Love and Marriage

Hello, everyone. Mr. Claudis mentioned the feast in 1963 in Jekyll Island. A couple of things I remember from that feast is going outside the tent in the morning we were camping, and putting on my shoes. I put my shoes outside the tent right over an anthill, and they were filled with ants. I can remember that very vividly. I also remember Dr. Pepper. Now, that sounds strange, but we lived in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, just north of the Mason-Dixon Line by five miles.

At that time, you could not get Dr. Pepper north of the Mason-Dixon Line. We drank all the Dr. Pepper we could get. Now, it's all over the place. We enjoyed being here this time of year. The fall in Texas is maybe 48 hours, and that's it. It's there and it's gone. Of course, a number of people here were up in Kerrville for the feast. We invite you to come up to Kerrville anytime you are down, I guess, from here, if you look at the globe for the Kerrville for the feast.

It's a very quiet feast site. There's not a lot to do in some ways, but it's a pretty area. You get outside of the little town there and get out into the hill country. In the Texas hill country, the hills are good-sized hills. It's different than here entirely, though. You won't find the big evergreen trees. You won't find the big hardwoods, the live oak, which is a real stubby tree. You have them all over the place up there, but it is a pretty area. The Texas hill country are similar to parts of Africa. The result is that they've imported animals up there for hunting. You'll see these big fences that go from miles and miles and miles, you know, eight-foot fences.

The reason why is they're fencing in exotic animals, and people pay thousands of dollars to come hunt them. Well, invariably, they get out. So you can find, up in the Texas hill country, herds of fallow deer, axis deer, elk, in case you'll see a zebra.

You'll just see things that obviously aren't native to Texas. Just wandering around because they get out and they have some real problems with these big wild pigs. They have a thousand-pound pigs.

Just tear up everything. So they now have an open season on them. You can shoot them as many as you want whenever you can. Buy a license, go out and shoot pigs. Of course, even pork-eaters won't eat those things because they cut them open. They're filled with worms. Anyways, you get a chance to come to Kerrville for the feast. It's a nice, quiet feast site.

You're only a little over an hour away from San Antonio, which is a very interesting city. It's over 50% Hispanic. I think my wife and I enjoy the culture. It's a very unique culture, a mixture of Texas, American, and Mexican cultures all mixed together.

Even the food there is unique. I did my little travel log for Kerrville now. I couldn't figure out what to speak on here. I went through a number of different sermon ideas. I asked, of course, Alan D'Anse and Pam D'Anse what they would suggest. I went through some sermons that I brought with me that I've given over the last six weeks or so. When I said I have one on marriage, Alan said, give that one.

My wife needs it. At least one person in the audience needs this. I'm just paying back. That's all I'm doing. When two people fall in love, it is one of the most exhilarating times of their lives. People who have been married for many years will talk about their falling in love experience.

It is a very real experience. When two people fall in love, there's a time period in which they absolutely look at that other person as almost a perfect human being. Of course, when another person is looking at you as a perfect human being, that makes you feel real good. You look at them in a very special way because of the way they're looking at you.

During that time period, it's just amazing what two human beings will do for each other. They will completely ignore other people. They will spend all their time together. They will believe that that other person is so wonderful and that what they're experiencing is so unique. They are so compatible and that these feelings will never go away. Many times believe that there's nobody else that's ever quite felt this way. It is interesting sometimes to sit down with people who are doing premarital counseling or sit down with teenagers.

They actually believe, well, you could never understand this because you're old and you've never felt this way. They believe it. Now, the uniqueness of falling in love is actually one of the most ununique human experiences because almost everybody goes through that experience sometime in their life.

Many times, if you're a 15-year-old girl, you go through it every week with somebody else. You're absolutely sure that you're in love with him until he throws up in class and then you know you'll never want him and now there's some other guy that you absolutely are sure that you feel for him is forever. Now, those are real emotions and they're also chemical reactions that happen in human beings. In fact, if probably we didn't have those unique reactions, human beings would just never get married.

They do drive two people to come together. Many times, those emotions and those feelings actually are so common. That's why so many people get married who shouldn't get married. They're actually not compatible. But because they think those feelings, because they are real, they believe then this must be a real relationship that can last the test of time.

And all of us have had an experience of watching a couple and everybody, the parents, the friends, everybody says, No, please, no! And yet, they can't understand why everybody doesn't see it. We feel this way, so it has to be true. So it is actually a very common experience that is created. In fact, not only is it common, but you can measure how long it will last.

Now, you talk about, in our society, everything is scientific. They actually measure everything now. And there's been some studies done on how long does the falling in love feelings last. And for most couples who end up married, it's about two years from, quote-unquote, falling in love, until those feelings are either gone or greatly diminished. Some people, it's a lot quicker than that. I mean, some people can think they're in love.

I mean, it's very sad, but in marriage counseling, and I know Mr. Holiday can say the same thing. Once you've done scores and hundreds of marriage counseling over the years, people come in, and the first thing they say is, we just don't feel anything anymore for each other. We just don't feel anything anymore. And it's amazing how many times people say, well, you know, it really started the day after the wedding, or two days into the honeymoon.

And I just started it. I didn't feel the same way towards him or towards her, and it deteriorated and deteriorated. And now, you know, maybe they're thinking about divorce, and they're five years into a marriage and have a baby. And it's all based on, I felt love, I felt in love, and now I don't feel in love. Fifty percent of all marriages that are done, you know, this year will end in marriage, statistically, and it's getting worse every year. Actually, it's a little worse than that because new marriages, you know, when you put the statistics together, a lot of times they're adding in old marriages, people that have been married for a long period of time.

So you take the people who have been married in the last five years, their chances of getting a divorce is actually higher. And their chance of what you've gone through a divorce of getting divorced two and three times is even more. I've never met anybody yet that says, yeah, we're getting married, we plan to stay together for maybe a year or two, and then we're going to get divorced. I've never met anybody yet that says... Everybody who gets married believes this is forever. And you ask them, how do you know it's forever? And they say, because of how I feel.

Now, those feelings are good and right and proper, and we should have those. They can be very blinding. I read many years ago a man had compiled a list of statements that women had made of why they married a man and then why they divorced him. And it was a very interesting list. One woman said, I married him because he was so charming. I divorced him because he chased other women. She didn't quite see the connection at the beginning, right? He was the life of the party. He just was so much fun to be with. She divorced him because he drank too much. She married him because he was his own man. Nobody told him what to do. She divorced him because he couldn't hold down a job.

He was the rugged outdoor type, and she was really attracted to that. She divorced him because all he wanted to do was hunt and fish. And the list went on and on. We all chuckled because, yeah, we'd seen that. Some of the things that really attract you to a person before you're married become annoying habits after you're married, as things change and just the stresses of life and daily living and all the things that we have to do. One woman said that, I just couldn't believe this one, I married him because he was so commanding. Well, you can imagine why she divorced him. Because he was so commanding, you know. She wasn't allowed to think for herself, do anything for herself. She was just a slave, as far as he was concerned. One woman, and this was a very sad one, she said he was so physical. I'm not quite sure what she meant, but I think she meant he was very strong. And she said, I divorced him because he beat on my head.

And he physically beat her. He was so carefree. She divorced him because once he had kids, he wasn't around.

And the list went on and on and on. He was so close to his family, she divorced him because he was a mama's boy. It is funny how when we're in those feelings of falling in love, how we will be clouded to the reality of many things. Oh no, that won't happen to us.

That won't happen to us. We're different. Sometimes I'll be talking to the parents, and they'll have maybe a young teenager that they're afraid of getting too involved. And I'll say, well, be careful how you handle this, or you'll create the Romeo and Juliet syndrome.

They're both 16, and they believe no older person could ever feel this way and never did anyways because they were always young, always old. And therefore, there's this romance to the whole world's against us. We're the only two people in the world that understand, and we're going to run away. Well, how are you going to feed yourself? It doesn't matter, because this is the way we feel. And we'll work it out. And sometimes you can create the Romeo and Juliet syndrome, in which the kids actually are driven towards each other, which is the opposite of what you're trying to do.

And that's all based on these emotions and feelings that we go through. Now, when we talk about marriage, Christian marriage and sermons, we always talk about commitment. I mean, there's certain words we use all the time. We talk about self-sacrifice. We talk about the male roles. We'll go to the Bible, Ephesians 5. We'll talk about the male roles. We'll talk about the female roles. We'll talk about agape. Well, I'm not even going to go to Ephesians 5 today, because I'm not going to talk about the male and female roles in marriage. I want to talk about this concept of romantic love, because there are many couples that stay together but believe that romantic love is something that happens for young people.

And, you know, we just understand that it's gone after you're married for a month or six months or a year or whatever, and then that's it. There's just no romance between us. And that falling in love is those emotions and those feelings and so forth are just for young people. Now, you cannot maintain the falling in love emotions and feelings every day for the rest of your life. If we did, civilization would collapse. No one would go to work, right?

No one would go to work. Kids would come along. We'd abandon them. I mean, it's not wise. Actually, you wouldn't want to live that way. You couldn't live that way. Because in those initial infatuation, in those falling in love experience, there is a little bit out of touch with reality. So I'm talking about romantic feelings that are based in reality. You actually see and know and understand the other person's shortcomings. You understand the real person that you're married to.

And yet you have emotions and feelings for each other. So we're going to talk about the feelings of marriage today. I'd rather talk about roles and stuff. It's a little easier for a man to talk about that kind of stuff than the emotions. And yet, I find it's amazing in marriage counseling how so many people believe that emotions aren't part of marriage after a while. That they're really not supposed to have what the Greeks called aros love. Well, aros. Aros love is the two words that mean the same thing. Love in English can mean all kinds of things.

The Greeks had a word for family love, the love between family members. Of course, we know of phileo and agape because they're in the Bible. Aros is never in the Bible. It's specifically the love between a man and a woman that is romantic. And yes, it included sexuality, but it didn't mean sex. There was just another word for people that were disengaging in sexual activity. Aros actually meant that there was something that happened between a husband or a man and a woman.

They have to be in marriage, the word. But that happened between these two human beings. That was emotional. That was a type of love. That there was a sharing of emotions between these two people. So we'll talk about aros. We'll talk about, for the lack of an English word, I'll use the word romance. But I don't mean it in terms of, well, let's say romance is, I bring her some flowers. Well, that may be. It may be something totally different. And that's where we have to explore each marriage to find out what creates romance within a marriage.

Because these kinds of emotions, romantic love is meant for marriage. And it's meant to be experienced for a lifetime. And it's not to be experienced every moment of a lifetime, or we would never get anything else done. Except sit and stare at each other's eyes. Well, life has to be more than that. In fact, romantic love over the years can actually be much more rewarding than the sort of frantic romantic love of falling in love.

And you know, you talk to people who have built a good marriage over the years, and they'll say, Yeah, actually, this is better than that. That was a little crazy. This is a whole lot better. Now, just think about a couple of things, and I'll show you why, even though Eros isn't mentioned in the Scripture, why romantic love is intended between a husband and wife, and a couple of things we can see.

First of all, when God created Adam, he did not create Eve until Adam had an emotional crisis. Not an intellectual crisis, an emotional crisis. It's a very important point. If God would have made Adam and Eve together, the relationship would have been totally different. God created Adam, and then waited until he said, you know what? I'm sort of alone. Can you make another one like me? Guy says, No, there's going to be some modifications on this one, but you'll really like this model.

A few modifications. You'll really like this model. God waited and then created someone like him, but different than him, so that when he said, Yes, emotionally, this is what I needed, but he had to wait until he reached the crisis to do it. It wasn't an intellectual crisis. It was an emotional crisis. That says something about, first of all, for us men to understand that we do have an emotional need that can be fulfilled in marriage. Eve seems to understand it right away. Most women seem to understand that. Men have to learn it.

It's the way we're wired. Now, also, it's interesting that God wants to explain certain spirit relationships. Now, he uses physical relationships to explain them so that we have some reference point. To say that God will love us for eternity and we will experience joy, that means something to us. That's a vague term since none of us are spirit.

We tend to experience so many things chemically, for one thing. So we're not sure what that entirely means. Jesus Christ, in order to explain his longing for us, said the way he feels about us, the best way to describe it, is the way a young man is when he's totally infatuated with the woman he's about to marry. I'm the bridegroom, you are the church. I mean, and the church is the bride.

That analogy is strong throughout the entire New Testament. To try to express, once again in human terms, okay, if you want to understand the intensity in which Jesus Christ wants us, he says, okay, then look at the way a young man is when he's in the midst of that falling in love experience with a girl. And that'll help you understand, at least in our little brains, in our chemical bodies, a little bit, that helps us understand now the intensity of belonging Jesus Christ has for each one of us.

So I do not believe that that analogy is used so that after the resurrection, you know, six months after the resurrection, you know, we're all sort of bored with Christ and, you know, the relationship's sort of meaningless and we're just sort of staying together for the sake of the kids. I don't think that's what it's intended to be. Well, I know it's not what it's intended to be because of what the Scripture says.

So when he uses that analogy, that's a very powerful analogy. What that means is that this longing and this, these intensities or this intensity of falling in love is supposed to be part of human experience. The problem with it is, once again, is when it steers people to multiple relationships, or steers people into a wrong relationship, or a relationship sometimes is too early. What happens is, in a good marriage, are that these feelings of love that are shared between the husband and wife, they ebb and they flow throughout the years, but they're always there.

They're always there. They ebb and flow. Sometimes they're more intense and more noticeable than others, but they're always there. Sometimes, you know, you're changing the baby's diaper, you're working late, and there is a lot of romantic feelings. But they come back, and there's always this ebb and flow in what's happening. And so that the couple's relationship is still a priority in their lives. Now, when we talk about compatibility, and I think as I go through the rest of what I want to go through, this is important to understand.

When a couple gets married, they have to have a certain amount of compatibility in some very important areas. It's interesting, over the years, there's a marriage inventory that I use. Do you use Prepared and Rich? It's a holiday that there's also. I have found that any time I have a young couple, now an older couple, I married two 60-year-olds a while back, and I figured, well, they know better, so whatever. They know enough.

They want to get married fine. But if I had a young couple come, I asked them to do this inventory, and said, well, why would you do that? It just finds out they answer questions, and it matches up where they're compatible and where they're not. In other words, if one person answers the question one way and the other the opposite, they're obviously not compatible in that way. They have opposite viewpoints. What's amazing is this is a great program to use because they've done it for 20 years, or over 20 years, and so they have a huge amount of research. And they can predict, just on compatibility, over 90% of the time, they predict accurately whether the couple will get divorced in the next seven years or not.

Ninety percent of the time. So a certain amount of compatibility is important before you get married. But no two people come together totally compatible. And you realize that, you know, three days after you're married, and he squeezes the toothpaste in the middle. Or doesn't put the seat down, you know. And suddenly, oh, we're not nearly as compatible as I thought we were. Now, compatibility is developed over a lifetime.

That's what makes marriage so unique. Two people grow in compatibility. They actually create it. You create compatibility by sharing life together. Your shared experiences create shared values, create compatibility. And in a bad marriage, that doesn't happen. And the two people remain individuals in conflict. So the idea that you create compatibility. Here's the thing. In the falling in love experience, all you see is the compatibility.

You don't see where you're not compatible. And so there's this artificial, out-of-touch reality that's going on. When you are married and you're committed to each other, and those feelings wane and now you begin to see more reality, you decide whether to create compatibility or not. This is where agape comes into the entire equation. Agape isn't based always on feelings. We'll talk about that more in a minute. It's making decisions.

Fortunately for us, God's love is not based on how He feels all the time. And that's specifically shown in the life of Jesus Christ.

It is based on what is right. So we choose to do certain things. That's agape. We choose to do certain things. And that's regardless of our mate or their actions or anybody else's actions. We choose it because it's the right thing to do.

Really, creating compatibility is doing things together that are positive for both people. One marriage counselor, over the years I've read dozens and dozens of books on marriage counseling and listened to hours and hours of tapes and everything else. One marriage counselor I thought had a good analogy. He said, you know, when two people are first married, they're like two fishermen on a boat. They're having a great time.

They put that net in the water and they haul up fish. And then they grab fish and they throw it into the hold of the ship or the boat. And this is just a wonderful experience. We're working together. Everything's great. We have our own ship. They throw the net in. They drag it. They bring it up again. The problem is, every time they bring the net up, not only do they bring up fish, they bring up debris from the ocean floor. And over the years, see, the analogy is over time, the net gets full of debris.

And pretty soon you throw the net over and there's not even any fish in it. It's just two people working very, very hard to pull up that net. And it won't come up because it's full of debris, so they just give up.

And that's what people do. What we do is, at first there's all these positive emotions. And then we get to the place where, over time, the relationship becomes filled with so many negative emotions that the negative emotions just pile up and pile up and pile up until it's really too heavy a net to pull up. You can't pull it up. You can be working very hard at a marriage and still have that marriage failing.

What's very sad is when you see two people working at it, although that's always easy to fix. You have two people working very hard at a marriage and it's not working. All that means is they don't understand. All you have to do is change the work schedule a little. You just change the task a little bit. And since they're already committed to such work, they'll fix it themselves.

What's very hard is when people come in and they don't care anymore. And that's what's always so scary about we just have no feelings for each other and we haven't for years. Because if there's positive emotions, no matter what the problems are between a husband and wife, if there are enough positive emotions between them, they will fix the problem. That's why emotions in marriage are important. If there's no positive emotions, getting two people filled with negative emotions to fix a problem takes ten times more work, takes God's Spirit...

I mean, it takes... it's an enormous job. And so emotions are important. 1 Corinthians 13 is read at so many marriage ceremonies. You know, Christian ceremonies, whether it's your Methodist or Baptist or even Catholic, they read 1 Corinthians 13. Unfortunately, 1 Corinthians 13, and if we'll go ahead and turn there, has become basically meaningless poetry. You know, everybody reads it, and it sounds very nice.

And yet the power of the instructions here in marriage, specifically, are many times so ignored. People come and they say, well, we need help with our marriage. Well, let's go to 1 Corinthians 13. No, we need help with our marriage. Basically, let's fix my husband or fix my wife. You know, we read this, and just briefly go through it here, and he's talking about agape. So the Apostle Paul uses agape in a very unique way, because the word was a philosophical word that meant basically the greatest good, the greatest love. So he takes the word and defines God's character as agape. He makes it much more specific than Plato or the other philosophers who use this word ever used it.

He makes it such a fascinating concept. The early Christian apostles here took a philosophical word and filled it with meaning, remarkable meaning. The greatest good, the greatest love is God's character. So if we can break that down into his component parts, we can begin to be like God.

We can follow God. So he says in verse 4, agape suffers long, it is kind, love does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. And so we go to weddings, and this is mentioned, this is read, there are songs, you know, this has put the music in it, it's sung at weddings. And yet this is the core of the entire character of God. This is what he is. And we are to bring this into our relationships. I want to zero in on here, does not seek its own.

This is one of the most difficult things to deal with once a relationship gets into a certain level of negativity. Because usually when people really reach the point where, hey, I need some help, because no one wants to say, hey, I need help in my marriage.

I mean, that's just women will tend to do that quicker than men. I mean, it's just such a, for a man to feel like I failed in my marriage makes him just so absolutely worthless. Or a woman will many times say, well, let's go seek help and we'll get this, you know, worked out. But for him, the fact that she says that means I'm just worthless. I'm a failure. And it's very difficult for men to even seek help or advice. But does not seek its own.

When people, when a marriage gets to a certain level of negativity, the couple believes, if you will take her and make her be a good wife, then we can fix this. And of course, she believes if you will take him and make him love me more and make me do whatever, you know, I need here, then, then this will be a good marriage.

We can be happy. Now, the problem with, with arrows, the feeling of arrows, the problem with that at that level, once it's broken down that far, is you have to do things that are the opposite of how you feel in order to create those feelings. You say, well, no, the other person has to make me feel that way.

So I will wait to feel something back to you until you make me, until you do something. And what's the other person saying? Well, as soon as you do such and such and make me feel something, then I will do this back. And you're in an impasse. This is where agape comes in. We must understand that romantic love over a lifetime is not created by the same things that create romantic love when you're 18 or 19.

It's created because two people are committed to actually creating it. The compatibility that creates those emotions, that the couple are dedicated to creating the compatibility. The emotions will come. There are some marriage counselors, and I don't believe this, but it's an interesting approach. There are some marriage counselors that no matter what the couple comes in for, the first thing they do is send them to a sex therapist. Anything? Well, that doesn't make sense. But you know what the logic behind it is?

We get them involved that sexually. It'll create enough positive emotions they can come back and have something to work with. Because they'll say, I have nothing to work with, so they send them to a sex therapist. Even though that may not be the problem at all in the marriage. Now, I think that's a convoluted way of coming through the back door in a relationship, but I understand why they do it.

It's an attempt to do this. It's an attempt to create some kind of... If I have some positive emotions, I can help this couple do something. This means that as Christians, we can have this unique understanding, okay, if I want romance here, I start weeks before rebuilding that. Because it's taken a long time for my marriage to slip into this sort of emptiness or negative. There's an emptiness that can happen between people. They sort of comfortably live together. There's people that just live together, but there's a warfare between them all the time.

It takes a long time to get here. I'm not going to change it overnight, but I can begin to decide to use agape now. Both people do that. It is a guarantee you will recreate romance. As part of that, it's chemical. And you'll actually use a chemical reaction in the body to what? To the brain. So you work with the brain, and the body will respond.

So it does not seek its own means that you have to discover what destroys romantic feelings in your spouse and what builds romantic feelings in your spouse. We're back to creating compatibility. You have to find out what is it that destroys romantic feelings in my spouse and what is it that creates romantic feelings in my spouse? In my spouse. So you know what it does, what creates romance for you, and it may be bringing flowers. The problem is sometimes is that there's a huge difference between individuals in what creates romantic feelings. Feelings, I love you, I think you're wonderful, I want to be with you. There's totally different mechanisms or ways in which that's created in people. Now you say, well, I don't have the ability to do that. I mean, maybe years and years of a bad marriage is just left too empty. That's what we can go back to God and recognize that agape, because God does something, it can give us emotional strength. Just briefly, let's go to Romans chapter 5, and then I'll come back to 1 Corinthians here. Romans chapter 5.

Now, usually when I go to Romans 5, it's because I'm talking about a doctrine. I'm talking about faith, or I'm talking about maybe the Christian need for perseverance. I mean, there's a whole bunch of reasons to come here. I want to go through these few verses here, but I want you to look at what these things generate in us, because there are certain times in life you and I can't do things unless God gives us the strength.

And that can be in our work, that can be in a trial we're going through, that can be in reconstructing a marriage that's filled with negative emotions. He says, therefore, having been justified by faith, I can intellectually go through that. That's a whole lot easier topic to talk about than trying to reconstruct emotions in a marriage. Because you can go through enough Scriptures, and you know, four or five Scriptures here, and I can give a sermon, you know, I can talk for an hour and a half about justification and explain it.

This is actually more difficult, because there is a certain uniqueness to each of us as human beings. And that's what makes it so hard. I mean, we can work really hard at a relationship. Two people can't and just miss each other. I mean, they're working hard, but they just miss each other. And they can't figure out why there's problems. But let's go through this now. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have our peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace.

See, there's a peace that can happen to us from God, even when there are problems in our marriage, or whatever other problems we have in life. But we're specifically talking about marriage today. You can have conflict in your relationship between your husband and wife still find the peace to be able to go deal with that conflict, because there's a peace that comes from God. In fact, some people sometimes will actually expect marriage to fill a certain void in them that only God can fill. And there's a certain emptiness that only God can fill.

You can have the perfect mate, and the perfect mate still can't fill the part in you that only God can fill. But there is a hole in each of us that marriage many times can fill. Some people are quite happy being single, and they're happy with it. And there's nothing wrong with that. For others, the need for a mate is very dramatic. For other people, some people find being single a very serious trial that they bear with, sometimes decades. Sometimes never getting married. And it can be very difficult for them.

But there's a peace that comes from God, through whom we all have access by faith and to this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope and the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance, character and character, hope. Never think of your marriage in this sense. That in your marriage, there may be difficulties, but it will produce perseverance and character and hope when we apply agape to it.

Hope is a good thing. When you get up every morning and you have hope, you feel good. Now, hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. In other words, the love of God can make up sometimes for the problems we have with the love of our mate. Sometimes it's the only time you're going to get the energy to go back into and deal with the marriage problems, as you're going to have to ask God to give you. The energy to give you the love, to give you the understanding, to give you the perseverance and the patience and the hope.

You say, well, let's talk about tribulations. Well, marriage can be a tribulation sometimes. That's the problem. When the falling in love goes away and people don't realize you have to create compatibility in order to maintain romantic love, it becomes a tribulation for people. And for many people, that's all marriage is, is a tribulation.

But then the point in verse 6, for when we were still without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. The point being made is, Christ did not die for us because He looked at us and we produced lots of good feelings in Him. I mean, you won't look at His time just on earth as a human being. When He was chemical, so He had chemical reactions to things. And how much frustration He shows with His disciples. How much frustration He shows with society. The anger He shows at times with the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The times He just sits and cries. It says, if you had just listened to me, I'd save you. You know, He looks out over Jerusalem and He's got all these chemical, emotional reactions because His Spirit is connected now to a brain. And He experiences all those things. He didn't say, kill me because I feel good for these people.

That's agape. Agape says, kill me so that I may save these people who really sometimes make me sick.

And He said, well, would He use those terms? Read the Old Testament. I mean, God basically says, thank you, people, make me sick.

He's putting it in human terms since God doesn't get sick. But He puts things in human terms for us so we understand. That's agape. And that's why you have to apply it at times. There's times when you and I do not have the ability to express that. And that's where you have to go get help. That's where God's Spirit gives us the ability to do something we cannot do. We forget that many times in our lives, and specifically in our marriages. We forget to go tell God, you know what? This guy is really hard to live with. So you're going to have to give me something I don't have. And He'll give it to you.

There's times we have to go ask for that help. So that brings us back around then to 1 Corinthians 13. Because it's in 1 Corinthians 13 that we begin to see specifics on how to love. And in marriage, when we do these things, these things will create arrows. It just creates it over time. It just does. Now, we're supposed to do these things to all people. But it won't create arrows between you and somebody else. But it will between you and your spouse. That's what's so amazing about this. We're wired that way. Our brain is designed that when we apply 1 Corinthians 13 to our spouse, it will create feelings. Happiness. There's times you will look at each other and just say, well, I'm really happy being married to you. There's times you say, I love you. And it just means it. It's just a feeling that's just overwhelming almost. You actually experience that.

You say, well, man, give me that drug. Well, the problem is it's not a drug. It's 1 Corinthians 13.

And it sometimes takes some work. And sometimes it's doing what you don't feel like doing. If you've read any marriage counseling books for the last 20 years, there's an analogy that's just used over and over again. And this is used in marriage counseling all the time. There's a reason why it's just such an easy thing to understand. Easy thing to understand. Since compatibility is created, what happens is the more positive emotions you share with somebody, the more time you want to spend with them. That's the way we are as human beings, right? You didn't marry her because she made you feel miserable.

That's why a couple in the throes of the falling in love experience can't get enough of each other. I mean, they want to go out on a date every night. They just want to be together. When they're not together, they're miserable. And the reason why is, every moment they spend together, they're actually creating these positive emotions with each other. They're creating compatibility. That's why, you know, this woman has this...she has this...I'm going to try to make up scenarios...she has this just attraction to this guy. She's absolutely sure she's in love with him. She feels towards him like she's never felt for any man, and he asks her out on a date. She's so excited, she calls and tells all her friends. She spends hours and hours getting ready for the date. She goes out with him. He's dressed nice. He seems so perfect. He's good looking. She sits down, and he begins to eat, and she realizes he's a barbarian. I mean, just food's flying. He's foggling with his mouth open. After all he can talk about is sports. And she says, oh my! And what has happened? What has happened is, when he met her, she was an empty jar. And he put pennies in her jar. He has a penny jar. He put a few pennies in the jar. Positive emotions. When he sat down one day with him, all the pennies were thrown out. She's never going to go out with him again.

You know who really understands this idea? Men who seduce women. What they do is they find an empty jar, and they put pennies in it. Until she thinks she's in love with him. Until she thinks she's in love with him. They're just experts. They're just certain men that become experts at doing that. But they have to find an empty jar first. See, they have to find a woman that feels empty and usually worthless inside first, and then he can put pennies in it. Now, when that jar is full of positive emotions, you look at your mate and it's like, I don't care if you've been married five years, forty years, it doesn't matter. Six months, fifty years, it's like, boy am I happy to be married to you. And you feel love towards that person. Eros, no. Because it's not agape, although there are emotions with agape, too, but you're feeling an attraction, and you're feeling a love towards that person that's very specific. You don't feel it towards anybody else. Now, the more, the lower that jar is full of pennies, the harder it is to feel that way. And most people coming from marriage counseling, both jars are empty, or they're almost empty. Now, here's what you have to realize if we're going to develop compatibility. And compatibility is based on two people sharing positive emotions.

You, every day, put pennies in the jar or take pennies out of the jar. This is why you have to seek, not your own. The problem is, all of us are going around saying, put pennies in my jar, put pennies in my jar. Right?

And you have to think in terms of, how do I put pennies in his jar or her jar? You go, oh, yeah, but, you know, how she wants me to put pennies in her jar is so stupid. Don't expect very many pennies to be coming your way, okay? They're just not going to come. You've just taken a whole lot of pennies out of her jar. The lower this jar is, by the way, the much harder it is to give somebody else pennies. You can't. That's why sometimes we have to go ask God to put something in us we don't have. You know, I empty this jar out, and when people come in, that first thing I try to figure out is, how many positive things do I have to work with here? And sometimes there's nothing. Absolutely nothing. The two people hate each other's guts. I've done some marriage counseling with people. Interesting. You know, not in the Church of God environment. And I've done marriage counseling with a lot of people outside of United and other Churches of God's environment. And it's interesting. You get outside the Church of God environment, and there's certain things I can talk about, and the two people just sit and stare at you. They have no idea what you even mean. And there's times I've had to tell people, look, our value systems are so different, you probably need to go get another marriage counselor. But you were recommended. Well, you came to me because I was free, but you have to pay somebody else, but they'll do you a whole lot better good than I am because our value systems are too great. I've actually had to sit and tell people that. Our value systems are too great. Greatly different. And I don't have enough common ground to deal with you.

But see, we put in and we take out. Now, when you start to realize that, and you start to look at your mate, and you start to say, okay, what do I do that can put in, and what do I do that takes out? That takes the pennies out. That takes out positive emotions. So this is a lot of work. So much in life depends on it. We know this. I mean, most of us in this room have been around a long time. There's a few young people in here, but most of what you get out of life is what you put into it. It's that simple.

I mean, if you don't go to work and work hard every day, not only are you not going to be satisfied with what you do, you ever have a job where you think, well, this is a cushy job I won't have anything to do? And after a lot, you just hate that job.

And then when they give you the check, you don't feel like you really earned it.

But it's a great feeling when you work real hard and you've done well, and then you get your paycheck at the end of the week. That's a great feeling. Because you work, and this is, you know, a marriage has to be worked at because you have to create this compatibility. So we go back to 1 Corinthians 13, and it says, Love suffers long in this kind. Now, the very first statement is, Agape puts up with an awful lot even when it hurts. First statement of the character of God. Right? I mean, suffering, which you do well. The whole poor person of life, it seems like, is avoid suffering. And this is the very first attribute of God is Agape is, He puts up with a lot even at immense personal cost. That's when we go back and we see even what Christ was willing to do. What was the Father willing to do in sacrificing His Son, and what was the Son willing to do in letting Himself be sacrificed? Immense personal cost. And so then we have to ask ourselves, As a Christian, have I sacrificed for my mate even at serious personal cost? So, God-based stuff is hard. It's hard. Have I sacrificed for my mate even at immense personal cost? And then the second one is kind. Simply kind.

Now, what's interesting, you can have, it'd be nice if I could sit down and say, Well, men will do this way and women will do this way, but it's not. Once you get to certain aspects of human relationships, See, certain things are typically male responses and certain things are typically female. There are certain other aspects of human relationships that are incredibly uniquely to the person. So I can't get up here and say, the way to deal with kindness is men, let me tell you how the women react, and women, let me tell you how the men react. Because that may not be true to each of you as an individual. Sometimes people simply have to define kindness, and they'll find out they have two totally different definitions of kindness. I remember doing a marriage seminar once, I asked for a definition of romance. And this woman said, When the toilets clogged up and overflowing, and he goes and fix it for me, that's romance.

Almost everybody else went, And there was another woman who was saying, Now there's a reason why that she doesn't realize why that meant something to her, but that's actually true. To her, that was romantic. And if you're married to a woman like that, you have to understand that. Why she would say that? Because that makes the sense to me. But there's a reason why. That's why God says, Men, love your wives according to understanding. We say, well that makes no sense. Well, okay, then you better learn to understand. Now, sometimes understanding somebody doesn't mean it has to make sense to us. It doesn't mean we have to agree. It just means we understand. We just have to understand. That's where you're coming from, and I know why. It does not envy. It doesn't parade itself up.

Acting superior to a husband or wife can be one of the most destructive things in any marriage. And this is one thing I've seen men do. I've seen women do too, but I've seen men do more. I've seen men take our role. See, we have a role which puts us as the head of the house. That's a role that God has given us. That's a job. We use that job to try to sort of force a superiority. We are spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally superior. In which case, all we're doing is we're breaking this command. These attributes of agape are also commands. This is the way we're supposed to become. We say, well, I keep the Ten Commandments, but I don't have to do all this agape stuff. Well, then we're no different than the Pharisees. We're no different than the Pharisees.

And so, this parading of ourselves.

Of course, women, you have to understand. We can get into this in a few minutes. I got to four, right? I started at two. Right, okay. Give it one more time. There's reasons guys parade themselves, and if you understood that, you could actually stop it.

You know, if you understood why he did it, or why he does it, there's reasons why. Now, certain guys don't feel that way. Certain guys do. And there's reasons, and it has to do with...part of it has to do with the wiring of our personality and our brains, and part of it has to do with what we were brought up, the home we were brought up in. The environment we were brought up in.

We're going to talk about that in a minute, too. But as you go through this, you can see where these things can put pennies... If you're kind, you're putting pennies in the jar. Every time we're unkind to our mate, we take pennies out. Now, if the jar's almost full, and you're having a bad day, and you're grumpy with your wife, and you take some pennies out, you really don't hurt much. You know, all you have to do is put some pennies back in, and she's happy. But you keep taking them out, pretty soon she's putting no pennies in your jar. And vice versa. So, in a good marriage, yeah, there's pennies coming out of the jar, but there's always pennies coming back in. Yes, there's negative emotions that happen, but there's always positives that come along and rebuild the relationship. You understand? They rebuild the relationship. And so there's an equilibrium of positiveness inside the relationship.

Two ways that we really parade against each other, and men and women both do this. One is we make disrespectful judgments. In other words, we impute a motive. Well, you did this because... And she's looking at you and saying, I didn't do it for that reason. Yeah, you did.

Or she'll say, well, you did this because, such and such. And sometimes a woman... A woman will say that because, in all honesty, if he was a woman, he wouldn't have done it.

He's a man and he doesn't know. So you impute a motive that is absolutely not in his head.

You know, I came out to show me, or to show you, my new shoes, and you were watching the football game, and I said, honey, look at my new shoes, and you didn't say anything back. That just shows that you don't love me, and that you're a mean person.

Now, there's a motive now imputed. The truth is, because men's brains are compartmentalized different than women, you didn't get his attention. He did not know you were there. I mean, he knew something was there, but... You could have been Sasquatch. He wouldn't have made any difference.

You know, you have to get his attention and actually break the attention. And then it's like, huh? Oh. And that's why so many men start with things with huh. You're actually breaking an attention problem.

Hey, it's actually one of the things you're attracted in us. Right? Those guys are so stable. Man, they just stayed, of course. You know they're going to get up every morning and go to work. Right? Gotta go to work this morning. Off we go. And yeah, because we're programmed that way. If we weren't programmed that way, we'd just say, ah, you're going to work. I don't care. But, you know, the downside of that is, you could be standing beside us and we don't even know it. That's the downside of it. So you have to accept it, and you have to say, hey, see my shoes. Of course you can come out with nothing else on, but then I'll get you some pictures. That's something else. Another thing we do is selfish demands. We make remarkably selfish demands of the other person. And we almost treat them more like slaves than, you know, well, I want her to be my best friend. I want her to be my confidant. I want her to be my lover. I want her to be all these things. But here's the list of demands I make. All right? Give him that honeydew list and keep pounding away at him and watch how few of them get done. Right? Because what you do is you keep... When his jar's full and you say, hey, can you go clean out the gutters? Okay. Or, well, I'll do it a little later. You know, as soon as I'm finished with this, I'll go do that. Do it when the jar's empty. And he'll only do it if you nag him enough, and then when he's done, he gets in the car and leaves. You have no idea where he is for the next four hours. Because the jar's empty and he's just not going to be around you. And what we'll do is we'll actually drive each other away. So, disrespectful judgments and selfish demands are two of the ways that we really parade against each other that can be very serious. Does not behave rudely. You know, marriage can have a lot of rudeness in it.

You know, there's little things, annoying habits, that can be very annoying to a mate. That we can say, look, if you married me for who I am, learn to live with it. And it can be little things. You know?

Just for your own personal experience, if you've been married any length of time at all, you can think about little things that you've let become big things. Or people will come in, sometimes they're marriage counseling. And you know, what's the problem? I just can't stand it. He swurps his soup.

Well, that's the way I've eaten my soup since I was a baby. I'm not going to change the way I eat my soup. The problem is, if you're not seeking your own, and slurping your soup actually takes pennies out of her jar. I can guarantee you, learning not to slurp your soup will give you so much payback, it's worth it. Guaranteed it's worth it! Just don't slurp your soup! Rude-ness can be something that we do with each other. And let's face it, in marriage you will say things to each other. You would never say to another person when you're angry or something. I mean, the guards are down, right? Because of the closeness that happens between the two people, in marriage people will say some of the meanest things to each other. And then you have to go say, well, we emptied each other's jars pretty good, we better start filling them back up. And then they work and work and work and work. And a good marriage. See, a good marriage doesn't mean that people don't have bad times. A good marriage doesn't mean sometimes that they don't do it right. A good marriage means that the two people always recognize that because I love the other person, and because I want to create compatibility, I'm going to apply certain principles so that that person feels loved by me.

When you have two people doing that, that marriage will weather anything. It'll weather anything because of their outlook towards each other.

This interesting phrase here, believe all things. I'm just going through, because I want you to study 1 Corinthians 13. In fact, I'm going to give you a little handout here in a minute that will help you be able to do that in your eyes a couple. Believes all things. Nothing will destroy a relationship quicker than dishonesty or perceived dishonesty. If you believe you can't believe that person, there's no way you're going to have any positive feelings for that person. And that's why lying never works in a relationship. It'll never work in a marriage.

It's better to deal with the hurt of a situation by telling the truth. Now, remember, telling the truth. When people usually say, I just believe in honesty, I'm a brutally honest person. I'm almost always honest. When a person says that, they're more brutal than honest. There's a way to be honest without being brutal to the person. But honesty is so important in that relationship, where people really are able to talk about how they think and how they feel. There's an interesting book, Gary Chapman. Gary Chapman is a well-known marriage counselor. I mean, that's what he does for a living. He's written, I don't know, half a dozen books on marriage, and specifically even on counseling. He had a book that came out, I didn't go buy it. It was, to me, it was too girly. The title. It was The Five Love Languages. Not just the love languages, what's that? You have to call her little names or something. The book didn't grab me. The Five Love Languages. I was talking to a pastor, a friend of mine, who said this book really helped him in being able to do some marriage counseling with some couples that he had that had just seemed to not be able to make some breakthroughs. So I went and I got the book and I read it, and it is a fascinating book. It's written from a counseling viewpoint. In other words, it's just he makes his point and then he gives actual counseling situations in which he used these points over and over and over again. But in his study, and he's been a marriage counselor for three decades, and what he's done, he says he's discovered that the idea of creating positive emotions, which is what you're doing when you're in the falling in love experience, right? What would you like to do tonight? It doesn't matter. Well, a year after marriage is not what you want to do tonight. And say I'm going bowling with the guys, I'll see you later, right? The whole, something's changed. In those first intense months and up to two years, the usual approach is, what can I do to make you happy?

In exploring that and doing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of counseling and doing research, he says he found a way in which he said most people, now you know everyone's a little different, but most people, there are five different ways in which we experience that. And as I look through this, it made perfect sense. In fact, I realized that some of these things I had applied to marriage counseling for years and didn't realize, you know, which is common sense. And that is, what is it that makes your mate happy? And he uses a case of one of the books that I actually have an exact case that was like that. I was counseling a couple, and he was saying, she was saying, she just distraught. And this was over 20 years ago, it's no one that anyone here would know. In fact, I can't even remember the people's names. I would see them, and I wouldn't even know who they are. So, this is a private situation. But the girl was just devastated because she had actually sacrificed buying clothes and other needs that she had to make sure every night he had meat for dinner. Because she said it's meat and potatoes. And I mean, she worked hard. And she was just devastated. She was emotionally drained. There was nothing left in her penny jar because she had worked so hard. And she said, he doesn't even care. He doesn't thank me. He doesn't notice. And he doesn't care that I'm doing all this work just to please him. And he looked at her and he said, Honey, eat your dad that likes to have meat every night. He says it doesn't make any difference to me at all.

She had been working so hard. And the reason why is that's what she's been taught all her life. That's what men like. Because that's what her dad liked. She had done so much that she's actually worked herself into exhaustion in what she was sacrificing. I mean, she was making... I don't know how they did it on the money they made. I mean, they're having a mistake every night. And it was because she would do anything because that was going to make him happy. And he looked at her and, you know, just the look in his face was like, oh my! He actually grasped right away what was happening. He said, that's your dad! That doesn't make any difference. Just feed me! That's all I care!

And that little thing made a huge difference in the beginning of them turning their marriage problems around. She did not understand what made him respond. And she was working very hard. And that happens a lot. Now, what Mr. Chapman has done is he's actually categorized five ways in which human beings respond, which actually create the positive emotions that create romantic or aeroist love. The thing is, is that every one of us needs this to a certain degree, but if you actually get people together and they talk about it, you'll find out that we prioritize this difference. For some people, one of these ways is very important. And another way is it. Sometimes the problem is the husband and wife are just different in what they need. So they're actually working hard because if he did this for me, I would be happy. She's doing it for him and he doesn't even notice.

If he took the same amount of energy and put it into a way that he understood to get all the reactions she wanted, all the right positive reactions she wanted. The first one is verbal encouragement. As I went through this, I realized children are like this, too. You start to realize in your children that your children actually respond differently in their needs for love. There are certain children that just need verbal encouragement all the time. You need to tell them, you know, did a good job. I love you. And it's like they can't get enough of it. Mom, Mom, did you see? Look at my report card! I mean, you can tell these children after a while because they're constantly begging for verbal encouragement. Those other children in the same family, you can say, did a good job! Okay. You know, I mean, they like to hear it. It's not like they don't like to hear it, but, you know, it doesn't energize them. I mean, there are certain people, if you learn how to compliment properly. I mean, a real compliment, you find this out at work. If you're a manager and you find someone that really thrives on verbal compliments and everything they do that is right, you tell them it's good, and you get twice as much work out of them. Don't work twice as hard just to hear a compliment. Certain people are like that. Now, if you're a woman and you thrive on verbal compliments, and you're a man who grew up in a family where, you know, you never got complimented on anything, you were just expected to do everything, and no one ever complimented anything. The most you ever got was, you know, a grut in the head. And this woman needs verbal encouragement all the time, and you never give it. She will actually believe you don't love her, and every day she will feel more and more negative emotions, and she doesn't even know why. If we're not going to seek our own, and we're going to love each other according to understanding, that means we have to find out what that person responds to. For some people, it's quality time.

Quality time. You have to spend time together, you know, talking, walking through the park holding hands or whatever. It's just quality time together. You see some men that really thrive on a wife who spends quality time with him in some recreational activity that he likes. And it just thrives, you know, she hates fishing, he loves fishing. You know what? She'll find that she goes fishing with him just once in a while, she's got a much better husband. He cleans the toilet and fixes the... You know when the woman said romance is cleaning the toilet, you know what kind of person she was? Acts of service. In other words, you love me by doing something for me that's a need. I needed that done, you did it for me, that makes me feel loved. And certain people just thrive on that. That's why you have certain men. What a perfect combination is something like, the man just thrives on acts of service. So I mean, he comes home and that house is spic and span. He's so excited he brings flour and candy, right? And she's the type of person, because there's a type of person really thrives on receiving gifts.

So she makes a nice meal and he's like, oh wow, that was wonderful! Let's go buy a new dress tomorrow. I mean, and he's constantly giving gifts. This is what is perfect, right? And he thrives on acts of service. She thrives on gifts. You know, watch little kids. Kids who do not thrive on gifts will give them gifts and what do they do? They throw them away. That's right. They don't care. Play with the boxes.

Watch a kid that thrives on gifts. You can give them something out of a crackerjack box. And they'll go around saying, hey, look what my mommy gave me. Hey, look what my... You can see it in them, even at a rally. Look what they gave me! And that kid would just... I mean, follow you around, because you gave him a gift. Well, the thing is, as adults, some of our emotions aren't any more complicated than that.

And if you're the type of person who thrives on giving gifts... See, I'm not... Gifts are fun. I like gifts. But I grew up in a family where we just didn't give each other a lot of gifts. So, you give me a gift, I'm happy. Thank you very much. But it's not like, I'm going to go clean the gutters.

The toilet's still stocked up. I'm just not motivated to go do that. See, verbal encouragement, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Some people just... I mean, they have to be touched all the time. Hogged, kissed, holding hands. You see two people that are like that. And when you get two people that actually have the same level of needs in this, it's like, oh man, you're getting embarrassed every time you see these people. They're hugging and kissing, and it's like, oh, come on, folks. Stop it. But they're just like that. That's their just... they just need and enjoy physical touch. And if you get two people just like that, that's what they're going to do all the time. Because that's the way they're wired. And a lot of it has to do with family or upbringing or what they went through. So you start thinking of yourself, and you start thinking, okay, what am I? I've got a hand up. I hope I made enough copies. There should be one for each couple, but I don't think I have enough.

I'll leave a copy with Mr. Holiday so he can make some copies.

This is something I use in marriage counseling. It's not some divinely inspired, you know, it's something I made up to help people. But it's just a tool.

What I do is I give this out to couples, and I have them study 1 Corinthians 13 on their own. And then they have to spend one hour a day for ten days answering each one of these questions. Now they can skip a day or so because maybe someone has to go out of town or whatever, but they have to do this as quickly as possible. And then in the end they have to agree to date each other, to actually set up a date and go out on a date once a week. They have to agree to do that for them.

Now I say they have to, it's up to them, but that's what I suggest to date them. But there's a trick to this. To do this you have to do something very specific. One is that there's a question you have to handle each time. And what you have to do is that in life you get to do this first. You take turns doing this, but, guys, let them do it first. See, that's leadership. You say, okay, you get to go first. The first question is, are we patient and long suffering with each other? Now if you've just done a study of 1 Corinthians 13, that's the first thing that you discuss. Are we patient with each other? Now the wife then explains, now this is all about how it makes you feel. How husband's patience with you makes you feel. Notice this is patience with you. You say, well, he's never patient with me. Find something. Okay, find something. I tell him, this made me feel really good. Now see, that's not what we do. What we say is, you inpatient jerk.

I just can't stand you. Okay, no, no, no. To say, when you are patient with me, it makes me feel so special or whatever. Whatever makes you feel. And you explain that. You're not attacking him, for one thing. And then when you say, explain how impatience makes you feel. His impatience. And you have to use an example or two. When you do this, that makes me feel terrible. And I tell you what, it's taking money, it's taking pennies out of the penny jar. I can tell you that much. And it makes me feel worthless. And sometimes I feel bad for days. Now first of all, he may not even know that. Second of all, guys, what you can't do is halfway through the debt and say, Well, you know, I'd be more patient with you if you just weren't late all the time. Before you can respond, you have to say, Okay, let me make sure I have this right. And you have to tell her back what she told you.

And if she says, No, that's not how I feel or that's not what I meant, she gets to explain it again. So get it right the first time. She explains it again until you say, Okay, okay, when I'm patient with you, this happens. Yes. And when I'm impatient with you, this is how you feel. And when she says, Yes. Now you get to do the same thing. But you don't get your turn until you understand how she feels. I didn't say you agreed with it, but you do understand it. Then you do the reverse. And she has to repeat back. And you say, No, that's not how I felt. This is what I mean. And you say it until she finally says, Okay, this is what you mean. And she says it. Now, remember, if you use harsh judgments in this, you just dump in the jar. Right? Well, that's a stupid way to feel. That's probably the end of the exercise right there, right?

Then you discuss how each of you can show more patience. And you write down one solution. One solution for him, one solution for her. And because this is a choice, this is agape, you cannot now badger, nag, or complain to your spouse if they don't do their part. You can only do your part. Now, I'll give you a secret, though. When they do it, encourage, encourage, encourage, encourage, encourage. If they like gifts, buy them gifts. Right? If they like verbal encouragement, just tell them how wonderful he or she is. If there's a person who responds with physical touch, hug them, kiss them, hold their, you know, just walk around like you're attached to them. Okay? And you will get all kinds of, I'll do that again. I like that. I'm being motivated now. And you're just going to get response. The more compatibility, the more positive feelings we build in each other, what do we want to do? We want to be with the other person. Why? Because they make me feel good. That's why. You understand what's happening? This is what romantic love is. See, agape love is what decides to commit us together for a lifetime. Friendship binds us together in a remarkable way between a husband and wife that someone can't understand if they're not friends with their husband or wife. Romahits is developed. It's built. It's something that doesn't happen by accident. You have to create it. This is why some people divorce every two to three years. They simply artificially recreate the feelings of falling in love with somebody else. And they recreate it over and over and over again until they get so sick of it, they just give up. They just give up. The marriage doesn't work. Well, doing what they're doing doesn't work. That's why God says don't do it.

So you go through each one of these and you take one hour. What I suggest is you set aside a couple hours and if you're done with the question, you go out on a date. Or one, go do this. Go out to a little restaurant someplace, you know, and get something to eat or a coffee shop and do this. And when you're done, well, let's go see a movie.

If something positive has happened, you'll probably like to spend some time together. Right? If something negative has happened and you haven't come up with a solution, you haven't worked things out, you say, well, okay, we've got to do it again tomorrow. We've got to keep after this. We've got an hour. I mean, if you did this perfectly, it'd take you ten days because there's ten questions. It may take you twenty, thirty, forty days. See, quality time is one of the problems we don't have in our marriages. Well, this is forcing you also to have quality time because you're spending the time together.

It's just a tool. You know, some people respond well to this kind of thing, others don't, but I find that those who do, that 1 Corinthians 13 becomes a very powerful force in their lives. The intense feelings of being involved in falling in love is not a gauge of how successful the marriage will be because almost all people who get divorced felt that way when they got married. So, feeling that intensely about another person does not guarantee a successful marriage. It's what we do with the marriage that counts. It's what we do with choosing to love, choosing to apply 1 Corinthians 13, and then actually creating compatibility and creating a lifetime of romance. You create a lifetime of romance. It's never too late to start. People say, well, we've been married too long. You know, believe me, a widow that's 68 and about to get married, it's always a little uncomfortable when this person comes in, 63 years old, and says, I'm just so infatuated, I feel like I'm 16 again. And you know what? She does. She does. I just met the perfect man. Okay, slow down a little bit.

Slow down a little bit. You're in falling in love mode, and that's fine, but let's make sure this is a lifetime. Well, hurry up! I don't have much longer to live, so let's go with this.

You know, the falling in love stage goes down. It does in every relationship, and then it's rebuilt with the ebb and flow of time. With that ebb and flow of time, something very wonderful happens between a man and a wife. I just urge all of you to spend the next 10 days, I don't care how good your marriage is, great marriage, make it better. Take the next 10 days. Or 20 days, if you have to skip a few days, and go through that. Study 1 Corinthians 13. You know, God designed marriage. He designed the emotions of marriage. This book tells us how to do it. So let's go to the creator of marriage and have him help us with our marriages.