NOTE: This at least for now is the last “why” in my “why” series of blog posts. I definitely put the most time and thought into this blog. I started with one thesis and then changed it as I began to study and process through this idea. Thanks for taking time to read this. My desire is not to cause shame or guilt in anyone but to encourage and spur you on to love your spouse in ways you may never have before. I am no expert on this topic but want to share how God has challenged me in this area over the past few months.
Asking someone why they love their spouse, is kind of like asking a fish what water is.
“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
-David Foster Wallace
Water is all around a fish. It’s all they ever know. They swim in it every day but never really think about it. It’s like marriage and why you love your spouse.
If I asked you why do you love your spouse, what would your answer be? You may list some of their wonderful qualities, or because they are your spouse or just because you love them, and you can’t really explain it.
So why do you love your spouse? I mean deep down at the root. Why do you love them? It’s kind of hard to explain, isn’t it? It’s like asking a fish to explain water.
Men was it her beauty, charm, kindness, heart or her great cooking that first caught your eye?
Women was it his handsome good looks, sense of humor, work ethic or that he could fix anything that drew you to him?
What caused you to have the thought, “I think I could spend the rest of my life with this person?” I would guess many of you would answer by saying, “I just knew at that moment that I loved them.”
The reason I believe that most of us get married is because we are so twitterpated by the other person that life just does not seem to make sense without them, so we want to get married. Now I am not saying this is a bad reason, but I want to ask is it enough. Or ask it this way, “Could there be more to marriage than just being madly in love with another person?”
Now if I am honest and let’s include most married men, one of the main reasons we got married was because we got to have SEX! And married sex is pretty awesome because there is a level intimacy experienced between married couples that cannot be found anywhere else. But anyone who has been married for more than a few years knows that sex is a very small part of the marriage. And it takes a lot of work to make it happen. Do you remember when you were engaged to your spouse and how hard you had to fight to not have sex before you said, “I do?” And then after getting married it seemed to switch. Once married you now have to work to make sex a regular part of your relationship. Isn’t that crazy? Think about that for a second. Why would this be the case? Could it be that Satan hates God honoring relationships and wants to ruin them at every opportunity?
Ok, let’s come back from that rabbit trail…
So, then what is the point of marriage?
If you do a search of the word “marriage” on Amazon, you will get over 100,000 search results related to the topic of marriage which means that there are plenty of opinions about what the point of marriage is.
Let me go back to the fish in water and why it’s hard to explain the love one has for their spouse.
Why do you love yourself? Have you ever thought about that question? Why do you love yourself? Umm…because…?Not in a narcissistic way but in a healthy I-want-to-take-care-of-myself way.
The answer comes down to worth, right?
Think about it, you love yourself which we all do because we are self-centered, so our natural inclination is to care for ourselves, which isn’t all bad but if we only care for our self then we become selfish. But it takes work and practice to love others. I mean, why else do I have to teach my two-year old to share instead of yelling, “Mine!” all the time? You love yourself because you feel worthy of that love. You assign value to yourself. That’s what we call self-worth.
So back to the question of why you love your spouse? Could it be due to the fact that you assign worth and value to them, so you have made the decision to invest in loving them?
But let me add this caveat from the Love Dare Journal:
“If your reasons for loving your spouse all have something to do with his or her qualities – and then those same qualities suddenly or gradually disappear – your basis for love is over.”
Now, I am going to say something controversial: people who are not followers of God cannot truly love someone. Let me explain: Where does a non-Christian (someone who has not made Jesus the Lord and Savior of their life) find worth? They find it from within themselves and the things they do. It’s dependent upon them.
Where does a Christian draw their worth from? From God. It’s dependent upon Him. God, the loving Father, who sent his only Son, Jesus Christ the God-man, to die in our place on the cross to atone for our sins forever. He died for you and me, worthless sinners, incapable of saving ourselves from our own sin and depravity so God stepped in to rescue us to give us life. That’s love.
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:7-18
You are not loved because you are worthy, you are worthy because you are loved.
And we have come full circle again. Why do you follow God? Because He loves you. He gave you worth that you could not find anywhere else so you gave your life to Him so you could experience His love every day. And now your life mission is to tell others about His Love.
The non-Christian has no well to draw from. Their worth is based upon their own strength. When life gets hard, they have no firm foundation to stand on. Or anyone to carry them when life beats them down. It is all on them.
You are married not to make your spouse feel worthy but to help them understand that they are already worthy because God loves them.
Your spouse, if they are a Christian, is a child of God. How do you expect other people to treat your own kids? Now think about this from God’s perspective. You are married to one of God’s children so think about how He wants them to be treated.
Can I suggest that your “why” for being married is to show God’s love to the world through your relationship with your spouse? Each day you get to wake up and decide whether or not you are going to love your spouse for that day. You get to practice how to truly love unconditionally because no one will hurt you like your spouse can, but no one can love you like they do. No one will know your hidden secrets and flaws like your spouse. But on the flipside, you also know their flaws and the choice is if you will love them flaws and all.
The only way for anyone of us to be to truly love our spouse or anyone unconditionally is to daily do what the previous passage said: know and rely on the love God has for us. This love has nothing to do with your looks, qualities, work, identity, nothing. It is truly unconditional love from a Father who gave it all so that we could experience it. That’s where we should find our worth. And that’s why when we seek our worth from God, lives will be transformed.
When we do this, God’s love will leak into every relationship in our life. When we do this, we begin to see our spouse as God sees them, WORTHY.
WE LOVE BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US.