EP 79. Genuine Love in Marriage; Desire for Your Spouse; 6 Vital Ways of Loving Your Spouse (6 of 7)

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

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In today's episode, we're continuing the series on genuine love and marriage, six final ways of loving your spouse.

This is part six of seven, and we're going to be focusing on you desiring your spouse.

That's right.

And before we get into it, here is our base scripture that we've been using for this series and really for our Married and Love it ministry.

It says, enjoy life with your spouse whom you love every day of your life.

And we're taking that word right there, whom you love every day of your life.

And looking at it six ways that we can apply the love that's talking about in the Bible and how we're to love our wives so we can be enjoying our life because God's got a lot of good things going for us.

And the day going to be looking at desire, which Linda mentioned a little while ago.

And it's really interesting how this applies.

So far we've covered four ways of loving our spouse.

We covered these in episode 69 and 70 and 76 through 78.

And there's four we've covered.

The first one's phileo, which means warm friendship and companionship, and a lot more than that.

But the bottom line is talking about being best friends.

So when the Bible says enjoy your spouse whom you love, that means that spouse you're loving is your best friend.

And I encourage you to listen to that episode that we talk about that, because best friends means a lot.

And if you're doing that, then you don't have to worry about being a roommate.

The next one is Eros, which everybody likes.

Romance, physical attraction, sex and all that type of stuff's involved in Eros.

But I'll tell you what, you can't base your marriage on just Eros, but you've got to have the rest of them.

Store gay is natural, family, affection, security, belonging and that's talking about belonging to your spouse.

You belong to somebody and somebody's accepting you into their life.

It's a really good one too.

And number four is ahava, which that's more of a Hebrew word that's used in Ecclesiastes 9, 9.

And it's a takeoff a little bit from agape.

It means commitment, devotion, affection.

And that can be emotional or physical affection, care, and a self giving concern for one another.

So it's not just like saying I love ice cream, we're saying I love my wife.

And it means all these different things.

Well, we have.

Yeah, we have two more to cover.

And plus an episode then called Bringing back that Loving Feeling.

Don't start singing Nice that we mentioned in episode 78.

Now today we're going to be covering word number five.

Say it for me, dear.

Epithemia.

You got it.

That's right.

Okay.

And just in the short review, there's three points I want to review is number one, love is not a buffet where you just pick one or the other.

Pick what type of love you want to demonstrate.

We got to have all of them, all six of them working together.

But now in a buffet, you can eat all you want most of the time.

So this love, you get to eat all you want.

Just lap it up because it's all.

Awesome and it's vital to the success of our marriage relationship.

Yes.

And number two point is just like a car, you know how car has to run on all six cylinders or it's not going to start up, it's going to sputter, it's not going to have that spark, you know, that power.

That power is not going to be there.

So you got to run your love life on all sides.

Six love types.

That's good for it to be great in your marriage.

Yeah.

In other words, when you push the pedal and you take off in your car and it's smooth, well, that's how you want your love affair with your wife.

You push the pedal down and it is smooth running.

There you go.

And another three.

Number three point is we have to be intentional.

Yes.

And we have to be on purpose.

Now Colossians 3:14 says when we must put on love.

So here's the love, the six different types of love that we can be putting on.

Yeah.

It's a decision and we'll probably bring that up more.

And actually we talk about putting on love all the time in our, in our podcast.

We do now let's take a look and see what epithemia actually means.

Well, it means desire, longing, craving, a strong desire, good and deep, heartfelt, to set your heart on.

You know, when I'm desiring Linda, I have a craving for her, just to be with her, to have time with her, lots of different ways.

And it's heartfelt.

And I set my heart and desires on her.

I'm focusing on her.

She's number one.

This desire is for us as married couples to start off strong.

When we first get married, you know, a lot of you guys got married, or all of us hopefully got married, and we had a strong love.

We were in love, couldn't do anything wrong and we were just flooding around.

But after about 12, 18, two months or two, two years, that love kind of settles down a little bit.

And then after a while people can become roommates or they're just, they're, they're in love, but they're just not experiencing all God wants for them.

But God wants you married.

If you live it that long and you get up to 50 or 60 years or longer, that your love is just as strong as it was on day one, and stronger, probably a little bit more mature, but it can be like that.

Linda and I are coming up on 49 years in November.

It's going to be here before we know it.

Our love is getting stronger and stronger.

And you know what, we've been through a lot of trials, tribulations and a lot of ups and downs in our marriage now that mean we were mad at each other the whole time.

He means life hit life, circumstances together as a team, we've, we've hung in there, we've got through the hard times, especially when we almost separated, but our love is just as strong and stronger than it was.

It's a mature love.

Yes, it's a mature love.

You know what?

But it's still got a lot of spark in it too.

So it keeps going and it should.

Be that way, it shouldn't be decreasing, but just getting stronger, right?

Yes.

So basically like our logo says, is saying as you get down the road every year when you have an anniversary, but the longer you go, you're still saying your spouse, you're still the one for me.

And it's actually even saying, I'm still the one for you.

It's a two way street.

Yeah.

And you still have that longing and desire to be with your spouse.

Now a little side note on epithelium.

Epithelium.

Epithemia.

Yes, there you go.

That's a Greek word and actually in the New Testament can be used for Good desires or bad desires which translate into lust or self selfish usage.

So we're looking at it in light of it being a companion to go with all the other love words that are in, in the Bible to be used in a marriage relationship.

You see, you and your spouse should have a strong, I mean strong, say that strong, strong loving desire for each other.

That's the way God set it up for including a strong physical desire that expresses itself with pleasurable key word there, pleasurable love making.

Now this also includes in its definition a strong desire to be together.

You know, your spouse should be the number one person that you want to do things with and doesn't mean you don't have friends to do, you know, go out and play pickleball or go quilting or whatever you do.

But a golf, but a strong desire, a strong desire to be together.

A longing for emotional closeness.

And if you're not having that, then we got some things to work on there.

A desire for physical intimacy.

Now if you're not having a desire for that, that's not good.

Now.

Yeah, there's different reasons and that's another topic.

Looking, you should be looking forward to spending time together when you're coming home from work or are your spouse is coming home.

Are you thinking, oh I'd rather go out with the guys or the girls tonight.

That's not talking about a quote girls night out type of thing.

But as a rule, who are you wanting to spend time for?

If the epithemia is an expression of love showing intensity, it's taking desire up to the next level.

Well, it complements the filet o love in the area of being best friends and eros in the area of romantic love.

Now that's a little sizzling.

Yeah, that's right.

Here's what fileto looks like regarding desire.

It means to love with deep affection, friendship, fondness.

It's a warm personal attachment.

You can see right here desire playing in here.

Yeah.

Now let's see how that works in your marriage.

It's enjoying your spouse's company, like Greg said before, and delighting in your relationship with them.

You have a warm affection toward them.

It's friendship, tenderness.

You enjoy one another's company.

You have loyalty, devotion and emotional closeness.

It's enjoying spending time together, holding hands, hugging and showing affection.

It's laughing together and sharing interest.

It's speaking kind and in kind words and speaking kindly, basically encouraging one another.

It is being emotionally available.

That's a good one.

Yeah, that's real good.

Because in today's world we need that, don't we?

Yeah.

It's finding joy in your spouse.

Right there, that's epithemia right there.

Yeah, yeah.

Caring about your spouse's feelings and daily experiences.

Here's the other one, the that epithemia complements and works with Eros, which y' all pretty well all know this, but it's romantic, passionate or sexual love.

It's describes, it's a strong attraction and desire between a husband and wife who are romantically attracted to each other.

It's a yearning to unite desire and enjoy your spouse.

So we can see that desire is a very important and vital part of your, your marriage relationship.

Now, having desire, operating your marriage, it helps to keep the roommate experience from coming upon you.

Because what happens when you have a strong desire in a in place in your marriage, you're wanting to spend time with your spouse and be together.

So what happens if you've got this strong desire going when all of a sudden the pressures of life start coming in?

Your schedule gets too busy, kids got too much going on.

If you've got kids at home, work's trying to pull away from you, you're just feeling this inside man.

We're not spending time together.

We got to work on this.

So what happens?

You're aware of that, it sets off your radar, beep, beep, beep, roommate danger.

And it says you need to spend some time with your wife, you need to stop everything you need, you need to tell your boss you can't come in that night.

Or you don't volunteer to bring green beans to dinner at church because you got to stay home and do something, whatever it is, because that desire is overriding what's going on in the world.

So get that, keep that desire working and have that make it a priority.

Yes.

Right, Right.

Well, here's some examples of this from the Bible.

Song of Solomon 4:9 says, you have made my heart beat faster, my sister, my bride, you have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes.

I like that because when I was looking at that, I was thinking, oh, do you ever make eye contact with your husband or your wife?

And your husband winks at you and you're the one that knows what that means.

That's right.

Right.

And nobody else in the room gets to have that single glance of his eyes.

That's right.

I love that song of Solomon 5:16 says, his mouth is full of sweetness and he is wholly desirable.

This is my beloved and this is my friend.

So those kisses, those 10 second kisses, oh, that's Right, there you go, right there.

Right.

Song of Solomon 7, verse 10 through 11.

We'll put all these in the show notes for you.

I am my beloved's and his desire is for me.

It shows right there.

They did both desiring one another.

That's right.

Come, my beloved, and let us go out into the country.

And that to me is saying, they're separating themselves from the rest of the world, what's going on around them.

And they're saying, let's go together.

Let us spend the night in the villages.

Yeah.

Because it says, I am my beloved.

That.

That goes there, right there.

To companionship.

Yep.

It's stoge, where you have a sense of belonging.

I am my beloved's.

I am Linda.

She is.

Is mine.

And our desire is for each other.

And like Linda said, it shows them getting away, us prioritizing the relationship.

So that's good.

Those are really good.

Now here's another.

Here's another little side note about desire and marriage.

And first of all, some of y' all are going, yeah, I like all this stuff and Song of Solomon, but that's.

That.

That can't be real.

But it can be.

And we're going to talk about that.

So don't.

Don't turn this off, because we're going to talk about some of the problems that.

That attack us to keep us from having this in our marriage relationship.

But this is just a little side note.

A lot of times I'm in different Facebook groups or listening in to different types of discussion that people are having regarding marriage.

And some people bring up, well, if a husband's looking at his wife and he's looking at her naked, is that lusting?

Are we allowed to lust after our husband or after our wife or.

That's lusting.

If you're just looking at your spouse and thinking about what you want to do with them or do, or they're whatever it is.

And there are some people that say, well, that's lust.

That is sin.

Well, I just want to say this.

If you're looking at your spouse and you're lusting after them, you're thinking, oh, man, I would like to do this or do that or her to do this or whatever it is, that's not lusting.

That's the bad side of hypothermia or.

Yeah, what?

You said it.

I said it.

Right.

Okay.

That's the other side of that.

That's if you're not married, but it's.

It's you.

God, your spouse is a gift.

Yeah.

You should desire he wants you to.

Look at God wants you to look at your spouse and have desires and you should have them back and forth.

So don't, don't get caught up.

I can't look like that.

It's not objectifying.

It's not objectifying.

Now if you're sitting there and getting obsessive with it, you're putting pressure on them and yourself seeking with your own desires and you're almost getting in that controlling start.

That's when you can start having problems.

Right.

But just to look at your spouse, just look at Song of Solomon.

They are looking at the body parts you read.

It talks about, they're talking about how they look and what they would like to do.

They say, let us climb up the branches or the promigants.

They're not talking about milk duds there.

Okay.

No, you know, so not the food.

Right.

Don't worry about lusting after your spouse.

Probably most of the marriages out there had a little lust sparking.

It'd probably be more sparking going on.

Yes, that's right.

Well, yeah, like that's the end of my rant.

Okay.

It sounds like a perfect fairy tale marriage.

That would be totally impossible.

But with God it is possible.

Um, actually that's what God, like Greg said, that's what God's given us.

Now Satan and life tries to destroy all this and hamper our desires.

But day to day life and the relationship tensions, the marriage busters that can wipe out these desires, God has replaced that.

Your desires can get wiped out or at least be dampened.

But the result of weakening desires can impact all the areas of our marriage, especially in our sex life, which basically causes a ripple effect throughout our marriage.

Right?

Yeah, it kind of, it affects every area.

That, that just shows how all six of these love language, love ways that they have to work together.

Yeah, right.

That statement, Linda, brought up how a desire can impact our sex life.

But however, if, if our sex life isn't going on and the desire is not there, then that eventually will affect the rest of our marriage.

That's the ripple effect.

Getting all these things in order are so powerful now.

Well, like fatigue and maybe it's a medical issue or schedules like you mentioned.

And there's so much more.

Yeah.

And we call a lot of that.

Marriage marriage busters, Right?

Yeah.

However, there's some other things that don't get mentioned in that little realm that people don't bring up a whole lot, but what I call toxic attacks.

Oh, that one can be anger.

You could be mad at your spouse and carrying around anger on a regular basis.

Now you think that's going to create desire?

No, not too much.

No, it's not going to do that.

Or maybe your spouse is angry at you or they're just angry.

You know, some people are just angry at life.

Yeah.

And you don't want to be around them.

So that can impact your.

Your, your, your desire.

In other words, you don't want to be around people like that because they stink.

All right.

Toxic.

Yeah.

Here's some other issues in your life, you or your spouse, that could be affecting your desire.

Resentment, unforgiveness, disappointments, complacency, even trust issues.

All these can come in and weaken and destroy the desires that you or your spouse have for each others.

But remember this, okay?

This is important.

Your desires are God's promise for you so that you can experience a love affair with your spouse.

You've got to remember that.

So what we need to do is deal.

If you've got resentment, unforgiveness, the disappointments, you're complacent, then you've got to deal with those.

And we'll talk about those.

Another point.

But you need to deal with them so you can have the marriage that God wants you to have.

Yeah.

Like if you have little or maybe no desire for your spouse at all, whether it's just.

Just spending time with them on a regular basis or with the physical intimacy, then let me encourage you to be a little curious.

That's a.

Curious.

That's a, That's a major point right there.

Be curious.

Ask yourself why.

Oh, you have no or little desire.

You know, that's a good question to ask yourself.

That's not God's plan.

A lot of times.

A lot of times I just don't ever have any desire for my spouse.

I don't have any desire.

I, I don't have.

But have you ever asked yourself why?

Why?

Oh, why?

Oh, it's not because they're a jerk.

I'm just angry at the world right now.

Or I've got this going on.

So ask yourself why.

And then this is something Linda brought up.

Is not God's plan for you.

Yeah.

And remember this.

That you are robbing your spouse from that aspect of your marriage relationship.

That's tough.

Yeah.

That.

That's a toughie.

Yeah.

See, what we allow.

Go on.

Sometimes.

Is not serving our spouse.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

Ask.

And then you know what?

Ask God to help you with this and help him to search your heart for anything that may be there.

That's hindering you.

There's a lot of times we don't even realize what it is.

Yeah.

So God can help you in answering that question.

Yes.

If you're wanting your marriage to be all it can be, and you really wanted to see these aspects of love come in, and especially if you're having desire issues with your spouse, because it's going to hinder being a best friend even.

It will.

It's going to hinder all of the rest.

It dampens it all is you just.

Sit there and put on your big boy pants or good big girl pants and say, God, why am I having this problem?

What can you do to help me get through this and ask God to show you those ways.

So before we get ready to close up here, I want something.

I want to bring something up first.

Corinthians 7:33 through 34 talks about how both a husband and wife's goal and desire is to please their spouse.

So God's saying, greg, your desire should be to please Linda, and Linda's desire should be please me.

So what happens when you're pleasing your spouse?

Let's say everything's going good and you're pleasing your spouse?

Well, you know what, you're doing things to bless them and make them happy.

And according to principles, as you give, it's going to be given back to you.

So.

And when things are going smooth, they're going to want to turn it back and bless you to where you're being pleased and being happy.

But what does this do when you're both pleasing each other?

You have a good time with each other, you're meeting each other's needs.

It feeds desire.

It's making you.

When you're pleasing your spouse and they're pleasing you, desire increases.

So there's a whole principle there focusing on your spouse and.

And that's going to open the door for more and more being more desirable to each other.

And this brings us to dressing for love.

Okay, Colossians 3, 8 talks about what to take off.

See, we put clothes on in the morning.

We take clothes off when we talk about this in Putting in love.

And so dressing for love means I'm going to take off anger.

Yeah, I'm going to take off unforgiveness.

I'm going to take off negative or abusive speech.

I'm going to take off content and all contempt and all of that type of stuff.

I'm going to take it off.

But then it says Colossians 12:13, because.

You want to put on.

It says, yeah, it Says, put on a heart of compassion, put on a heart of kindness, put on a heart of humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness.

So when we're both, both of us dressing up to go out, so to speak, and looking good, you know, you ever watch these Hallmark movies or movies that got romance, and they're meeting each other for a date and the guy walks up, he's got a nice outfit on, shirt and slacks, or he's got a coat and tie on, and the girl comes down the stairs and looking good.

And what are they doing?

They're putting on love, so to speak.

See that?

Like that.

And they're going, oh, you look so good.

What does that create?

Desire.

Creates desire.

So when we put on love, we are creating desire for our spouse to have something to be attracted to.

So you know what?

Here's what I wrote down on this right here earlier today.

Putting on love, you got to dress for love.

And that leads to getting naked for love.

Oh, does that make sense?

That's profound.

Right?

So if you're wanting to get naked with your honey, then you better be dressed for love on the rest of the time.

That was profound.

All right, all right.

Episode 64 and 65, go a little more in depth, all right.

On what to put on and what to take off.

Right?

Yes.

Yeah.

So, well, in closing, I want to refer to this statement.

You have the band that says you can.

Amen.

Yes.

By being married.

You have all the promises of God for your marriage.

All the time.

All the time.

All the time.

In desiring and being desired is all.

A part of that two way street.

It is.

So don't settle for.

Hey, you guys.

Don't settle for what the world wants to tell you about it.

Don't settle for what the devil's throwing at you.

That's right.

Do the work.

Do the love work.

That's required.

Yes.

Okay.

All right, so next episode, next week we're going to be talking about agape love.

And then the following week we're going to close it all out with reigniting that loving feeling.

Okay then.

Alrighty.

Oh, we have some.

Yes, we do.

Okay, here's one of them.

On a scale of 1 to 10, ask yourself how you feel the desire for your spouse is.

Now think about it.

You know, give yourself some time to really ponder that.

And if it's not 8 or above, well, what do you feel is keeping it from being higher and what can you do about it?

Like, you know, we talked about being curious.

For example, is it an angry issue?

Are you angry at your spouse or are you just an angry person?

You know, do a self examination.

This is number three.

Do a self examination on how desirable you may be.

And if you see there's areas that you can fix and make adjustments, we'll do so.

Yes.

What's number four?

Number four is the ten second kiss.

Kiss is a great way to help create desire.

You're doing good on desire.

If not, then it's a be really good because there's nothing like a good kiss to help begin.

You know, a good kiss can lead to a makeout session that can lead to more.

But if you're rushing out the door to go to work, it can set the pace and tone for the rest of the day.

So here's what you do.

Grab your spouse.

Even if you're, you're, you're doing it by faith because the desire isn't there, right?

Then pull them over to you.

Set your timer for 10 seconds and plan a real good don't give them a little peck on the cheek or the head for 10 seconds.

Kiss them on the lips and maybe give them a little bit of tongue too if you want.

But give them a good wet kiss and I guarantee you it's going to calm things down, it's going to stir the fires and you never know what could happen then or later in the day, especially sending your honey off to work or going back into the nursery to take care of the kids.

You've got a nice little warm fuzzy going on.

That's right.

Well, you know what, we just are so glad that you're with us and that you've taken the time to listen to our podcast and your feedback.

It matters to us.

Yes.

So we want to hear your comments.

If there's questions you might have, we'll be glad to answer them to the best of our ability.

And also let us know what topics you would like us to discuss in our future podcasts.

So text us voicemail, email us whatever it might be, the phone number and email address.

It's going to be in our show notes.

And if you do have a prayer request, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.

We pray for our married and love it family on a regular basis.

So once again, thanks for joining us and we hope you got inspired by today's message.

We're going to see you next week and remember this, you can be married and love it on purpose.