LOVE DARE DAY FOURTEEN

LOVE TAKES DELIGHT

Eccles 9:9
delight in the wife of your youth.

Don't just follow your heart. Lead it. Don't let your feelings & emotions do the driving. Put them in the back seat & tell them where you're going.

It's unrealistic for your heart to constantly thrill at the thought of spending every moment with your spouse.

Feelings come and go. They are unreliable at best. Just because you love your spouse, doesnt mean you will always feel that. So let's get that out of the way immediately. There will be times when you even feel angry. But you know you still love them.

Love is not based on feelings. Perhaps it would fit better if we said that the feelings are based on love. That's why the author of the Love Dare says we need to lead our hearts, not be led by them.

Remember God said through Jeremiah that the heart is sick, deceitful and wicked. It tells us things that aren't true, convincing us that they are.

Hence teenage girls give their virginity away to boys they never could love, adamant that it is "true love". Hence middle aged men leave their wives for lustful affairs with someone else, insisting they have found their "soulmate".

And many other crimes of the heart, even murder, all based on a flawed understanding of the real nature of love.

Knowing I love Liz (& she loves me) is just the start, and it is my motivation. With this starting point I can lead my heart. We do (&will always) have times where our opinions differ, where we disagree, where we feel disappointed or annoyed with the other.

But we can make the choice to simply keep loving.

* * * * *

This is like my comments on previous days about cherishing. Something may ruffle me, but then it's my responsibility to remember that I cherish Liz. So I stop and actually focus in cherishing her. Immediately the awkwardness dissipates and I am just feeling and thinking in ways that bless her (& make me feel a whole lot better!)

The same fits here. I cherish Liz, and now I can choose to simply delight in her.

* * * * *

So now I have three words to live by, or maybe I should say to love by!!

CHERISH
+
LISTEN
+
DELIGHT