Staying In Love

Our church has started a new series about how to maintain a great, God-centered marriage relationship called "Staying in Love." We really enjoyed the first sermon and so I thought I'd post my notes on here. There are definitely some great points that married people, singles, and even divorcees can benefit from!

"Staying In Love - Is It Even Possible?"

Palm Valley Church, September 13, 2009

• All People desire and hope for true love.
• God is love, so we’re hard-wired to desire it.
• As we grow up in our modern society, we wonder if the dream of finding your one true love and living happily ever after is even possible.
• Another question we grow up asking is if there is someone out there for us.
• 1 Corinthians 12:4-8 describes what love is and says that it will last forever. However, people have a hard time buying into that idea because that has not been their experience.
• The trouble is that we look at love through a flawed lens.
• Often, people go to the Bible and look for something that justifies their world-view, and don’t really listen to what it’s really saying.
• Did you ever think that maybe God has a better understanding of love than we do?
• Our problem is that we try to do love our own way.
• We equate love with a feeling, but if love is just a feeling to you then it is easy to fall out of love.
• That is why the divorce rate in Maricopa County is nearing 70% - the economy and other problems are stressing us out and making us lose that “happy ever after” feeling.
• In the Bible, love is defined as a commitment that needs to be turned into a verb.
• So many times we enter into a marriage with a false foundation, so when things don’t turn out like we expected, we assume that marriage is nothing but a false promise of life-long happiness.
• God did not make us to be completed and made whole by loving, or being loved by, another person.
• If you would stop focusing on looking for “the one” and start focusing on becoming “the one,” God will make you whole in Him and then you’ll be happier when you do find the person you want to marry.
• Our pastor believes that marriage is a big mirror for our inner life - you both pour all of yourselves into the the marriage, so if you don’t like your marriage that’s a reflection on you and where your heart is.
• John 13:34 - Jesus commands us to love each other as He loved us.
• He basically says that love encapsulates all of the law of God.
• Philippians 2:3-8 - talks about how to make love a verb. 3 STEPS.

1) Correct your motives ~ Be Humble!

• Make your marriage less about you and more about Him and your spouse
• Ephesians 4 - submit to one another because of who He is
• “Submit” doesn’t mean becoming a door mat, it means you make your spouse the priority and tend to their needs before your own
• For some reason we are willing to do this for so many other, random people in our lives, but not for the single most important person in our lives. Why is that??
• Treating your spouse as less worthy than yourself is dishonoring to them and to God.

2) Consider the messages you’re sending

• We sent very clear messages while we were dating: “I love you.” “You are beautiful.” But as time goes on, we tend to get lazy and send mixed messages.
• We’re so careful about the messages we send while out in public or are around strangers, but we are careless with our family at home
• Learn each other’s love languages and think about how you give and receive love.
• Misunderstanding this about your spouse can breed discontent and kill your marriage.
• Make it VERY CLEAR to your spouse how much you love them, every day.
• Don’t be careless! The Bible is very clear about the damage careless words and actions can do.

3) Create love moments ~ Plan your romance!

• Return to your first love and pour yourself into it.
• Listen to what makes your spouse tick (take note of what they desire or dream about and make it happen!)
• Be “religious” about your date night - let nothing get in the way of your special time together!
• A lot of people complain that they can’t afford to have a date night every week, but date nights are much cheaper than a divorce lawyer!
• Anyway, what you do together doesn’t have to be expensive.
• Guys tend to equate love to events, and think that they have to really plan things out and spend a lot of money for a date to be good.
• But girls equate love to communication and deep connection, which can happen just as easily on a walk around the neighborhood as at a fancy restaurant.
• A lot of us are selfish people who don’t like to serve but want to be served. Consider Romans 5:8.

• When we begin to understand the love of God and all that He did for us, we’ll turn around and try to reflect that in our lives and relationships.
• The answer to our problems doesn’t lie in a self-help book or relying on our own will power to change our attitude.
• Inviting Jesus to be the Lord of our life is a concrete solution.
• Anything that He calls us to, including marriage, cannot be done by our own power. We need Him in order to be successful!
• If we make love a verb in our marriage, it will make an impression on our spouses and it will change their hearts.
• ** That’s the problem with Christianity today. We don’t truly love people and so we are unable to make a good impression on the world and change people’s hearts. Instead, we do just the opposite.

God wants us to be able to experience that incredible love relationship that he hard-wired us to desire, and the first step in that direction is to invite him into your life.