In order to attract the type of love you deserve, you first must understand and know what love is. It’s more than warm fuzzies on a cold winter’s night. It is more than someone holding you close and whispering sweet nothings in your ear. These are lovely things of course, and they help to develop intimacy in a relationship, but they cannot define what love is. Love is so much more, and it’s why finding the person God has ordained to be your marital partner is so important. Whether we know it or not, a desire for marriage is a desire to expand and increase ourselves through love. It will require us to pull back some layers that we’ve accumulated through life, so we can get back to square one. In other words, we must stop assigning our own interpretations to what it means to truly love someone and get back to what God says about the matter.
One of the first things that God teaches us about love is that it doesn’t begin outside of ourselves. 2Corinthians 4:7(NLT) tells us, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” The treasure is inside of our earthen vessels—our body temples. It’s inside of us, and it is given to us by God so that the love we give out to others will not be substandard or lacking in any way. It is excellent love, because it comes from God. Our responsibility, then, is to learn to bring the excellency of God’s love from the inside of us and express it to others outwardly.
This is where we get it twisted sometimes. We want to take credit and think that we can love a person enough all by ourselves. We cannot. Without learning to love God’s way, we simply cannot love someone a lifetime. Outside of God’s love, we can’t love people in a way that makes them better, while also making us better as well. Only the love of Jesus Christ has this kind of power.
One of the layers we must pull back is desperation. Some of us are desperate to get married because we believe our need to feel loved is critical. Our God is rich beyond comprehension. He owns everything, and as His children, we shouldn’t be desperate to receive anything. Heavenly Father is our Sufficiency, and He tells us that He will supply all our need. We should look to Him to fill our cups, because He’s the only One that can do it.
Wanting to be loved isn’t as important as desiring to love others with the love of Christ. The words of Jesus Christ in Acts 20:35 tell us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. His words allow us to view marriage as the ministry God intends it to be. Giving a Christ-kind of love should be at the forefront of our desire for marriage.
Again, love doesn’t begin outside of us; it begins in us through the love of Christ. He said in Matthew 11:29 (NIV), “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” The more we learn about Christ, the more we learn how to love. And as we learn about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we will hear an awful lot about surrendering to God and being humble. For the single Christian person that is desiring to increase through the union of marriage, these are two spiritual lessons that cannot be missed. We need to surrender the idea that we know enough about love, because we simply don’t. And we need to humble ourselves before God so that we’re teachable and eager to learn from Him.
God knows exactly where the holes are in the fabric of our love capacity. He knows the missing elements. Without certain spiritual lessons about the love of Christ, and without changing some habits and qualities that we have, our future marriages might collapse. They will collapse because we haven’t built a strong enough foundation on the example of Christ to hold our marriages together.
Yes, it takes two people to make it work, but the beauty of the reality of Christ is that it only takes one person in a marriage to hold up the standard. The other person then has no other choice but to respond to it. This is how potent the love of God in Christ is. God’s love changes things. It motivates, creates, and makes life infinitely better. So, we have to surrender this idea that we are equipped already with a fully developed love. It needs to be perfected through Christ and getting back to square one requires us to not only acknowledge this, but to pull back layers of things like jealousy, insecurities, arrogance, conceit, and other heavies; so that we can love fully.
Jesus Christ told us something that is a huge piece of knowledge, and it will help us to put on more of his example of love. He said in Matthew 11:29 that he is humble. This is more beautiful than anything we can imagine. Jesus Christ is a King! He is more royal, powerful, and glorious than any king in the earth could ever hope to be, yet he tells us that he is humble. This should warm your heart to pieces.
Philippians 2:3-4 (NLT) says, “3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too.” Humility will require a person to strip away layers of pride and arrogance. It requires that a person is eager to demonstrate a denial of self for the benefit of others. It is having a heart that delights more in the blessings of others than for yourself. We may not always exhibit this level of humility, but marriage requires us to understand what it is, and to also be able to pull it out of our tool chest when it is needed. The ability to place the needs of your spouse above your own is absolutely essential in a marriage, and very few marriages can make it without this kind of humility.
Adjustments and transition can be challenging, but to partner they are necessary and unavoidable if we desire to be successful spouses. We do not have all the answers, but we know who does. Trust that as you seek the fulfillment of God’s promise, you must come earnestly before Him with a mind-and-heart-set to get back to square one when it comes to what it means to love His way. Renew your commitment to allow Jesus to lead and teach you and be patient as He prepares you to partner through his love. ■
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Getting Back to Square One!” written by Kim Times, edited by Reverend Fran Mack for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2016. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.