Love is a Verb

Over the next 4 blog posts (including this one)  we will be looking at how to stay in love. We won’t be talking about falling in love. Everyone knows how to fall in love. All you must have is a pulse and be six feet above ground to fall in love. All someone has to do is walk by and look good and/or smell good and we can fall in love. We do know how to fall in love. Our problem is we don’t know how to stay in love. If you ask any couple who has been married 20+ years they will tell you that there are some rules that every boy/girl relationship must follow. Young men ……..  listen up. Older men you need to nod your head when I am right. Ladies I just need for you to smile. Plus, you cannot physically or verbally harm me after you read this. (click pic to listen)

“Rules of Male-Female Relationships”

1. The Female always makes the Rules.

2. The Rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification.

3. No Male can possibly know all the Rules.

4. If the Female suspects the Male knows all the Rules, she must immediately
change some or all of the Rules.

5. The Female is never wrong.

6. If the Female is wrong, it is because of a flagrant Misunderstanding, which
was a direct result of something the Male did or said wrong.

7. If Rule 6 applies, the Male must apologize IMMEDIATELY for causing the
Misunderstanding.

8. The Female can change her mind at any given point in time.

9. The Male must never change his mind without express written consent from the
Female.

10. The Female has every right to be angry or upset at any time.

11. The Male must remain calm at all times, unless the Female wants him to be
angry or upset.

12. The Female must under no circumstances let the Male know whether or not she
wants him to be angry or upset.

13. Any attempt to document these Rules could result in bodily harm to the
Male.

Statistics tell us that we are not very good at staying in love. If the statistics are still the same over, ½ the couples who get divorced do so within the first three years.

Can you guess the #1 reason couples tell me they want to get married? (This is based on doing 23 years of marriage counseling),

You probably guessed right …..  Because they are in love.

If you like Disney, watch this edited video  clip – It will explain what happens in each of us. If you watched the clip you learned what really happens to us ….. we get twitterpated. The other person makes our head spin. The other person makes us feel light-headed. The other person makes us irrational. They “make” us do things we said we would never do.  When I was twitterpated  I was dumb enough to say before my wife and I were married that I would clean the bathrooms. I was twitterpated!!! O’ the things I had to do to convince her that I was the man of her dreams. I fell in love with my wife the minute she walked through the church doors.

Our problem is not whether we can fall in love. Our problem is staying in love.

For those couples who have been married 20+ years and who have been happily married for 20+ will tell you that there were moments when they wondered if they married the right person. Or at least they have said, “this is NOT the person I married – they’ve changed.” Staying in love is hard work! Most kids grow up never seeing love. 40% of kids in our nation today don’t have a dad or a mom in their life. When they don’t see a good relationship or any relationship at all where do they learn to love someone? Anywhere they can find it. Some grow up with a mom and a dad and they still never get to see how love really works in a relationship. They have had terrible examples in their life of a mom and dad who didn’t know how to love each other. A lot of people never get to see what a real relationship looks like.  They never see their mom love their dad or their dad love their mom. They have never seen what it looks like or what it means to love.  We do what we see and know.

On top of all this, we live in a culture that has a low tolerance for pain in a relationship. When the relationship experiences some pain – we just get up and leave. We don’t have to take it. So many spouses take their toys and go play with someone else. And we keep the cycle going wondering when we will find true love.

Our culture also teaches us that if aren’t happy in a relationship we must be with the wrong person. We must have chosen poorly. So we think we need to choose another person. If that one doesn’t work out, pick another one. And we keep the cycle going. I was talking to the wife of a young couple a couple of months ago  – these are the actual words she said to me, “ I think he tricked me into marrying him.”  Do you hear what she is saying?  She is saying, “I think I chose the wrong person.”

(just so you know …. I “tricked”  my wife into marrying me ….. I didn’t start cleaning the bathrooms until about 5 years ago. I am pretty sure that is why she finally said yes).

Our culture gives us no help in how to stay in love. There are 1500 sites on the internet that will help you find the right person to fall in love with. But our culture, with its lack of tolerance for relational pain and it’s montra that says “if person isn’t making you happy go choose another person”, can’t teach you how to stay in love.

Once again, if you were to ask a couple who has been married 20+ years,  they would tell you they decided somewhere along the line that the person they chose was the right person. Flaws, failures, freckles and all.  They made a decision that this person is the right person for me.

My wife and I have a little mantra we use in our relationship. We say it in cards every once in a while. I actually think Dana thought of it first  (ticks me off because I wanted to think of it first).  The mantra goes like this: Neither one of us is perfect but we are perfect for one another. We made a decision that it was okay for each of us to be imperfect but we are perfect for one another. We made a decision to love each other through our flaws and our failures. We used our BRAINS not our hearts. Feeling in love only goes so far. There’s a point where your brain needs to take over and make a decision to love that person.

That is so important (and I believe we all know this and ladies please don’t get mad) It (staying in love)  is not about having a nice wedding ceremony in a church and signing a piece of paper. It’s about making  A DECISION! A decision to love that person through pain, flaws, and failures.

Unfortunately though ….. Statistics tells that it is highly improbable that your marriage or your relationship will stay together. I just learned of a couple that was in my youth group, both of them strong believers, got a divorce  a couple of months ago. I knew this couple as kids. They memorized large portions of scripture. Both of them had parents who stayed in love and provided an incredible example of what staying in love looked like. Something went wrong.

Culture keeps telling us that is highly unlikely that you will stick around for the pain.

With the odds against us, Jesus comes into the picture and speaks about what it takes to stay in love. 2000 years ago He gave us the foundation for what it takes to stay in love.

It is so simple –  it’s brilliant.  It is so obvious that we miss it. When you see it you will be like … really? That’s it? There has got to be more to it!

Look at what he says in John 13:34 – ³⁴ So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Jesus is taking what we normally use as a noun and he turns it into a verb! We fall in love. We make love. In the month of February we celebrate love. If you want to stay in love – turn love into a verb. You need to make love – — happen. Jesus is saying do something to make love happen. We can sit around and say we love each other all we want but if don’t do anything to make love happen then it is not love. Love is an action word. Something that needs to demonstrated. Jesus commands that we do it.  It is a guarantee  that if the both of you turn this word LOVE into an action word  – you will stay in love.

So much of what love is now is based on how you feel. We treat it like a noun, a thing. We says things like “I don’t feel in love.” When  you say that you are making love a noun. Loving someone is not based on how we feel. This is the hard part ….. because when Jesus loved he didn’t make people love  him back. We can’t make anyone love us back.  Jesus simply loved. Jesus didn’t say – “love each other when  you feel like it” or “love each other when things are going good.” Or “love each other when it is convenient for you.”

He simply says “love each other.”  This is a whole new way of thinking. It’s so obvious we miss it. It’s  so simple it’s brilliant. Then he goes on to say, “Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.” In other words, he doesn’t want us follow the example of our culture.  He is saying stop listening to the culture. He says, listen to me.

Jesus tells us, through Paul,  in Ephesians 5 – submit to one another. This is secret #2 to staying in love.  You might be thinking: “No, no,  you are reading it wrong” – it says wives submit to your husband. You need to read the whole chapter not just the verse you like. Before that it says in vs. 21, ²¹ And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

In relationships, we so much want our own way. We even tilt scripture to say what we want and feel. This goes both ways. Guys want what they want and if they don’t get it – we pout. If girls don’t get what they want – they find a way to get what they want or they go silent. In a relationship we want to be the one who is right. We want to be the one who wins the argument. We want to prove our spouse wrong. In some relationships we belittle our spouse so that we can feel superior.

If you want to stay in love – submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Who cares if you are right? Why does it matter who wins the argument? Many times you forget what you are arguing about any way. Sometimes we are more interested in saying “I told you so,” than saying “I love you.”  or “I’m sorry”. It doesn’t make a difference who is right and who is wrong.  Does it? Jesus tells us that it is not about who is right and who is wrong – he says that dirty curse word of the 21^st century – “submit to one another.”

If you want to stay in love, “submit to one another.” That is totally against the grain of our culture. We hate submitting. We hate submitting to our bosses. We hate submitting to our parents. We hate submitting to rules. So,  We create our own. We hate submitting to God. We hate submitting … period.

None of us in here like to be told what to do!!! And you want me to submit to my spouse? or to the person I love?

YEP! If you want to stay in love.