True Love Can Last A Lifetime, Even When It’s Tough!

When love is lacking I must…

Remember the purpose of marriage.

Genesis 2:18 NLT
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”

Philippians 2:2-4 CEV
Live in harmony by showing love for each other. Be united in what you think, as if you were only one person. Don’t be jealous or proud, but be humble and consider others more important than yourselves. Care about them as much as you care about yourselves

Lean into my role.

Ephesians 5:21-26 NLT
And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.

Find a something to celebrate.

Philippians 4:8 NLT
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Rely on the grace of God.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10 NIV
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Common misheld belief, that if you are a Christian, it is never God’s will for you to be disappointed, for you to suffer, that life should always make sense, you should always be happy and comfortable. This has bled over into marriage, that the purpose of marriage is to make me happy! – you want to be happy, get a dog!

God’s purpose in marriage is to build your character more than make you comfortable. Does he want you to be happy? Sure he does, but he’s more interested in your holiness, your righteousness than your happiness!

God is committed to growing you up, stretching your faith, and making you like him, and marriage is one of the ways that he does that.

God created marriage so that two people could come together and help each other become more like Christ! Your supposed to be helping your husband/wife become more like Christ, it’s not about your comfort, happiness, or expectations.

One of the biggest causes for arguments and strife in marriage is unspoken expectations…

What gets celebrated get repeated!
My challenge to you is to make a Praise List: Things you can celebrate about your spouse.

You might be thinking, I’m ready to give up, I can’t do this on my own, this is too hard…

Listen To Entire Message Here

A little humor for the soul…

Story 1
A man was having severe chest pains and headaches, so his wife took him into the emergency room. They did a complete battery of tests that lasted several hours and finally the doctor came in and asked if he could speak with the wife outside of the room.

He said, “Maam, I hate to tell you this but your husband has a very serious condition and the slightest thing could cause his body to just shut down. You are going to have to make your home a stress free environment, no yelling or arguing with him, no loud noises, he won’t be able to help you in any way around the house. He is going to need your constant attention for at least the next six months, otherwise his body will simply stop working. But, if you do what I’m telling you he should have a full recovery” The wife with a grim look on her face told the doctor that she understood and solemnly walked back into the room.

Her husband with a very worried look on his face, asked, “What did the doctor say?” His wife moved over next to the bed, took his hand, and quietly whispered, “The doctor said your going to die.”

Story 2
A woman’s club had a guest speaker, and she decided to talk about how as a wife it’s easy to fall into some bad habits. So she said, “Many of us end up mothering our husbands, but in reality, how many of us really intend to mother our husbands?” One woman in the back slowly raised her hand, and the speaker was a little thrown off. She asked, “you really want to mother your husband.” The woman looked fairly surprised and said, “Oh, you said Mother your husband, I thought you asked if we wanted to smother our husband.”

Story 3
An elderly pastor was searching his closet for his coat before church one Sunday morning. In the back of the closet, he found a small box containing 3 eggs and 100 $1 bills. He called his wife into the closet to ask her about the box and its contents.

Embarrassed, she admitted having hidden the box for their entire 40 years of marriage. Disappointed and hurt, the pastor asked her, “WHY?”

The wife replied that she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings. He asked her how the box could have hurt his feelings. She said that every time during their marriage that he delivered a poor sermon, she had placed an egg in the box. The pastor felt that 3 poor sermons in 40 years was certainly nothing to feel bad about, so he asked her what the $100 was for.

She replied, “Each time I got a dozen eggs, I sold them to the neighbors for $1.