EP 69. Genuine Love; 6 Vital Ways of Loving Your Spouse. PT 1

Foreign welcome to the Married in Love It Podcast.

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

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In this episode, we are beginning this series on genuine love, six vital ways of loving your spouse.

And this is part one, part one.

Of several episodes that we're going to be doing as we break down love.

I believe this can be a marriage changing series as we talk about the true meaning of love, even a little deeper than what we've done in previous episodes.

So make sure you're, you're tuning in, so to speak, to hear what we're talking about.

But before we get into the main part of this message, I wanted to share the words of a song that I heard the other day.

I guess I was on oldies with Goldie's station or something.

I like the older songs because they had good words, most of them did and had some meaning to them and I can understand them.

But this song is from Wayne Newton.

Now, some of the people, our age range, you know, Linda and I have been married 48 years.

Coming up on 49 years.

That means we got married back in the 70s, 77, matter of fact, this is that song, but it's called Daddy, don't you walk so Fast.

I'm going to read the lyrics and I'm not going to do it justice by all at all.

But I want to read the lyrics here and because it just really stirred me up on why we do married and love it.

But also for you to do an evaluation of what's going on in your marriage.

Maybe you're listening today and your marriage is doing great.

Maybe, you know, you need a little tune up and maybe, maybe you're listening and your marriage is hurting.

Maybe you're on the brink of making a decision.

Should we separate?

Should we go to separate bedrooms and sleep?

Maybe we need to go get counseling.

Maybe we need to get a divorce.

Or maybe you're already there.

So I want you to listen to these Song the words of this song and apply it to your heart and where you're at.

So what?

So that no matter where you're at in the marriage, you don't want this to happen.

It says the love between the two of us was dying.

And it got so bad, I knew I had to leave.

But halfway down the highway, when I turned around, I saw my little daughter running after me.

She was crying, Daddy, don't you walk so fast.

Daddy, don't you walk so fast.

Daddy, slow down some.

Cause you're making me run.

Daddy, don't you walk so fast.

Now it broke my heart to tell my little daughter that her daddy had to run to catch a train.

She had no way of knowing I was leaving home for good.

I turned around and there she was again.

And she said to me, daddy, don't you walk so fast.

My darling cried, Daddy, don't you walk so fast.

And it goes on like that.

Couple more courses.

Then it said, if only for the sake of my sweet daughter, I just had to turn back home right then and there and to try to start a new life with the mother of my child.

I couldn't bear to hear those words again.

She cried and said, daddy, don't you walk so fast My darling cried, Daddy, don't you walk so fast.

And when I heard this song, my heart just kind of broke.

Well, number one for that little girl find not even knowing why her dad is leaving.

And then if he were to tell her that he's never coming back.

I mean, think about how your kids are when you leave to go to work.

Sometimes, you know, can break your heart because they're crying and they don't want you to leave.

But here's a guy who was giving up on his marriage, and I just want to encourage you if you're thinking about giving up in your marriage, and even if you don't divorce or you don't leave, but you're just giving up and let things go.

You've got.

You may have kids that are looking to you.

You know, your kids are going to get a picture of marriage from you and your spouse, and they're going to carry that on with.

With what happens in your family is going to affect them possibly for future generations.

So.

So think about that.

But he heard her daughter, he heard his daughter crying.

And he made the decision, if it's only for my daughter, I'm going to turn around and go back home and try to begin again with my spouse.

So wherever you're at right now, think about that.

Your decision to shut down, to quit, to give up, to say, hey, my spouse isn't loving me.

I'm doing my part.

But they're not doing their part.

And you make a decision to stop or to give up, you're impacting your children or maybe your grandchildren.

You're giving up on God's plan for your marriage.

You're settling for defeat.

Make a decision, no matter where you're at today, that you're not going to give up on your marriage.

You're going to say, God help me.

How can I be a better spouse?

What can I do to love my husband, my wife, better?

Lord, where they have hurt me?

Maybe they had an affair.

Maybe right now there's.

They're just being mean and cruel.

You say, God, help me to get through this.

Because God loves you.

He sees maybe you're running after God, saying, God help me, help me.

God's there to help you.

So think about this song and allow it to minister to you.

Wherever you're at, make that decision.

Today's a new day to begin again.

So I'm taking a little bit of on this time, on this, because I feel like somebody needed to hear this.

Maybe it's next week when this releases.

Maybe it's in two years or three years, or maybe it's somebody over in Europe listening to this.

But God cares about you and your marriage.

And today we're going to be talking about starting a series on what it means to have genuine love.

And I believe it's going to help you where you never have to feel like you got to leave or you got to hide or you've got a shutdown, because that's what the enemy wants to do.

He wants you to enjoy life and life more abundantly with your spouse.

Yeah, that is.

That is really powerful.

You know, thanks for sharing that, taking the time.

And I. I agree with you.

I think there's somebody there that needs to hear this song.

Well, what does it really mean to say I love you to your spouse?

And then we turn around the next sentence and we say, I love the Dallas Cowboys, or I love chocolate ice cream, or I love a certain movie star, or I love to cook and I love to play golf.

What did it mean when you said your vows while you were holding hands and looking into each other's eyes and said, I love you?

You know, this phrase is used pretty loosely, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can turn around, say, oh, I just love you, Linda.

I love you, Linda.

You know what?

I'd really go look, love to Go up to the ice cream place and get a milkshake.

You know, we use that word love so loosely.

And even when we talk about it in marriage, it's like, you know, it.

We, we, we touch on it.

But when I started doing a little bit of research and thinking about what it means to say I love you and the different types of love, it just really got me.

We don't really understand that much because.

Oh, you really.

If we're understanding it, you know what, our little girl or our little granddaughter or somebody's not going to come looking for us because we're leaving.

Yeah.

When we know what God's love is and how to imply it in our marriage, we're going to hang in there.

And yes, I, I know there could be some major abuse problems going on and things that are out of our control.

And I mean, it's going to take a miracle.

God can do that.

But there are abusive situations and such, so we're not talking about those.

We're talking about a man and a wife learning how to act like mature adults and be able to learn how to love and bring healing to their relationship and experience all that God wants.

And that's what we're going to be talking about.

So in the next several episodes, we're going to explain what it means to say I love you.

When I tell Linda I love her, I am saying, so much power.

It's not just because I love her and she looks good in her bathing suit or she looks good in, in the shower or because she's a good cook or she knows how to do this.

But what does it mean?

Because really, when you say and I love you, you could say you're complimenting them because you like they make you feel good, you love being with them.

But really, when you're saying I love you, you're actually making a statement.

I am going to value you.

And here's how I'm going to value you and love you.

And here's all the things I'm going to do to make you feel.

So love is definitely an action verb.

So we're gonna explain in more detail what it means to say I love you.

And plus, God wants you having a love affair.

I mean, a lot of people are married and they're in love.

Oh, yeah.

I love my husband and we eat dinner together.

We go, maybe even go for a walk together.

You go to church together and you smile real good.

But your roommates, or you're just existing, you're settling for.

There's no spirit, spark, There you're not having a love affair.

And yes, you can have a marriage love affair.

So we're going to talk about that.

So we're going to divine what genuine really means.

Genuine love.

Genuine love, yes.

Genuine love.

What it really means.

There's six different words that are used in the Bible that talk about.

About love.

One of them's in the Old Testament, and five of them that we're going to be using are in the New Testament.

There are there.

Here they are.

I'm going to try to say them.

Okay.

So if I don't do them good, you'll get the drift.

As we talk about these Ahava, love, Eva, Thuma, Eros, Storge, Fileto and Agape.

I think I did it.

I think so.

Yeah.

So we're not going to explain all those.

We are going to get into ahava today, but we're not going to explain all the others until future episodes in the next couple of three or four weeks where we're going to go over those, but that's when we're going to explain those.

So hang on.

And we're going to talk about how to love.

Yeah.

A successful, fulfilling marriage.

It's.

It's got to have all these working together, right?

That's right.

All of them.

You can't just pick out your favorite one and then skip over the others, as it doesn't work that way.

They're all different and they all build on each other.

It's like a recipe or a formula and that needs all the ingredients.

So that's the same thing with all these love types of love that God talks about.

And they deal with the physical, the spiritual and emotional aspects of love, and they kind of overlap each other and really they reinforce each other.

It takes all of them to have genuine love, which is what we're talking about, right?

It's.

They blend together.

They're going to create like in a recipe where all the ingredients blend together to create that masterpiece.

Kind of like putting it in that big bowl you make stuff in, and.

It's a blender going up.

Get it going.

You know, you got everything in there.

Because I know when you put the pepper, sometimes I'll taste that pepper you have by itself and it's like, oh, it burns my mouth and all that.

So it's not good.

But when you blend it, what happens,.

Causes it brings out the flavors, and it just creates a great bowl of chili or whatever it is that I make.

Making me think.

When we watch some of these cooking channels, like Robert Irvine on Restaurant Impossible.

He'll sit there and create a creation.

And he.

They're putting all these ingredients in there, and you go, oh, that.

That's not going to taste good.

Or that's not going to taste good.

But all of a sudden he gets.

They cook it.

They mix it up.

They cook it just right.

And he.

He pulls it out and he asks everybody, here, take a bite.

And everybody's just going, oh, this is so good.

And he goes, oh, that's so sexy.

And all that time he.

Because those flavors come together, and it's just awesome.

And that's what God is wanting to do when he blends all these.

All these different ingredients into cooking.

And that now cooking is more Linda's expertise.

So I'll let her continue on there.

You do pretty good.

Yeah, well, it's what.

What's happening here is these six different types of love blend together, and they create a successful, fulfilling marriage.

Yeah.

The one that we're looking for now,.

Here's something on some of the stuff.

Like if you're cooking a cake and I like the batter.

Yeah.

You eat it raw.

I'll eat the batter raw.

But some stuff doesn't taste good till you cook it.

And that's kind of like our marriages.

Sometimes we.

We can have all the ingredients, but sometimes it takes us getting in a little bit of pressure when we're learning how to communicate or we're dealing with trials, we're dealing with differences.

We get it.

Yeah, you bring it to a boiling point.

Yeah, you bring it to the boiling.

Point, then you bring it down and you let it simmer.

Right.

Yeah.

So it.

So marriage is a.

Is a blending bowl.

Blending.

Just like when Linda and I got married together.

Two different type of people and personalities with they.

We were attracted with that.

And then it caused little problems down the road.

But as we've grown, we've blended together.

We used to call one of our teachings marriage blending.

Yeah.

Because we begin to take on each other.

We absorb the good things from each other.

And that's what we're going to be talking about.

Yeah.

Because if you don't understand what love means, you're not going to be able to demonstrate love properly in your marriage.

Right.

And you're not going to experience what God wants you to experience.

And then I believe if somebody's not doing all five of these different New Testament to five of the New Testament words, and then there's one that we're going to use from the Old Testament.

Right.

But you bring those in if you're not doing all those.

It can cause the roommate syndrome.

Why do we hear people so much?

We're just existing.

We're just roommates.

So a roommates may be treating each other nice, which is a form maybe of agape love.

You're being nice to one another.

But if you're not having the romantic side or the physical side or friendship going on in those areas, roommates happen.

And that's not what God's plan for us.

So we're going to look at how today, in today's episode, how genuine love is relates to God's plan for your marriage.

And then in the next episode, we're going to look at how God's word for love affects your love life more.

The practical daily things involved in your life.

So today we're going to look at one way.

Next week we're gonna do number two.

And then those.

These two episodes are gonna lay the foundation for the next three or four episodes that follow as we get deeper and deeper into how to love your spouse God's way.

Okay, so let's get into what we're gonna be getting into today.

And number one, we want you to see God's plan for your marriage.

And that is, this is one we use a lot.

I think it's a foundation for married and love it.

It's in Ecclesiastes 9.

9.

It says to relish and enjoy life with the spouse that you love each and every day of your life.

So we see here, God wants you to be enjoying your marriage.

He wants you to enjoy your life.

You know, if you're not enjoying your marriage, you're probably not enjoying your life because everything really is going to take off from that relationship between husband and wife.

And then joy means to take pleasure in.

And like.

So today, are you enjoying your life overall?

I mean, even if you got a crappy job, you're miserable in job, you've got problems, and you can come home to a spouse that you love.

Or even if you're in the middle of financial situations or health situations or having problems with wayward children or whatever, if you're joining together as a husband and wife and you're walking in love, you're still able to take pleasure and you're able to come together as your team.

But if you're not in a good relationship, you're not going to enjoy and you're not going to be able to do the other things.

But it says to enjoy life with your what?

Dear spouse.

Now, a lot of people come and say, my partner.

They'll say, partner Your spouse is not.

Yes, you, you are partners in a sense, but your spouse is not just a partner, they're your spouse.

So it always cringes me when people say, well, me and my partner are going to go do this.

My question is partner can mean many things.

Yeah, it does.

We need to be proud that we are married.

Yes.

And that we have a husband or wife.

You follow what I'm saying?

Partner.

I mean, partner can mean your shack up, honey.

Yeah, that's true.

Honestly, when people aren't committed in a marriage and they're living together, number one, that goes against God's word.

Now if you're not born again, you probably, it doesn't matter, I mean, because you're, you don't have the guidelines that we use.

But, but live ins have a higher divorce rate even if they get married than people that didn't shack up.

But that's not our point here.

But that could mean a shack up, honey.

And I'm going to say this.

There can be marriages that people are in, same sex marriages.

They say partners.

So to me, sometimes when people say, I, I've got my apartment, a partner here, I don't know what they're implying, but we need to be proud that we're married and say, me and my spouse are doing this.

Me and my husband, or me and my wife.

Yes.

Because like I said, a partner could be anybody.

You could be business partner.

That's right.

So enjoying life with the spouse that you love each and every day of your life.

Okay, so here's my question.

How are we going to do this?

Well, for to begin with, we're going to love.

Put on love.

And what's that?

It doesn't happen.

It's a decision.

Right.

There's a scripture reference, Colossians 3:14.

I'm not going to go into it, but check it out.

And also it's when you put on love, it opens the door to enjoy your life with your spouse.

And we're going to define this a little bit later in this series.

And here's another question I have.

I love asking questions, don't I?

Yes, all the time.

Okay.

When, when about this.

You do it daily.

That's when.

All the time.

Daily.

Yes.

You were going to learn how to, the proper ways of how to love on a daily basis.

So when you say daily, that means every day.

We put every day just like that scripture.

In Ecclesiastes, you're talking about every day of your life.

Right?

Right.

Not just here and there.

Does that mean if you wake up In a bad mood?

No, it says.

Okay, well, we get into that a little bit here.

Allow a heart change.

We're going to be teaching on that.

You got to create love habits.

It's got to be a lifestyle.

Really?

Yeah, that's what it is.

And so you put on love every day, right?

Yep, every day.

We got to be doing this.

Now the attitude to have is to be all in.

If you go into K9, 10, it says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

So we see here God is saying, enjoy life with your spouse.

How?

By loving them daily, no matter how you feel.

Even if you went to bed the night before and they were acting like a jerk, you wake up in the morning, your goal is to love them.

What?

That's what we're going to be getting regardless, right?

It's a decision regardless.

Then when?

Every other day?

No, every day.

What about if it's that time of month for the wife?

Does she still love.

He still loves her.

That's what I mean.

Yeah, but what I mean is.

But she's still gotta love too.

She's got to make a decision to try to break through what's causing the moods and all that.

And if.

And if the husband knows that's going on, then he's got to walk in love towards her.

Right.

Not take it personally, not be a big baby or the wife needs to know, man, I'm gonna be in sometime.

So you warn your husband, say, hey, there's a bear alert, alert, alert, alert.

But it's daily and it becomes a lifestyle.

Yes, but we're going to talk about whatever your hand finds to do it, do it with all your might.

With all your might.

It's being intentional and committed and it's being aware.

Kind of like the.

Being mindful.

Yeah, being mind aware, you know what's going on and what's causing it.

Right.

So now here's something I like.

If you're.

When you're at work, especially in today's culture, everybody's.

A lot of people are workaholics or they want to perform.

They want to be the number one salesperson.

They want to do what they need to do to get a promotion.

They suck up to the boss.

They work late, they come.

They come in early, work late.

And they really don't get a lot of attention for it.

But you gotta do the corporate thing or they're involved in sports and they want to.

Maybe that's their career or maybe it's a hobby, sport, hobbies.

People in life have what they call peak performance.

I want to go to work.

I want to participate in this golf tournament.

I want to play basketball, whatever it is.

I want to be peak performance.

You know, every so often we'll go out to eat.

There's one restaurant and people in there playing card games.

Some of those people in there are serious.

They are working at peak performance, wanting to win that bridge game or whatever they're playing.

Well, that type of attitude is what we need to have in our marriage, in our love life, to be at peak performance.

For me, that means I need to be on the top of my love game with Linda.

Am I always that way?

No, because I'm still learning and growing and sometimes I'm.

The old nature wants to come up and then I gotta fall back and get God to help me in that and make a decision.

But we want to be a peak performance player.

And those type of people are the ones that are usually succeeding.

I'm not talking about the ones that go overboard where their priorities are online.

They just want to be the best.

And what happens is we need to be the best.

We want to be the best we can be.

And you know what?

What's in our favor that as a Christian, we can say, God, help me to be a better husband.

Help me to know how to love Linda, especially on those days where she.

The pain is more than usual or, or maybe she does something or says something I don't particularly like, or vice versa.

We have God to help us.

We have the grace of God to say, you know what, your husband's going through this at work.

Here's some things you can do to make his life a little bit better when he comes home today.

That's operating a peak performance.

And this is a key here.

Peak performers study, they learn, they train, they practice them, even have coaches or people help them so that they can be the best in their specialty or their career or in their hobbies.

Well, same thing in marriage.

We need to be peep for performers.

What do you do?

You listen to podcasts like ours.

You read a book, maybe any study, and you learn, you practice.

That means every day you practice putting on love.

And sometimes maybe you got to talk to a good friend or a counselor or talk to somebody that knows some more marriage stuff, maybe a mentor type person to find out how can I fine tune my love walk to get through this so you don't have to come to a point where you want to walk out the door and put your kids in a situation or your grandkids in a Situation because you're going to be a peak performer and you're going to know how to work through those things.

So those are goals to have in our marriage right here.

Go all in.

To be the best you can be.

You know, you hear these old movies, they say, oh, this guy's the world's greatest lover.

No, that doesn't mean he's just in bed.

We want to be the world's greatest lover to our spouse and to our kids and our grandkids.

Yeah.

Well, let's look and see what that word Love, in Ecclesiastes 9:9 really means.

Love each day of your life.

What does that mean?

That.

That is the Hebrew word ahava, which means to love.

I ahava you.

Oh, thank you, dear.

So romantic.

That does sound.

Okay.

It's the Hebrew counterpart of the New Testament word agape love.

And we.

That most people are familiar with what that means.

Okay.

But it can be interpreted as God's love for his people or having a love for.

For God or love for friends or a love between family members.

But it's also the love that's expressed between a husband and a wife, which is what we're going to be focusing on in this episode.

So we're going to look at that definition in more detail and how, as we do this, think about how this definition lines up when you say I love you to your spouse.

So here's what it means.

It's more ahave.

Love is means.

It's more than just a feeling.

It can be commitment, devotion, affection, care, self giving, a concern for another.

So when I look over and I say, linda, I love you, I'm actually saying I'm committed to you into our marriage.

I'm devoted to you, I have affection for you.

I'm going to care for you, I'm going to give of myself to you.

I have a concern for you.

And.

And then in our marriages, it can mean a deep affection, loyalty and faithfulness.

See, we want to be loyal to our spouse, some partner, you know, who knows?

But our.

We are.

We have to have loyalty and faithfulness in all areas.

Caring for your spouse's needs.

That's what we're called to do.

When we say I love you, it's not just a warm fuzzy because they look pretty.

You say, I love you.

I love the way you make me feel.

No, I love you means I want you to love the way I make you feel.

Putting up.

It's putting your spouse's best interest first.

Oh, that's a tough one.

That is.

That's tough.

That's selfless love.

It's building emotional and spiritual connection.

It's sharing and enjoying everyday life.

It's companionship.

So when you say I love you, you're saying all these.

And you're committing to these things, man.

That's a commitment every time you say I love you.

Commitment in delighting in your spouse.

Well, a good definition would be love expressed through commitment, care, and genuine affection.

Right, right.

It's more than just those romantic feelings.

It's cherishing and valuing your spouse and enjoying life.

That's committed, like you've been saying it is actively.

And what's the word?

Intentionally.

It's being on purpose, putting on love on purpose.

It's taking action to demonstrate your love.

And not just a romantic feeling of love, right?

Yes, that's right.

So the question now is, what does it mean when you say to your spouse, I love you?

Wow, that's a big question.

That is.

That's something to think about.

Seriously.

All right, so in this episode, we've talked about God's plan for your marriage, which is for you to enjoy life with your.

Everybody say it.

Spouse.

How often?

Every day.

And the key is what?

Putting on ahava love daily.

And that's by how create habits by putting on love.

Creating love habits.

You got to practice.

That's right.

And being in love.

Well, you know what?

You can say practice.

I'm thinking, okay, we want to be friendly.

I mean, love our spouse all day long.

So, yeah, that's a practice.

But you can say, you know what?

My goal today is to do three things that's going to show my spouse that I love them.

Maybe it's get them a cup of coffee.

Maybe it's go out and.

And fill their car up with gas.

Maybe it's bringing them their.

Cooking them their favorite meal or cleaning up their something, their mess that maybe they leave whatever it is.

That's how you can practice.

You go above the normal nice things you would do.

So you, you set a goal.

I'm going to do these so that.

That's a type of practice.

That is.

That's true.

So you can.

So you want to create those habits and then in other words, you want to be at peak performance in your love walk with your spouse so you can enjoy life with your spouse.

All right, well, so in closing, next week we're going to look at part two of God's plan, which is having a love affair.

This is going to be a good one in your marriage.

And how the meaning of life and how the Meaning of love applies in this area.

It's part of enjoying life with your spouse.

So we do want to look in the show notes for the definition of.

We're going to put them in our show.

Yeah, we'll put that in.

Okay, sounds good.

Well, we do have some honeydews.

And here they are.

Number one, what does the phrase I love you mean to you when you say it to your spouse now that you've heard a little bit of this teaching?

Number two, in what ways can you be a peak performer in your love walk with your spouse?

Number three, create daily habits from what love means to you in your marriage.

And what's your number four, dear?

Number four is the ten second kiss.

So find your spouse, your lover, pull them up to you for all your regulars.

You know the drill and just look at them and say, come here, I want to give you our kiss this morning.

Our 10 second kiss.

Set your timer and give them a good old kiss.

There you go.

And have that 10 second kiss.

You can do it more than once a day too.

Yeah.

All right.

Hey, thanks for joining us.

We appreciate you taking your time to tune in and getting your marriage booster shot for the week.

And we would love to hear your comments.

If you have any questions or topics you would like us to cover in our podcast, please text us.

You can do a voicemail or even email us and the phone number and email address is in our show notes.

You know, also let me interrupt you there.

Also get on our email newsletter.

Yes, because we send out marriage tips every week to two weeks.

We've been getting nuggets and a little golden nugget love nuggets and a little bit about what's going on our podcast or other announcements or things that we might have.

So do that.

And remember, share this.

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Share, subscribe, subscribe, follow all of those.

You know the routine.

Yeah.

Yeah, you do.

And if you have a specific prayer request, we pray for our married and Lovett family every day.

So please reach out, feel free to contact us and we will cover you in prayer.

And so thanks for joining us again.

Like I said, I hope you got inspired by today's message and we're gonna see you next time.

Until then, remember this, you can be married and love it on purpose.

Thank you for investing into your marriage by listening to the Married and Love it podcast.

Be sure to be a part of the ripple effect of making marriage great by sharing this podcast with other couples to equip them to be married and Love It.

Also, subscribe to and follow us on your favorite platform and be sure to check out our website at www.marriedandlovet.com where you can learn more about Married and Love it.

And contact us with any questions or comments that you may have.

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