When you hear the word “cherish”, what do you think of? I think of the 1966 song “Cherish” by the band The Association. Yeah, I’m THAT old. The song starts out with these lyrics…

Cherish is the word I use to describe
All the feeling that I have hiding here for you inside

When I hear the word cherish—almost automatically—the tune from that song goes through my head along with the words from the first verse.

I wonder what goes through your head when you hear the word cherish. Cherish is not a word people use to describe much of anything these days. As my friend Tom Torkelson says, “It’s not a word you hear a lot of anymore—except maybe at weddings, as in ‘do you promise to love and to cherish till death do you part’ “? Regardless, whether we use the word or not isn’t as important as whether we actually cherish our spouse or not.

We’re currently in the middle of a 5-week series in our Ignite! marriage group at Mountain Springs Church looking at the topic of Cherishing Your Spouse, based on the Gary Thomas book titled “Cherish”.

“The problem in unhappy relationships is not that people need to be more positive — it’s that they need to notice the positive that’s already there.”

John and Julie Gottman

What does cherishing look like?

It’s an active positive rather than an absent negative. That is to say, it’s not enough to just avoid saying or doing hurtful things to your spouse. That’s necessary to be sure. But cherishing is so much more. Cherishing actively seeks to honor, bless, praise, and bring joy to your spouse. It requires intentionally saying and doing things that bring joy to your spouse. We may think good things about our spouse throughout the day, but if we keep it to ourselves and don’t verbalize it or take action on it, our spouse will never know just how much we love and cherish them.

Cherishing means loving indulgently and extravagantly. We can take our cues from the many stories of extravagant love displayed in the Bible. From the very beginning, God’s amazing creation was given to Adam & Eve to rule over and care for. The wisdom and riches that were lavished on Solomon were never seen before and probably never since. The extravagant gift of Jesus, God’s only son, to live among us in the flesh. The sacrifice of Mary pouring out her costly perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiping them with her hair as a display of her love for him and to prepare him for his most extravagant gift—the gift of himself, willingly taking our punishment and dying in our place so that we could have peace with God and life everlasting. Jesus showed us how to love. We should seek to love our spouse in the same way.

Cherishing means you only have eyes for your spouse. One of the greatest enemies of cherishing is comparison. We need to view our spouses as God’s gift to us and commit to investing our time, thoughts, affections, and energy into our relationship with our spouse. We have to have the mindset that there is no “plan B” if things don’t work out. When you settle that in your mind and commit to a lifelong marriage together, you have the safety and security to do the hard things that need to be done to repair and enrich your relationship. Resist fantasizing about other people who “appear” to be so much better than your spouse. When we are struggling in our relationship we only see the good things in others and the bad things in our spouse. EVERYONE has their issues and things they can improve on. Water the garden in your own yard and harvest the fruit from it.

So make a choice to start seeing your spouse as God sees them. God lavishes His love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness on us each and every day—and he commands us to do the same for each other, especially our spouse. Find out what gives your spouse joy and then look for ways to be a messenger of joy and love your spouse extravagantly as you are loved by your heavenly Father. Make giving—and receiving—joy a part of your natural rhythm of life. Remember, cherish is the word…

There is so much more to be said about cherishing your spouse. In fact, Gary Thomas wrote a book about it! So if you want to dig deeper into the topic of cherishing your spouse, I recommend getting a copy of Gary’s book, “Cherish“.