In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:9-10 ESV
We all go into marriage with a definition of what love should look like, and so much of that definition comes from what the world tells us will fill our hearts. But the reality is, if we are trying to define what love in our marriage should look like, we must start here: God is the very definition of love. We must look vertically before we can ever look horizontally to find the love our hearts desire. We spend so much energy trying to communicate our need for love to our spouses by defining what it should look like. So many conversations dedicated to communicating what we need to feel loved, and so many arguments born of the frustration when they fail to meet those expectations.
God defined love when He willingly sent His Son as a sacrifice for our sins so that our undeserving souls may know life. He didn’t wait for us to get our act together and He didn’t do it with any expectation of return. He didn’t withhold His love from us because we were unkind or indifferent, He didn’t withhold His love from us because we chose other things over Him. He didn’t explain to us what we needed to do to earn His love. Instead, He was proactive in His love for us. He gave when we didn’t. He demonstrated His love for us as a sacrifice before our lives even began because He knew we would need His grace.
Our problem in marriage isn’t our spouse or the way they love us. It isn’t the fact that they don’t respect us or they don’t prioritize our feelings. It isn’t our lack of communication or our lack of interest. The problem in our marriage is that we have defined love by the world’s standards and not by His standards. Before we can ever get things right in our marriage, we need to get this right. God is the author of marriage and the very definition of love. We need to spend time meditating on and understanding His love for us, and we need to allow our hearts to receive that love before we can ever love our spouse in the way God intended.
Press on ~ you are loved 💗
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