The Ultimate Embrace - The One Year Love Talk Devotional for Couples
The Ultimate Embrace
He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.
1 Peter 2:24
Years ago, Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, was having an intense conversation with his wife, and he was becoming increasingly agitated. In anger, he yelled at her and punched his fist into their dining room wall. “Unfortunately,” Mark says, “the Holy Spirit failed to guide my hand between the studs,” and he ended up breaking a knuckle.
Mark grew up in a family where nothing got done until someone yelled, whereas his wife, Barb, came from a family for whom yelling was not comfortable at all. So after this eruption of anger, Mark was sure that Barb was not going to speak to him for weeks. As he writhed in physical pain, he also cringed in emotional pain. He felt like a complete moral failure as a husband.
As he was awkwardly trying to sweep up with one hand the bits of Sheetrock strewn on his dining room floor, he felt a hand on his arm. He turned around, and it was Barb. She said something apologetic. He did the same. And then, he said, “She embraced me for a long time.”
Mark goes on to say that Barb had every right to condemn his behavior and distance herself from her husband. “Instead, she embraced the angry sinner, and rather than teaching me a lesson,” Mark says, “she helped heal me.”a
During this time of year, we Christians celebrate a similar event. Good Friday is an example of the righteous embracing the sinner on a cosmic scale. Jesus did not distance himself from our sin. He, the sinless one, came down to embrace us in spite of—in fact, because of—our sin. By this embrace, Jesus made redemption possible.
We all have an opportunity to allow the amazing grace of Jesus to flow through not only ourselves, but out through us to others as well. Allow this grace to flow through you to your spouse today.
God led Jesus to a cross, not a crown, and yet that cross ultimately proved to be the gateway to freedom and forgiveness for every sinner in the world. God also asks us, as Jesus’ followers, to carry a cross. Paradoxically, in carrying that cross, we find liberty and joy and fulfillment.
—Bill Hybels
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The One Year Love Talk Devotional for Couples
By Dr. Les Parrott and Dr. Leslie Parrott
Tyndale
$7.99
