Why Love Is Preeminent

If you find yourself wondering why doesn't my marriage measure up to the love stories that I see in movies what case you just need to get real. Everything is you want to live in everything that she thought alive was based on the not to be on the right idea made one you love bended real life is like somebody. This is family like today. Our hosts are David and Wilson from bottlefeeding you can find us online@familylifetoday.com.

Time for some recalibration time for a reality check when it comes to what real love is supposed to look like let's do that today okay. Stay with us and welcome to family life to.

Thanks for joining us. I I'm ready for a revolution.

You know I think it's about time he grabbed my guitar say you want to.

Really I think it's about time for there to be a revolution in marriages around what love is supposed to look like. I think I know someone that wrote about yeah I think it's a really good reason is this famous author. This is something I'm pretty passionate about. I did write a book called love like you mean it, and it comes out of years of talking to couples at weekend.

Remember, getaways, and have good practical and biblical. I just notice that couples don't know they think about love and marriage from a cultural standpoint, not from a biblical sample you seen that right. Oh yeah, I mean it's I think we all agree it's always been true, but I think there's something in our culture. I don't know the last decade or more. It's dominating how we view love and its social media. It's their shows like bachelor and bachelorette again. I met Sen. Hiram shows yeah I know going in a prince charming hated which makes a point it's always been. You've always had misconceptions compared to reality you decided let's go and find out what the author, the creator of love has the say exactly read first Corinthians 13 and you see a whole different picture of love than what you see in ROM comes or what you hear about in pop songs.

So I wrote the book love like you mean it. It came out this year and our team said we need to come up with something that would take this book and make it accessible for couples to go through together with other couples have conversations around the subjects and so were about to release a small group video series, and it is exciting. I was really encouraged by how turned out, and some of the people we had participate in this process. I think brought a lot to it. Each of these video sessions is about 20 minutes long so it's easy to do in an adult Sunday school or a small group, you can do it online if you assume small group that you are doing these days in just a couple yeah it it is something we designed it so that you could use it for premarital engagement or one-on-one mentoring with other couples and its 10 sessions long but it's also designed so it can kinda be a choose your own if you say we only have six weeks to go through something like this when you do the first and the last, and you pick the middle ones you want to go through. There's even an assessment you can take to help you determine which are the ones you need to pay more attention to this series to take an assessment yet so we should we should give you the assessment and share with our listeners yeah what your strengths and we we we want our listeners to get all sample of this and to hear some of what's behind the big idea and so this is an excerpt from session 1 of the love like you minute small group series where we talk about the fact that our expectations related to love and marriage are often different than the reality that we experience. I don't have experience with online dating sites that married clearly old enough that before I was married no such thing existed, but I also know some of you babysitting here that I met one another was through technology but one of the things I've told people who have been on the sciences that sometimes the profile picture that you see on the site is not the same as the real life image when you finally meet that person got a nice airbrushed glamour shot on the website meet for coffee and you know so little different than you did on the website. I think that can also apply to how we think about love and marriage before Mary versus after because I think we have this image that love and marriage are going to be this wonderful, beautiful, magical, always romantic, always joy filled experience, we see the airbrushed image the glamour shot and then we get married and it's like that sometimes when you think about the rest of the diamonds kind ordinary. It's a little more mundane. We when she pulled up to Buffalo Wild Wings. Can I with my college buddies.

She got a car and I chose her cheesy. We may kickball. I wouldn't say was love at first sight. Like in the beginning of this relationship relationship.

I pray for him and this is my husband Mike will now he was an email when I was 15 my sister was dating his best friend. She wanted to visit him his job as well and he came out to say hello and not remember that we not live per se really nigh like me and so I need to just a couple of dates in.

After a while, I would like to go any further, there are situations are two different and he told me that I believe that you are the one I got answer me about it and I believe I saw her from classroom no, I did call him that we can and he gets on the phone.

He says hey baby, how are you I'm not your baby and you don't know me like that. Write me a letter about yourself thinking that he would never write me as I was really trying to brush them off. But he actually wrote me and sprayed cologne in the Cardin gift with it when I read the card that is by reading the words in the car and he was really great guy find a we both say it was truly God's will for us to get married, not in my personality personality anybody on a blindingly per se like like a person we have these nine illusions about what marriage would be well.

We watch movies or read Jane Austen novels or we we listen to pop songs and just think this is what the world supposed to be. This is what marriage is supposed to be. So we come into marriage with this highly romantic highly emotion-based view of marriage, author and pastor Dr. Chapman calls it the tingles and tingles right we all like the tingles when we feel a bit marriage but as Dr. Chapman says the tingles will not sustain you through a lifetime of marriage. The tingles will come and go when they come. It's great when they're gone.

We miss some, but that's not what real love is all about. In the first place aspect of our love for one another, but it's not the foundation, and that's what this series is all about. How do we get a better understanding of what the Bible describes as the foundation for love and marriage. How do we build a marriage foundation that is described for us in the Bible foundation and the kind of love that has fiber and grit and substance to it. That's the kind of love we need to build a marriage and gratefully the Bible describes that for us in first Corinthians 13. You probably heard that passage of Scripture. Maybe read yourself, but we really stop to think deeply about the pondered to dig down and say what does this passage tell us about what real love is supposed to look like like our wedding vows you remember when we got married and they said you promise to love honor and cherish if we heard those words we thought. Yes of course I promise to do that but we really stop to think what is love and honor in church look like 70% require of me… How to love, honor, and church is not about that. I will always feel a certain way about marriage. It's about that. I will always choose to act a certain way. I will always make choices that are loving and honoring and cherishing promising big promise. That's the promise that we made when we married. This is to see how people look at social media love to look at families and always always got an argument that she wanted to be like for me everything I would never watch what I've seen enough of the credit previews no she want to live life was based on the right. Maybe we might be on you know we're real people don't like something we all will be just like you is like somebody love that fund that that guy is real is a guy like we got a couple together and just have them share about their own experience around the themes from this book is about love and what had been included that in the video series that we put together so it's not can be boring. It's not just Bob preaching at you when you hear and even that couple is this like that is that is exactly how we all feel we wanted to bring real life and make this a real life thing real and that every woman wants to be like and I love you and sometimes I don't like you) doesn't mean I don't love you. It's hard. It's messy but I still love you. I need something but when Mary and I are talking to a an engaged couple. I will often say no look. Marriages can be harder than you realize and Marion will say and it's wonderful yeah and it's harder than you realize and it's wonderful could you want them to understand this really is. This is great and it's hard simultaneously, but it's it's so word and no you tell them the truth until there in that reality. And we go out in the series to take couples to the source material for where you find what love is all about and that's the Bible, so let's listen to another excerpt from the lovely video series. Read the biblical description of love from first Corinthians 13 and remind us of what the Bible says here and you probably heard these words before but I want us to think carefully and deeply about this and as I read this passage you might be thinking this is like me is describing me this kind of person you can take the word love out and put your name in and say these things be true about me to do that is Irene first's 13 starting at verse four. The Bible says love is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast, it's not arrogant or rude does not insist on its own way. It's not your reason. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

Love never ends.

This is the kind of love that is the right kind of foundation for marriage to thrive couples to flourish with this foundation in place. Marriage can be what God designed for it to be. But when we settle for something less than this. When we try to build our marriage on something that is a less firm foundation than this kind of pretty love that's being described here will have a less than fulfilling and less than God honoring marriage takes work. There are no shortcuts. This is this is hard to pursue. You don't just fall into this kind of love. This is kind of love that has to be worked on, has to be cultivated has to be nurtured just at this when this love is not present in a marriage. Whatever else that marriage might be it might be a happy marriage. You might be mutually appealing to one another.

You might get along well with one another. You can you can coexist. You can have an okay marriage without this kind of love, but which can never have is the kind of marriage that God intended, or that glorifies him. You might be the ideal spouse charming responsible.

Your good-looking your successful your fun-loving you're intelligent you're all these wonderful things but first Corinthians 13 says it doesn't matter how gifted you are, how skilled you are noble you are. If love is absent than what you got on the other side is nothing it says everything minus love equals nothing.

That's the calculation in the Bible without love. You don't have anything that that honors God.

You don't have anything that pleases God.

You might have a nice marriage but unless you have the kind of greater love that the Bible talks about a love that lays down his life for others, then it's always good to be less than fully satisfying for you and it's never going to be the kind of marriage that displays God in his glory to others. There is really specific instance that I remember early on feeling like okay take. Love is not obviously just butterflies and on like machine feelings all the time and I knew that going into management. Then after we got married like this means having our conversation and admitting I'm wrong and committing. I wear like an having conversations that aren't always fine at all you're getting like we need to talk about. I would rather I needed to realize I need to I need really lean into this and conversation. Yeah, I think I quickly understood that we are in different places just mentally and spiritually. I feel like not on each other or anything but just in different places and understanding who she was and how she processed things, was a huge part of that and growing.

I can be the kind of person right in there let's just get it over with and she needs to think about it and talk through it so I think that was a big part in the first year of her marriage really understand each other and when we were at and how we like to process things our relationship as husband and wife should have at its core, a passionate commitment to want to see the other person in our marriage thrive to see them excel to see them be the person God wants them to be. And God wants us to experience in marriage. A taste of the joy that the father and son and Holy Spirit have experienced in their union in their oneness throughout eternity as they have loved one another with perfect unity. God says I want your marriage to give you a taste of the joy that we've experienced and enjoyed the you're invited into as a son or daughter of God and that you will experience for eternity with us as you surrender your life to Christ, so that's what this study is all about that kind of love that some of you were very practically minded people. You may find yourself a little frustrated in the series, thinking I look through the manual.

Where's the section on sex or finances or communication. Her parenting work or conflict resolution. Those are all common issues that we face in marriage and they're not on important issues there issues that need to be addressed and biblical wisdom needs to be brought to those what I'm suggesting in this series is that before we focus on those issues. Let's focus on the foundation.

Let's make sure we understand what love is. Let's make sure we understand what we are to build our marriage and and if we understand what love is and if we get the foundation right that's it will affect our communication will affect our conflict resolution are parenting our finances are sexual little missy. All of those manifestations of love all those practical realities of love will grow best when they grow in the soil of the kind of love that's defined for us here in the Bible.

So let's get ready to look carefully at what the Bible says. Real love looks like listing again to an excerpt from the new love like you mean it video series that's about to be released by family life series for couples to go through with other couples in a small group mentor coupled with the younger couple husband-and-wife could go through this on their own and have a conversation about it.

We just want couples to start inking more biblically about love. Okay what if I'm a wife has a husband that is interested can I do this for some girlfriends. I think it's going to help everybody understand love better right so your teaching from Scripture. This is from first Corinthians, and so we really would have the foundation and definition of what true biblical love that you would, I think you will be frustrated because you are to be growing in your understanding about what love is and your spouse isn't going to be growing along with you that we can always control them, saying, the best would be.

Here's what you can do. I think you could say to your spouse hate I want to show you about a 10 minute video clip idea. Shawn, the first half of session one and say is this something we could do together or do with other couples.

I think a lot of spouses may be a lot of husbands they hear about something like this and I don't know this is just to be 10 sessions of torture for me what I should do.

That's right.

And maybe watching a little bit of it. They would go this would be okay on I just say to the man do do this this I mean it. You don't think this can help there's one thing to do with your wife.

That's great you do with other couples and use you see how real their marriages in your marriage or similar struggles and you hear God's word God, you show up and do some couples who have been through your vertical marriage video series. This could be the follow-up phone that and couples who haven't been through vertical marriage should check it out as well that you can go to our website. Family life to.com to find out more about the new love like you mean it video series or about the vertical marriage video series about the heart of marriage, video series are parenting video series. The stepping up video series. We got a lot of resources available for small groups or for outreach. You can use these video series invite couples in your neighborhood to come over for a potluck dinner show session. One of any of these video series and say what you think about getting back together next week or couple weeks from now let's go to the series together again all of the information about the new love like you mean it video series or the other resources we have a family life, you'll find the information available on our website@familylifeto.com or you can call if you have any questions, call one 800 FL today, 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today.

Call to order the love like you minute video series or if you have any questions about any of the other series we have available and I just want to say a word of thanks to those of you who support the ministry of family life and make these resources possible, especially our monthly legacy partners legacy partners provide the financial stability, the backbone for this ministry month in and month out.

You make it possible for us to consistently provide practical biblical help and hope for marriages and families.

You keep this program on the air on your local station and on stations all around the country. So thank you for your partnership with us and we hope you realize there are hundreds of thousands of husbands and wives, moms and dads who are benefiting every day. As a result of your financial investment. We appreciate you and were grateful for your partnership and we hope you can join us back tomorrow to talk about the unusual place where the Bible begins finding real love looks like talk about that tomorrow along with our entire broadcast Time for another family life, family life to day is the production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas.

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