Love of a Lifetime

How many songs can we think of that deal with love? Looking on the internet, I found thinks like “Top 21 Love Songs” “50 Top Love Songs”, and among those were songs such as “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, "The Power of Love", "I Just Called to Say I Love You", "Can’t Help Falling in Love", "Can’t Help Falling in Love", "What’s Love Got to Do With It", "I Think I Love You", "It Must Have Been Love", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "I Will Always Love You", but growing up in the late 80’s early 90’s there was one song called “Love of a Lifetime” by the band Firehouse that I enjoyed listening to. You know, the sappy, ooey, gooey, love ballads that those rock bands could swoon on about. As I was studying this week that theme kept coming back to me. But then, I started thinking what does it mean to have the Love of a Lifetime?

The lyrics of the song speaks to what one might look for:

I guess the time was right for us to say

We'd take our time and live our lives together day by day

We'll make a wish and send it on a prayer We know our dreams can all come true with love that we can share

With you I never wonder Will you be there for me? With you I never wonder You're the right one for me

I finally found the love of a lifetime A love to last my whole life through I finally found the love of a lifetime Forever in my heart I finally found the love of a lifetime.

Now, who wouldn’t want to find the love of a lifetime???

But, the problem is, we all have an opinion of what love is. According to the Oxford Dictionary, love is an intense feeling of deep affection (a gentle feeling of fondness or liking), or a great interest and pleasure in something. And, if we all think back (some of us much longer than others), there was a time where we were all ooey, gooey, and madly, deeply in love.

George Levinger, a German psychologist, developed a theory of five relationship states that we go through. Acquaintance (Attraction), Buildup, Continuation, Deterioration (Decline), Termination (Ending). Now, to me Levinger kind of concludes or at least hints that all relationships are destined for failure. However Allison Abrams, a licensed psychotherapist in the article “Navigating the 4 Stages of a Relationship” give a more optimistic outlook. Stage 1: The euphoric stage - 6 months to 24 months (2 years), Stage 2: The early attachment stage - 12 months (1 year) to 60 months (5 years), Stage 3: The crisis stage - 60 months (5 years) to 84 months (7 years), Stage 4: The deep attachment stage - 84 months (7 years) and beyond. To me this gives hope for those of us that have made it past the 7 year stage!

Now bringing it back to a theological theme, how will we ever know how to give true love if we have never felt true love? More importantly, where can we find a true, pure love? We see a model of the purest of love in the form of God. As a matter of fact, scripture tells us God IS love:

1 John 4:8 ESV

8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

To show us how much He loves us, we find in Romans 5:8:

Romans 5:8 ESV

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

One might call this the TRUE love of a lifetime. So, how is it we find this love?

Let’s explore the biblical explanation using the model of Levinger and Abrams.

Attraction

How is it we attract God? The good news is, we don’t have to. God, as our Creator, already desires a relationship with us. It is our obligation, though, to act on our attraction to Him. Some might call this the wooing, the calling, the time we fall under conviction - when God draws us to Him.

John 6:44 ESV

44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

God causes us to "come near"; we do not go to Him on our own. Not saying we might not attracted to God. We can draw near, but with our kind of character, as variable as it is, we come and go. Our nature does not allow us to fully understand just how much God does love us.

John 3:16 KJV (WS)

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

I don’t think many of us truly think of the deep level of love this verse shows for us. The truest example of the love of God demonstrated to His creation. We sin against Him, He does not have to tolerate that disobedience. We deserve a sinners hell. But. One of the greatest words in the bible. But, he loves us so much He sent Jesus to pay the substitutionary price for our sins. My goodness, should we not be attracted to the one who loves us this much?

Development / Early Attachment

Not only should there be an attraction, but there also is a time of developing our relationship.

2 Timothy 2:15 KJV (WS)

15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

There is work to be done on our part. We must set our heart to be in tune with the heart of God, our mind with His mind, our steps with His steps, and it requires putting forth an effort. If you think back to the time when you were wooing your spouse, you wanted to spend every free moment you had with them. There was an excitement, there was a desire to learn as much as you could about the love of your life. Any detail was welcomed, nothing too small, everything was soaked up.

Shouldn’t that be the way we approach the relationship we have established with Christ? Should we not want to spend every free moment, excited to learn every detail we can, soaking up every small detail. It is this type of excitement that leads us to be approved by God as we then understand more deeply who God is and how to handle the word He has given us.

But then, after we spend time - years in the relationship with Christ, that things begin to grow stale. The excitement wears off. The desire to learn becomes more like work. And there are things that pop up in our lives that draw us away. That’s when we enter into a phase where we have to buckle down and work on maintaining our relationship.

Crisis / Continuation

Matthew 8:23–27 ESV

23 And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. 27 And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”

The disciples had been in deep studying, being mentored by Jesus. They walked, talked, ate, lived, breathed every moment with Jesus. They were invested in their relationship with Him. They had seen miracles performed. They were growing in their understanding of who He was. But they didn’t know the crisis that was ahead of them. They didn’t understand that there would be a storm in their life that would challenge the faith in their relationship with Jesus.

After experiencing a mountain top experience with Jesus, they were about to experience a ferocious storm that would place them in a spiritual valley. “Save us, Lord; we are perishing”!

How often in our spiritual relationship with Jesus have we had moments where we too have cried out “Save us, Lord”? Even after experiencing the mountain tops, after seeing Him move in our lives or in situations, even experiencing miracles. When the storms of life hits, we are just like the disciples. This, to me, was a transformational time in the disciples relationship with Jesus, and it IS/ WILL BE a transformational time in our relationship with Him also.

Jesus responded to His disciples in the same way I think He responds to us today “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith”. What challenged their relationship with Jesus? FEAR. They allowed fear to overtake their knowledge. Even though they had experience and knowledge of what God could do, their trust and faith had not grown to the point of maturity.

In our relationship with Christ, we will face times where we will be faced with life’s storms. They will either show our immature faith when we question God, or the maturity when we overcome with the help of God. It’s working through life together, having faith in Him that will grow our relationship to another level. One where we lean on Him and trust the relationship, by faith, and grows our love towards Him even deeper.

Deep Attraction

To grow a deep attraction, there must be a deep faith. To have deep faith means to have a deep conviction or belief that there are realities beyond what we can see – beyond our circumstances, our abilities and weaknesses, tragedies, regrets, guilt, shame from our past and our fears about tomorrow. It’s believing that God is greater than anything we are facing and anything we will ever encounter.

As we grow in our faith with our spouse, we grow in our trust. Regardless of what happens, we know they have our back. We know they will see us through. We know they’re our rock and our stability. How do we know that? Because they have proven themselves through the rough storms of life.

Now, we see this same picture in our relationship with Jesus.

Hebrews 11:1 ESV

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

We have faith - Here in Hebrews 11 is a definition of what faith is. The assurance - confidence - of what we have been told. We must firmly believe God will do what He said He will do. We believe it so passionately that it gives us the comfort in our heart that we can trust Him to have our back, to see us through the rough times, to be our rack and our stability. It is then that we can face whatever life brings us with peace, comfort, and joy. We will then understand that we have found our true love of a lifetime.

Closing

The last part of Levinger’s states of relationships were Deterioration / Decline and Termination. Too often, we feel as though the love doesn’t last. Why? Maybe it is because we will not allow ourselves to grow in our relationship, or we get let down by our partner, or we can’t allow ourselves to grow in our faith because we can’t allow ourselves to trust something or someone other than ourselves.

Could be that we quit listening to “Love of a Lifetime” and started using “Looking for Love in All The Wrong Places” as our theme. You see, when we misplace our priorities, then we prioritize things that are not important. It is when we allow our own desires and wants before those whom we love that our relationship starts to decline and may even come to an end.

We have to remember that a relationship is two sided. That there is an attraction, a drawing together, that the relationship must grow and develop, that during crisis we learn to grow in our faith and trust, and that deep faith and trust is the result.

1 John 4:16 ESV

16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

We cannot allow ourselves to allow the relationship to deteriorate. We have to focus on God, on His love for us, and we must abide in that love.

abide - ménō.

1. This word means a. “to stay in a place,” figuratively “to remain in a sphere,” b. “to stand against opposition,” “to hold out,” “to stand fast,” c. “to stay still,” and d. “to remain,” “to endure,” “to stay in force.”

IF we abide in Him, then we are assured HE abides in us, and we can experience a true love of a lifetime.

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