Mentoring Men for the Master

OVERCOMING THE DESTROYER OF HAPPINESS IN YOUR HOME

If you would make your marriage a “Little Heaven on Earth,”  you must overcome the enemy of a happy marriage.  What is this?  Selfishness – that human tendency to protect, promote, and project our desires and ways without regard to others.  The Bible calls it the flesh.  What power can overcome this monster?  Only God’s kind of love experienced in your heart and expressed by your actions toward others.  Such is the wonderful work of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).

The love of which I speak is not physical love or sexual (Eros).  It is not brotherly love (Phileo) nor is it parental love (Storge).  None of these have the power to overcome, to subdue selfishness because they within themselves are love of self.  Only God’s kind of love can accomplish it – Agape love- love that loves unconditionally and sacrificially, that reaches out to bless and help others with no thought of being paid back.  This is the love demonstrated by our Savior on Calvary.

Now Paul clearly shows that God’s love in action is the cure for human selfishness.  Let us note 3 crucial truths Paul propounds:

  1. God’s Kind of Love (agape) Is Absolutely Essential for The Christian Life in general, and if so, especially for a happy married life. 1 Cor. 13:1-3 says, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.  And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge: and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth  me nothing.”
    1. Without love, it doesn’t matter what the husband or wife may say. Sweet words and promises are only hot air without God’s love (v.1).
    2. Without love, it doesn’t matter what you know. You may have all the books on marriage and have attended all the seminars, you are nothing without love- v. 2.
    3. Without love, it doesn’t matter what you sacrifice. Many a husband has sacrificed to have a mansion, nice car, every material thing and yet his home is miserable.  :  A close friend moved out of the most affluent section of Wilmington.  I asked him why he would leave such a “Paradise on Earth.”  He replied, “The people  living there are so miserable I couldn’t stand to live beside them.  It depressed me.”  Illus.:  The woman who had everything but wrote her mother, “I hate my husband.”
  2. God’s Kind of Love is Abundantly Expressive. In our text, Paul uses 15 words to describe love.  All these words are verbs and in the present tense, meaning love is something you do, not say, and it works constantly (present tense).
    1. God’s kind of love suffers long. That is, it is patient.  No such thing as a quick, fantastic marriage.  It takes time.  The first year of my marriage was a struggle.  I could easily have divorced, but God gave me grace enough to be patient, now my marriage is a “little heaven on earth.”
    2. God’s kind of love is kind – so love is the cure for inconsiderateness. Love is kind in big and little ways.  :  Some observed “if you see a man open the door of the car for his wife, either she is new or the car is new.”
    3. Love does not envy.
    4. Love is not puffed u, vaunteth not itself – the cure for ego and pride.
    5. Love does not behave rudely – so it’s a cure for bad manners. Love is a lady and gentleman.
    6. Love seeketh not its own way – cure for selfishness. :  One man said, “Jesus made me and my wife one and I am that one.”
    7. Love is not provoked – cure for bad temper, a governor of the soul. : “But my mother had red hair, and I am Irish.” “No, you are of your father the devil.  Don’t blame it on your parents.”
    8. Love thinketh no evil – cure for unforgiveness. Ephesians 4:32.  Marriage is the union of two forgivers.
    9. Love rejoices not in iniquity – but rejoices in the truth.
    10. Love beareth and covereth all things. There should be communication within marriage but you should not go outside and spread your troubles.
    11. Love believeth all things – cure for suspicion.
    12. Love hopeth all things – cure for pessimism.
    13. Love endures all things – cure for giving up.
    14. Finally, God’s Kind of Love Always Endures or Never Fails. :  God is love no matter the way the wind is blowing.

Now let’s look back at our text and put the Name of Jesus where love appears:

Jesus suffers long and is kind.  Jesus envies not, is not puffed up, vaunteth not  Himself, behaves not rudely, etc.

Now see if you can place your own name where love appears:      “Bill suffers long, Bill envies not, is not puffed up, etc.”

But you say, “But I cannot have that kind of love.”  “Wrong.  When you are  born again, you are born of God’s kind of love.”  1 John 4:7-8 says, “Beloved,       let us love one another; for love is of God: and everyone that loveth is born of       God, and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is   love.”

Illus.:  Once there was single man who lived with his mother and made the   statement that he only loved her and would never love anyone else. Then he met a beautiful girl and then said that he now loved two people and no one   else.  He married the girl and they had a son.  He said he loved these three  people but could never love anyone else.  He met Jesus and then he said, he  loved everybody.