In our wedding vows we might say “to love and to cherish, till death do us part,” but have you ever thought about the difference between the words love and cherish? Hello, church, and welcome back to our discussion of different books from our resource desk. Today we are going to look at the book Cherish by Gary Thomas. In today’s video we are going to look through about ten of the thirteen chapters and just pull out some highlights from this book that focuses exclusively on that word cherish.
Love and Cherish
There is a difference between the two words, and it is first a difference in attitude. Where love is foundational to the marriage, the word cherish is more about the attitude of marriage. So the author is making a distinction between the two words, love and cherish, kind of like two sides of the same coin. They are not the same word, but they both go together very, very closely. He uses 1 Corinthians 13 contrasted with the Song of Solomon to show some of those differences between the two. He says love is gracious and altruistic, but cherishing is enthusiastic and enthralled. Love is quiet and understated, and cherishing is bold and loud on behalf of the one that you cherish. Loving is selfless, but cherishing is not just selfless; it is praising the other person. Love does not want something bad for the other person, but cherishing wants something good for the other person. Love puts up with a lot; cherishing enjoys a lot. Love is about commitment, and cherishing is about delight and passion. So they both go hand in hand. They are not contrasting, but there are differences between the two, and it is primarily about the attitude that you approach your marriage with, and it should be with an attitude of cherishing your spouse.
Holding Somebody Dear
The second point he makes is that cherishing is learning to hold somebody dear. Adam and Eve were the example of the first marriage in the Scriptures, and obviously they did not have much choice. They had to cherish one another; they were the only ones created for each other. But that is kind of just the point. In God’s design with the first marriage, there was only one man and one woman. When Adam saw the rest of creation and had named all of the other creatures, he saw that they each had a mate, but for him there was no equal counterpart. There was no human. So when Eve was created, we read in Genesis 2:23, “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” He realized immediately that this woman is like me, but not exactly like me. She is, in a sense, the opposite of me. She was an help meet for him. She was designed perfectly for him, and they were just this perfect fit, because that is how God created them to be. So in Adam’s eyes, and I think in the grand scheme of what marriage ought to be in this ideal, perfect, Garden of Eden type setting of God’s design, he was a one-woman kind of man. He looked at Eve as the source, the picture, of beauty. And Eve was a one-man kind of woman. She looked to Adam as the source of her fulfillment in marriage, and she did not look anywhere else. In that same vein, as Christians we are looking at our spouses and choosing contentment with our spouse. We can get into the comparison game and start to think that the airbrushed version of a woman is the ideal spouse for me, but the Scriptures are trying to get us back to our spouse and say, “No, you focus on your wife. If you are a man, you are a one-woman kind of man.” Sometimes the steamy romance novels that many women read will paint a fantasy picture in their minds of what a man can be, and that is all it is, fantasy. There is no man on earth who can live up to the kind of romance and the kind of passion that she has dreamt up in her mind about this fake man. So the idea of the book is that she needs to choose to be content with the man God has placed her with. It is a choice and contentment for the husband, and a choice and contentment for the wife. Not settling, not stagnating, but choosing to be content as a one-woman kind of man and as a one-man kind of woman.
Showcasing Your Spouse
The third point he makes is that cherishing means learning to showcase your spouse. I have seen some couples where it seems like there is a little bit of competition for attention. They are always putting each other down to lift themselves up, or everything the other person says feels like some kind of a dig, some kind of an attack, and there is almost this vying for attention. Now, I married a firecracker kind of a girl. I love the energy that my wife brings to every situation. Those are the kinds of people I love, that I am drawn to. When we were first dating, I remember thinking, “Oh no, is that going to be okay? Is this going to be all right?” And I remember conversations my fiancée at the time and I had, where she was going, “I see Mrs. Davison, and I see this picture of what maybe a pastor’s wife ought to be,” and she was thinking, “God has designed me with this certain type of personality that is very out there, very administrative, very by the book. I get a lot of things done. I am very active.” So in her mind she was almost thinking, “Has God designed me wrong?” We worked through that and came to realize that no, God did not make any mistakes when He formed and created my wife. She can still be a wonderful keeper at home, and she is, and she can still have a meek and quiet spirit. But that is not always a description of somebody’s personality. There can be a meek and quiet spirit in a firecracker type of personality, and I love that she has that. When she was thinking about dating, and the type of person she would marry one day, before she and I met, she had in her mind that because her personality was up here, she would need a personality that was even stronger and bolder and more aggressive. If she was ever going to learn biblical submission, she would need somebody stronger to be able to force her down. And yet anytime she met a personality like that, it just clashed. It was like she would bow up against that, and it did not work. God has created me with a personality that is not bold and brash, and it is not aggressive in any way. Pretty chill, pretty laid back. When God put us together, she realized, “Oh, okay, this is how this can work,” and I realized, “Man, this is just so much life that she can bring to my life.” To have two lives fit so perfectly together is just a wonderful testimony of saying, “Man, God did this.” So I love highlighting my wife. I love that she can speak at ladies’ engagements or help our church. I love who she is, and I love everything about her personality. I love the conversations she can have and carry, and I love her hosting abilities and the way she mothers our children. I love all that about her, and I want her to shine. And conversely, she wants me to shine. She is not threatened at all by me being the public face of our family and the pastor of our church. It is not a competition. It is this beautiful harmony that has happened in our marriage, and I want that for every marriage, and I believe that is what God wants. When a marriage cherishes one another well, you want the other person to shine, and that is a picture of what cherishing can be.
Noticing and Honoring
The fourth chapter in the book says that cherishing is noticing and honoring one another. He tells a story of a pastor in a church setting where there was a husband sitting with his wife on one side and his buddy, his guy friend, on the other side. When the pastor was preaching, he would tell a joke and the entire crowd would laugh. That happened three or four times, and every single time the eyes of the husband went to his male friend. They would look at each other and laugh together; they would elbow each other; they would enjoy that moment together. And every single time she would look to her husband to connect with him, but his head was always turned the other way. That happened two or three times before finally her shoulders just slumped over and she sat there dejectedly. He imagines the conversation on the car ride home: “Hey, what’s wrong?” “Nothing, it’s fine.” “Oh, come on, tell me what’s wrong.” His act of not connecting with her, of not noticing her, was an act of not cherishing her. Many times it is not domestic violence that breaks marriages apart. It is just a wife who feels invisible. It is a wife whose husband is connecting with everybody else except for her. And it can go the other way too. Many times a wife might be so connected online to her phone that as soon as he gets home, they can never connect, because she is always on her phone. She is always distracted with everybody else’s lives except for the relationship at home, the marriage relationship. I think it is such a shame that on car rides many times everybody in the car will just be on their phone and it is dead silent, when it could be a chance to connect with one another. I heard of a pastor friend who has a phone jail. As soon as he gets home from work, everybody’s phones go in this drawer. They are charged all night; they do not touch the phones for the entire evening. They are just in there, and it is family time. I think that is a great habit to get into, because those phones can distract us from nourishing and cherishing by our attention toward one another. So cherishing might just look like turning your attention toward somebody. John Gottman calls it catching bids. Bids are when a husband or a wife will say something that is of interest to him or to her, and that is a bid for attention, a bid for connection, and you can either turn toward that bid or away from it. I watched a funny video the other day of a guy driving down the road with his wife. He was a heating and air conditioning guy, and he looks over at a house and says, “Hey, look at that house over there. I did all the duct work, all the heating and air conditioning in that house.” The subtitle on the video said, “What every husband wishes his wife would say,” and it put words in her mouth. Her response was something like, “Wow, that is incredible! I bet they are sitting inside that house right now so excited about the warm air coming out of their vents, and there is snow outside, and I bet they are saying, ‘That heating and air guy did such a good job on our heating system. I bet the duct work in our attic is just perfect. There are no holes. I bet it is all secured just right.’ Man, I am so happy for our heating and air guy.” Now obviously that is probably not what they are saying in the home, but the point is that he sent out the bid. He sent out the pitch for something that is important to him. His job is important to him, and the wife can either respond by saying, “Oh, stop talking about work,” or she can respond by saying, “Oh, that is nice. What did you do? How long did it take to do that attic? I bet that was a really hard job, wasn’t it? Tell me more about that.” Asking questions and showing interest in something that, quite frankly, she is probably not interested in, and that is okay. It is not about being interested in the topic; it is about being interested in the person. It is about wanting to get to know the person in a deeper way. John Gottman says that of the successful marriages he polled, he found that 90 percent of the bids were met with enthusiasm and interest. Every single time a spouse says something, your attention can go toward him or her by just asking questions and being curious about what that means and what it means to that person. That is cherishing.
Killing Contempt
Fifth, cherishing is about protecting one another and killing contempt. “He’s not a chef, he’s a cook.” “Well, he can call me a chef.” “No, he can’t, because you’re not a chef. A chef makes things from scratch. You just heat things up. It’s not the same thing.” The author says, “I had been trying to involve a quiet man in the discussion, so I brought up what he did, referring to him as a chef. ‘Don’t chefs usually make such and such?’ His wife jumped on the offensive, declaring that her husband was not a chef and that no one in the entire universe should ever use that label when referring to her husband.” See, he had worked at a retirement home, preparing meals every single day for 200 of the residents there, and so to him it was a matter of pride. He was thankful for his job, and she was demeaning to him. She looked at him with contempt. Something in their marriage had gotten under her skin. Most marriages start at the dating phase, which means you can do no wrong. Everything is flowery and beautiful. Well, somehow you move from being able to do no wrong to “you can do no right.” Everything that you do: “You are an idiot. You are so stupid. I cannot believe you did not think about that. Why do you always say that?” You move from frustration to bitterness to contempt, this anger of the soul, this in-depth hatred of your spouse, and nothing kills marriages faster than contempt. So for a successful, healthy marriage, you have got to kill contempt. You have got to choose to set that bitterness aside and choose to believe the best by cherishing your spouse. This cherishing shows up in areas like wanting to protect your spouse, not blame your spouse. “Oh man, we’re late again. We’re always late because of this one, always making me late.” Instead of that, protect your spouse instead of throwing them under the bus all the time. With basically everything you do, you are either protecting or you are attacking, and I think we should go to war for our spouse, not go to war against our spouse. Let’s cherish our spouse by removing contempt.
Cherishing That Heals
Sixth, cherishing teaches us that indulging our spouse, or helping our spouse, can actually be spiritually healing to our spouse. In some marriages there is one, or perhaps both, in the marriage who have never experienced true biblical charity and cherishing. They have no idea what unconditional love is actually supposed to look like. They have no reference point for what the love of Christ is. There is nothing in their life where they have ever experienced love without strings attached, or love like Christ loves the church and gave Himself for it. So if you are in a Christian marriage, if you are the Christian in the marriage, you might have an opportunity to show cherishing to your spouse in ways they have never experienced before, and show them the love of Christ in ways that can heal their spirit. The gospel has had a way of changing you and of healing you, and so what you have the potential to do is to show that exact kind of healing to your spouse. That might come through simple cherishing, forgiving, forbearing them, being humble, and waiting for God to change them, as it is not going to change overnight, especially if there is deep-rooted anger or bitterness, or especially if there is some kind of trauma or history of abuse, or some kind of problems you have worked through and there is no trust there. I am not saying trust is going to be built overnight, but the point of that chapter, and it is an interesting chapter, is that you have the chance to promote healing in your marriage through Jesus Christ working through you. One of the ways the author had seen it done was a wife who kept a journal of all the good things her husband had done for her. It was a secret journal she kept, and after a year of writing journal entries, she gave it to him, and he read the whole thing in one sitting. It was the smallest things she was noticing day to day, and she would date it. As often as she could, she was looking for things to be thankful for, looking for ways to lift him up and to thank him for the little things he had done. It was simple things like, “Thank you for hanging the Christmas lights when it was freezing outside. You wanted us to have that joy, and it was so cold. That must have been a terrible thing to go through.” Another entry was, “Thank you for traveling. I know it must be hard. I could see how tired you were when you walked out the door on February 6th. You do such a good job of providing for our family.” Another entry was something like, “Thank you for when you came home from that business trip. Even though you were dead tired, you still took time to play with the kids, and you did not let them know at all how tired you were. I really admired that about you.” He said this about it: “It makes me aspire to be the man she thinks I am.” And that is good. If you want to inspire change in somebody, maybe a journal would be one of the ways you could inspire them through your cherishing. What if you used the journal to get you out of contempt mode and into thankfulness mode? Maybe you are in a dip right now in your marriage and you need to climb out. Well, thankfulness will help you climb out of that dip, and maybe a journal can be just the thing you need to find those areas that are good and focus on those. Well, that is cherishing.
Cherishing with Our Words
The seventh chapter was a quick little checkup, just a short chapter basically saying never give up on cherishing. Keep going; push through any of the low points. But then the eighth chapter was on using our words intentionally to nourish and to cherish one another. It is not just the words we say but the tone we say them in. The author said that after they landed, Lisa heard a doctor take a phone call, and it was in clipped tones. He was cruel and short with his wife. There was no warm-up, no endearing “Hello, sweetie.” There was just this harsh and hard utilitarianism: “Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m still on the plane. Yeah, whatever.” After several phrases like this, his voice suddenly got soft and cheerful, and he goes, “Hi, Alex! How you doing, buddy? Oh, I can’t wait to get home and see you. Yeah, that’s great!” Then obviously his wife gets back on the phone, and it is back to those clipped, short phrases: “I already said we can go as soon as we get home. All right. Fine. Bye.” There was no “I love you.” There was no gentleness to his tone. There was just that short, clipped anger. There was no enthusiasm to see her like there was enthusiasm to see his son. You can tell in the tone of somebody’s voice whether there is cherishing going on or not. So cherish with your words, and even the tone behind your words. When you speak to your spouse, speak in a cherishing tone and with cherishing words. He said that early in her marriage, Jacqueline heard a woman tell her, “Never say a bad word about your husband.” “That was huge to me,” Jacqueline said. “Where I grew up, men were losers and women had to wear the pants. Every wife I knew talked badly about her husband. I am so glad a woman told me that marriage did not have to be like that, that we did not have to talk to each other that way. That kind of negative talk would have been so hurtful to Donnie,” her husband, “if I had decided to act like the wives I had seen growing up.” What a powerful testimony of this woman deciding to change the tone and the words of her marriage, and that changed the whole direction of her life. What a powerful use words can be: affectionate, kind words used intentionally and with purpose. Not just, “Oh yeah, you look fine,” but, “Man, your eyes sparkle. You look really good today. I really like the way that dress looks on you.” You have got to figure out between you and your spouse what that looks like and how you are going to make that happen. My wife and I have this really fun, sometimes sarcastic, little approach to some of the ways we deal with each other, and I think it is hilarious. I will get turned around in a car sometimes, and she will help me navigate all the time: “In two miles you are going to need to take a right-hand turn,” so it is not a last-minute lane change. We have figured out ways to communicate with each other that are respectful and kind, and then sometimes, if I feel like she is crossing a line, we will make a little joke, and she will laugh about it, and I will laugh about it, and that is okay. The author talks about a situation like that in the book Cherish, where he tried to help his wife navigate which way to turn when they got out of an elevator. Sometimes she would turn the wrong way, and he would grab her arm, or he would say something and try to make a joke, and it was never received well. So finally, after a couple of these little arguments, he says, “Well, how do you want me to say it?” And she said, “Just say, simply, ‘This way, hon,'” and she said it exactly in that tone, “and we will be fine.” So he said, “The next time we got out of an elevator and she started to go the opposite direction, I just said, ‘This way, hon,’ and she turned around and smiled at me, looked me in the eye, and just said, ‘Perfect.'” They laughed, and they still laugh about it to this day. In those simple little ways, she helped him realize: say these words, in this tone. They just had to communicate about how to handle that situation in the future, and that communication is totally doable for every couple. You just figure out how to cherish your spouse and the ways you like to be cherished.
Cherish Your Unique Spouse
That brings us to point number nine, which is cherish your unique spouse. What works for one couple may not work for every couple. In one couple, one spouse might want you to spend more: “Oh, you never buy me any gifts.” But another couple might be spending too much money on gifts, and they should not spend more. One couple might want to talk more, and another couple might need to talk less and listen more. Every couple is going to be unique; every individual is going to be unique. You just have to find what works in your marriage and in your home and how your personalities work together. Even if there are stereotypes, what usually works for men maybe in your home relates more to the woman, and maybe the stereotypes for most women relate, in your marriage, to the husband, and you are a little embarrassed about that. Well, no. You have to relate to one another within your unique marriage. So relate to your unique spouse.
Patient with Your Spouse’s Sins
The tenth and last point in today’s video is that cherishing your spouse might mean being patient with your spouse’s sins. We might put down some kind of ultimatum: “I will cherish them when they stop,” and you fill in the blank. There is a kind of conditional love there, a conditional cherishing: “I am not going to cherish them until they,” and you fill in the blank with some kind of ultimatum. Yet I am just going to read Ephesians 4:1-3 in conclusion: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” You have to realize, “I have got to be patient with my spouse. I have got to put up with some things.” I may have been putting up with some things for a while, but I do not want to just write them off as a lost cause. I want God to keep on working in them and through them, and maybe God is using me in my spouse’s life to bring them to that place of repentance and to that place of following the Lord. You can choose to believe the best about them. You can choose to keep loving them unconditionally. You can choose that for your spouse, but just be patient sometimes with their sins, and that is often what cherishing looks like. In the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the book, there are very practical suggestions on how to develop that cherishing mindset from Philippians 4:8-9: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.” There are many practical suggestions. I encourage you to look the book up. It is available at our resource desk if you are at our church, and if not, you can buy it anywhere Christian books are sold. I encourage you to look into this one and pull out some more practical ideas, but that gave you at least a snapshot of the book. I hope it is a help for you, and I really hope it is a help for your marriage. God bless you, and we will see you in the next video. Hey, thank you for watching this video. We started this channel because we want to help bring the Bible home. So if you enjoyed this video, if it was a help to you, would you mind clicking the like button and subscribing to our channel? That way you will never miss another video. We look forward to seeing you in the next one. God bless you.
