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November 10, 2020 1:00 am
Love is patient. Are you? Bob Lepine, author of the book, "Love Like You Mean It," talks about what it means to be patient, or long-suffering, especially if your spouse isn't as loving, or helpful or attentive as you hoped. Lepine reminds us that most of us got married for oneness. God has put you here to be a dispenser of love to those who need it, so how can you be an ambassador of grace? Cry out to God, and ask for His help.
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Do you define love differently today than you do find it when you were dating back before you were married, a lot of couples do. I think the way you define love back then was just a place of security commitment ultimately feeling I didn't understand the harder parts. I didn't understand self-sacrifice how I define love back then was probably selfish now as soon as I don't I'm unhappy or it's not the way I think it should be an automatic. This is family life today. Our hosts are David and Wilson.
I'm Bob Lapine you can find us online@familylifetoday.com if love is at the heart of what makes a marriage work, and we better make sure we understand what real love is supposed to be will explore that today stay with us and welcome to family life to the thanks for joining us.
I have to tell you we at family life. What we're passionate about is husbands and wives, moms and dads getting in alignment biblically with what our assignment is in marriage and in family. We believe that families can be transformed when husbands and wives, moms and dads start thinking biblically more biblically about this and we believe cultures can be transformed when families are transformed yeah and you're not going to start thinking biblically. Here's a here's a profound thought into you look at the Bible. I mean seriously it's like the cultures can dominate our thinking about love and and and all kinds of things and a lot of us. That's about the only input we get. It's like okay what would happen if I sent them to put as much time into the word of God, you're going to see your marriage and you can see love totally different. It's not just this little cute little Scripture is read it weddings the love chapter, it is profound and how it changes the way you see love That we had seen personally gods change our lives. As a result of surrendering to him and following what he says in Scripture and Bob, you can get into the topic today which is not an easy one for we we have just developed a new video series for couples called love like you mean that it's based on the book I wrote by the same title that came out this year and this is designed for small groups we go through first Corinthians 13 phrase by phrase idea by idea and it's interesting to me that where the Bible starts in defining love for us is with the idea that love is patient, which is not the first word that would come to mind for me when I think about where and I think part of the reason the Bible starts there is because you have to start by recognizing yet this is gonna take some work, some development and we want our listeners to hear an excerpt from the love like you mean it video series were hoping that there will be tens of thousands of couples who will get together and go through this content in a Sunday school class in a small group.
Couples can do it online on a zoom call and what great premarital material. Yeah boy I wish we would've heard this before we got married well in in one of the early sessions we talk about what the Bible says what it's is one quality of love is that love is patient, so let's listen to an excerpt from the series number of years ago I was approached by some friends who asked if I'd be willing to officiate their wedding and to do premarital counseling for them. So I was delighted to do that, they were coworkers.
I knew both of them and how look forward to interacting with them around marriage issues and so I remember getting together with them for the first time. Their names were Maria and Hector and I asked each of them got a piece of paper and I wanted them to write down in two or three sentences a definition of love. Just write down for me how you would find love someone ask you to define so they did paper and jotted out their notes and when they were done. I just pulled up and and turn it into me so they handed her. Then I put it aside, and I thought I would go back and look at that later we went on with our first session, premarital counseling. Well, later that night I pulled up there the paper and read their definitions of love and read a little bit like bad Romance poetry from the 60s or a Hallmark card matched up together you know it was a lot of flowers and sunshine words. Not a lot of hard work words when it comes to marriage.
I think the way I define love back then was just a place of security, commitment, ultimately feeling I didn't understand the harder parts. I didn't understand self-sacrifice how I define love back then was probably selfish now is I don't I'm unhappy or it's not the way I think it should be. Think back then.
I probably thought it was easy. It's not the beginning is always be good to do all this for the silly stuff together always around virtually everything that you want to. And now we were the farmer and soaks grace and mercy and love each other through those mistakes like I still want to choose. You made me really upset to say now not doing things to serve him and let him that it's hard how my displaying Christ in anything that I would say love now to me is so much different because it's a picture of God. It's more than just commitment it's it's a pursuit regardless of what is going on in our circumstances or how I feel at the moment the will to love you if I gave you the same assignment. You pull a piece of paper you wrote down your debt. Mission of love. What kind of descriptive words would show up in your definition. If you're trying to explain what real love looks like somebody else.
How do you define what words would you use.
I think it's fascinating. The first word that shows up in the Bible's definition of love if you gave me a piece of paper and write down words that describe love. I would write down a whole lot of words before I never get to the word that the Bible describes as the word defining love and that word is patient.
Now it's not that that's an unimportant word it's it's a powerful word critical word for us when it comes to understanding love first Corinthians 13 four love is patient, Dr. Bracken is the president at Wheaton College says this he says patience is having the ability to put up with the frustrations we will face anytime we have a relationship with someone who is just as flawed and every bit as fallen as we are in older translations of the Bible.
There's an interesting way that the word patience is translated the original Greek word is translated in older versions this way. Love is long suffering love suffers long just to say if I said you let me describe love to your loving relationship with somebody over a lifetime – here's the first thing you need to know you're really suffering for a long time coming. Who says okay I'm right that's that's what I was signing up. Most of us don't even think that way. And yet when we think about the traditional wedding vows there designed to help us think this way. That's why in those vows.
There are phrases like, for better or for worse, because anybody who's been around marriage long enough knows worse is going to come into your relationship and love is good have to figure out a way to hold together when you're experiencing worse, for richer or for poorer what you do when either poverty or affluence begin to cause a drift in your marriage.
What you do when there's sickness in a marriage relationship. These kinds of pressures can begin to drain the emotion out of a marriage relationship and yet the Bible says love is enduring love suffers long and well in the midst of these kinds of challenges when we been listening to a portion of the new love like you mean it video series for couples and and it's a hard place to start to think love is going to have to learn how to endure hardship, but it's the reality.
All of us are to face if we don't know how to face tough times together and how to demonstrate patience toward one another.
You know it's interesting when year for the Detroit Lions wives Bible study that I need.
I asked the whites as you watch a movie in your defining true love would you rather see a young married couple walking down the sidewalk holding hands are a couple that had been married 70 years walking down the sidewalk holding hands, and of course they all said outlets. The couple that's been married 70 years and have a different walking means there in their name and my parents were married 70 years before my mom just passed away and you talk about enduring love you now to watch Stan stay side-by-side to encourage one another to love one another through Alzheimer's through heart attacks through the good, the bad, the poor, the rich, there's something endearing and biblical thing. I look at and I think God intended use of both your mom and dad have to be patient with one another yes and you saw how love is they are in the midst of that patience and what demonstration of love when we are enduring and putting up with the hardship that's external and the idiosyncrasies that are part of our relationship. Yet I tell you, there's something that you tear up when you see it and its emotional when you watch somebody go through hardship and bond closer together.
I think you tear up because it's divine. You know you're looking at a godly love because it's so easy and tough times to bail and I didn't sign up for this. Actually you did, you know, when you say I'm going to be married. You say, are better for worse, and you just don't know. Every marriage is going to have parts of worse. And it's beautiful when you endure through those romantic in the moment you know it's not our Hollywood view our version of it, but it is this beautiful picture of endurance, one of the things that we did in the series as we got a number of couples together and had them share about their marriage and their experience of love in marriage, but it's a real tribute to your producer Jim Mitchell, Jim, to the great job with this and and what we wanted was to say there's a real life to all that were talking about here, and one of the couples we talked to Robbie and Sabrina are in a blended marriage. Both of them have been previously married and learning to love and show patients to one another. That was something as they were blending their family.
Patience was required and they sure about that. The video series. The hardest part and I married, I think, is learning how to love that person so we can from a divorce situation where there was trouble we came from a situation where we both loved our previous spouses. There was never a waning that and when we got married I would be for me to find out how to let him and in it was his learning curve. You think you know how to do it all. Sabrina requires more attention first wife. Every so I had to learn how to live and how to pay her attention think she had to be patient with me while patient with the way he was used to being loving and being laughed and have to be patient and the growth of that and realizing 22 years with the woman that he last before he married me seven years at the man I left for me again and now were trying to compare the growth in that time, together with just six months or a year or year and 1/2, so we really had to just be patient and wait for that kind of love to really take and inform the fruit that it needed to form, so we both nights we would go to think sending argument are are something that nature and you think wow this never happened to me before. Yes is not something I dealt with in my previous marriage. It was easier than you get into the trap and you have to get yourself out of anger. I know I am choosing to have grace upon this situation, and upon this person and not let myself go down into the depths of saying it's never getting better so you just have to continually hope in the patient endurance those times and say I'm going to choose to have hope peacefully that it does get better and it will just say you love another person is to say I'm surprised these challenges come away with these challenges, not to give up on us when we face these kinds of challenges I'm in for the duration even when things get hard quickly talking about enduring abuse. When I talk about being long-suffering. I'm not saying that if somebody's been physically abusive to you are emotionally cooled over sustained period of time that your job is just to to endure just to suffer in fact are not loving somebody well if you're enabling them with that kind of behavior they need to be loved well so that they can they can come that behavior so they can move from that sinful pattern in their life to a new pattern, but patient, love is love that says I'm not to be surprised that adversity comes to run and yes it's probably the costly and it's not pleasant at certain times were I will bear up in the midst of that patience is his grace fueled by love that sustains a relationship and think about this God is patient with us.
My favorite verses in the Bible is a verse that says that God demonstrated his love for us. This way, while we were still rebelling against him sinning against him, Christ died for us. God demonstrated his love through sacrifice and through suffering while we were still opposed.
That's what patient endurance marriage relationship is supposed to look like. Love does not crumble when circumstances get hard. Love says my goal is your good even if it cost me something and maybe one of the most remarkable examples of this in the Bible is the account of the interaction between Jesus and Judas on the night that Judas comes to betray Jesus. Jesus knows what's going on you and the other disciples are the garden of Gethsemane. There, praying. Judas has already left the meal and Jesus knew why he was leaving, so here comes Judas with temple guards behind him in the coming to arrest Jesus and Judas walks up to Jesus and remember what he does. He kisses him on the cheek kiss of betrayal and Jesus looks at Judas in that moment, and the first thing he says his friend calls him friend that moment, he says, do quickly what you came to do here is Jesus knowing the greater glory of God is at stake who is entering into a season of suffering.
Later in the same scene he says to his disciples, and I wanted to put an end to this I can call 30,000 angels to come to my defense of this whole thing will be over right now Jesus is entering into suffering because it's for our good and he is patiently enduring what he's experiencing in this moment, the couple that I did premarital counseling with Maria and Hector at the end of our time together after we done five or six sessions of premarital counseling. I got out there definition of love that they have written the first night and I read it aloud to both of them I watch them smile because my goal over the time we were together was to have them removed from this romanticized view of love to a more biblical way of thinking about love and really the end of the session. I want them to lock in on two big ideas.
I wanted them to see love is commitment and self-sacrifice, and for that to sustain itself throughout marriage.
There's Camilo patients required and I think that's a great starting place for us as we think about love.
Love is patient, there's going be commitment, self-sacrifice, and when suffering comes, will do. We endure do we suffer long.
Love is patient question is are you might think. The portion of the new love like you made a video series for couples. A good step on your toes or did you pick something way to go but each of these things I eyed somebody years ago who said read first Corinthians 13. The definition of love and take up the word love and put in your name. Bob is patient Bob is kind, Bob is not self-seeking. Bob doesn't insist on his own way.
I went… We can't get very far without going okay. That's not true about me but I have a young wife who reach out to me recently and she and her husband are tough spot there. Trying to patch up a lot of damage in their marriage and she sent me a note and she said the I'm reading your book and its convicting, but it's life-changing and that's what you read a book open. That's what we put this video series together, hoping will happen that the love like you mean it video series 10 sessions for couples to go through in a Sunday school class in a small group, you can do this online. The videos are available on DVD or you can stream the videos. There are workbooks available for the couples as well and we are hoping a lot of husbands and wives will get with other husbands and wives because there's real, there's power in synergy when you're doing this with other couples so you can do it on your own, but to do it with other couples. I'd I just think that multiplies the experiences significantly. Find out more about the brand-new love like you mean it video series. It is available for preorder now you can go to family life to a.com to find out more. There's also information on a website about other video series available from family life of the vertical marriage series that you guys have done the art of marriage series that you're a part of the parenting you guys are part of that as well. A whole line of video resources designed to help husbands and wives and moms and dads build stronger, healthier marriages and families again go to our website family like today.com and find out about the new love like you mean it video series or call one 800 FL today. If you have any questions or if you'd like to order the series by phone again. The number 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life and in the word today asked about the love like you mean it video series or any of the series we have available here at family life and I want to say thank you to our monthly legacy partners and to those of you who donate to support the ministry of family life to your the people who make all of these resources.
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We believe godly marriages and families can change the world and you help make that happen every time you make a donation to family life to the as we look toward the close of 2020 we are asking God to help us close this year in the black. We had to make some significant cuts in the last several months in order to weather some of the challenges we've all been facing this year and so were asking listers if you're able to make a donation as we approach the end of the year. Or if you're thinking about you and giving please consider family life to our pledges. We will invest what you send to help strengthen the marriages and families of people all around the globe. So thanks for helping to make that happen, and we hope you can join us again tomorrow morning to talk about what a good man looks like Nathan Clarkson is the author of a book called good man and he examines what makes up godly masculinity talk with him about that tomorrow with us for that think our engineer today. Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast team on behalf of our hosts David and Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. See you back next time for another edition of family life, family life, to a is a production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry help for today hope for tomorrow