How's Your Love Life?

How's your love life? We're not trying to be fresh and get up in your personal affairs, but our desire today is to challenge you to think about how well you demonstrate love to your spouse not just during the Valentine season but every day of the year.

Some will think about intimacy between married persons when I talk about their love life and to some degree the success of your love life in Christ will depend on your intimacy with God. A successful LOVE LIFE depends on an active relationship with Jesus Christ.

I admit it is easy to be deceived to believe that love is solely about hearts, flowers, candy and good sex, but Christians must look to Jesus and His Holy Word for the real meaning of love.

God is love. He embodies it in His love and care for every living creature on this planet and He demonstrated it in selfless action by sacrificing His Son, Jesus, so that we can have eternal life. Our job then is to look like Him and demonstrate His love to this love-starved world.

Consider Ephesians 5:1,2:
"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly beloved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." (NIV)

Ephesians 5:1 in the King James version says to "walk in love" and carries the ideal that love should be a lifestyle. Christian can do this with success because "God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given to us." (Romans 5:5, NIV)

A love life then is a challenge to "live a life of love." A life of love is one of sacrifice and sacrifice is often about giving up your rights for the good of others. Isn't that what Jesus did at Calvary? His sacrifice is compared to a fragrance that is sweet in the nose of the one experiencing the smell. When we sacrifice for our marriage it is a sweet-smelling fragrance in the nose of God.

Whew! Can I pause here for a minute? As I (Jo-Ann) examined my love life, I saw that I haven't always put Jim's needs before mine and that I haven't always acted lovingly toward him, even when we aren't disagreeing. I have taken Jim's love for granted more often than I should.

But I praise God for this opportunity to confess my wrongs to Him and be held accountable for godly Christians. God has promised to forgive me and give me another opportunity to get it right. And I will, starting now. How about you?

It's Marriage Mondays . . .