EP 28. Putting On Love; The God Factor; From The Lover's Dozen Series PT 10

Welcome to the Married in Lovett Podcast.

We are Greg and Linda Smith, your host from Raleigh, North Carolina.

It is great that you are taking time to invest into your marriage by listening to our weekly podcast.

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See it as a freshening up of your marriage, preventive maintenance, a marriage tune up, or fanning the flames of romance, love and pass.

You could even call it continuing education.

We will be covering everything that has to do with your marriage, including hot topics like sex, communication, love and much, much more.

Our teachings are based on Christian principles plus over 47 years of marriage to each other and ministry experience.

We want to help you make your marriage great by teaching you how to be married and loving.

It is an honor and privilege to have you join us.

Hey, I'm glad you tuned in with us today to get your weekly dose of Married and love it.

That's your booster shot for the week.

Well, on today's episode we're going to be continuing the Lover's dozen, which it's 13 principles that we've applied since our marriage was restored after a near separation back in 1986.

And you know what?

We're still applying them and now we're like 47 plus years of being married and loving it.

But you know what, it also takes that being on our well, this series begins with episode 19.

So let me encourage you to go back and listen to all of those episodes if you haven't already heard them.

Yeah, that would really be great if you did go back, if you missed them, because each one's going to build upon the next one.

And all of it's coming together because again, like Linda said, these are 13 things that we did over a period of time to get our marriage to where we are today and to help us get through a lot of the struggles, especially the last few years.

So we're excited to be able to share these principles and truths with you.

And as Linda said, this is your weekly dose.

So no matter if your marriage is hurting or you just got some areas, little hot spots that need attention, or if you're just doing really good, always good to do the preventive maintenance because that will save you in the long run.

Before we get into the new strategies we're going to talk about tonight, I just want to ask you to do a couple things.

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So today on this episode, we're going to continue the strategies of the lover's dozen.

There's 13 and we've done five of them.

So you can go back and listen to those previous episodes.

So today we're going to try to cover two of them.

And the first one is, it's called We Go by the Bible.

Lynn and I are Christians.

We built our, our marriage on following God's word.

Now, we didn't apply everything perfectly the way we would have liked to, otherwise we probably wouldn't have run in the problems during those first few years of our marriage.

But we, we refocused and we brought in the God factor.

And that is, that brings in, that makes the Word of God our foundation.

That's what we base our, our marriage on.

We center our relationship around God and His principles.

Now, if you're not a hearer of the Word and a doer of the Word, and chances are maybe they're not going to work real good for you, but then he can help you get back to where you need to be.

Now, do you have to be a Christian and do the board of do the what the Bible says that was successful?

No, you don't have to.

But your chances of having a good marriage go down quite a bit because I know people who aren't Christians and they're probably doing better some than some Christians because the Christians aren't applying what God says.

But I will share this interesting statistic that less than 1% of couples who pray together regularly, the key word there is pray.

And then regularly there's a less than 1% divorce rate.

So there is something there about having God invited into your marriage, following his principles and praying together and being together.

So why not throw chance away, give your marriage to God, apply His Word, then you can be married and love it on purpose.

And that goes back to Ecclesiastes 9:9, which we talk about a whole lot.

But what I want to do is share scripture that we stand on for marriages.

And it's.

It's changed around for marriage.

Okay, it says, this is Matthew 7:24 through 27.

It says, Therefore every marriage who hears these words of mine and acts upon them may be compared to a wise man or a wise marriage who built his house upon the rock.

That's the word of God.

And the reigns descended and the floods came and the winds blew.

In other words, the marriage busters of life burst against that house.

If you experience marriage busters, that's anything that causes your marriage to have problems, to have struggles, to you guys not to get along, that wears you out, zaps your sex life, etc.

Etc.

And it says, they burst against that house, and yet it did not fall, for it had been found that upon the rock.

Now, the next part says, and everyone who hears these words of mine, every marriage, and does not act upon them will be like a foolish man.

Do you want to be a foolish man or foolish woman or wife or marriage?

No, no, no.

Oh, okay.

Good, good.

Okay.

I don't.

And they built a house upon the sand, a bad foundation, and the rain descended.

You know, that's kind of like some of y' all getting married.

And you don't listen to the red flags that you see in the potential spouse or what all everybody's saying, don't marry that person.

They got these red flags.

Or y' all marry after three weeks without really checking each other out and learning about each other.

And what happens, it crumbles.

So you want a good, strong foundation.

All right, let me get back.

Anyway, it says they built their house upon the sand.

Then the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew and burst against that house or marriage, and it fell, and great was its fall.

So just point being, build your marriage on the word of God.

Another scripture, Matthew 18, 19, 20 says, Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done by them, by my Father who is in heaven.

For where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst.

So get God, agree together on his word and ask with God involved in miracles, and there's no telling what can come out of your marriage.

That's good.

Yep.

That's.

That's a testimony for our marriage.

Definitely is.

I know we would not have survived.

So now the next one.

Oh, this is one of my favorite right here.

We put on love.

We put on love.

Well, when God restored our marriage, I told Greg, I do not love you.

My heart.

I remember we Were laying in bed in our wood frame house there, Fort Worth, Texas.

And I think, I don't know if Linda had gone to their meeting with our mentor lady or not, but we were laying there and she just looked at me, says, greg, I do not love you.

So now I.

So I had to make the decision to put on love.

Yes.

You know, love is a choice.

It's a decision.

So now today, many years later, we are experiencing a love affair with each other.

You know, because we chose.

I chose.

And I know Greg had to choose to put on love toward me.

When I told him that, can you imagine the stab in the heart that I gave him?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it was.

That was a tough time because she had to decide to do that.

And then there was a lot of stuff going on in our marriage at that point.

And.

And so there was decisions that had to be made and she made that one.

And because she should have.

She could have easily said, nope, listen to her family members and friends and gone the other way.

But she made that decision.

So then I put on love.

Yes.

And now another point is we try to out love each other.

Yeah.

What can I do to love you?

You know, I wake up in the morning, Lord, what can I do to love Greg more today than I did yesterday?

Yes.

So we try to out love each other.

Now that doesn't mean we walk around the house and just have loved us going all over the place and we're lovey w.

We still have our moments.

Yeah.

We get a chance and then we get to make that decision.

Are we going to put on love?

Right.

Put on love and make love.

Oh, hey.

Because if you don't put on love, you may not be making much love.

That's so true.

That is true.

That's so true.

So let's look at this.

My.

One of my favorite scriptures.

It's in Colossians and it talks about this.

All right?

It says put on love.

So if you're going to put on something, that means you need to take something off.

So let's look at Colossians.

I'm going to read this.

Three, eight.

Okay.

It says, but now you also put them all aside.

Is Paul's talking about put on the old man, new man type stuff here.

But it says put them aside.

Have you ever had anger, had wrath, slander, malice, abusive speech in your mouth?

It says put that aside.

So that means when you get ready to, you get angry.

God's saying, put that off.

Take it off.

You have a decision.

See some of y' all walk around angry, you got unforgiveness going on in your life.

You, you have abusive speech, at times sarcastic, you may lie, and you're just allowing the old nasty nature come out.

Well, God says you have a choice.

You weren't made that way.

The devil didn't make you do it.

You did it because you chose to continue to wear it.

Sometimes we gotta just zip our lip.

Gotta zip your lip.

Zip the lip.

So it says, do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self.

And it says, Verse 10 says you put on the new self.

Now look at this.

I'm going to drop down the verse 12.

It says, and so as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, even if you're not chosen of God, because you're not maybe a Christian listening to this, and we love it that you're not, you're, you're listening to this because you can still apply God's principles.

You just don't maybe have the full power behind you.

But it says, put on.

Everybody say that to yourself.

Put, put on a heart of compassion.

Oh, kindness.

Yeah, kindness, humility, gentleness.

And it says, patience, bearing with one another.

Isn't this a fun chapter?

Oh, yeah.

And bearing with one another and, and forgiving each other.

And whoever has a complain against anyone.

How many times hear people complaining about their spouses?

A lot, a lot.

Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

Now that sounds pretty, pretty bold, doesn't it?

Put on compassion, humility, kindness, gentleness.

And then it says, and beyond all these things are put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

So if you want unity in your marriage, be putting on love.

And then it says, let the peace of God rule in your hearts.

Because when you get unity and you're putting on love, you're going to have peace in your home.

That's a nice thing.

You're going to have peace in your home.

Right?

So we're talking about putting on love.

Now, putting on love, I want you to think of you're dressed in the morning and you walk outside and you go, oh, it is freezing cold outside or it's raining outside.

What do you do?

You go back in the house and you make a decision.

I'm going to put on this coat, be it a winter coat or a raincoat.

What did you do?

You put that on.

That's the same principle as you're living your life when you're married, actually every day, no matter if you're married or not, you got to make that Decision to put on that coat and zip it up.

So when you're in your marriage and something comes up and your wife or husband says something, it irritates you or you.

You've got to do something to please them or help them clean up a mess at that moment, you can say, and let them have it.

Or you can say, honey, can I help you with that?

Or honey, I forgive you, or honey, this.

And you put on you.

You literally.

You can see yourself literally putting on love.

You make a decision.

Like Linda said, she put on love when she decided to stay with me and to make this work, even though she didn't feel like it.

And I want to give you a story.

Years ago, we lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and we had a coupon book.

We would get these coupon books.

They sold them, and you could get everything really cheap in these coupon books.

And we had a chance to get.

Get a.

Go to a hotel in Dallas, from Fort Worth over to Dallas.

And the hotel was probably back then, 150 bucks a night, which back then, that was a lot of money.

And we got the room for $40.

So we, my parents, I think, took care of the kids.

We drove over there.

Of course, it's a nice hotel.

I'm thinking, oh, we are going to have a night tonight.

And Linda probably was thinking that.

I hope she was thinking about that.

But we were going to go over.

It was going to be a romantic evening.

We had a coupon for the restaurant, and it was just going to be suck up.

It's one of those hotels when you pull in, they.

They say, welcome to the hotel tonight, sir.

Here's your keys.

So we got it.

We got in there and we went up to the room.

They had these real nice, fuzzy, thick, warm hotel robes you could wear around your room.

And so we said, all right.

So then we said, I said, let's go down and get something to eat.

So we went down to the.

To the caf, not cafeteria, the dining room.

And we sat down and we got what.

We ordered our food.

And I'm thinking, all right, we're going to have this good dinner, just have love talk.

And then we're going to go upstairs.

And who knows what might happen?

And I'm looking over at Linda and she goes, greg, we need to talk.

And I just sat there, we need to talk.

And I could tell by her tone, facial expressions and how she was sitting that this was not.

Here's what I would like to do tonight when we get back to the room, we can do this and that and that and this and that.

You know, those robes, they may not stay on too long.

That's what I was hoping she was going to say.

No, we need to talk.

At that moment, I had a decision to make.

Was I going to start a pity party and go, dear, you know, we, we, we got this Coupon.

We got $150 night hotel for $40.

We got a free meal or a discount on our meal.

We got a nice room.

We didn't drive all the way, 45 minutes or so over to get this hotel to talk.

I could have said that if I did.

Be honest.

Do you think my night would have been any better?

No.

We should drive back to Raleigh then.

I mean, Fort Worth then.

I had a decision to make.

So what did I do?

I decided to put on love.

I said, okay, let's talk.

So we did talk and she just shared a few things that we could work on with the kids.

Maybe our budget, talk about our ministry.

Just needed to clear the air because I put on love.

The meal went good.

I don't think it was worth even the coupon price.

But we, we talked.

We were able to talk about in game plan and it turned out to be okay.

And then we went back to the room later that night and we had a good evening.

But I had a decision to make.

Put on love or put on the other stuff.

If I would have done that, it probably would have been a total wreck and I probably would have lost lots of points and no telling what would have happened.

So that's just a practical ex.

Practical way to put on love.

Okay, so you know, in Genesis, chapter 12, verses 11 through 20, Abram did a thing where he didn't put on love.

Abraham, they were going into Egypt.

And he told the Egyptians that Sarai was his sister.

He didn't protect Sarai.

And he said, hey, this is my sister.

Because otherwise he thought they would probably kill him because he had a hot looking wife.

He said, and if they know that I'm married to her, they're going to kill me.

He was a chicken.

And then Pharaoh, they told Pharaoh and he says, yeah, I'll take her.

But then he found out that Sarah was Abraham's wife.

Yeah.

And he said, I don't want to die.

So he said, come get your wife and leave.

See, he.

But he put his wife in danger like that.

So here's another scripture that's really good for this.

Philippians 2, 2, 4.

It says, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility.

Of mind.

Let each of you regard one another, listen to this one another as more important than himself.

That's putting on love.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interest.

That doesn't mean you can't look out for yourself.

It says don't look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interest of others, your spouse.

You see, love is self giving.

It's sacrificial.

It's not what I can get, but what I can give.

What love is not, it's not being selfish.

I see that in so many times.

People are being selfish when they have a pity party, when they don't get their way, when they choose not to walk in love and to serve and to give and always say, what about me?

What about me?

The definition of selfishness is being devoted or caring for oneself concerned primarily for own one's own interest, benefits and welfare, regardless of other.

So put on love.

And now we're going to move on to the next one.

Linda, you want to go ahead and get the next one?

Yeah.

It's unconditional.

It has no price tags.

It doesn't say if you'll be nice to me, then I'll be nice to you.

So it's like even if life situations change, you still love your spouse.

And that would be like when health challenges might hit you or mental or emotional challenges, anything like that.

So you.

So putting on love is unconditional.

Let me just repeat it because it's worth it.

It has no price tags.

So some examples of that would be, you know, throughout your marriage, you're going to have different seasons in life.

Like when your wife has a baby, all of a sudden her physical body changes, she's got baby weight and you're going to see her in a whole different manner than when you first got mar.

You know, so that's something that at that point you get to make a decision, am I going to put on love and love her regardless, regardless of the baby weight and just overlook it?

You know, we have counseled other couples and they.

The husband has actually wanted to leave because he just couldn't tolerate the, the way his wife, her body developed after having babies.

So, you know, like I had a lot of surgeries and that was that that's a season in life that Greg had to put on love and realize that I couldn't meet a lot of his needs because of recovering from surgery, you know, and the caretaking that he's had to, you know, take for me.

And the chronic pain, the chronic pain.

That constantly is there and the medicine that is having to be taken makes me not who I really am, you know, so Greg has many opportunities.

When something comes out my mouth, that is medicine.

Because of the medicine and the pain.

And he says he just puts on love.

I'm going to love her.

That's not her talking.

That's the medicine talking.

Yeah, right.

That's the pain talking.

Or like I think about Joni Eareckson when she's paralyzed and she has no.

No body from the neck down and her husband loves her unconditionally.

I think that's amazing.

That is amazing.

Okay.

Love doesn't have price tags.

Well, do you ever say I love you if fill in the blank or when?

Yeah.

So we shouldn't be doing that.

Yeah, we shouldn't do that.

No price, conditional love.

But, you know, we are to love unconditionally.

It's loving when your spouse at times is not very lovable, you know, and that's going to happen.

You know, we're all human beings.

That is going to happen.

Yeah.

And, you know, being unconditional, there's going to be.

Hopefully you don't ever have to face some of these.

Yes.

That you're.

Somebody doesn't get sick or, or has health challenges or things that are going to put a demand on you.

But, you know, that's when your love really gets tested.

That's true.

So hopefully in the little things, you're.

You're being unconditional your love, you know, if they're not doing everything perfect, that you're still able to say, I'm going to love you anyway.

And you can be praying for them and discussing, you know, bringing things out and such.

But unconditional is very, very powerful, especially when there's extreme things going on, because that's what, that's the true commitment of your love.

That's true when things happen that baby time because you're not able to have sex the way the guys, you know, has a pity party and he's saying, I don't love you anymore and, and such.

But I will say this, sometimes you can't use things as an excuse not to improve in your life.

So.

So improve when you can, but don't be unconditional.

Be forgiving.

Be a teammate and help them get through what's going on.

That's what I'm having to do.

That's what I've been to.

I don't have to do it.

I choose to do Linda and to serve her and to minister to while she's getting healed because I Love her unconditionally.

So anything else on that one?

No.

Okay, now I just want to say, I don't think I said it earlier under the, the.

The love.

When we talk, Linda and I talk about genuine love as a rule in one of our courses, there's over 10 of these strategies that we share just on the love part.

We're only covering about three or four of them in this episode.

And we plan on doing a full in depth love episode which may take two or three episodes here in the near future.

So this is just a little bit about what we usually talk about.

Okay.

All right, now the next one for here, we chose to forgive.

That's right.

Ephesians 4, verses 31 through 32 says this.

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving, just as God has forgiven you.

You see, forgiveness is a decision.

I mean, some of y' all, it could be just forgiving them because they didn't take out the garbage three weeks in a row.

Some people, that's a no big deal.

One person that may not be a big deal, but your next door neighbor could be totally irritated at their spouse and just unforgiving because they don't ever do what they say.

Forgiveness is a decision.

It goes back to putting on love.

You choose to forgive, choose to put on that coat of love.

And it is a feeling now there's all sorts of forgiveness.

There's forgiveness from somebody having an affair all the way down for somebody stabbing the back.

I remember back when Linda and I were been married for a few years.

We had just moved to Fort Worth and I was going to Bible Scholar College and we decided to have another child and Linda got pregnant.

Faith plus works and she was pregnant and my parents had moved here and we decided we need to tell them that share with them.

They're gonna have.

We're gonna have another baby.

Well, we actually chose to have that baby.

So when my parents came over, I knew when I told them I was probably gonna.

I went him thinking that they were going to be a stack to have another grandbaby.

But I figured I was going to get.

Oh, you don't you.

Why did you do that for?

Because you know you can't afford that.

You're going to Bible school.

All the negatives.

And at that point I was still kind of under their control.

I was still in that mode of trying to please my parents.

So I told.

I think I had told them, Linda, correct me that no, it just kind of happened.

What did I say?

You said, no, we didn't plan we didn't plan it.

And I'm thinking, what?

Okay.

And that just.

That just stabbed Linda in the back was.

You gotta be kidding me.

So that was a little higher than me not taking the garbage out for three or four weeks.

Right.

So Linda had to put on love.

I had to put on love.

And I had to forgive.

Always forgive.

I had to make the decision.

Feel like you forgave me right away.

Oh, no, no.

It took some time.

It took a little bit of time for me to get over the stabbing in the back that happened in my heart about all that, you know, and it is.

It's going to take time to heal.

And so ask God to help you on healing, you know, and if you need to get help, that if you need some extra therapy or you just need somebody to.

To talk to, go ahead and get some help.

There's nothing wrong with that.

And, you know, healing, it can be.

See, a lot of times, maybe you don't have something major happen in your life that you really are hurt by.

Sometimes it is just the little things.

And if you're an unforgiving type person that can build up to one point, it's just your heart is going to get hard and you're just going to explode.

And we don't want that happening.

No.

Holding on to the past keeps you from enjoying your future.

It does.

Don't hold grudges, you know, hugs are better than walls.

That's it.

Holding your spouse in your arms is more fun than holding a grudge or unforgiveness in your heart.

Sure.

And one quick more story on this.

I remember one time, Linda and I were in bed.

This is a few years ago, a long time ago, 47 years.

Everything goes by fast and you have to try to remember where everything was at.

But I remember one night, because we don't.

We did that.

We don't.

We wouldn't hold grudges.

We'd just laugh things off or kiss and make up.

But one night we were in bed and we had a discussion.

I guess I just got mad.

I mean, I was mad and I just told myself, I'm gonna get up and go sleep on the couch.

I mean, I was mad.

I said, you don't do that.

And I go, tonight I am.

This is just.

I'm gonna go lay on the couch.

I don't even remember.

She was probably asleep, so I gotta bed.

Went out there, kids are in their rooms.

And I got on the couch, I laid there about five minutes and go, what am I doing?

I don't get up and sleep on the couch.

I can't stay mad.

So I got up, went back to bed, but it went against my grain.

I said, I can't stay mad.

You know, it's a lot more fun to kiss and make up than to have a pity party and not talk for four or five days and build up a wall.

Think about it the next time you get mad.

How silly is it?

Put on love.

Building walls destroys your marriage.

Forgiveness brings healing and growth and fun.

Don't walk around having a pity party.

Now, you may say, who does that?

There's a lot of people that do it because we hear about it.

So true.

Forget put on love, kiss and makeup.

Yes, that's right.

So another point that we did and walked in was to accept and let me encourage you, accept your spouse for the way they are, just the way they are.

Don't try to change them.

You know, so many times we enter into a marriage and with the thought process of, well, you know, we'll get married and then I'll change them.

It does not work that way.

Right.

You know, we have learned to work on changing ourself and not each other.

Now, Romans 15:7 goes into this.

It says, wherefore accept one another, just as Christ has accepted you.

So that is a good scripture to stand on.

Now, I remember Greg would put me in a box and he really stifled me.

And, you know, that didn't work out too well, did it, dear?

No, it didn't.

No.

It was actually created more problems in our marriage and.

But he would do things, too, that would aggravate me, and I would try to change him, but because of his stubborn, mean.

Do men have stubborn egos?

No.

Yeah, well, he will.

I can't lie, can I?

No, you cannot lie.

You have to go back to the house and figure that.

Well, finally.

Ding.

We both finally learned that to improve our relationship, we needed to focus on ourself.

Yes.

Not on the other person.

And accept that other person as I were.

So once we realized that the other one wasn't needing to change, well, once we started putting the focus on ourself, well, we began to see that the other person didn't really need to change that much.

You know, the Bible says, don't look at the speck on your brother's eye when you got a log in your own eyes.

True.

That's right.

So as our relationship has grown over the years, we're able to communicate with each other about changes we'd like to see because of being open to listen and open to being changed.

And change just naturally develops out of all of that.

Yes.

So, well, in the episode 20 and 21, I believe that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We explain that by understanding ourselves and our spouse.

It helps our marriage, and we do a pretty good study on that.

So go back if you hadn't already listened to those episodes, and check it out.

And you know what?

Even if you have listened to it, listen again, Because I know when I listen to something second time around, I even get even more good stuff out of it.

So.

And you know, re listening to something is good because it says in the word, says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Just like a sermon at church or a good book you read, you need.

Sometimes you need to hear it more than once because you're having to renew your mind and get new habits established and new thought patterns and get reminded of things.

And even if you're an expert, we've had people come to our classes in the past and say, you know, we've heard a lot of this stuff before, but we just forgot to do it.

Yeah.

So it's a good reminder.

Reminder.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's another point there.

Now there's four ways to show love.

You want to talk about that?

Yeah.

Let's just give you four little nuggets real quick as we close up to kind of some things you can think about as you Till the next episode.

All right.

Yep.

Four ways to love.

First of all, you love with your words.

That's evil.

Verbal or written words.

So take the time to verbally express your love to your spouse and.

But you can do it through a text.

Also write it on a little sticky note or write a little note.

Note.

Put it in their briefcase or in their underwear drawer somewhere.

Put it on their mirror.

But express your love with words, verbal or written.

Right.

Another one is with our actions.

And we're always told, actions speak louder than words.

So do something that really expresses your love to.

To your spouse.

With your spouse.

Now, this is kind of silly, but we women were always saying, why doesn't that man put the toilet seat down?

Well, you know what?

How about reverse that a little bit?

And after you're taking care of your business, put the toilet seat up for them.

That's a novel idea.

That's kind of different and interesting.

Is that Holy Ghost inspired?

Maybe.

You never know.

So just do something silly like that.

And they'll be going like, wow, that was just really different.

So what's another way?

So with our actions, as Linda said, now Another way is with their attitude.

So if you say, you know what?

My wife wanted me to get her a glass of tea to sit so she can sit and read.

Now express it with your attitude.

Don't.

If she says, oh, can you get me a refill on my iced tea?

Don't go, okay, and roll your eyes and say, okay, as soon as I get up and go over there, I'll do it.

You know what?

You just write your body language and your attitude in your tone.

So with our attitude, we express our love.

So watch your body language and watch your tone, because that tone's one thing I have to work on all the time.

But our words and actions and our body language.

Okay, so another one is listen to what your spouse is saying with what your undivided attention.

Put that device down, look your spouse in the eye, if that's where you're sitting, with each other, whatever, and pay attention to what they're saying.

That's why you can show that.

That you really do care and that you really do love.

Pause the TV program you're looking at.

That's right.

But look up and look in the eyes.

So love is friendship that has caught fire.

Amen.

Yeah.

It is quiet understanding of a mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving all of these things.

It's loyalty through the good and the bad times.

It settles for less than perfection.

It doesn't always, like, if you're perfect.

Here we go again, that unconditional love.

I'm going to love you if you're perfect.

Well, nobody's perfect.

Jesus himself.

That's all right.

But we make allowances for human weaknesses.

That's right.

That's good.

And we're going to close with this scripture here.

It's a short version.

In First Thessalonians 4, 9, 10, it says, they're talking to the people there, and it says they've been loving real good.

So he says, you have been putting on love.

He's saying, you're already putting on love and you're doing good.

But then the writer says, but excel still more.

So that's our challenge for you tonight.

Listen to these four or five nuggets we gave you.

Loving unconditionally, putting on love.

We got more common.

And you say, hey, you know, I'm doing this pretty good.

Well, God is saying, excel still more after all these things it said in Colossians, put on love there.

We have some honeydews.

We do.

We got a few little honeydews.

Listen, number one honeydew would be to listen to episodes One through three.

And they talk about the God factor.

So do that.

That's real good.

And then number two, honeydew, think of ways that you can improve on putting on love.

How can you improve, you know, wardrobe of love?

Yes.

Right.

When the pressure's on or when the pressure's off.

That's right.

Now what's number three?

Number three.

And this is a way to put on love.

It's the ten second kiss.

Take the time to do it.

Take the time.

Right.

You're in a hurry.

Say, you know what?

It only takes 10 seconds to give my spouse that 10 second kiss.

You never know.

Some days that kiss, maybe you're just doing it because it's homework because we told you to.

But some days you may give that kiss.

And that kiss could change the mood for your spouse that day because they're down together.

That's right.

Or it could set the pace for something that can happen later in the afternoon or in the evening, depending on what day it is.

So you never know what could come out of that 10 second kiss.

Well, so that was a really good episode today.

It was.

And thank you guys for joining us.

And I hope you got some good tips for your marriage for this week.

Something you can apply.

That's the key.

That's right.

Apply what you're learning.

Put on love.

So we look forward to you joining us next week.

Now remember, you can be married and love it on purpose.

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And remember with God that you have a future and a hope and you can be married and love it on purpose.