Staying in Love…Love is a Verb

Adapted from Andy Stanley’s study Staying in Love

Falling in love is easy…the only thing really required is a pulse.  It is the staying in love that requires work.  Our culture today tells us that if you’re not happy in your marriage and the marriage is not easy you where not meant to be so you need to go “fall in love” with someone else.  Andy Stanley makes a great point when he says “…our culture has a very low threshold for relational pain.”  If it ain’t easy just get out.    

This brings us to a great question in this culture of “Happiness”.  Can a husband and wife stay in love or better yet stay “happy” forever?  Most of us start our marriage answering this question with a resounding YES!  We believe that it is in fact possible to live happily ever after with the one we marry.  But are our standards too high?  We expect from our spouse respect, encouragement, comfort, security, support, acceptance, approval, appreciation, attention, and affection with no idea of how to give those things back.  In a great book by Gary Thomas called “Sacred Marriage” he makes the point how can we expect marital bliss when you take two sinners and slap them together under one roof and say “Okay you are married go and be happy.”  I brought my junk to this marriage and Crystal brought her junk and we had to sort through all the JUNK before we could ever begin to “Stay in Love.”

So how do we “Stay in Love”?  Christ has given us a clear message in John 13:34 (The Message) “Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another.”  Isn’t that cool how Jesus changes the word love that we use as a noun (a feeling we experience) and highlights it as a verb (action we must take).  Jesus has giving us a command to love one anther as a choice we make that will be followed with the feelings.  Submission seems to be a recurring theme in this marriage journey.  I have notice something of late as I have been working through this idea of submission and loving Crystal as Christ loves me.  I noticed that the Bible states that Christ was a servant to me and loves me as a servant.  This notion of Christ serving is difficult for me but that is exactly what He did when He stepped down from Heaven, took on the form of man, and died for my sins.  Note He did not do these things as a slave.  A slave is forced to love, but a servant desires to serve, desires to love.  The more I study what God says about marriage this theme of “love your spouse as Christ loved you” guides me to love Crystal in a way that is so counter cultural…and I am finally beginning to see the guidance I needed for “Staying in Love” was that love is moving, it is an action.  To be able to say I love Crystal I must serve as Christ served.  It takes love as an action to “Stay in Love”.