Love without limits. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Yes, it is!
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I recently illustrated a point with the above image and decided to use it again. Listening to many of Elvis’s songs and watching video from his life, his associates, his concerts, and interviews over the years, I believe I could tell that he (Elvis) was hungry for purpose and love. I wonder if he would have traded all the fame, attention, and money for one truly loving, lasting, and intimate relationship. Maybe he had that. I am not sure, but I am sure of this. Everyone wants to be known and loved. Everyone wants to be able to know another person and to love another person deeply. We call it intimacy.
Intimacy: I know you. I let you know me. We know each other to care for each other.
As you can tell in the above definition, I am not referring to physical or sexual intimacy only. I hope you know by now that sexual intimacy is perhaps the least fulfilling form of intimacy available to the human race. Certainly, it is natural and wonderful in its place within heterosexual marriage. But there is so much more….., and we know it. Some take longer to learn it than others.
Being engaged in relationship ministry affords Carol and me the chance to see first hand how little sexual intimacy alone has the power to keep a couple together in a growing, caring relationship. The “staying power” of couples who start their relationship in bed or who introduce sex before God’s prescribed time is like the bandaid on the skin after that bandaid has been taken off over and over again. It loses its “sticky”.
Something else must come along to keep the sexual side of marriage vibrant, and that “something” is the personal relationship with God that Jesus brings to a human life resulting in a growing friendship with your spouse. The level of unconditional love we experience with Jesus our Savior brings the Spirit of God right into our heart and with Him, the fruit of the Spirit….love, God’s love. We love because of the gift of love He brings. We experience closeness on a heart level and spiritual level, as well as physically.
We cannot sustain love in marriage or any other relationship without the unconditional love of God inside us (I John 4:19), bringing the peace of knowing we are accepted and wanted by our Father and the power to love others that way…..as Jesus did. (John 13:34-35) So, wherever you started your current relationship, married or single, if you want it to deepen into true intimacy – spiritually, emotionally, and physically (as God designed), make sure you know you are loved by God and then give His love away. Even when your spouse is being unlovely or unloveable, call on God’s love to give love to them.
God’s love translates our best efforts into an unconditional love!
When we love others with God’s love, we are doing exactly what Jesus told us to do in the Golden Rule of Matthew 7:12:
12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
and in Matthew 11:37-40:
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Both the Matthew 7 and Matthew 11 passages indicate that love is the fulfillment of all the laws. God loved us and sent His Son, didn’t He? Why? He did it so that you and I could know His love and give it away….showing the world that we are His disciples by the way we love.
His unconditional love for us can make the difference in our marriage, parenting, work place, and wherever your relationships reach.
Our shattered world needs to see Jesus’ love for themselves in authentic, not necessarily perfect, relationships, so they will know His true character through us and be drawn to the Lord of our life-even Jesus Christ. John 13:35 is clear!