Love Life for every Married Couple - Pt 1

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Hello, this is Dr. Ed Week, a family physician and marriage counselor in Springdale. Arkansas. I want to speak with you today about something that is so very important to your happiness and well-being. The subject is love and marriage. Your marriage and how you can fill it to the brim with love. But first, let me give you just a little background information. I received an interesting assignment several years ago. You see, I'm a bibleelving Christian and also a certified sex therapist. So I was asked by conservative Christian leaders to prepare a teaching cassette album on sex and marriage from the biblical point of view. Many Christians were seeking specific medically accurate information on sex, but they wanted it in a form that was tasteful and not offensive. Above all, they needed to have understanding of sexual fulfillment from the perspective of eternal biblical truth. Well, we did produce the album called Sex Technique and Sex Problems in Marriage. And then my wife Gay and I wrote the book Intended for Pleasure, which added a great deal more information to this subject of sexual fulfillment in Christian marriage. The response to our book and cassette album from the Christian community worldwide has been truly amazing. It has shown us how great the needs are among Christians whose marriages are not what they would like. for them to be. Every day I receive long-distance calls and letters from people who have heard the cassettes or read the book and are anxious to discuss their particular problem with a Bible oriented counselor who has the medical knowledge and specialized training to help them. But in counseling, I encounter one acute problem many many couples are facing which cannot be resolved medically. The question which comes up so often is this. We are married, but there's no love in our marriage. We are Christians and we do not want to get a divorce. But we just do not care about each other anymore. Is there an answer for us? What can we do? Yes, there are answers for you. There are some very important things which you can do. And that is why I have prepared this new cassette album to put the information into the hands of many more people than I can possibly reach. speech by personal contact. Recently, a letter came to me from the African continent asking how a couple could learn to love each other. My answer is that if you will listen to this album carefully and follow the prescriptions I give you faithfully, you are going to fall in love with each other all over again or perhaps for the very first time. The pencil on these cassettes has already been tested and proven by couples and married circumstances. Some on the verge of divorce, some together but indifferent, some eager to build more love in their marriage, some trying to cope with unfaithfulness or other difficult problems, and some dramatic cases where only one partner is committed to saving the marriage. The answers I have to offer are not easy overnight cures, but we have found that the council and this album does work when it is applied consistently to the situation. One middle-aged couple who are now thrilled by their love life after years of boredom said to me, "We only wish we'd known these things 20 years ago." That is why I strongly recommend this cassette series for young couples just beginning their marriage. By learning and practicing these concepts, newlyweds can begin immediately to shape their relationship in such a way that their present love will continue to grow and become more wonderful every year of their life together. Some of you who are listening to these cassettes have a good marriage already, but you're concerned with keeping your marriage healthy and full of love. As you apply this information, you will find yourself enjoying more and more the feeling of love. You will be drawn even closer together and at the same time, you will be strengthening the foundations of your relationship to withstand the stresses of a lifetime. I recommend that husband and wife listen to this album together. Whenever possible, I hope each of you will feel that I am speaking to you as directly and personally as though you were a patient here in my medical clinic. It will be best if you hear the entire series first, then go back and study one section at a time using the outline that accompanies this album. Listen to each segment as many times as necessary, taking notes and thinking about how you can apply this counsel to your own marriage and how it can enhance your love life. By the way, I've been asked if when I speak of love life, I am referring to sexual activity. New research indicates that out of 168 hours in a week, the average couple seldom spends more than an hour of that time making love sexually. It's what you do with the rest of the time that determines the quality of your love life. Love life refers to your total relationship, the whole of your marriage, the love affair between you and your mate that goes on and on and gets better and better for the rest of your life. In today's society, people usually think of a love affair as an amorous interlude between two people not married to each other. But the dictionary defines it as an affinity between two persons, a particular experience of being in love. The experience I'm talking about is the love affair God intends every husband and wife to enjoy. You see, God does not withhold anything from his children that is really wonderful and desirable and enjoyable. He invented every pleasure known to man in its normal, healthy, satisfying form. He designed a love affair full of thrills and joy and lasting satisfaction for every couple. And he gave the principle guidelines in the Bible to point the way to it. This is why the prescriptions given in this album work when taken as directed because the Bible has the answers for every phase of living. We add the details of medical and psychological knowledge in applying the divine wisdom our creator has given to us in the scriptures. I know that many of you are trying to solve your marriage problem alone without the cooperation of your partner. You will be particularly interested in the comment of marriage counselor Anne Christristen Carol who says, "If you think there's no hope because you're the only one in your relationship who wants or cares enough to try to save your marriage, you're wrong." She adds, "In my experience, most torn marriages are brought to new life, new vitality by the interest basically of only one party." This is the end of her quote. You see, Your situation is far from hopeless, no matter what your specific marriage problem is. In this album, we intend to give you positive answers which will show you how to save your marriage by applying biblical concepts in all areas of your relationship, including the physical. This will take effort. It will take time. It will require a willingness on your own part to change. But you and your partner can resolve your difficulties and fall in love all over again, even if only one of you is willing to fully cooperate with God in the process. The concerned wife wrote this to me. She said, "Dr. Wheat, my husband and I are both born again Christians, but he doesn't see that it is possible for love to be rekindled in our marriage. I know our God is big enough to handle that, and that wife is right." You need to start out with the same point of view. that God can always be found on the side of marriage. That God is always on the side of love in marriage. After all, he is the inventor of marriage and the author of love. Let me give you a fact that you can absolutely count on in the weeks and months ahead. You can be sure it is true because it is a biblical principle. It is God's will for every married couple to love each other with an absorbing spiritual emotional and physical attraction which continues to grow throughout their lifetime together. Another fact follows from this great truth that it is totally possible for every Christian couple to develop this kind of love relationship in their marriage because it is God's will. This means that God is intimately involved in all your efforts to restore love to your marriage and the positive force of his will is at work with you. in the process because he is our creator, the one who made us, he knows best how to build love into marriage and if we follow his principles, they will work. Let's look at marriage from the divine viewpoint. Why did God establish it? What does it offer? How permanent is it? We have all the answers in the Bible. In the beginning, we're told God created marriage because it was not good for man to be alone. Therefore, God made a marvelous provision for us. Through the institution of marriage, men and women are able to experience an amazing physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy which every person longs for. But you can only find it with your mate. Through marriage, God has made the two of you into one flesh. And so, there is a special love and completion and sense of true belonging which only your mate can give to you. It is unique and you are the only person in the world who can provide this for your mate. There is no adequate substitute once you've been joined together in marriage. From the divine viewpoint, your marriage is a lifetime relationship which was designed to benefit both of you perhaps far more than you ever realized. We can be sure that marriage was planned for our blessing. Because the book of Ephesians in the New Testament tells us that God designed marriage to present an accurate picture of the eternally wonderful love relationship between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church. When a husband and wife enter into this design, they are immensely blessed and their marriage reflects Christ's love like a mirror for all to see. We know that the relationship between Christ and his church will never be broken. Thus, we can be sure that marriage which is designed to portray this relationship was never meant to be broken either. Obviously, while divorce is man's attempt to solve a difficult problem, it is never God's solution. Although he permits it when people choose to use it as an escape route. But those who have gone through divorce say that they escaped nothing. That there is hardly anything worse than the finalized pain of the divorce. That they take their unresolved problems with them into new relationships and that they are left with feelings of failure and alienation and incompleteness. This of course is because the courts of law in the land cannot really dissolve a relationship which God himself has made indesoluble. When two people marry, they become one flesh by the plan and decree of God. This awesome bond of marriage is often denied but it cannot be destroyed this side of death. Listen to God's view as stated by the Lord Jesus Christ in the book of Mark chapter 10. Jesus said, "From the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. So then they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put us under." Perhaps a divorce woman suggested the word divorce should be stricken from the vocabulary of a couple having problems because God has a way that is so much better. Let me share my own experience with you. My wife and I used to have what the world would consider a good marriage. We had a pleasant, harmonious relationship with each other. We enjoyed our three daughters and our comfortable life, but we just didn't know what we were missing. I thought we had all there was. But then I met Jesus Christ through the witness of another person and I trusted him to be my savior and desired that he control my life. This meant that I had to learn his plan for me through studying the Bible. While I did this, my wife and daughters who were not yet Christians reacted to me with a lack of understanding and with total amazement. I am sure they wondered what in the world had happened to me as they saw their husband and father change so drastically. under their eyes. For almost 2 years, my wife was unresponsive to the gospel and to me. And during this time, our marriage went through the kinds of stresses and strains that have helped gay and me to understand what many of you are going through now. I've always been very grateful for this experience for it drove me to the word of God to learn what I should do. You know what I learned? First of all, that it was not my business to make my wife obey God's principles. It was not my business to push her in the Christian living. Instead, it was my responsibility to love her the way Christ loved me. At first, it was a responsibility. Many times I did not feel like doing it. For rejection, even quiet, courteous rejection, is a hard thing to handle. But I did it. At times I of obedience to God, not out of desire. And I discovered that as I put the principles of the Bible into practice, as I learned more and more how to love my wife and began to do it, this became a joy as well as a responsibility. As I slowly became the husband God had designed me to be, my wife began to respond just as God had planned and promised. When she trusted our Lord Jesus Christ as her person, Savior. It was the real beginning of our own love affair as God had planned from ages past. We honestly fell in love with each other. Since that time, more than 15 years ago, the Lord has continued to teach us more and more of the thrills and joys of love and marriage. This is why we write, speak, and counsel on the subject, and why I have placed hundreds of the best teaching cassettes on marriage in the Bible believers cassettes free loan library. We want others to have every opportunity to discover the love relationship God has designed for every married couple. So let me share this insight with you. God is the God of the living and it pleases him for us to be fully alive as husband and wife. I say this because I know of so many marriages which are at best only partly alive. You see, God created us as incredibly complex living beings. with a vast array of emotions and human needs. And the marriage relationship has been prepared by God to meet these needs and to satisfy every element of our being, including the sweet joy of knowing and worshiping him together. Think about how God made us as men and women, and then realize that all the ways of loving are a part of marriage as God designed it. There's always more ahead for us if we will force take our rigidity, our timidity, and our unbelief. The principle from scripture is the Lord is able to give thee much more than this. So let's remember that marriage was not intended to produce martyrs, but two radiantly happy people united as one. Many women were made to love with total commitment by the choice of their free wills and also to desire a response to that love. I hope you will begin now to look forward expectantly to the love life God has for you and your partner to enjoy together. Do you consider yourself an authority on love? Researchers tell us that most people do. And yet it is said that hardly anything is started with such high hopes and great expectations but fails as regularly as love. This suggests that perhaps we don't know as much as we think we do about love itself or how to love. Actually, great numbers of people have mistaken notions of love and these fallacies and misconceptions can seriously affect their love life. Believe it or not, your marriage and future happiness are being shaped right now by what you really think about love. Here are six erroneous ideas about love misconceptions. Compare your own views with these. Fallacy number one, some people think that love can't be understood. that no one can really agree on what love is, that it is a mysterious thing which cannot be discussed rationally. Of course, this is not true. God's word clearly shows us what love is in essence and it describes the characteristics of love as well as giving the unforgettable example in Jesus Christ of love and action. A little later, we will consider the five different kinds of love and how they operate within a marriage. We not only can But we must understand what love is in order to restore it to our marriage. Fallacy number two takes the opposite extreme and says that love is the simplest thing in the world to understand and that it is easy to love requiring neither thought nor effort. No one has to learn about love or even think about it. It's just a matter of doing what comes naturally. This is a fallacy particularly held by teenagers who have trouble outgrowing it as adults. But it's not true. As we've already observed, people fail all the time at love. Note the present 40% divorce rate, showing that in almost one out of every two marriages, failure has been openly admitted. No, people need to realize that love is not easy. It is an art which must be learned. If we want to learn the art of loving, we must go about it in the same way we would learn any other art. The art of music, for instance. In my case, I spent years learning the art of medicine. First, mastering the theories of medicine and then learning how to put the theories into practice. Most important, I wanted to learn to practice medicine so intensely that I was willing to put everything I had into it. If you want to master the art of loving and obtain the rewards of a tremendously happy marriage, you're going to have to learn the principles of building love into your marriage. And then you'll need to practice them on a daily basis. Above all, you will have to want to learn and pour your very life into it. Prophecy number three says that love is a feeling which just happened. happens or else it doesn't happen or it happens and then stops happening so that nothing can be done to recapture love once it goes. Of course, this is widely believed because most of the boy meets girl, girl loses boy movie and television plots are based on this fallacy. It infers that we're all the helpless slaves of love. But this is simply not true. Essentially, love is not a feeling at all. Although an incredible gamut of feelings and sensations can accompany and motivate love. Instead, love is an active power which you were meant to control by your own will. You see, you can always choose to love because God created you in his own image and he himself is love. Replace this false picture of love as an uncontrollable feeling with the truth that love is the power which produces love. Fallacy number four. This is promoted by Madison Avenue. It argues that it is much more important to learn how to be lovable than to learn how to love. You know the current standard which measures how lovable you are. It is based on three things. Your popularity, your sex appeal, and on whether you use the right products as advertised. The truth is that God's word shows the real secret of being lovable and desirable to your marriage partner. And this involves learning to give love rather than straining to attractive policy number five says that romantic love just doesn't exist. Even a few Christians hold this view because they believe romantic love to be the invention of Hollywood. But how could Hollywood have invented something that it's as old as time itself? For it came into being in the Garden of Eden as Adam and Eve first gazed upon each other. It was Adam who expressed the wonder that both of them must have felt. At last, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. In other words, I have finally found the one who and complete me who takes away my loneliness who will be as dear to me as my own flesh and she is so very beautiful. She is all that I will ever need. Even that does not sum up the emotional response that must have been in both of them at that moment. We can be sure that real romantic love as opposed to passing infatuation is indeed the invention and gift of God and we should thank him for it. There are cynics who scoff at romantic love as myth and then there are men and women who look down on but simply because they themselves are not experiencing it. If they do not have romantic love in their marriage, they suppress the thought of it and the desire for it altogether. Some of them reason, "If I don't have it, it must not exist." Of course, this is like a blind man denying the reality of a particularly beautiful flower just because he cannot see it. But if he can touch it, at least he can discern its existence and the shape of it. In this album, we're going to attempt to show the shape of true romantic love to some who may not have experienced it in their own marriage. At least it can give them the awareness that it does exist as well as a desire for all that God has for them in marriage. And that is a first step toward love life. Fallacy number six is a misconception sometimes held by well-meaning religious people who have been taught to look down on the various aspects of love between husband and wife is self-seeking in character and therefore not quite acceptable. And some Christians have been taught by the tradition of their church to consider physical love as particularly sinful in its expression because agape love of the giving love so often mentioned in the Bible seeks nothing in return. Many Christians feel they should downplay all the other kinds of love in a marriage relationship is being less than worthy. But the truth is that all the loves of marriage are God-given and represent different aspects, not degrees of love. Every facet of human love between husband and wife desires a response. And there's nothing wrong with this. I urge you to value every part of the lifelong love affair. God has designed for you and your mate. Now, if any of these misconceptions have affected your attitude toward love and marriage, I suggest that you begin consciously to reprogram your mind concerning love. Here are some powerful truths to shape your attitude. Number one, I can learn what love is from the word of God. I can love. Number two, love is an art which I must want to learn more than anything else. I can learn how to love. Number three, love is an active power. which I control by my own will. Number four, love is the power that will produce love if I learn to give it rather than try to attract it. Number five, genuine romantic love is possible in my marriage because it is the gift and invention of God, our creator. Number six, I can love my partner with agape love whether or not there is a response. But there's nothing wrong with desiring a response from the one I love. All the aspects of love in a marriage relationship are God-given, including the physical and the emotional. Now, we're going to define the different kinds of love which will be present in a marriage when it is fully alive as God intended it to be. Of course, the English language offers only the one word, love. And this word can mean almost anything today depending on how the speaker uses it. For instance, we love the Lord Jesus, fried chicken, and football. We love our friends and our parents and our pet cat. We love our children, our marriage partner, the Rocky Mountains, and our new stereo. Those are just some of the ways we love rightly use the word love. Fortunately, we can call upon the precise language of the Greek New Testament to help us at this point. For the Greeks of the New Testament era not only had a word for it, they had four or five words by which we can distinguish the various aspects of love and marriage. By the way, there's no such thing as window shopping here. You cannot pick and choose the kind of love you prefer and leave the others out. Each builds upon the other. Each plays an important part as you will find when you begin to put all of these loves into practice in your own marriage. The first word we're going to consider is never translated love in the Bible, but it represents one important aspect of the love relationship between husband and wife. This word is epia. A strong desire of any kind, sometimes good sometimes bad. It means to set the heart upon, long for rightfully or otherwise. Or it can mean to covet. When it is used in the Bible in a negative way, it is translated lust. When it is used in a positive way, it is translated desire. And this is the way we will be using the word. For in your marriage, you and your mate should have a strong physical sexual desire for each other. You may not have this at the present time simply because other aspects of your relationship are not working as they should. It is fairly easy to turn sexual desire off, but that does not have to be permanent. Restoring sexual desire in your marriage will play an important part in the total experience of falling in love with your mate. For this reason, we will devote some time to a discussion of this. phase of marriage just a bit later. Now we will go on and describe the other kinds of love to be found in a good marriage. The next word never appears in the New Testament but its Hebrew counterpart is used in the Old Testament. It is a word quite common to our ears because our word erotic comes from this source. I am speaking of aeros love which more than any other kind carries with it the idea of romance. It is not always sensual, but it does include the idea of yearning to unite with and the drive to possess the object of one's love. Aeros is romantic, passionate, and sentimental. It is quite often the starting point for marriage being the kind of love which lovers fall into and write songs and poetry about. It has been called rapture, exquisite pleasure, strong sweet and terrifying because it's so all absorbing. Aeros love always needs help because it can be fickle. It is unable to last a lifetime by itself. Aeros wants to promise that the relationship will last forever, but it cannot keep that promise alone. I would stress that foolish infatuations which sometime occur have nothing to do with the true romantic love to be found in a god-esigned marriage. Aeros love when enjoyed in the lasting context of Christian marriage offers wonderful emotions and personal rewards which are the gift and creation of God himself. God never commands aeros love for it is totally emotional and cannot be summoned at will but it appears as a sure response when the other loves of marriage are set in motion. You will experience aeros love and a rich mature particularly joyous form when you have mastered the art of loving. More than any other kind of love, Els changes a black and white existence to full technicolor and is a vital part of the love life of marriage. The third word representing a love of marriage is stoay. A comfortable old shoe relationship characterized by loyal family ly affection and belonging. It is the kind of love shared by parents and children. The kind of love Robert Frost described when he said that home is the place where when you go there they have to take you in. Home is something you don't have to deserve. End of quote. Stogay love provides sure loyalty and a place of refuge from the outside world. This should not be ignored. in the building of a love relationship. The fourth word for love is the Greek verb fileo which often appears in the New Testament. This kind of love cherishes and has tender affection for the beloved but it always expects their response. It is a love of relationship, comradeship, sharing, communication, friendship. While aeros makes lovers, Fileo makes good friends who enjoy the closeness and companionship with each other. They share their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, plans, and dreams, the most intimate things which they would share with no one else. It takes two for the full enjoyment of fileo. But when seeking to restore love to the marriage, it is enough for one partner to begin with the expectation of response. When biblical concepts have been acted upon, it is something to look forward to even though not enjoyed at the present. We'll save the most important of the five kinds of love for last. I am referring to agape love which values and serves in contrast to fileo which cherishes and enjoys. Agape love is a totally unselfish love which gives and keeps on giving without expecting return. turn. The New Testament speaks of this love frequently, for it was agape which prompted Christ to come to earth as a man on our behalf. God loves all mankind with an agape love. Although he also has a fileo love for those who are in relationship with him. Agape love is of particular significance to those of you who are seeking right now to save your marriage and to find the love you lost. You see, of all the loves, agape is the one you can restore to your marriage immediately because it is exercised as a choice of your will and has no dependence upon feelings. It is a love of action, not emotion. It focuses on what you do and say, never how you feel. CS Lewis showed the difference between agape love and all the other natural loves by using this word picture. He described the natural love as a garden which would soon run to weeds if left alone. Agape love is represented by the rakes and hoes, the shears and plant food and weed killer employed by a skilled gardener to keep the garden thriving orderly and beautiful. In other words, when God planted the garden of our nature and caused the flowering fruit and loves to grow there, he set our will to tune them, to watch over them, to care for them, as a wise gardener should. This operation of the will is agape love, a knowledgeable and skillful love concerned with doing what is best for the beloved. A marriage possessing agape love can survive anything. It is agape love which keeps a marriage going when the natural loves falter or even die. In going with the wind, we have the classic picture of an intense Long-term natural love finally dying. The parting scene of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara has passed into American folklore. Rhett Butler forever at the door saying with complete indifference, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." We may not like his language, but we all understand what he is saying. That even the strongest natural love has to end when there is no response. But agape love is different. This is one of the most exciting truths in all of scripture. Agape love is plugged into an eternal power source and it can go on operating when every other kind of love fails. Not only that, it loves no matter what. No matter how unlovable the other person is, agape love can keep on flowing. Agape love is as unconditional as God's love for us. It is a mental attitude based upon a deliberate choice of the will. And so you can choose right now to begin to love your mate with an agape love, no matter how indifferent the other one is or how unlovable. There's just one catch to this. If you want to love with an agape love, you will need to trust Jesus Christ as your own personal savior and lord in order to have his kind of love available to give to your mate. Yes, unbelievers can choose to love this way as well, and some will give it a try because they have a genuine desire to love their mate in the best way possible. The trouble is that no matter how good their intentions are, they simply lack the divine resources needed to maintain agape love over a long period of time. Right now, before we go any further, I want to explain to those of you who need this information how you can trust Jesus Christ to be your savior. This is a choice which will stand for all eternity and it can transform your own life right now as well as your marriage. relationship the way of shame in the book of Romans 10:es 9 and 10. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart believeth under righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. The Bible tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the son of God who came to earth through the miracle of a virgin birth. He lived a perfect life as a man and at a specific moment in history, he died died on cross to bear the sins of the whole world, the sins of every individual who will ever live, including you. He died for you personally. Through that mighty act, he paid the death penalty and provided the way whereby your sins and mine can be forgiven and remembered no more. After 3 days in the grave, Jesus demonstrated to all people for all time that he is God by rising from the dead, a legally authenticated fact of history. After more than a month, spinning this earth in his resurrection body. He ascended to heaven with all power and authority in his possession. He makes his resources available in the life of anyone who believes on him. It is written in John 1:12. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. If you believe these things in your heart, it will help to confess them with your mouth, both to God and to men. Here is a prayer which You may wish to follow and expressing your faith in Jesus Christ as your savior. Heavenly Father, I realize I am a sinner and cannot do one thing to save myself. Right now, I believe Jesus Christ died on the cross. Shedding his blood is full payment for my sins, past, present, and future. And by rising from the dead, he demonstrated that he is God. As best I know how, I am believing in him, putting all my trust in Jesus. Jesus Christ as my personal savior, as my only hope for salvation and eternal life. Right now, I am receiving Christ into my life, and I thank you for saving me as you promised. And I ask that you will give me increasing faith and wisdom and joy as I study and believe your word. For I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, from this point on, I must assume that I am speaking to people who have been born again, who have the resources of for living God to call upon and restoring love to their marriage. Here is how God can help you. Begin by counting on his involvement, knowing he is with you and deeply concerned about your marriage. Then follow his counsel, depending on his wisdom. Draw on his power every day. Rely on his promises to you from the Bible, and absolutely trust him with the outcome. We're discussing how you can fall in love with each other, how you can stay in love, and how you can restore love. of to your marriage even when it seems hopeless. I have assured you that the prescriptions I am giving will work even when only one partner is actively involved in saving the marriage. Nevertheless, you may feel discouraged right now. It may seem almost hopeless. People close to you may be telling you to just give up. So, let me remind you of some of the positive factors operating in your favor. First of all, if the two of you are still living in the same household, you have the daily opportunity to put powerful biblical principles into action. Don't underestimate the advantage you have as long as you're together in the same house. You see, you're in a position to love so steadily, so unchangingly that the impact upon your partner will increase and build with the passing of time. As you consistently apply eternal concepts to your daily relationship, time and togetherness become your helpers in restoring love to your marriage. Even if you are living apart but have some contact because of children or another common bond, You still have the opportunity to build love through your behavior and attitudes. Remember, love is the power that produces love and you can learn to love your marriage partner in such a way that there will be a response. Besides opportunity, you have the assurance, biblical assurance that is the will of God for your marriage to become as beautiful and as wonderful as the unending love relationship between Jesus Christ and his people. So, you don't have to be torn up wondering whether you're taking the right course. divorce. You know that God's will is in this situation and that's why you're not going to listen to well-meaning but misguided people who urge you to separate. You can be sure that God is working with you to accomplish his will in your home and that he will honor your choice to obey him in this matter. If you feel alone in the stand you're taking, remember, God plus one is always a majority. Let me stress that the less said about your marital problems to anyone except a biblical counselor, the better. Your marriage is such a private and personal matter before God that almost no one else should be brought into a discussion of it. We humans have a natural craving for sympathy from family and friends. But after all, you have the Lord's complete compassionate attention, and that should be more than enough to see you through. You not only have the opportunity and assurance, you also have the clear-cut counsel from scriptures, which if obeyed will save your marriage. This is advice which you can follow with complete confidence. Because the one who invented marriage is certainly the ultimate expert on restoring love to it. In the Bible, he has revealed every concept you need to know in order to become the kind of husband or wife he designed you to be. As you change to fit his design, your marriage relationship will change, too. And your partner will be irresistibly drawn to the husband or wife you have become. But with all of these positive factors operating in your behalf, negative forces are at work also. I refer to bad feelings, negative attitudes, which most likely are standing as a barrier between the two of you, blocking off any real closeness that could develop. Genuine romantic love simply cannot grow in the same heart with such negatives as anger, bitterness, resentment, pride, disillusionment, despair. And yet, some of these attitudes will be found in almost any trouble marriage. Occasionally, I counsel couples where either husband or wife will not admit any bad feelings. They claim they feel nothing but indifference. Only after deeper consideration do they realize that their indifference is the direct result of buried anger which has led to depression numbing all of their emotions both happy and unhappy ones. It is important to understand that a negative attitude represents psychic energy which cannot be ignored or hidden away. This psychic energy is a force which must be reckoned with when one tries either to maintain it or conceal it. So much Emotional strength is required that the person will end up drained and therefore very depressed. Now I want you to concentrate on your own attitudes not those of your partner. Please face them. If negative attitudes are taking root in your heart they must be dealt with. They will have different names because people react differently. One wife confessed that she was so angry with her husband that she had a desire to smother him as he slept. While another retreated into an icy resentment which caused her to say that she could not respond to her husband even if he Perfect. Whatever name you give to your negative attitudes, the common denominator is an unforgiving spirit which will rob you of all that makes life good if you let it continue. It does not matter how justified you are in your bad feelings. This is not the issue. You personally are faced with a choice. Let me spell it out so that you can make a conscious rational decision about it rather than sliding into a choice almost unconsciously. A decision based on emotion with neither logic nor the word of God to back it up. If you want a marriage full of love, you cannot afford the luxury of resentment or self-pity or anger. Unforgiveness toward your mate in any form will be the death blow to love. If you choose to cling to your bad feelings, they will cripple your marriage relationship. And at the same time, they will take their toll of your physical health and emotional well-being. Of course, normal people want health and happiness and love in their marriage, but they often do not know how to handle the past, how to deal with their negative attitudes, how to cope with their resentments, or how to recognize their own anger buried under a layer of depression. Many do not know how to forgive, and they think it must be very complicated or even impossible. But it is not. God never asks his children to do anything he does not provide both the instructions for and the strength to accomplish. Let me share two basic principles which will help you at this point. First, you do not have to be controlled by your feelings. And second, you are not the helpless prisoner of your past. You see, this is the chief objection people offer when told they need to forgive. The answer goes like this. Maybe so, but I can never feel any forgiveness towards my husband after what he did. Or, I'd like to forgive my wife, but I can't change the way I feel. I can't change the past. These people are confessing the state of slavery. They are picturing themselves as enslaved by their own feelings, as prisoners of events which happened in the past. And yet, Born again Christians have already been set free. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." If the son of man make you free, you shall be free indeed. So let me say to you that right now you are more free than you know. Even in the secular world, counselors have dramatically change their approach to these problems in a way that is much more in accord with biblical principles. Counselors no longer focus on the patient's feeling. Many of them now concentrate upon the important importance of the individual's behavior. Many of the most effective counselors no longer attempt prolonged treatment of the patient's past. Instead, they emphasize the present, the here and now with marked success. So, begin by realizing that you are in control of your behavior and this is what counts because it is a proven fact that feelings change as behavior changes. Then you must understand that God is not asking you to change your feelings. He never does that. Throughout scripture, he tells us the way he wants us to behave and to think. Because he created us, he knows full well that as we think rightly and behave rightly, right feelings will come to us as a matter of course. You need to realize that God is not asking you to work up a feeling of forgiveness toward your mate. But he is asking you to make a choice, no matter how you feel, to forgive that one. There are several things we should realize. First, that we are asked to forgive because it is good for us to do. do so as a God who loves us with a fatherly heart. He desires our best and that best includes the spiritual and emotional wholeness and the physical well-being which spring out of a spirit of forgiveness. Second, we need never think that unreasonable demands are being made upon us by our God. He forgave first in a way that we can neither discount nor overlook. When Jesus Christ, a totally innocent man, suffered crucifixion and prayed in the midst of his agony, "Father, forgive them." God asked no more, indeed far less of you and me. And he himself did when, as someone has said, the only man who ever had the right to be bitter wasn't, and forgave instead. Forgiveness involves three steps. Number one, using your free will to make the choice to forgive. Number two, deliberately behaving in the manner which the Lord has shown in the Bible to be right. Number three, trusting him to do his part by renewing your mind and giving you new transformed attitudes. To help us make the choice to forgive, the Lord provides an urgent warning in the 12th chapter of the letter to the Hebrews. Make straight paths for your feet, lest that rain be turned out of the way, but rather let it be healed. Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, looking diligently lest any man fail. of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled. The one who clings to the misery of an unforgiving spirit will be crippled in the living of life, God warns, and not only will that person be troubled by the root of bitterness growing in his life, but many others will be affected by it as well. We have all seen this happen. The word bitterness in the Greek New Testament is picos giving the idea of a cutting, pricking, puncturing which is at the same time pungent and penetrating. It vividly communicates the sensations of torture. And this is just what you're doing to yourself and your loved ones when you refuse to forgive your mate. Charles Swindoll has suggested that it is like locking yourself in a concentration camp of your own making. Cory Tindon describes it as sitting in a very dark room in the daytime with heavy draperies closing off the sunlight and fresh air. The fact is that you will indeed suffer by your own choice until you decide to fully and completely forgive the wrong done to you. It may be one big thing or years of small hurts adding up to one large resentment. Certainly, it will cost you just as it cost God to forgive us. But once you've made the choice with your will, you will find that you've taken a big step into freedom and emotional health and spiritual growth. When you can choose to forgive your husband or wife totally and wholeheartedly for any all wrongs. You've taken a sure step into the kingdom of love. I have never known anyone who later regretted that step. As soon as you choose to forgive with your mind and your will and commit this matter to God, you free both yourself and the one who offended you from the power of the past. Now, whatever happened is historical fact, but no longer emotional fact. In a very real way, you have opened up the wound to the great physician, and you will find and that his love poured upon it will so heal that you will no longer feel the sting. Just think of the words that the Lord Jesus used to describe his ministry. He said, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to set at liberty them that are bruised." There you have both the deliverance and the healing. There is no bruise, no wound in your marriage that the Lord cannot heal. When you choose to forgive and commit this matter and your subsequent behavior to him. No hatred can hold you prisoner when you choose freedom. No negative attitude can dominate you when you choose to let it go as an act of obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. His love simply overpowers old resentments. It's like raising the shade and opening the window in that dark room. The sunshine floods in and dispels every corner of darkness. The air is fresh and sweet and exhilarating. The council for the second step of forgiveness is found in capsule form in Ephesians 4:es 31 and 32. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. This is the step of behavior of looking into the Bible to see what God says to do, then doing it. In this scripture, the Lord shows the process of first choosing to put away the negative attitudes, then assuming positive attitudes and behaving in positive ways. Summed up in the instruction, be kind, be tender-hearted, be forgiving. The essence of kind treatment of your partner is to treat him or her the way you wish to be treated. Kindness, as expressed in connection with your partner's wrongdoing, will certainly include these proofs of of your forgiveness. You will never use the past against him. You will never talk about it again either to him or to anyone else. You will never dwell on it in your thoughts. If you think of it, you will immediately remember that it has been forgiven just as God has forgiven you for many things far worse. I want to emphasize this point so that there will be no misunderstanding. When authentic forgiveness takes place, your behavior will change. It must change. Let me give you the example of a husband who wife has been unfaithful to him. He says that he has forgiven her. Yet, even years later, his behavior toward her clearly shows that he does not trust her. Obviously, this husband has never really forgiven his wife, and she is only too aware of it. You can imagine how difficult it is for love to grow in that environment. You see, to forgive is to say goodbye forever to the pain of the past and to be rid of its effect in the present. This is an essential part of the third aspect of forgiveness, which is forgetting your past and moving into the future, letting God do his part by renewing your mind through the word of God and giving you good attitudes with which to bless your marriage relationship. As we've already observed, this ability to leave the past behind is a special characteristic of God's people. In fact, the Christian life is all present and future. God has designed it so that the Christian can always begin where he is right now to live life in a new way, God's way. And believe me, it is impossible for us to mess things up so badly that God cannot work all of it together for our good. It's hard for us to understand how God can seemingly start over with a new set of plans dating from this moment. But he can and he will. He always responds completely in love to our efforts to follow his counsel. The biblical principle is that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. be a new every morning. Great is his faithfulness. So it is altogether possible for us to say like Paul in the third chapter of Philippians. This one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth under those things which are ahead. Forgetting reaching forth. This is the way to go on beyond that moment of forgiveness into the kingdom of love to live there for the rest of your life. Now what can you do about the negative attitude your partner holds? You need to take the initiative and and seek his or her forgiveness. First of all, stop doing the thing that caused the feeling of estrangement between you. Show by your speech and actions and attitudes that you are aware of your wrongdoing and you would like to write it. Never use the word if when you're speaking to your partner about the matter. Simply admit your own wrong and ask for forgiveness. This means so much more than saying, "If I have hurt you, I'm sorry." Be careful not to project any blame for the problem onto your partner. Making your mate feel guilty is one of the worst things you can do if you want to restore love to your marriage. If after this your mate does not immediately respond, continue to show by your consistent loving behavior that you have forgiven on your side that you are committed to loving your partner for the rest of your life. Remember, forgiveness can begin as a unilateral action. So, let it begin with you. Let me add this. Out of many years of experience, in spite of all all that has been said, you may still have some mental limitations tacked on to your scope of forgiveness. In other words, I can forgive everything else, but I could never forgive my partner's unfaithfulness. Or, I could never forgive my husband for this or my wife for that. Insert any unpleasant, unthinkable situation in the blanks. You name it, I have seen it and counseledled a person with the problem, usually a Christian. Sin is sin, and every person is equally capable of committing sin. It Paul needs to be dealt with and forgiven in any category. If you are bitterly disappointed in your mate, that attitude also is a signal that you need to choose to forgive. Remember that God's grace covers every category. The love of God can cover every kind of problem. Please believe me when I tell you that I've seen that there's no situation so difficult or so shocking that God cannot restore the marriage and bring glory to his name in the process. If I could give you examples, without touching the privacy of those I have counseledled, you would be amazed and encouraged. Many people think that of all sins, adultery must surely destroy the marriage bond. But biblically speaking, adultery need be no more destructive to your marriage than any other sin. I have seen a surprising number of Christian marriages attacked by unfaithfulness. But I have also seen many of these restored in such a way that the relationship became wonderful, even if it had never been before. with a beautiful depth of love and mutual commitment. Recently, a pastor was heard to say in reference to some very troubled marriages, "Only God could heal those relationships." This is true, but God heals as people are willing to apply the word of God to their situation. When you are ready to forgive and let go of your negative attitudes, God will be more than ready to heal you and renew your love for each other. other. He's been waiting for that all this time. Now, we're ready to discuss how to love one's marriage partner day in and day out in order to produce a responding love. Remember, you become lovable by loving, not by straining to attract love. So, be careful how you love. Loving your mate in God's way does not mean clinging, complaining, or making demands. This type of behavior will only drive your mate away. Loving your partner in God's way does not mean playing games, trying to make your mate jealous, for instance, playing hard to get, or any of the other approaches which you may have used when you were in your early teens, but which are inappropriate for marriage. I recommend that you read the 13th chapter of First Corinthians and as many different modern translations as you can find. Read it over and over to learn the behavior patterns which characterize genuine love. For it is this quality of love that can save your marriage. Fill your mind and spirit with these basic behavior responses so that they can reshape your attitudes and actions. 1 Corinthians 13 is not the whole answer. Of course, there are still specific needs and longings. which only our mate can fulfill for us. One wife asked her husband, "What can I do to show you that I love you?" This was his answer. He said, "You could be nice to me all of the time, not just when you're in the mood. You could treat me as if I'm really special. You could show me that you love me by respecting me and not trying to take over." A wife expressed her desire in this way. She said, "I just want my husband to keep telling me that he loves me and approves of me, not only with words, but with kisses and thoughtfulness and understanding and protectiveness. I suppose what I'm really saying is that I want him to love me the way the Bible says, to love me the way Jesus Christ loved the church." You see, we all hunger to be loved and we want tangible proof that we are love. But Someone in the marriage has to take the initiative to begin the loving process. When misunderstandings have arisen, this can be difficult. There's a great deal of truth in the observation made by Robert Lewis Stevenson. He said, "Here we are, most of us sitting at the window of our heart crying for someone to come in and love us. But then we cover up the window with the stained glass of pride or anger or self-pity so that no one can glimpse the lonely self inside." In quote. You might want to apply that description to your own marriage relationship at this moment. Is it possible that there are two lonely people there, each crying for the other to come in and love him, yet confused about what the other really wants and feels. There is only one constructive answer. Just as you chose to forgive unilaterally, if necessary, now choose to love your partner and show it by meeting his or her needs. You will remember that on the first side of this cassette, we described the five kinds of love which will operate within the marriage when it is fully alive. We're going to see how to build love in each of these five aspects of the relationship and I am going to give you some key words which will help you to remember how each kind of love is developed. Let's begin now with epidemia. The strong physical desire of marriage. Your goal in this phase of building love will be to establish positive physical communication through closeness and pleasurable physical touching. The key words are response and intimacy. Sex, of course, is not the most important aspect of your relationship, but it is a definite indicator of the health of your marriage and it provides the opportunity for communication and mutual pleasure at a time when you're trying to work out other areas of your relationship. This is why I've chosen to discuss the physical desire of marriage first. It is very important for you to have a positive sexual relationship with your partner. I hope you've already learned the principle that as you change your actions and absorb right ways of thinking, your feelings will change of their own accord. So your immediate challenge is to and to act and think in ways that will enhance your love making. In order to restore love to your marriage in the area of mutual physical pleasure, you will need four things and the first of these is complete, dependable medical information. No one is a natural-born expert, but certainly our creator wants us to understand everything he has built into our bodies for delight and refreshment through sexual union. My first prescription for you is to read our book, Intended for Pleasure, and to listen together in the privacy of your own bedroom to our counseling cassette series, Sex Technique and Sex Problems in Marriage. This contains a great deal of information which cannot be repeated in this cassette series, and you owe it to yourself to be fully informed. I can say to both husband and wife, there is no reason why you cannot be a great lover. Just make sure that you know what you need to know. The second thing you must have is an understanding of God's view of sex. This comes from the scriptures, of course. We find in Hebrews 13:4 that the marriage union is honorable and the bed undefiled. The word for bed here is ketus in the Greek language, physical intercourse. course. It is undefiled, not sinful, not soiled. It is a place of great honor in marriage, the holy of holies in the husband wife relationship. If you grasp this truth, it can rid you of all the wrong attitudes towards sex which you may have picked up along the way. Then there are several basic principles concerning the sex relationship in marriage found in the seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians and I want to give them to you briefly. First, God tells us not as a polite suggestion, but as a commandment to meet our mate's sexual needs, recognizing that both husband and wife have sexual needs. Now, when you take hold of this concept and begin to do everything you can to meet your partner's need, even in obedience to God, you are going to develop a very wonderful and exciting relationship. Next, God gives us the principle of authority which tells us that on the day we marry in God's sight, we relinquish the right to our own body and we turn that authority over to our mate. This is certainly an indication of the lifetime scope of marriage as God designed it. It is a very sobering principle which people should understand before they get married. For by biblical command, the wife's body belongs to the husband. The husband's body belongs to the wife. life. This has several implications. For instance, it means loving that mate's body and caring for it as our own. But it also means that we have no right to withhold physical affection from our partner for our body has become the possession of our marriage partner and vice versa. Finally, we are told that we must not defraud our mate by abstaining from the habit of sex. except by mutual consent for a brief period of time. The reason for this warning is clear. If you do not maintain the habit of sex, you will open yourself to satanic temptations. Thus, God counsels us to participate actively and regularly in sex with our own mate. To fail to do so is to cheat our marriage partner. To apply these principles on sex in the most practical terms, I suggest that you make every effort to give your mate a good sexual release as an habitual part of your life together. I refer you to our book, our first cassette album for specific instruction in this area. If you're unable to obtain these at your Christian bookstore, you may write me at 130 Spring, Springdale, Arkansas 72764. The third thing you will need in restoring love to your physical relationship is the approach to sex. After all, this is a time when your marriage may be undergoing stresses. You may be passing through a long winter season of indifference. Depression may have lessened your interest in sex. So, what do you do? Where do you start? By eliminating the negatives and establishing a series of pleasant physical experiences on which you can build. This means that you will never again criticize the other, but express in the most positive terms. your love, your caring, your desire to please your mate and meet his need. You're not to lecture your partner on the biblical commandments which we've just discussed. They are for you to obey at this point. It is not your responsibility to make him or her obey them. If your mate disappoints you, you will be careful not to say by word or action anything which will make that one feel like a failure. Even one slip of the tongue can undo the progress you have made during many weeks of rebuilding romantic love in your marriage. I said earlier that the goal must be to establish positive physical communication. We've just shown how to emphasize the positive. Now we must concentrate on the physical aspect which is in essence enjoyable touching rather than grand fireworks and shooting stars. The thrills will come later. Here's how to develop this. Deliberately spend time relaxing together. It has been proven that without preforeplay time together, sexual interest tends to wayne. So aim for a pleasant closeness in your time together which you can both enjoy. Relax and enjoy touching each other, cuddling, snuggling. All human beings of all ages have a very real need for this. Then lovingly give each other sexual release as you have learned from our pre previous book and cassettes. If you decide to practice some of the exercises described there, make them fun, not drudgery. Eliminate all nagging and pushing on both sides. Emphasize your caring and your verbal appreciation for your partner. Words are especially important right now. Husband, one sentence of criticism directed at your wife in any area may well drive away the desire she would otherwise feel that day. On the other hand, one sentence of praise and approval, the more specific the better, is going to do wonders for her. You may think that I'm suggesting hypocrisy. You may ask, "Why should I tell her I care when I don't particularly feel anything for her?" My answer is that God has commanded you to love, an action word. He has not commanded you to feel. If you want to find his blessing, and his plan for your marriage. You will begin to act with love right now before you feel attracted to her, before you have any romantic feelings. As you obey God's plan, you can absolutely trust him to revive the feelings. This, of course, is a biblical principle which applies in every area of the Christian life. For instance, we're not told to feel thankful in the Bible. We're told to give thanks. action. As we obey this, we find ourselves experiencing the feelings of thankfulness as well. Begin showing your wife in other ways that you love her. Give a romantic caresses at times when you're not preparing for sex, admiring glances, affectionate pats, a smile and a wink across the room, small attentions that tell her she is a very special person in your sight. All of this builds intimacy. Why? wife, you can do the same for your husband. Both of you should approach the sex relationship as fun, not as a hassle or unpleasant medicine or hard challenge you're afraid you'll fail at. It can be fun. After you have accurate information, the divine viewpoint, and the right approach, you will still need a fourth thing, an abundance of patience. There is just no room for impatience and criticism in the realm of love making. As you follow the course of action I have suggested, remember that you have something important working for you and that is the principle of propenquity. In other words, you have a nearness of relationship, time and place that can work in your favor. That can be really exciting. You are perfectly free to enjoy each other's lovemaking. You can go in a room and shut the door or go off together for a weekend and know that in God's eyes you belong together. There's no limit to the pleasure you can find together. You can fall in love all over again. We have talked to building intimacy. The other key word in restoring physical love is response. I want to point out some factors which may be hindering your partner's responsiveness. A very interesting stud study was done comparing women of high response and women of low response. The findings were strikingly clear. We now know that orgasmic capacity in a woman is strongly tied to her feeling concerning the dependability of a relationship with her husband. In other words, the highly orgasmic wife feels she can trust her husband. The lowresponder feels that her husband will let her down since she can't depend on him. and thinks she has to stand on her own. She finds it almost impossible to trust him in the sexual act and to relax and let herself go in his arms. Her deeprooted apprehension robs her of her ability to respond fully to her husband. This study also showed that the highly orgasmic women had had fathers who were not passive toward them, but who strongly cared about them and their well-being. These fathers had not been permissive. Instead, they had set standards and well-defined rules for their daughter's protection in their growing up years. What do these findings mean to the husband who longs for his wife to become sexually responsive? If you want her to respond passionately and with a beautiful relaxation and abandon and love making, you need to give her the absolute security of your love in the context of permanent commitment. When you convince her that you will not let her down, you will find her becoming increasingly responsive. Secondly, while you cannot change the way your wife's father treated her, you can give her what she should have had from her father, a strong, loving concern from a man who is both leader, protector, and example to her. If she believes you actively care about every detail of her welfare, and if she can respect you as the spiritual leader of your home, the chances are very good indeed that you will see improvement in her sexual responsiveness over a period of time. Those of you who are familiar with the fifth chapter of Ephesians will realize that what I have just said based on a scientific study strongly supports the council God gives to the husband in Ephesians where the husband is commanded to provide his wife with a permanent sacrificial love, a protective love, a nourishing cherishing love. This is not not just something you do in order to gain God's approval. It works. It brings about the kind of marriage God wants every husband and wife to enjoy. A marriage which includes keen sexual desire on the part of the woman as well as the man. Now let us consider factors which influence a husband's sexual response. And this I am directing to the wife. If your husband is indifferent to you, I want to ask you two questions which may point to the underlying cause. First, do you respect your husband leadership as a man, as the head of your home, as the father of your children, and as your lover? If you indicate to him by word, action, or attitude that you do not respect him, you will erect a barrier which will hinder his desire for you. While this is a biblical principle, it is also a principle emphasized by secular experts in the sex therapy field. When a husband's self-esteem is reduced because his wife does not respect him, their sex life is sure to suffer. Second, I want you to consider this. Have you misused the sexual relationship in the past? Have you used sex as a tool of manipulation or as a weapon against your husband? Have you rejected him on a whim? Have you withheld physical faith? favors to pay him back for something. Have you been dishonest with him playing games? Have you battered his sexuality through hostility or criticism or ridicule? You see, your husband is as psychologically vulnerable to injury in the area of sex as he is physically vulnerable. You realize that a physical blow to his genitals would cause severe pain, but his sense of manhood is equally vulnerable. If you have participated in producing an attitude of failure within him, you're going to have to start all over again and build him up by your tenderness, your sensitivity, your respect, and your responsiveness. We will continue our discussion on cassette two of this album. This is Dr. Ed Weat wanting to thank you for your close attention and my prayer There is that you will feel as I do the great importance of building a strong emotion of love as an integral part of your marriage. Thank you.

Mark 10 · chapter mention John 1:12 Hebrews 13:4

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