Fireproofing Our Relationships – Part 5
The New Testament has three words for love: eros, phileos, and agape.
Erotic comes from eros. The name of the city – Philadelphia – means brotherly love comes from phileos. And agape refers to a love that goes well beyond eros and phileos.
Eros love is a sensual kind of love and it asks the question, WHAT CAN I GET OUT OF THIS?
Phileos is relational love and it asks the question, WHAT CAN WE GET OUT OF THIS?
Agape is unconditional, deeper love and it asks the question, WHAT CAN YOU GET OUT OF THIS?
Another way to think of these is,
EROS LOVES WHEN …
PHILEOS LOVES BECAUSE …
AGAPE LOVES IN SPITE OF …
For love to last for a lifetime in a marriage relationship, agape love is a better way of loving (1 Cor 13).
Fireproofing Our Relationships – Part 4
Perhaps the greatest threat to a healthy marriage relationship is temptation. Temptation is like a relational parasite. A parasite sucks the life of whatever it’s attached to. In the same way, relational parasites diminish the quality of our connection with each other.
For example, these parasites come in many different forms such as addictive behaviors like alcoholism, sexual addictions, workaholism or addictions to gambling or drugs. We need to do whatever it takes to say no to unhealthy parasites like these examples. Men may need close friends that they can turn to for help. Women need each other. As a church, we encourage everyone to find a neighborhood small group for frienship, spiritual connection and also accountability with each other – especially men with men and women with women. We need to create safe places where people can be real about whatever is going on in their lives. That may happen in a small group or in one-to-one relationships. Temptation seems to take root when we isolate. If we feel alone it’s harder to say no to the unhealthy things and yes to the healthy things (Galatians 6:1-4).
Fireproofing Our Relationships – Part 3
If marriage is to become all that God intended it to be, then we must embrace God’s plan for oneness. The Bible mentions that God’s plan for oneness is leaving, cleaving and weaving. The leaving part is simply separating from our parents.
Cleaving and weaving (or building intimacy) happen over a lifetime. The Bible says that when a man and a woman join together in marriage, they become one flesh. That means that there is actually a spiritual, emotional and relational bond between them. There are barriers that keep us from living out that oneness:
Eradicating the Barriers to Cleaving
~ Accept our natural differences.
Genesis 1 [27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
~ Be aware of our natural weaknesses.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Cor 12:9-10
We all have weaknesses. And these weaknesses can become magnified in marriage. If we’re not aware of them, we can’t work on them. As we become aware of our own weaknesses and as we draw closer to God, we become aware that His power and strength is sufficient to help us face anything.
~ Anticipate how selfish we can be at times.
Isaiah 53 [6] All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Philippians 2 [3] Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. [4] Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
~ Recognize the real enemy of our marriages.
Ephesians 6 [10] A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. [11] Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. [12] For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.
Fireproofing Our Relationships – Part 2
We can’t it alone. If God was enough for Adam then He wouldn’t have said in Genesis 2:18, “It’s not good that man should be alone.” Before Eve was created, Adam was busy working in the Garden of Eden. Part of his work included naming all of the animals. Adam was busy giving love. But besides needing to give love, Adam needed to receive love – not only from God but from a partner.
Many of us are good at giving love but what about receiving love? Are we really taking the time to slow down to not be physically present but emotionally present with our spouses each day? No matter how busy life gets with work, kids and other stuff finding that time to just be with our spouses is one way to grow in our love for each other.
For example, too many couples grow old together but find that they are actually growing apart. The wife desperately wants a connection with her husband. But, the husband is emotionally absent and often retreats from deeper conversation or connection. He can do things for her or give things to her but receiving love is just too hard.
When we violate the life principle of inflow/outflow, the connection between two people just seems to get stale. God gives us the hope that as we spend time with Him and allow Him to love us, we discover that the love we’re experiencing from God automatically flows out from us to our spouses. It’s a basic life principle – inflow/outflow.
Fireproofing Our Relationships – Part 1
We’ve been doing a series based on the movie Fireproof. The movie is all about a firefigther (Caleb) who is struggling with keeping his marriage together. It’s real life stuff. Caleb and Katherine have slowly grown apart over time. He ends up turning to other things to meet the emptiness that he’s feeling inside. She thinks he’s cold and unloving. They live together but, in reality, they’re emotionally divorced. It’s not until his dad intervenes and shares his own story about how he considered leaving his wife until God captured his heart and gave him hope that their marriage could be restored with His help. His dad helps him see that he needs Christ in his own life. His dad said to him – “You can’t give her what you don’t have, Caleb.” Caleb couldn’t love her deeply because he didn’t have God’s love in his own heart.
There’s something there in that statement. I think many marriages are struggling because either the husband or wife – or both of them – haven’t experienced God’s love in their own lives. You can’t give our what you don’t have. The starting place is surrendering our lives to God and asking him to give us the ability to love our spouses with the love God has given us.
