February 15

“God is love.  His very nature is perfect love, but because of sin love does not always come freely and naturally to His children....Are you struggling to love someone?” H. Blackaby, Experiencing God Day-by-Day, 2/15

The more I only go to God for my love needs the more I understand why I struggle to love others at times.  It is so amazingly simple I don’t understand why it’s not abundantly clear to everyone (including me).  It must be the power of sin that keeps this knowledge from us.  For what I’ve discovered is I cannot love another as long as I’m expecting something in return.  I think a major problem in marriages is that we confuse “relationship” and “love”.  In order to have a good relationship there are things that must take place on both sides.  It’s like any partnership.  The very nature of a partnership is that each person in it has responsibilities that must be carried out in order for it to work properly.  Separate from all of this, however, is love.  Carrying out your responsibilities has nothing to do with love, but the first thing a woman will do is equate her husband’s timeliness in doing his chores with how much he loves her.  A husband, on the other hand, probably equates his wife’s carrying out of her “conjugal responsibilities” with how much she loves him.  We wouldn’t do this if we only sought to get love from God.  Our partner, then, becomes the benefactor of our love relationship with God.  There is no longer any effort needed to love others because the way they treat us is no longer a factor.  Just like a new mother doesn’t need anything from her newborn infant to love it with her whole heart--even when it’s getting her up twice a night--we don’t need anything from others in order to love them and care for them.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t work out a schedule for that child that will allow us to get some sleep.  In a marriage it means each partner needs to be responsible for their end of the relationship and things may need to be negotiated to make that happen.  Love should never become an issue.  If it is, we must look at our relationship with God and see what’s wrong there.

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory He may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.”  Ephesians 3:14-19