How would you describe your love for your spouse?

Valentine’s Day is approaching very quickly.  If you walk into any store, you will see hearts, balloons, flowers, and lots of the colors red and pink.  Merchants are attempting to get us to spend money on our spouse, girl-friend, or boy-friend to celebrate a “day of love.”  Florists will have more orders for flowers than any other day of the year, except maybe Mother’s Day.  More cards are sold than any other card than Christmas cards and Mother’s Day cards.  Gifts of all sorts are bought while hotel rooms are rented well in advance for the little get-a-way around Valentine’s Day.  Now, am I against such spending?  NO WAY!!!  I will buy the cards and maybe even the flowers or a gift.  I will want to go out on a date or maybe I might fix a romantic dinner for two at my house.  The plans are still in the works, I promise.   You will have to wait and see what I decide to do and then only if I decide to write about it will you actually know what happens at my house for a Valentine’s Day celebration.

The reason that I bring up all the hype of Valentine’s Day is that many times we want to shower our loved ones with gifts on just special occasions, but we do not want to show love on an everyday occurrence.  Let me ask you a simple question, “What does love look like to you?”  Another way of wording the same question would be, “What are your expectations in your love relationship?”  The question I think is a simple one to ask, but the answer might be much more complex.  Gary Chapman wrote a book a number of years ago entitled, The Five Love Languages. He has since written about teenagers, children, and even now about apologies.  We all have different ways of saying “I love you.”  I personally think that every married couple should read that book, but this writing today is not to be centered on how we say “I love you,” but rather what are we saying when we say “I love you.”

The Bible uses a word in the original language that most people have heard that we translate as love and that word is αγαπε (agape).  Agape love is the love that describes God, God’s relationship with man, Man’s relationship with God, and Man’s relationship with his wife.  The love is a love that is totally unconditional and selfless.  It is a self-sacrificial love that is given actually in spite of the fact the recipient does not necessarily deserve to be loved in such a way.  Agape love is not earned or deserved, it is given.

With those thoughts on the word LOVE, how would you describe your love for your spouse today?  Would you say that your love is sacrificial or selfless?  Or would you have to say that your love is selfishly motivated?  I am not trying to accuse anyone with these questions.  I am attempting to cause you to focus on your relationship with your spouse from a Biblical perspective, which in turn will enable your relationship to go the distance.  Unconditional love can stand the test of time.  Every one of us will change over the years.  Age catches up to us in all kinds of different ways.  Some of us have put on a pound or two extra, (maybe a lot more than that) while some of us have lost our hair.  Some people’s hair has changed colors while others have changed the color of their hair.  Eye-sights change, hearing changes, as well as even some personalities will change.   With all of the changing that takes place over the course of a lifetime, there needs to be a foundation that the relationship is built on in order for it to maintain a sense of stability and that foundation has to be Αγαπε Love!

Do you have it?  Are you sharing it with your spouse so that every day is a Valentine’s Day?

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NASB)
⁴ Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
⁵ does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
⁶ does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
⁸ Love never fails;