feel the most comfortable in their bare feet. The atmosphere in your marriage should be one of freedom. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, your coexistence at home should only intensify your intimacy. Being “naked” and “not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25) should always be in the same sentence, right in your marriage—physically and emotionally.
Admittedly, this is tender territory. Marriage has unloaded another person’s sinfulness and baggage into your life, and yours into theirs. Both of you may feel misunderstood and unloved, which is the opposite of intimacy. But today begins an opportunity to wrap your mate’s private information in the protective embrace of your love, and recommit to being the one who can best help him or her deal with it.
Some secrets may need correcting. Therefore, you can be an agent of compassion and healing—not by lecturing or criticizing, but by listening in love and then gently speaking truth when they feel safe enough to receive it from you.
Some secrets just need accepting. They are part of this person’s makeup and history. And though unpleasant, these issues always require a gentle touch. In either case, you alone wield the power either to reject your spouse because of what you know or to welcome them in—warts and all. They will either know they’re in a refuge of safety where they are free to make mistakes, or they will recoil into themselves and be lost to you, perhaps forever. Loving them well should be your life’s work.
Consider it this way. No one knows you more intimately than God, the One who made you. The writer of Psalm 139 was right when he prayed, “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all” (Psalm 139:2–4).
And yet God, who knows every secret about us, loves us at a depth we cannot begin to fathom (Ephesians 3:19). How much more should we—as imperfect people—reach out to our spouse in grace, accepting them for who they are and assuring them their friendship and secrets are safe with us?
This may be an area where you’ve failed in the past. If so, don’t expect your mate to immediately give you wide-open access to their heart. You must begin to rebuild trust slowly. To stop avoiding them and start talking. To listen compassionately, accept them more genuinely, and then love them more deeply.
Jesus Himself is described as One who doesn’t barge into people’s lives but who stands at the door and knocks. He said, “If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).
The reality of intimacy always takes time to develop, especially after being compromised. But it is worth the endless treasures found beneath its guarded lock. Your loving commitment to reestablishing it may be the key to opening it—for anyone willing to take the dare.
TODAY'S DARE
Begin building emotional intimacy with your mate. Determine today to guard your mate’s secrets (unless they are dangerous to them or to you) and to pray for them. Talk with your spouse and listen with acceptance, opening up to them as well. Make them feel safe.
____ Check here when you’ve completed today’s dare.
Given that the safer people feel, the more they open up, what does this say about your marriage in the past? How hard is it for you to listen and hold back from saying something, critical or otherwise? What have you learned about your spouse today, simply from listening?
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