How deep is your love?

“How deep is your love?”  So sang The Bee Gees in their famous hit song from the 1970s.  We often ask that question of God.  Do You really love me God?  If so, why don’t you answer my prayers?  Why do you let me suffer with losses that can seem too hard to bear? Is that Your idea of love?

Perhaps God is asking us the same question.  How deep is your love for Me?  What will you give up in order to have a deeper relationship with me, one where you rely on My strength and not your own?  This might be your health, your bank account or a deeply important relationship that is now in trouble.  Can we believe that more love is on the other side of the valley we are now in?

Though the tales of the handicapped often point to inspiring heroics, most of would rather keep our stable, ordinary lives by comparison.  Yet the yearning for love never ends and in its pursuit, we seek Him and then ultimately we must surrender to Him in order to feel His love for us.  Isn’t that what deep love is? A surrender, a vulnerability to let ourselves love and be loved.  Jesus showed us the way and we follow with trembling hands.  But in Him, we can do all things.  So let us not judge the life He is giving us, but rather in faith, accept it as His gift to us.

Oh God, what now?

Oh God, what now?

As I have let go of most things in my life, I have become filled with Him.  He occupies my mind, my heart, my soul.  With non-judgment, my mind is clear.  My troubles are few, though they would seem large to my peers.  The Lord has been faithful to me in every crisis and in every way.  Though I had no idea where each issue would end up, He always met my bodily needs and grew my mind, heart and soul.  Indeed, my body is far healthier than most of my peers.  An untroubled mind has that affect on the body. I feel serenity, most of the time.

I have accepted that my path is not the path of others.  His will for me has nothing to do with you.  Yet, you can touch me and I can touch you.  My thoughtless neighbour is my opportunity to grow in grace.  Those who would hurt me are my opportunity to love my enemies, as Jesus asked.  My dying to self in order to lift my wife, has been rewarded a thousand times over by her amazing response.  Yes, it took nine years of concerted effort.  Few have the stamina. But in Jesus, I can do all things. And so can you.  All you and I have to do each day is ask,

Oh God, what now?

Then be obedient.  God is trustworthy but you can only deeply know that in your bones, when you put yourself in that vulnerable position for Him to reveal it in His way and in His timing.  Financially vulnerable. Relationally vulnerable.  Emotionally and mentally vulnerable.   It all boils down to listening.  Be still and you will know He is God.

A flexible spouse learns the true meaning of grace

Many marriages carry the burden of being unequally yoked.  Even when both partners are believers, one may be more committed to being a true follower of Jesus  – in word and in deed.

For the spiritually-oriented spouse, the journey towards grace is a demanding one.  This spouse must consider setting aside his or her own needs in order to meet the needs of the mate.  This reveals itself in being more flexible about decision-making.  Who gets to decide…what is right, good and acceptable.

The flexible spouse learns to discern those times when to let the partner be in control.  This means giving to one’s partner at the expense of one’s own needs.   Sacrificially, this act of love is repeated for two to five years before real changes take root.  Like being a passenger in a car with a wayward driver, crashes occur repeatedly and the flexible spouse learns the meaning of humility.

Small signs of grace become noticeable along the way.   The partner begins to appreciate, forgive and repent as never before.  The partner notices a very real and deep change in the spiritual spouse.  Communication improves as the couple breaks the frustrating 3Ds cycle of Deny, Defend, Deflect.

For the flexible spouse, love changes.  His or her need for traditional love goes away.  Neediness goes away.  Needing to be heard, understood, respected all goes away.  Most importantly, the need to be right goes away.  Being right gives way to being successful. The spiritual spouse seeks to need nothing.  Needing nothing is the true meaning of love (1Cor 13).

The result is grace for the flexible spouse and a transformation of the marriage.  The journey is not for the simple believer but the for the committed follower of Jesus. Great are the rewards – heaven on earth.  Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” (Luke 17:21)  The flexible spouse knows the meaning of this.  It is grace.

To learn more about the spiritual journey of developing a more flexible soul, go to http://www.presentliving.com

Spiritual intimacy for couples – what it means for you.

Spiritual intimacy begins at the source: God.  God is love, the apostle John assures us in 1 John 4:8  “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”  To love means to give.  Jesus makes this very clear throughout his teachings and by his example.  He died to allow us to love and be loved by God the Father.  His loss was our gain. 

But it was His gain too. Jesus returned to the Father to be one with Him, living in love for eternity.  When you love your partner like Jesus loved you, you give.  Their gain is your loss.  But in the end, you gain too.  You discover that in giving your partner what he/she needs, you experience love.  Spiritual love.  The kind where your ego and self-oriented needs die.

Dying hurts.  It is ego and pride that shrinks, crying out in pain and despair along the way.  Yet that is the path to spiritual intimacy with God and true love for your partner.  You cannot love God if you hate your neighbour.  The Bible says it and I’ve experienced it.  Holding judgments against even one person out there, blocks you from feeling God’s love for you.   Jesus said that the greatest command is to love God.  Then he said in Mt 22:39 ”And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.”

The key words are “like it.”  It means the same as.   To love your neighbour is to love God.   To love your spouse the way Jesus taught us to love, by putting ourselves last and others first may feel painful, but the reward is heavenly. 

You will experience spiritual intimacy with your spouse when you put their needs ahead of yours, without compromising God’s teachings for you.  It comes down to boundaries.  You have to know when to give and when to take a stand.  Give away what is their right to do.  Take a stand where it is your right and even obligation to do (such as time spent building your faith).

Yours in the love of Jesus Christ,

John

Ten minutes that will change your married life…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra0ezadC3Os

Communicating without words

This is how being present looks when you are truly connected to the love of your life…

The Math of Love

T x T = T.  That is the math of love.  Truth x Tolerance = Trust. Without trust, there can be no love.  10 x 10 = 100.  Full trust.  Deep love.

How much do you love your partner?    Is he/she truthful with you?  On a scale of 1 to 10, how truthful?   Six?  Seven? Nine?   How tolerant is your partner of you – your habits and your way of doing things?  Six? Seven?  Four?

Measure the trust in your marriage….    6 x 6?  = 36.   Not very high.  9 x 7? = 63.   A long way from 100.

Truth and tolerance are in conflict with each other.  The more truthful you are, the more likely you will attract intolerance! To protect ourselves from intolerance, we hide the truth.  Slowly love dies as we realize deep down that we are never good enough in the eyes of our partner.

For most couples, tolerance is the difficult one.  We judge each other – blame, criticize, snap, roll eyes.  Intolerance shows up as a lack of respect.  We don’t respect what we don’t want to tolerate.  We judge the person.  Then our partner snaps back at us about faults, or begins to hide their truth in order to protect themselves.

Wives hide what they purchase. Husbands hide lustful thoughts.  Each gives one word answers to loaded questions.  Why tell the full truth?  You’ll only get judged for it!

Non-judgment is the answer.  To have full trust and deep love, you must learn to be tolerant of your partner’s truth.  This requires forgiveness of faults, sins and betrayals.  When you forgive your partner, you are blessing yourself.  Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  When we forgive, we are forgiven ourselves.  When we are tolerant, we get truth. With truth, comes a deep love that you can both trust till death do you part.

http://www.truthfulmarriage.com and http://www.whosthedriver.com – a communication tool for couples committed to truthfulness.

To be Truthful or to be Protective? That is the question facing every couple.

There are only two kinds of marriages – truthful and protective. You cannot be both at the same moment in time.  They are a dilemma in the same way that it cannot be both night and day at the same time.  We have no choice but to give up one in order to have the other.   I cannot protect you from what you don’t want to hear, and also be truthful about what’s really going on inside me.

When you first got married, you started out aiming to be truthful. You told each other how you really felt, what you really thought and what you really wanted.  You felt safe and love blossomed.  Your trust felt deep and unshakeable.

However, you didn’t really know each other. The first year was the biggest wake-up call.  To continue reading the full article, click here...

An 8 month married woman’s view

Came across this on a BBC site from Britain:

“I have only been married for eight months, but I know that if my feelings for my husband ever change, I will get divorced. No one can predict how they will feel 10 or 20 years down the line. You can put in as much effort, concentration and focus as you like to make it work but at the end of the day, if you don’t love someone any more it won’t make any difference. When did marriage stop being about love and start being about pre-nups, social stigma and “marriage workshops”? My parents divorced after my father had an affair. Anyone who thinks this should be worked through just to preserve the marriage is crazy. We are human beings and we are entitled to live our lives as we see fit, not by what people believe is the “right” way to behave.”
Kate, Edinburgh

Do you agree?

Can you solve Every Couple’s Dilemma?

Marriage is a dilemma.   If one wants to save money and other wants to spend, there has to be one winner and one loser.  There is no way both partners can win.  If one hates to travel and the other loves to travel, it’s a dilemma.  Can’t do both.    If one partner likes to keep family matters private and the other likes to be open about things, someone has to lose.

The real problem is that the loser usually makes the winner pay a price.  That way both partners lose.  The loser on a core issue may complain, criticize or portray his or her partner as a control freak to others.  This creates a new set of problems, of hurt feelings and broken trust.

No one  feels loved when this cycle is happening.  You need to learn how to solve Every Couple’s Dilemma.

Go to www.marriagedilemma.com and find a communication solution that works.  This will work for any couple who is committed to marriage for life and who is open to a spiritually anchored, Jesus-centered solution.