The Gift of Fresh
Give your marriage the gift of fresh.
Everyone likes fresh, right? Fresh sheets, fresh smells, fresh air, and fresh toes? Fresh bread, fresh water, fresh fruit, and fresh clothes? Too much Dr. Seuss, I suppose?
FRESH.
What better thing to do for your marriage, than to enter this NEW year with a FRESH, CLEAN SLATE?
I’d like to give you three ways to start your marriage FRESH in 2021:
1. Bind Mercy Around Your Neck
I love that every twelve months, we can start all over again; but really, we can start all over again every day. God’s mercies are literally NEW every, single, morning (Lamentations 3:22-23), allowing us to start off FRESH.
So why would we hold on to what’s been done? Why would we hang on to negative images and hurtful words of times past? It’s impossible to truly move forward with all the previous years’ issues, hurts, and mistakes hanging like baggage around our necks.
If we are to have anything hanging around our necks as we go into 2021, let it be the MERCY of the Lord:
Do not let mercy and kindness and truth leave you [instead let these qualities define you]; Bind them [securely] around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart.
(Proverbs 3:3, AMPC)
Rather than carrying hurts, failures, emotion, or mistakes (his or yours) around your neck, bind mercy, instead. Wear it like a necklace and let nothing keep you from walking in it.
Let’s be like the Lord: longsuffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression (Numbers 14:18).
We can give this gift of mercy to our marriages, to ourselves, and to our hubbies.
Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.
(Matthew 5:7, NKJV)
God’s rich mercy is like a deep ocean with each wave carrying His mercy to every moment and every day—ensuring we don’t get the bad our actions so deserve.
He has FRESH mercy waiting on us every day and for every situation, including our marriages. And there is no list of prerequisites to receive this FRESH mercy of the Lord. There are no exclusions—no matter what’s been done or who did it—to receiving a FRESH-EVERY-MORNING mercy.
2. A Fresh, Clean Heart
Start off strong by choosing to forgive. Forgive yourself and your husband. Forgive your past and your marriage’s past.
Forgiveness is the gift of fresh.
When you FORgive, you are giving pardon beFORehand—beFORe you ever receive any payment. You are giving debt-release—Letting go of it and saying, “That situation owes me no longer,” “He owes me no longer,” “I owe myself no longer.”
Unforgiveness is like carrying around pounds of dirty, stinky laundry on your back. It’s gross, it’s heavy, it hurts, you can barely get along, you aren’t making progress, and it’s only bothering the person carrying it.
But how can you let it go? I mean, there were some legitimate issues, some real hurts, some genuine let-downs, some unmet expectations. Much of it felt like it was never resolved... So how do you just drop it, let it go, and move on?
Through the years, I have found there were many things in my marriage relationship that we just needed to LET GO. We didn’t need to relive it, explain, rehash, figure out what happened, or make each other understand the other’s perspective. We just needed to drop it, and never go back.
Are you willing to drop it? How are you able to drop it—to wipe the slate clean and start fresh with your hubby, with yourself, and with your marriage?
Didn’t Jesus do this very thing, for us?
The Bible says Jesus WIPED CLEAN the handwriting of requirements that were against us, and He nailed them to the Cross (Colossians 2:14, NKJV). Another translation says He WIPED AWAY the bill of charges against us (CJB), and we don’t even owe Him an explanation or payment for what’s been done. We are free and clear.
The cleansing fire of God’s forgiving love has wiped our slates clean—as if we had never done it (Now that’s a deep clean)—giving us a FRESH, NEW start.
And because He forgave us, we can do the same for ourselves, our hubbies, and our marriages.
Remember, forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling. So, when those feelings of unforgiveness sneak back up, making you “feel” like you didn’t really forgive, just bop ‘em on the head and tell ‘em loud and clear, “No, I forgave!” And go on!
Don’t carry last year’s baggage into this new and exciting year that is a gift from God. Drop it at the feet of Jesus, never to pick it up again.
3. The Cleansing Fire of Love
True love is a gift given, proven greatest when the person receiving it has done nothing to deserve it.
God demonstrated this true love for each of us: While we were yet engrossed in sin, He gave us FRESH, NEW life in Jesus.
You see, when we were born again, we were born of LOVE. The same love the Father bestowed on us (1 John 3:1) is now alive on the inside of us.
And we are now able to love deeply, honestly, and genuinely with this God-kind of love, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).
But we are the ones who must put this love into practice. We must choose to let this love loose from within us! Don’t let it lie dormant! Don’t keep love bound in your heart, Sister!
Let it LOOSE!
Loose fervent, forgiving love to flow to yourself, to your husband, and to the “issues” of your marriage.
Let it flow to every crevice in your heart and relationship, BURNING UP every mistake, every sin, every issue, and every failure in the fire of God’s love (1 Peter 1:22, 1 Peter 4:8).
Jesus did it for us, and that same love with which He wiped our slate clean, you can do for your SELF, your husband, and your marriage.
Let’s keep ourselves in the love of God, LOOKING for the mercy of the Lord at every turn, giving the gift of FRESH.
Love you much,
Jess.