EP 70. Genuine Love in Marriage; 6 Vital Ways of Loving Your Spouse. PT 2

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In this episode, we are continuing the series on genuine love.

Six final ways of loving your spouse.

This is part two.

That's right.

I'm excited about this one.

I've been looking forward to this episode because we're talking about love in your marri and God's wanting you to have a love affair with your spouse all the time, which we started talking about last week.

And this week we're going to dig further into it.

And in the next couple episodes when we talk about six vital ways to love your spouse, you're going to see how this all comes together.

And God has got good stuff for you.

And regardless of where your marriage is at right now, excel still more.

I mean, God's got so much for us in our marriage relationships and he wants you to be enjoying it.

And that's in the midst of all the marriage busters, having kids or you got grandkids, you're working, you're not working.

You've got physical challenges going on in your life.

He wants you to enjoy being married.

Now it takes a little bit of work on my part, your part, all of our own parts in our marriage because sometimes most of the time it doesn't just happen.

So that's why we're doing this podcast in this episode.

So hold on, because you're going to be enjoying life with your spouse even greater.

As we go through these episodes on ways to love your spouse, we're basing this series on vital ways to love your your spouse actually married and love.

It's based on this, but it's Ecclesiastes 9, 9 through 10 and it says enjoy life with your wife.

And we put in there your spouse because it's a two way street.

Enjoy.

God wants you having fun, you know, not just oh, here they come or boring.

What are we going to do?

No having fun.

All right.

And that you love each other every day of your life.

And then it goes on in verse 10 and says, and whatever your hand finds to do.

Remember when you got married, you reached out and held hands and looked starry eyed in each other's eyes.

And you said, I am here for everything and anything that comes at us and we're going to have fun and have a good life.

Well, God says, even though you let go of your hands, you've still got your hand going to your marriage, so you need to do it with all your might.

In other words, what you put into your marriage and what you put into yourself to be a better spouse is going to determine how much you're loving your marriage.

Because you are the number one factor in determining the.

The def.

The direction of your marriage, because your actions can affect your spouse.

All right, so this verse is describing God's plan, but it also gives instructions.

See, God gives us instructions and it says how to accomplish this.

And the key words when we read that scripture, which we went into last week, are number one, love.

And that's what we're talking about today.

We're going to continue talking about love.

And it says daily habits.

All right, so, well, in other words, we need to put on love and make it a daily habit.

Yes, right.

That's right.

In order to do this successfully, then we're going to need to have an understanding of what the word love actually means.

You know, it kind of means work.

It's intentional, and it's on purpose work with benefits.

Yeah, so that's what we're going to.

That's it.

We're in the process of covering all that now.

Verse 10 says, Like Greg said, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

And that means being intentional.

It means being on purpose.

It means being aware.

It means being mindful plus taking action.

Yes, that is so true.

I mean, you just don't wake up just because you went to the altar and you had goosebumps and everything going on.

It takes work.

You got to be intentional.

You just, you just don't know how to be married.

And those little good old hormones begin to wear off pretty quick.

Some of y' all wore off on the honeymoon.

Some of y' all was 18 months later.

But sooner or later, you got to be more intentional and on purpose, as Linda said.

And last week we talked about this ax aspect of it as being at peak performance.

Just that like athletes or people involved in some type of challenge, or maybe they're a chef or maybe they're A doctor.

They want to be, perhaps be precision.

They want to be on.

They want to win.

And that's what God's calling us to do.

Be at peak performance in your love life while you're.

When you're working on loving her and serving them.

So that's what we're talking about, being at peak performance.

Now, we also looked at the Old Testament Hebrew word, which that's part of the six vital ways of loving your spouse.

There's five New Testament words we're going to look at.

And then we have one from the Old Testament, which is ahava, which relates to the word agape in the New Testament as a key word that's explaining what love is.

And we're gonna break.

We talked about that last week, but in a few more moments here, we're going to delve back into that for a little bit of review, but tying it into the scripture that we're going to use today.

So if you have already done it, listen to episode 69 because it lays the foundation for today and for the upcoming two or three more sessions we're going to do on this.

But before we get into that, I just want to remind everybody to sign up for our newsletter and also to share our podcast with your family and friends.

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Yeah, it'll be easy.

So in this episode, we're going to continue with God's plan for your marriage with another scripture using the word ahava.

Now, God, this next scripture is going to talk about God wants you having a love affair with your spouse, not just be in love.

A lot of people are in love with their spouse.

They may even like them, which that's really good.

But there's not a love affair.

There's not that air of romance coming through.

There's not this excitement.

There's not a lot of joy there.

Maybe they're just going through the motions.

They're happy, they look good, you know, but God wants that a love affair in there.

He wants to take your marriage up to the next level.

So you're supposed to have a love affair and not just be in love, but the love affair we're talking about is the result of all the different five parts of blending that we're talking about with these Other definitions of love which we're going to be breaking down, there's different aspects of genuine love and they've all got to be incorporated.

Now there's like five we're going to focus on after we get done with Ahava.

And those are in the New Testament.

We're going to break those down.

But you just can't pick like I like number one and number two and leave number three, four and five out because then your recipe for love is not going to last.

Well, it's like a recipe.

When we go to bake a cake, if you leave out one ingredient, it is not going to make a delicious cake.

Right, right.

So we will be in the next few episodes going through those five words like Greg said and describe love from the New Testament.

But today we're going to be continuing with the Old Testament word Ahava.

So let's take a look at God's plan for a love affair for your marriage.

It's taken that word enjoying life with, with your spouse to the next level.

It's God's plan and promise you promise for you now being roommates, ships passing in the night, just existing.

Well, that is not in God's plan for you.

A key to his promise coming to pass though, regarding your marriage is remembering that love plays a vital role in his plan to becoming a success.

Yes.

Now we've got another scripture we're going to look at, but something Linda said.

She, she's laid out.

This is God's plan for you.

You know, if your marriage isn't where you want it to be at, you don't have to settle for and you can't have to wonder is it ever going to get any better from wherever it's at.

You know, you want any to get better regardless of what shape it's in and you just don't have faith for that.

Or is that really going to happen?

If God said he wants you enjoying life with your spouse and then having a love affair and having all what he says in the Bible about merits and some even look at Song of Solomon, you know what?

That's his standard.

And you as a believer and as a spouse, you can believe God for that.

Get these scriptures and meditate on them.

God, it says, my husband shouldn't be enjoying me.

I should be enjoying my wife.

I should be enjoying my husband.

This is what God, he wants us having fun, enjoying life.

Well, you, you put that up on a wall and you say, repeat it, pray over it.

And you begin to believe what God says for you.

Just like if you're believing for healing.

What did we.

What, what do we get taught?

Get some healing scriptures.

By the stripes of Jesus, I am healed.

Put it up on a mirror.

Put it up.

Speak it over the day, pray over it.

Say, God, this is my right as a born again believer to be healed.

Well, you know what?

It's your right to be in a blessed marriage where you're having fun.

Amen.

Yes.

It takes work.

He's gonna takes faith plus works.

You can believe God for your spouse or husband to be better, but God says your faith has got to have some corresponding actions to it.

Right?

That's why if you're totally ticked off at your husband or your wife and you go, I ain't gonna do this, and you put your hands on your hip and you just go sulk, or you walk around say, I ain't gonna do that because they did that.

That's not faith working by love and that, that's faith rebellion.

In a sense, you're not operating in faith.

God's not going to honor what you want if you're not doing your part.

Amen.

So let's move on.

That was my little thoughts on that one.

Here's this scripture here.

Now this, this is shows the importance and the inspiration of a public reading of a scripture.

You'll see what I mean in a minute.

Yeah.

Proverbs 55, 18, 19.

Now again, we're talking about a love affair.

If you got little kids in the car, maybe close their ears for a minute, okay?

Proverbs 5, 18, 19, says, Let your fountain, which refers to the wife.

And you can see that in verse 15, when you look in Proverbs 5 says, Let your fountain or your wife be blessed.

And rejoice in the wife of your youth as a loving hind and a graceful doe.

Let her breast satisfy you at all times.

Be exhilarated always with her love.

And so we're going to look at this scripture and break it down here a little bit on how love plays into that.

But this first part kind of looks like, well, this is all about the husband.

What about the wife?

You know, they're talking about him being satisfied with her body, but what about me, you know?

Well, if you look at the very first words, it says, let your fountain.

He's like talking to the husband and saying, hey, man, man up.

Be the man sent by God and let your fountain be blessed.

That means God.

God has put a calling on the husband to say, hey, you're supposed to be blessing your wife.

If you're going to want to be satisfied with her body.

And she's of course going to want to be satisfied with yours.

You better be doing this other stuff we're going to talk about.

All right, so.

Well, so both the husband and wife is going to be blessed, right?

Yes.

So you can get a good picture of this love affair, so to speak, in the Song of Solomon.

It gets.

They lay it out pretty clear right there.

So we can see right here.

It starts, it starts off by saying, let in your fountain, which is your wife, be blessed.

And it's saying to the husband that you, husband, need to take care of your wife and to love her God's way.

And she needs to know that your number one priority is heart.

Yes, right.

Yeah.

And the Bible also says, rejoice in the wife of your youth, which we've talked about.

And that means taking pleasure in enjoying being excited about the wife of your youth.

And this shows a lasting love affair.

God wants you.

I mean, not.

That's from Star.

Yeah.

Long time lasting love affair.

Linda and I are coming up on 48, 49 years.

Lasting love affair.

Yeah, you're going to have ups and downs in there, but you know what?

Love keeps you focused and pushing through and it just gets better and better and better.

Yeah, Quality married life from the beginning to the end, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And yeah, quality.

That's right.

Again, what you put into it can be what you get out of it.

All right?

Then it goes on to say, let her breasts satisfy at all times and be exhilarated always with her love.

Some translations will say be satisfied to the fullest.

Other translations say ravished with her love, which can mean in the Hebrew, to stagger as if intoxicated and exhilarated.

Satisfied.

You see right here, sex in God's eyes.

Not the world's eyes, but in God's eyes should be awesome.

It should be sizzling.

So don't settle for.

For anything less in God's.

In your life, you want God's best and you can check out.

We're not.

This is not a.

This isn't the sex talk.

Okay.

This is God's love affair.

But you can listen to episodes 34 through 38 and we've got several episodes to talk about sex.

Fizzle or sizzle in your marriage life.

Yeah.

So just what.

Just FYI, I'm going to throw in here up and coming.

We're going to be doing a series on low desire, high desire, and that's regarding sex and marriage.

So you are not going to want to miss out on those Episodes.

Now let's dig a little bit deeper, dear.

Okay.

Okay.

So we're, you may ask, what does love have to do with it?

Well, let me just tell you.

It says in the scripture to be exhilarated with her love.

We've looked at the physical part of love.

Now let's look at the Hebrew word again for love.

I'm going to interrupt this for a second right there if you hold your thought.

But it says on the, we're looking at the physical side.

But honestly guys, for you to be exhilarated with your her love, chances are you're knowing how to please her and, and in love on her physically, which that means she's enjoying it.

So therefore her response to you is going to be awesome and then she's going to be responding to you.

So it's, it's, it's a two way street.

Both ways.

It's two way street.

And again we get into that in the other episodes on Sex.

But I just want to point that out.

It's not a one way street for pleasure, it's both of you guys.

Well, it's being committed to always doing and being the best for your spouse.

Oh yeah, that's right.

That's good.

You know, it brings in the element of emotional love outside of that physical part of love.

Right.

Which is so important.

So here's a couple other questions to ask.

Another way to look at this is am I being lovable?

Am I being desirable?

Am I bringing to.

Am I bringing my best to my spouse to make him or her want me spirit, soul and body with my words and my actions?

Now this goes beyond just having that physical lust or sex, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Okay.

You know, and we talk about this in episode 69, kind of get a start on that.

But I'm going to back up for a little moment where it talks about am I being lovable?

Am I being desirable?

You can go back and listen to some other episodes.

I don't know the number.

We talked about being dressed properly for your marriage.

You know, we talk about, oh, husband comes in and he's wanting to make love, but he's got the outside grass stains all over him.

He still stinks.

Smells like he's been mowing the lawn.

And he comes in, he says, here I am your hero.

And she goes, phew, forget it, Jack.

No, thank you.

So there's that physical appearances.

But you know what, not only is there that are you being lovable, it's not talking about your physical looks per se, but when you come on whether it's the wife or the husband wanting to have more physical reactions.

How are you desirable?

Are you treating your husband or are you nagging all day long?

And then you're wanting to have sex with your husband.

He goes, oh no, I ain't helping in the bed with that.

Right.

You know, because it, he can only take so much or is the husband not doing his part?

So really think about that.

It's so important.

Right now we're going to look at the word ahava and see how it implies to the scripture that we're talking about.

Okay?

Because it says be exhilarated also with her love.

Well, her love, that word in, in this scripture is not really talking about the erotic type.

It can refer to that, but it's talking about ahava, which we already looked at some of that definition a moment ago.

But let me just, just continue on with what Linda had said.

It's, it involves the spiritual, the emotional and physical oneness.

It's the love expressed between a husband and wife, which we will be focusing on.

It's a definition of loving every day.

We got to look at it like that.

Like it says who you love all the days of your life.

It's more than just a feeling.

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

It can be deep affection, loyalty and faithfulness.

Caring for your spouse's needs.

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

Everybody think and say best interest your spouse.

Building emotional and spiritual connection, sharing and enjoying every day in your life.

Companionship, commitment and delighting in one spouse.

You know, you can look at this when it says be exhilarated with her love.

Well, I'll tell you what, if you're applying all this towards your spouse, you're going to be exhilarated with her love because she's responding.

Or the same way she's looking at you and saying, hey man, we're going to rock your world today because you're you putting my special, my best interest all the time ahead of me.

See, it's not just horniness and lust.

It's all of this, right?

What we're talking about with ahava to put you where you can have that love affair.

It's like you try to out serve one another, Right?

Right?

Yeah.

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

It's like Greg said, more than romantic feelings.

Say that again.

It's more than romantic feelings.

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

Committed to each other.

It's actively and intentionally being on purpose putting on love.

It's taken action to demonstrate your love, not just the romantic feelings of love.

Yeah.

And it is putting on God's love in the form of the hava ahava.

And we've talked about a lot in our podcast because to putting on love is a major part of what we believe needs to be done in a marriage.

That means picture yourself if you haven't heard this daily.

You need to get up.

You know, you put your underclothes on, you put the right type of shirt on, it's cold outside.

You put a long sleeve shirt on, a jacket.

Well, when you get up in the morning, are you putting on selfishness?

Are you putting on love?

Are you putting on anger?

Are you putting on unforgiveness?

What are you putting on as far as your love walk every day?

So put on love.

And now we've talked about ahava.

So we're gonna, in the next few episodes, we'll start getting into the other five areas of love and breaking them down.

And then when we do that, we're going to be enjoying life with our spouse.

Now, Linda talked about blending, and I'm just going to give a little peek right here.

This Proverbs 5:18 through 19 is a good example of ex of blending because he's talking, the scripture is talking about some physical stuff going on, being satisfied with your spouse's body, being exhilarated with their love.

But also it talks about the ahava love where you're, you're going past just the physical part and the physical pleasure.

And you see in the New Testament there's several words we're going to look at, and one of them is eros.

And that word right there means romantic love.

And it goes all into that.

There's another word which is hard for me to say.

It's epithumia.

And see, sometimes I always have problems with base English words when I talk.

But back in 99, well, 1999, I was t boned and I had a whole bunch of stuff hit me and physical stuff.

But I almost bit off about the last part, about half inch of my tongue.

I had to have stitches in my tongue.

Think about that.

And then my mouth was wired shut because they had to wire my whole mouth back together with screws and stuff.

But that's affected the way I say certain words and stuff, so I can blame it on that.

But so anyway, I could say these.

Words myself and I've not got that.

But one of them means a strong desire, the other one's romantic and the other one means best friends.

And then of course we're, in other words, it's going to be agape, which is kind of like ahava.

But see what happens?

This Ephesians 5:18 is talking about physical and the emotional and about a commitment to one another with how it's laid out.

But I'll tell you what, if you don't have the ahava working in this scenario, and maybe you as a husband and wife aren't really best friends, you know what, you're more like roommates.

But you know what, if all you have is the romantic and a strong desire and you don't have this other working, what's going to happen?

You're going to be operating out of lust or just having sex.

But when you have all of them working together, then it's a love affair.

However, if you're, maybe you're treating your wife or husband the best they can be, be, be.

I mean, you're nice, you serve them, you do this and you that.

But I'll tell you what, if you don't allow romance to come in, or you don't have any desire to be together physically, or you're done in denial, you're denying your spouse whatever reason, it can be legit, legitimate reason.

But I tell you what, if you don't have those, that's when you can become roommates because there's nothing there.

You're committed, but there's nothing there to bring the life into it.

So that's what we're going to go.

More detail, not the glue that's needed, you know, and that, that's why it takes everything, just like I said earlier, the cake, the ingredients of that cake to turn out really delicious.

It takes all of the ingredients working together.

So following God's plan for marriage by putting on this kind of love and following God's instructions, that is going to help build a foundation in marriage to be able to stand together when the marriage busters come against your marriage.

So let's put on love every day and enjoy your marriage.

Right?

Amen.

That's awesome.

You know, I'm just thinking of a wedding cake you could use as an example.

That's true.

When that wedding cake comes out as representing this, I mean, how much time did you take, tasting, buying, designing that wedding cake and how much did it cost?

You wanted it to be perfect, right?

Well, you can look at that wedding cake as a type of something in our marriage.

You want the best looking marriage, you want an awesome marriage that's going to taste good, look good, and you have to make an investment into it because if they would have messed up that wedding cake, you would have been ticked off probably.

Well, when the devil comes in and messes up our marriage because we act like ding dongs, we got to be ticked off and say, what can I do to fix this and get it back to where I need it to be?

There you go.

All right, so in the last two episodes, we've talked about the importance of understanding ahava love and how it impacts our marriage.

Okay, so in the next episode, we're going to start looking at a few of the words from the the Greek New testament on love.

I don't.

We're going to do one or two at a time.

We'll see how the time goes, but how they can have an impact on our marriage.

All right.

Yeah.

And we're going to talk about practical ways of how you can apply all that y on a daily basis.

Okay.

And in our show notes, we're going to put the definition of hababa in there so you can look at that and study that.

And then we're going to have some honeydews for you.

There you go.

Here's a couple of the honeydews right now.

Read through the definition of ahava love, which can be found in our show notes.

And then number two, ask yourself, what ways can you be more lovable toward your spouse with your words and your actions?

I mean, evaluate, take a good look in the mirror, see about that.

And, and number three, what are one or maybe two love habits that you can start adding today or you can start implementing that you've done in the past, but it's time to get it back into that routine, that daily habit.

And number four, can that be before.

I get the number, could that habit.

Maybe you're just going to start making their coffee.

Yeah.

A few mornings a week.

Something is simple.

Something simple that would bless them.

Maybe one of those habits could be you're going to start doing the 10 second kiss, which is number four.

That every day you're going to tell your honey say, hey, come on over here, my big hunk of burning love.

Let's do our 10 second kiss.

And you say, hey, Siri, set my timer for 10 seconds.

And you lay a big one on.

Them, you know, and it can be done any time of the day.

Any time of the day.

You can do it more than once.

Yes.

But be intentional on it.

And if you start a habit of that, you get where you're looking forward to that.

So that's number four.

Do that.

Make that one of your two habits.

Your habits.

So we would love to hear from you, your comments, if you got any questions or if you have some topics that you would like us to cover in our podcast, you can text or voicemail email us and all of that information is going to be in our show notes, the phone number and the email address.

So also just remember this if you have a specific prayer request, we pray for our married and Love it family on a regular basis and we would love to hear from you.

Feel free to contact us.

It's private and you can send that as well through text, voicemail or emailing.

So again, thank you today for joining us.

Thank you for investing in your time.

Thank you.

I hope you've gotten inspired by today's message and we're going to see you next time.

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

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