Morning Moments

A wife seemed so distressed in her marriage. She needed so desperately for the man she married to tell her how he loved her. After some time of despair her husband asked her what we wrong. She told him that she just needed to have him tell her he loved her. She continued that he never told her that he loved her. To which the man replied, “I told you I loved you when I married you and if I change my mind I will let you know.”

A man sent his wife a message on his cell phone. It was a simple message of three words, “I Love You.” She replied to the message with the question, “What did I do?” “NOTHING,” he replied. He loves her not for what she did or did not do, but for HER.

We are a strange lot about our love expressions. If we worked as hard to STAY in love as we do to GET in love, there would be few marital problems. Loving is indeed more than merely saying the words, just as praise is more than just saying “praise the Lord” all the time.

No ONE of us as true believers has a shortage of the love Paul wrote about in 1 Cor. 13:4-8, but we are sometimes slack in saying it.

There is also the complication of a limited English vocabulary. We say, “I love…” in reference to animals, clothes, beautiful scenery, church members, food, and a thousand other things we enjoy; and then with perhaps a little less enthusiasm at times say the same thing to our spouse, or our parents, or our children.

We have a precious little Maltese dog. She is beautiful and she knows it. When she runs, her hair flows in the breeze and she loves being held. I love that little dog, but I certainly do not love her as I love my wife of almost 44 years. Mattie loves to lick me…my wife doesn’t NOT do that. BUT I certainly love my wife more than that dog, even if she doesn’t lick me.

I spoke with a man recently whose wife had discovered that he had several “affairs” or adulterous relationships. When confronted, he said the relationships meant nothing but sex to him but that it was his wife he loved. His wife denied him the pleasure, but other women delighted in his pleasure.

When we really read about the love of God in us by the Holy Spirit, we discover that love teaches us to refuse any “feelings” that do not want to best for the other person, with fadeless hopes, that never fail, and are not touchy, fretful, resentful, and enduring.

One’s choice of a spouse is not the solution to marital problems. One’s choice of the faith and love are God Himself IS. We all need the kind of love that only Christ can give. We need it to love ourselves as we should (“for what man hateth his own body), and we need it for others so that we “take no account of a suffered wrong” and rejoice when truth and righteous prevail” as we love our enemies and pray for those who might “despitefully use and persecute us”

“LOVE NEVER FAILS”.

Love disciplines, love directs, love deletes forgiven sins, love reaches out with broken limbs and a bleeding heart in the hope that God will reach others around us with HIS love.

BLESSINGS!