Loving Like God When Love Grows Cold

Marriage Seminar for Mision Berea in Tegucigalpa

Session 1: Thursday night

November 19, 2020; 7-8:30pm

Loving Like God When Love Grows Cold

Introduction: The Inconvenience (bother, trouble, challenge) of Love

--ONE of the great struggles in marriage is LOVELESSNESS…love that has grown cold.

--God designed true love to be a challenge

--Culture tends to portray love the opposite way: nothing but wonderful feelings; never takes real effort or disciplined choices…just look at romance movies and novels

Someone has said: “Love is a feeling you feel when you feel that you are going to feel a feeling that you’ve never felt before…”

Martin Luther said: “First love is a DRUNKEN love (that is all feelings and passion), but it has to grow out of that.”

--remember the early love of your relationship: nothing was inconvenient, always exciting, always wanted to be together…

--NOW? Where has the thrill gone? Not as exciting as it used to be…more challenging to sacrifice for each other…

IS THIS A PROBLEM?

--we don’t need to go back to that initial excitement of our early love…to recapture it…that was an immature love that needed to grow and mature

--as our marriage goes on, we see more of the rough parts of our spouse’s life and the inconvenience of loving them…the cost to ourselves…But this is and can be a GOOD thing

God commands us to LOVE EACH OTHER EARNESTLY (eagerly, fervently, diligently). 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 4:8

--this means constant choice, in spite of the presence or absence of feelings…an active desire and pursuit of one another…a DEEPER LOVE.

This is how GOD LOVES

1.   God’s love for us was NOT dependent on our attractiveness, but He desired us and chose to PURSUE us.

Song of Songs 7:10

10 I am my beloved's,

and his desire is for me.

The bride of the Song of Songs is telling this to her friends.

She says that her bridegroom’s love is:

SECURE: “I am my beloved’s” I am His. I am loved.

REASON for this SECURITY: “his DESIRE is for me”.

But this love of the bridegroom for this bride, the SOS’s picture of Christ’s love for us, was a love that He chose to give IN SPITE OF unattractiveness in us.

Song of Solomon 1:5-6

5 I am very dark, but lovely,

O daughters of Jerusalem,

like the tents of Kedar,

like the curtains of Solomon.

6 Do not gaze at me because I am dark,

because the sun has looked upon me.

My mother's sons were angry with me;

they made me keeper of the vineyards,

but my own vineyard I have not kept!

She had dark skin, which was not considered beautiful at all…she worked out in the sun as a shepherdess and laborer in the vineyards…a common worker…

But this great PRINCE (the bridegroom in SOS is a shepherd/King) says this of her:

Song of Songs 1:15

15 Behold, you are beautiful, my love;

behold, you are beautiful;

your eyes are doves.

--God has loved us in Christ EVEN WHILE WE WERE REBEL SINNERS:

Romans 5:8

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

--He chose us in Christ when there was NOTHING lovely or desirable in us. BUT NOW that He has chosen us, we do have a glorious beauty…the very beauty of the perfection and righteousness of Jesus Christ that God has given us!

--our initial love for each other in marriage is full of those things we DESIRE and find attractive in each other (personality, outward attractiveness, abilities, etc). But over time we lose some of that attractiveness that initially drew us to each other.

What are we to do about this?

We are to obey the Lord by loving our spouse with Christ’s very own committed, desiring, pursuing love.

A Woman/wife is only secure in her marriage when her husband demonstrates DESIRE for her…

HOW does she know he desires her? HE PURSUES HER. He makes sure he is around her. He take loving INITIATIVE to care for her and her needs and her desires.

--in the Song of Solomon the bridegroom IS ALWAYS pursuing the bride!

--DESIRE and PURSUING cannot be separated. We ALWAYS pursue what we desire and therefore desire what we pursue.

BUT AFTER we have been married for some time, it COSTS more to pursue…It is not driven by “loving” feelings as much…and this is what actually identifies it as true and biblical love.

--THEREFORE, this more costly pursuit of our spouse causes us to see how much we NEED JESUS’ HELP to love our spouse. It reveals our own selfishness and sin. We realize more deeply how we need the GOSPEL to TRANSFORM our HEARTS! The Desire and Power to sacrificially love and pursue our spouse MUST COME FROM JESUS.

God commands us in the Scriptures to PURSUE our spouse as He has pursued us:

Ephesians 5:25

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word…

1 Peter 3:1-2

1 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2 when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

IT IS OK THAT IT IS HARDER TO DESIRE AND TO LOVE YOUR SPOUSE…LOVE ACTUALLY REQUIRES IT!

THIS IS HOW GOD LOVES…

2.   GOD’S LOVE IS UNDIVIDED; therefore, desire and pursuit of our spouse involves TURNING FROM RIVAL DESIRES and PURSUITS… (and they are not necessarily easy to see.)

We need Jesus power for this because of our sinful, selfish hearts.

---we will naturally serve ourselves instead of our spouse rather than serving our spouse instead of ourselves…

Galatians 5:16-17

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

NOTE: LOVING my spouse is a BATTLE of DESIRES!

--What do I most deeply want and what am I most deeply committed to?

To continue to love my spouse, even after love become much more challenging, I must IDENTIFY things, people, etc that I am pursuing MORE than my spouse.

Eg: Sexual lust: fantasy such as pornography…or, a real person in a forbidden relationship…or, even some idea of an ideal person or relationship but not a real person…romance novels, the attention of a person at work…etc.

If there is low desire and low pursuit of my spouse it means THERE IS a higher desire and pursuit of someone or something else…

Eg: Affirmation: perhaps someone besides my spouse is affirming me as attractive, successful, desirable, witty, intelligent, strong leader, etc.

THIS can so easily be a motive for SOCIAL MEDIA…where I post the best things about me and others respond with “You are Amazing!”

WE WILL ALWAYS PURSUE SOMETHING OR SOMEONE!

BUT…

NO person can actually give me the ultimate affirmation I am looking for…ONLY THE LORD CAN!

ONLY HE love’s me NOT based on my attractiveness…only HE pursues me purely because of HIS OWN LOVE.

If we look to our spouse for affirmation and they are not giving it, WE WILL LOOK ELSEWHERE and our spouse will NOT be as desirable.

Eg: Fulfillment: A desire to find earthly satisfaction in earthly things. Looking for our best life NOW!

---But the Lord DID NOT design THIS WORLD to be the place of ultimate fulfillment…

--He designs the lack of fulfillment we experience here to make us RESTLESS for a “better country”…our final home in heaven with HIM!

Hebrews 11:13-16

13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

 THIS IS HOW GOD LOVES…

III. FAITHFUL DESIRE AND PURSUIT OF YOUR SPOUSE BEGINS WITH A HEART THAT TRUSTS GOD’S FAITHFUL DESIRE AND PURSUIT OF YOU…

---Jesus has not stopped pursuing you since before you were born (If you are truly born-again!), and HE NEVER WILL!

---He needs NOTHING from you, yet He constantly takes the initiative to PURSUE you. He will NEVER LET YOU GO!

Hebrews 13:5

…“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

FOR HUSBANDS:

--A woman feels secure and intimate when she feels DESIRED & PURSUED.

--YOUR RESPONSIBILITY is to desire and pursue your wife, as a REFLECTION of God desire and pursuit of you IN SPITE OF your great unattractiveness…

--It is costly and inconvenient to desire and pursue her this way!

--A woman’s body changes over time…if a husband says he is no longer attracted to his wife’s body and beauty he has bought into what the culture says about beauty and rejected what GOD says.

--BEAUTY SHOULD LOOK LIKE YOUR WIFE!

--BEAUTY is the whole person: body and soul. PURSUE HER by faith and obedience and because Christ loves and pursues you and YOUR DESIRE FOR HER WILL GROW!

--Fantasy like pornography make desiring your wife very difficult!

***AS YOU PURSUE YOUR WIFE, ASK GOD TO GIVE YOU A DESIRING, PURSUING HEART FOR HER! He delights to do this:

John 14:14

14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

If this is His will, and it is, He will answer with a “YES!” Always…if I ask genuinely. This gives GREAT HOPE!

FOR WIVES:

--IT IS HARD to pursue a non-pursuing husband.

--But you are NOT to wait for your husband to be the first to obey.

--see 1 Peter 3:1-6

--Pursuing him will help him in his pursuit of you. Pursue him because Christ desires and pursues you.

--IT will cost you…it is inconvenient…hard!

--But YOU, TOO can ask Jesus to give you a desiring and pursuing heart for your husband. AND HE WILL!!

FINAL THREE STEPS TO TAKE FOR HUSBANDS AND WIVES…

I.              COMMIT TO READ REGULARLY IN THE SCRIPTURES OF CHRIST’S PURSUIT OF YOU. Think and pray deeply on His love for you.

EG: Romans 5:6-11; Zephaniah 3:14-17; Isaiah 43:1-7; etc

II.             TAKE A HARD LOOK at how you use your time on a given day…the things you spend your time on…WHAT YOU PURSUE.

WHICH PURSUITS are rivals to pursuing God and your spouse?

WEED THEM OUT!

EG: hours in Facebook, etc instead of conversation with your spouse.

III.           TALK TO YOUR SPOUSE about how to BETTER PURSUE one another in the busyness of life.

“How can I pursue you better?”