Enduring Love for Spouse, Children and Friends

 

Love bears all things, believes all

things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13:7

                                       Love doesn’t quit.             Love doesn’t give up.       Love endures all things.

Forgive me please for this late post about ‘Love’.  This was supposed to be posted on Valentine’s Day, but life got in the way and this blog post got pushed aside. I feel the message is timely even if Valentine’s Day has passed.

When the Captain and I married, we used chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians as part of our wedding ceremony.  We wanted to start our journey together with a description of what Love is and is not…we needed this gentle reminder of the importance of Love,  enduring Love, …not only for each other but for our children and friends. Scripture tells us to love one another because He first loved us.

                                                                                                                1 John 4:19

                                                                              “we love because He first loved us.”

We have an opportunity to show this enduring love through any and all relationships in our lives; our marriage relationship, our parent/child relationship, and our friend relationships.

As I stated above, our marriage vows (Me and My Captain’s) spoke of love enduring all things.  We said the vows ‘for better or worse’…in other words for all time not just until the going gets tough and then we call it quits.  This also includes ‘for richer or poorer’ and we all know the money obstacles the early years of marriage usually encounters. Add the words ‘in sickness and in health’ and as many of you know, the Captain was by my side all through my bout of Pancreatic Cancer.  He did not hop the first plane out of town at the obvious commitment of remaining at home by my side through a year of hospital and doctor visits, chemo and radiation treatments, plus constant bedside care…He did it all with the knowledge that my life could end at any moment. That is enduring Love.

Unfortunately, today we live in a ‘throw away world’…which to many means marriage is disposable.  If it doesn’t work the way we want it to…there is always divorce. However, that is not enduring love and not how God sees marriage.  For God, marriage is a lifetime commitment.  Of course one would not expect a wife to remain in an abusive marriage… that is a different set of circumstances, and also leads us to the Bible verse of being unequally yoked, and hopefully a discernment of one’s partner before one marries into such a situation. (2 Corinthians 6:14 )

I repeat…To God, marriage is a lifetime commitment.  This is not to say that a God ‘approved’ marriage is issue free.  A husband may not be as attentive as we would like, or he leaves the toilet lid up, or he tosses his dirty clothes on the floor beside the hamper, or the wife spends more money than the budget allows, or perhaps she buys too many lottery tickets or maybe she would rather not cook….there can be something about our spouse that drives us a bit batty.  But LOVE endures.

For those of us that have endured and are in our marriage twilight years…we have learned that enduring love still allows for growth and improvement.  One may have to sit down and have a ‘heart to heart’ conversation with their spouse….no matter our ages or how long we have been married.  A loving and helpful compromise nurtures love.  We should never give up and toss in the towel so to speak.  Love endures.

The same holds true of our parent/child relationship and we all know how much a mother loves her babies from womb to birth and beyond.  And we never give up on them although we might have to admit there are times we become very exasperated… not only if they are needy toddlers, or in their sometimes rebellious teen-age years but in their adult lives as well.  There may be times when our adult children are battling demons of their own such as drug or alcohol addiction, or perhaps it is simply that they have strayed away from God’s teaching.  As mothers, we never give up on them, do we?…love endures…and we certainly should never give up on praying for them. We should pray to God for wisdom and discernment and deliverance for our children, no matter their ages.  We need to be faithful in prayer for our children. Love endures.

And finally fellowship/friendship.  Our friends, especially women friends, are so very important in our lives.  I again speak from experience when my various needs were met by my wonderful ‘sisters’ during my illness. I have been Blessed by the many times my friends have “been there” whether it be for encouragement, words of advice or merely a listening ear.  On the other side of that coin, I am sure there are times when we might be annoyed by a misunderstanding or misconception of being ignored by our friends. Maybe a word spoken in jest that hit us wrong because of other areas in our lives that were at the time overwhelming us.  Perhaps we feel offended because we didn’t get that chicken soup hand delivered when we had the flu or our friend didn’t offer to help when she knew we were hosting a funeral dinner at church and could use extra help.  We may falsely think we can’t be friends anymore. But that is simply not true.  Think Love my sweet friends, … We women need our women friends.  We need to know there is someone who understands us and will pray not only with us but for us regularly. 

I love the following story about friendship found in Mark 2:3-5.

“…And they came, bringing to Him a paralytic

carried by four men. And when they could

not get near Him because of the crowd, they

removed the roof above Him, and when they

had made an opening, they let down the bed

on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw

their faith, He said to the paralytic,

“Son, your sins are forgiven.”

These friends carried a bed or cot holding their friend to see Jesus.  Wow!  This was before easy transportation like a car, a bus or even a wheel chair. Plus the Bible doesn’t say how far they carried their paralyzed friend! I believe it was quite a distance…certainly not just next door.  The point remains…they carried him. After they arrived, there were so many people gathered that they couldn’t get their friend in the house to see Jesus.  Many of us would have just given up and left …but not these friends. They discussed it and decided to enter the house through the roof!  Can you imagine?  They were determined to help their friend and when Jesus saw their faith…(the friends’ faith) the man was forgiven his sins and healed. Their Love endured. We need friends whose love will endure and we need to be that kind of friend.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the enduring love of our Savior.  Jesus did not give up and he showed us His enduring love as he hung on Calvary’s cross after a horrendous beating. He chose to die for me and for you.  Jesus is the example we should see when we think of love. Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so

great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay 

aside every weight, and sin which clings so

closely, and let us run with endurance the

race that is set before us, looking to Jesus,

the founder and perfecter of our faith, who

for the joy that was set before him endured

the cross, despising the shame, and is seated

at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Our love, whether for our spouse, our children, or a friend, needs to be a love that endures all things. 

                          Love doesn’t quit.              Love doesn’t give up.             Love endures all things.

Thank you for reading Enduring Love for Spouse, Children and Friends

Blessings And Love Always,