True Love

Imagine two young people, been in church their whole lives, one a pastor's daughter and the other a deacon's son who pursue each other and finally get married who now have four children and fifteen grandchildren.  What would you say about that couple and their beginning?  Super couple with a great background and off to a solid start?  No chance of divorce with those two?  Perfect example of how Christian families should begin and will work out if done right?  Well, Norm Wakefield from Spirit of Elijah Ministries described his relationship with his wife (and her relationship with him) as idolatrous, and testified to the first 10 years being a "train wreck".  I suspect this is the case far more often than most believers will even admit, for fear of letting out the awful truth that we who profess Christ as our Savior mess things up sometimes too.

Do we really think about Love in terms of Christ's love for us?  I mean really think about it that way.  A brief review of scripture shows with certainty that He loved us BEFORE we did anything to deserve it.  Do we really love people before they do things we want, or give us things we desire?  How about it husbands, do we love our wives, serve them, bring them flowers, write them little love text messages throughout the day, buy them gifts for no reason, without any expectation of physical intimacy later on?  How about it fathers, do we spend time with our children, read books, play sports, work projects, have devotions, without any expectation of obedience or verbal approval of our parenting as a result?  Do we love our families, giving of all we are, without any expectation of something in return - or do we love them like a football team, spending time and cheering them on as long as they are winning for the entertainment we derive from the investment?  Sobering to think we are all creating for ourselves idols and carving them with precision every day.

Go to Spirit of Elijah Ministries website and look into the book "Equipped to Love" by Norm Wakefield.  The man is gifted by God to speak to relationships in real terms, identifying real loving relationships from idolatrous ones.  It will open your eyes, as his talk did mine, to the correct way to think and pray for help in experiencing God's love for us in a deeper and more intimate way, and how we can be successful in loving others and ourselves in the way God loves us.

We don't have relationship issues, or communication problems, or repressions of this or that from past situations by and large.  We have a sin problem in that we are experts in habitual creation and formation of idols from which we derive our fulfillment.  We need all the resources we can to identify ways in which we can rely completely on our God and Savior to bring fulfillment in every area of our lives.  Norm's book is a good one to add to your collection.