The record shows that when many couples get married today they are “in love” but know nothing about true love because they did not get their concept of love from the Bible but from Hollywood, television, and pop music. The “in love” experience does not last because it is emotionally based. We see the best in the other person, and the relationship stimulates the best in us. In fact we do and say things that we feel deeply in our emotions. So we give gifts we cannot afford and make outrageous promises only to learn after marriage that we were “uttering sweet nothings” in the moon light.
Then we come down off our emotional high, all the euphoria evaporates, and we discover that we are in fact not lovers at all, but are TWO SELF-CENTERED BRATS who made promises to each other that we are incapable of keeping. Euphoria is replaced with disappointment, hurt, anger, and fear. As I grew up most such couples just lived in “Silent Desperation,” knowing they were trapped and incarcerated for life, divorce not being an option. Today, half of married couples trash their marriage by divorce or extra-marital relationships.
However, “Silent Desperation” or Divorce are not the options of those who take seriously God’s Handbook on Marriage, the Holy Bible, for therein they discover that the only thing that opens the doorway to a lifelong relationship is God’s kind of love – Agape – which “wills” not “feels” the well being of their spouse and expresses that love sacrificially according to God’s specific directions of which there are seven characteristics: (1 Cor. 13:4-7; Gal. 5:22-23; 1 John 4:7-8)[1]
- Kindness
- Patience
- Forgiveness
- Courtesy
- Humility
- Generosity
- Honesty
[1] Gary Chapman, Love as a Way of Life, pp. 191-198