THIS THING CALLED LOVE
Three things will last forever —faith, hope, and love —and the greatest of these is love.
—1 Corinthians 13:13, NLT
Not long ago, my fifteen-year-old son, Garrison, held up a VHS tape he’d found in the closet. “My history teacher showed us pictures of these the other day,” he joked. “I didn’t know that any had survived.”
This comment resulted in the idea to digitize. The decades-old tape was of a wedding ceremony, specifically the nuptials of one love-struck Gregory Thomas Smalley to the beautiful Erin Christine Murphy. Since we hadn’t owned a VCR player for many years, I decided it was time to convert it to a DVD.
In many ways it felt like yesterday —watching Erin, escorted by her parents, walk down the aisle to my waiting hand. In other ways, our wedding felt like a lifetime ago. I don’t mean that as in “the ol’ ball and chain,” because I love my wife and our marriage. But it was strange to see my twenty-three-year-old self. I was barely shaving, and yet there I stood, pledging life-changing vows.
I, Greg, take you, Erin, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.
And that’s when I noticed something remarkable. I replayed the scene several times to make sure I’d heard it correctly. I smiled at the realization that everything I’ve learned about marriage in the past twenty-four years —both as a husband and as a psychologist —could be summed up in two simple words. And yet I’d failed to grasp their significance when I’d said them.
What are these life-changing words? To love.
I’m sure you’re thinking, Love? That’s it —that’s your big revelation about the secret for a great marriage? I want my money back!
But hold on —I know that you recognize the importance of love. In fact, a recent Pew Research Center survey showed that 88 percent of Americans cited love as a “very important” reason to get married, ahead of lifelong commitment (81 percent) and companionship (76 percent).[1] But I’m not talking about love, the noun. My moment of revelation was hearing my very own lips vow “to love” Erin.
Eighty-eight percent of Americans cited love as a “very important” reason to get married.
This short phrase is the secret of a thriving marriage and the foundation of everything that you’ll learn within the pages of this book.
Society’s views on love and marriage are not only false, but they can also severely harm or handicap your relationship. The toxic parts of unbiblical ideas about love are often rooted deep in the heart. Maxims such as, “Your spouse will ‘complete’ you,” sound great as a headline, but over time false ideas result in emotional pain and relationship strain.
Let me tell you a story to show what I mean.
LOVE’S FINE PRINT
I’ll never forget a special phone call I made to Erin during our engagement. I was euphoric about a fortuitous turn of events.
After she answered the phone, I asked her to sit down and brace herself, then I proudly announced that I had received official notification in the mail that I had won the big sweepstakes! Yes, indeed, Erin was preparing to marry a very rich man. I was in the running for a new car, a free luxury trip, or even one million dollars!
At first Erin was speechless. I thought this would truly be any bride’s dream come true: entering marriage with no financial worries. So it was no wonder the glorious news had stunned her into silence. A minute later I didn’t understand when she actually laughed out loud while I went on and on about how we would spend the money and what I was going to buy her.
One is very crazy when in love.
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis
To make a long and embarrassing story short, I had fallen for a scam. (Today Erin says that when she was in nursing school, she’d had conversations that were eerily similar —with the patients in the hospital’s psychiatric ward.)
Indeed these marketers had done a great job presenting their pitch. I wasn’t able to distinguish between reality and the hope of financial independence. The “winner” notification sounded legitimate with all the right legal jargon. The stationery looked so authentic —the envelope even had a wax seal!
I felt humiliated. Not only had I believed I was a millionaire, I had also told my entire family and bragged to many of my graduate school friends.
In one day I learned that without reading and understanding the fine print, I could easily end up sounding like a fool.
When it comes to marriage, we are being scammed as well. However, it’s not by some crook peddling a bogus sweepstakes; it’s by the culture that we live in. We are being sold ideas about marriage that contain “fine print,” which sets up couples —even couples who have been married ten years or longer —to fail.
THE LOVE LIES
See if you recognize some of these popular marriage scams:
- Marriage is easy when you find “the one.”
- Conflict is a sign of a troubled relationship.
- Romance and passion will always be alive in a good marriage.
- Your spouse should automatically know what you need.
- Marriage is about being happy.
- Spouses will naturally grow closer as time goes by.
- Love is self-sustaining.
- Oneness is about losing your identity.
- Differences are the problem in most marriages.
As wonderful as they sound, these faulty beliefs create unrealistic expectations that in general undermine your marriage relationship. But I want to focus on one myth in particular. In my opinion, it’s the most destructive. This concept is best summed up by French novelist George Sand writing to future daughter-in-law Lina Calamatta about marriage: “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”[2]
As I have already pointed out, this quote contains a kernel of truth. It is good “to love.” The distorted mush is the “be loved” part. Happiness is not dependent on finding someone to love you. The popular notion that we need to be loved by our spouse, or anyone for that matter, is intellectual swill.
The truth is that I don’t need Erin to love me.
I know this sounds counterintuitive and crazy —because we’ve all probably been bombarded with this cultural lie through magazine articles, movie scripts, and music lyrics. One song recorded by country music artist Wynonna Judd offers this advice, “You got to find somebody to love you / Someone to be there for you night and day.”[3]
The Bible, however, doesn’t say that you need to find someone to love you.
Let that sink in. You don’t need to find someone to love you.
There’s nothing in Scripture that says this. Not. One. Verse.
You don’t need your spouse to love you, but you do need love. You need God’s love.
God is love (1 John 4:8), and His love is perfect, everlasting, unconditional, sacrificial, steadfast, faithful, genuine, and active. Your need to be loved has been completely met by God.
The culture doesn’t acknowledge that a personal, loving God exists. So it sells you this lie, and it’s a whopper:
If you fail to find your “soul mate,” then a massive “love hole” will remain in your heart, and you will spend the rest of your meaningless life weeping and gnashing your teeth until you find someone else who will give you the love that you so crave.
THE LOVE TRUTH
Here’s a summary of the love truth found in Scripture:
You don’t have a “love hole” in your heart. God is the source of love. Your need to be loved has already been 100 percent satisfied by your heavenly Father.
Your spouse will never be “the source” of love in your life. This is God’s exclusive role —and He is a jealous lover! We are constantly reminded of God’s possessive love throughout the Bible: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3, ESV). The apostle Paul called us “dearly loved children” (Ephesians 5:1) and John wrote, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11, ESV). The word beloved means “much loved.” The Creator of the universe loves you completely!
So, our first and most important job in marriage is to open our hearts to God’s unlimited love. This is why the greatest commandment begins with an instruction to love God: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).
When you put God first, He promises to meet all your needs. “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:33, NLT). God alone can fill you to the full.
Nothing on this earth compares to being loved by Him (Ephesians 3:16-21).
THEN WHY MARRIAGE?
God designed marriage to start with His love. The Lord created you to depend completely upon Him —heart, soul, mind, and strength. He fills you up in ways that nothing else can. You will never find ultimate satisfaction except in a vital, dynamic relationship with God.
That being said, God’s design for us includes community —both a blood community and a faith community. Marriage is God’s plan for individuals and also for community. God gave us marriage as a gift, but that gift does not supersede our primary relationship, which is with Him as our Source of life and love.
TO LOVE . . .
Once you are able to receive God’s love, as a married person you have a job to do. Freed from the bonds of trying to get your spouse to love you, you are now able to love fully. Instead of spending time, effort, and energy on looking inward, your job is to look outward and love your spouse.
Erase the cultural scams and myths about matrimony from your mind and heart; this is the real job your heavenly Father has given you: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).
Your marriage destiny is to love your spouse.
THE LOOK OF LOVE
So, what does loving your spouse truly look like?
Let me illustrate the answer to this question. I recently was editing video curriculum that featured twenty of the best Christian marriage experts. They were offering advice for engaged couples.[4] We didn’t script or tell the experts what to say, and we received some powerful biblical counsel.
As I watched all the experts —one right after the other —I was amazed at a particular theme that was repeated by the presenters: sacrifice. It’s as if they all had read John 15:13 as their morning devotion: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (ESV).
Sacrifice is what love looks like. It’s giving up something you value (your time, money, comfort, or desires) for the sake of someone else whom you consider to have a greater value.[5]
It’s relatively easy for me as an adult to serve someone —to help out or assist. I usually do that cheerfully. But it’s a whole different story when serving someone costs me something.
I admit sacrificing for Erin can be a struggle. But I don’t regret or resent it. In fact, the act of sacrificing now is one way I grow closer to God.
The culture says that sacrifice is a loss. In a biblical reckoning, sacrifice in marriage is a win-win situation.
That’s what’s so crazy about biblical marriage. There are twelve secrets —crazy countercultural secrets —that stem from Scriptures that, once embraced, will fill your marriage with intimacy, trust, and romance.
Let’s look at “Romance Secret #1: True Love Commits.”