In the last post, I shared key quotes from Gary Thomas’ book A Lifelong Love: What If Marriage Is about More Than Just Staying Together? from the spiritual dimension of marriage. Today I will share quotes from the last two legs of the marriage stool – Growing Together and The Journey Toward Love.
Again, I encourage you to choose at least one of the quotes below to prayer over and discuss with your spouse. Also, please share by leaving a comment on the blog of how the quote spoke to you.
Growing Together in Love
A lifelong love is all about thriving in a ministry-minded marriage that impacts others.
If we aren’t dedicated to saying “I do” every day after the wedding, then, relationally speaking, that’s a day lost.
A good marriage isn’t something that you find; it’s something you make, and you have to keep on making it. Just as important (and here lies the hope), you can also begin remaking it at any stage.
Intimacy is something we can choose to build and even rebuild if it has been lost. … Intimacy isn’t something you “have” or “don’t have” as much as it is something you choose.
We have to fight to not let the kids come first and thus destroy the stability of our kids’ home – even when they’re babies. … And the wife can do a lot of harm to her marriage if, ruled by those strong maternal feelings, she succumbs to the trap of becoming a mom first and a wife second.
When a marriage gets sick, the family gets sick. To stop building your marriage for the sake of your children is like leaving them out in the rain while you cook the dinner.
Becoming one with another person helps us to experience God in His fullness.
I have to choose to look at every moment of marriage as a way to purposefully bless my wife.
One of the things that inhibits the growth of marital intimacy is when we start to focus on the difficulties of loving our spouses rather than focusing on how we can bless them.
Marriage changes when we stop doing it alone. When we stop trying to make ourselves feel something, when we stop trying to muster up some kind of hope and instead go to the one sure hope we have and pray, “God please give me the will to make this marriage work, for Your good pleasure.”
[You can slowly begin putting your marriage back together, when you begin] growing toward God and then growing toward each other.
God wants you to have an intimate marriage even more than you do.
The Journey Toward Love
For a Christian, our highest desire for our spouses should be to want them to seek first the kingdom of God, to love God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength.
I now understand that God created marriage in part to rid me of my selfishness and pride, to teach me how to life “a life of love.”
Biblical love isn’t a feeling to be felt; it’s a commitment to be kept. You can’t make yourself feel anything, but you can choose to submit your actions to the will of God. So you can choose to love your spouse if you define love as the Bible does, even if you can’t choose to become “in love” once again.
If you truly want a lifelong love … you must first accept as most important the biblical definition of what love actually is. [I Corinthians 13]
To give up hope in your spouse is to give up hope in God and His ability to change someone’s heart.
Love is not desire, but love creates desire. The more loving I act toward someone, the more I begin to desire that person.
We truly are designed to be at our best when we put our spouse’s needs above our own.
Wow…”God wants me to have an intimate marriage even more than I do.” So, what is stopping me? What is stopping you?
I pray that God will use these quotes and this book to truly transform your marriage and help you understand that “the ‘secret’ to a truly sacred marriage is actually a person, God’s promised Holy Spirit.”
We have to fight to not let the kids come first and thus destroy the stability of our kids' home – even when they're babies. … And the wife can do a lot of harm to her marriage if, ruled by those strong maternal feelings, she succumbs to the trap of becoming a mom first and a wife second.
this is the one that really speaks to me, but its not the wife its the husband for me sometimes. he was spending most of his time not working with them but they were sick so that I know had to do with it but I started to feel jealous not good on my part. I am really great at talking with him and telling my feeling and we talk and work it out and makes me feel that my feelings are valid. it still becomes a problem at times and thank the Lord we can communicate.
They say that realizing the problem is half the battle. I think you have made a huge step. God bless you as you grow in your lifelong love.