“The proof that you love someone is not that you have warm affectionate feelings toward them. The proof is in your actions, your words and your sacrifice, your willingness to give the best of yourself and your willingness to get nothing in return.” ~Katherine Walden
Love is not always a warm and cushy feeling that we have for the other person. It is not always the picture of Cupid with his quiver of arrows who shoots you and you fall madly in love with desire. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were always portrayed that way, or as in the song That’s Amore by Dean Martin – “When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, That’s Amore“.
Rather, at times, it seems Cupid’s arrows seem to pierce our heart and we fall madly out-of-love. For a shocking number of marriages in America today, “till death do us part” is merely a dream unfulfilled because they fail to embrace God’s Word pertaining to love. According to a McKinley Irvin study, in America, there is one divorce every 13 seconds. That is 6,646 divorces per day, and 46,523 divorces per week. That translates to roughly 50 percent of 1st marriages that get divorced; 60% of 2nd marriages that get divorced, and 73% of 3rd marriages that get divorced. However, when couples prayed together on a daily basis, less than 1% of those couples would end up getting divorced.
I believe that love is a decision that we make. For a relationship to be a lasting love, each person in a marriage must sacrifice and work together for the sake of love and the relationship, and surrender their wills to God. Paul Stookie of Peter, Paul and Mary said it so aptly in his “Wedding Song” where he sang “The union of your spirits, here, has caused Him to remain, For whenever two or more of you are gathered in His name There is Love, there is Love.” Click on the link to this song and see if it doesn’t bring tears to your eyes. For some they will be joyful tears because their love is a lasting love; for others they will be sorrowful tears because their love has slipped away. Don’t let what God has joined together be torn apart because you fail to give the best of yourself or that you fail to embrace God in your marriage.
PRAYER: God, help us to be patient and kind; help us to not envy or boast, nor be arrogant or rude to one another. Help us to not insist on our own way, or be irritable or resentful towards each other. Help us to not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoice in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
Copyright 2013 by Bill Hutzel