Dare Twenty Nine: Love's not about me

If I don't feel loved, sometimes I don't give love.  If I feel wronged, I feel justified in being a little less cordial.  If I feel angry, I'll show it in a heartbeat.  Honestly?  My attitude is pitiful!  Love is not about me.

Dare Twenty Nine: "Before you see your spouse again today, pray for them by name and for their needs.  Whether it comes easy for you or not, say "I love you," then express love to them in some tangible way.  Go to God in prayer again, thanking Him for giving you the privilege of loving this one special person -- unconditionally, the way He loves both of you."

This dare was about recognizing that the true motivation of love is not about getting love or about maintaining a perfect marriage.  Love is about God.  We love each other because God first loved us.  The two greatest commandments in the Bible are "Love the Lord your God" and "Love your neighbor."  Even when I don't want to give love, God's love is enough that I might still give love.  The motivation for love is God's call to us to love one another as He loves us.

Colossians 3:17 states, "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."  Even our love in marriage should be done in the name of the Lord.  I am not sure if my love is always comparable to God's love, but I know that God can make it the same.  God's love is unconditional.  So our love, through God's love, should be unconditional towards our spouse.

Unconditional . . . regardless of whether he does something that makes me livid, regardless of whether I'm in a bad mood, regardless of whether I've had a long day, I can and must love my husband.  I keep telling my son that every good and perfect gift is from above.  Love is that good and perfect give and it is my job to appreciate the love that God has given me.

Dare Twenty Two: I love you regardless

To James:  I love you regardless.  No matter what you do or say, you are getting love from me.  The love that I offered on our wedding day was not a whishy washy dependent on you type of love, I offered you a love that was unconditional.  These are the vows that I said on our wedding day:

I do take you James to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, to give and to receive, to speak and to listen, to be loyal to you, till death us do part according to God’s Holy Law.

James, to you, I offer my life, my body, my strength, my support, and my loyalty.  I offer my faith, my hope, and my love in all the changing circumstances of life as long as we both shall live.

The twenty second dare expressed that “love is a choice, not a feeling.  It is an initiated action, not a knee-jerk reaction.  Choose today to be committed to love even if your spouse has lost most of their interest in receiving it.  Say to them today in words similar to these, ‘I love you.  Period.  I choose to love you even if you don’t love me in return.’”  I am blessed.  James does reciprocate my love, but not always the way that I wish he would.  Sometimes it feels like he’s expressing his love in Zulu while I feel that I’m expressing my love in Cupidese.

In response to God’s unconditional love, I can give James love no matter whether he loves me “adequately” or not.  James’s love is not sufficient, God’s is.  My love is not sufficient for James either, only God has the love that is unlike any other.  Sometimes I find myself looking to James for fulfillment in love, but only God can provide that to me.  As I learn to depend on God’s love to fulfill my heart, I want to love James unconditionally with all my heart.

Dare Twenty: Learning to Love Love

I have already placed my faith in Jesus as the Lord of my life and trust in Him for my salvation, but I also realize that in accepting Him daily I must learn to love love.  I John 4:16 says, “God is love,” and if I resist God at all I am resisting unconditional love.  The dare asked me to commit my life to God, “Dare to take God at His word.  Dare to trust Jesus Christ for salvation.  Dare to pray, ‘Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner.  But you have shown your love for me by dying to forgive my sins, and you have proven your power to save me from death by your resurrection.  Lord change my heart, and save me by your grace.’”  While I do trust Jesus for my salvation, I have been sincerely asking God to change my heart.  Instead of keeping God locked up in a room of my heart, I want to make sure that He has free reign in me.

God has been calling me to radically change my life.  I keep feeling his draw to give up certain things for his glory and to live my life in a special way devoted to Him.  One of the things that helped me see that I wasn’t fully abandoned to God’s will was the fact that I was stumbling so regularly in loving James in this dare.  This past week was a rough week for me.  I was selfish, rude, and I was not succeeding in love.  What I realized through the last dare and this one is that I cannot love with unconditional love if Christ does not have my whole heart in which to pour his unconditional love. 

The last two lines of the song I wrote yesterday were “I’ve let go of all I’m grasping for, I’m grasping for you.”  The life that God has called me to live is a life devoted to grasping after Him.  I am learning to hunger and thirst for God like I have never known before.  How does this have to do with the love dare?  I can only love my husband fully if I know the love of God in a real way.  If I tip my hat to God, then go on living my life, I am not receiving God’s unconditional love that I can pour out to my husband.  God loves me unconditionally and in response to that kind of love, I can love unconditionally.  I don’t deserve that kind of love, and sometimes my wonderful yet flawed husband doesn’t deserve that kind of love, but that doesn’t stop God from loving me, and that shouldn’t stop me from loving my husband.

How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Amazing love! How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

- Charles Wesley

Dare Ten: Love is a choice

Sometimes showing love to your spouse does not look very romantic to the rest of the world.  In fact, the one intentional thing that I did to fulfill yesterday's dare would be absolutely dumb to anyone else.  The dare said to "do something out of the ordinary today for your spouse - something that proves (to you and to them) that your love is based on your choice and nothing else."  Well, yesterday, I bought James Organic Chicken Better Than Bouillon!

I knew that James had wanted some more Chicken Better Than Bouillon, and I also knew that he would love that I found it in organic.  Fulfilling the dare meant going out of my way, putting off a few other things that I needed to be doing, and visiting the Coast Health & Nutrition off of 49.  I had to choose to show my love in that way.

James loved it.  He found it in the bag on the sofa before I got home from Growth Group last night.  I pulled it out of the bag to show him later on, and he said that he had seen it.  Not only did I get a smile out of the deal, but I could see that he knew that I had done something special for him.  While I thought this was the completion of the dare, I had no idea that this dare was going to be tested again this morning.

James lets his alarm go off time after time in the morning.  The second time it went off, I woke up.  Unlike my typical bad attitude upon awaking to a blaring alarm, I simply asked him if he would please get up so it would not go off again.  He did not want to get up, and wanted to keep sleeping until the alarm went off again.  I was hurt.  I shared my feelings and told him how I knew he wanted sleep, but that my sleep was being disrupted by the alarm.  Again, he was not moved to action.  Finally, the alarm went off once more.

He decided to try to prove his point about not wanting to get up when I asked him by asking me if I would like to get up to fix him breakfast.  It was not really the dare, it was not really me trying to prove a point (though maybe a little), but I really wanted to show him that my love was unconditional.  I got up out of bed upon his request and fixed him breakfast.  He thought I was just trying to pull a "holier than thou", but I explained that I love him that much.  I wanted to do what he asked.  My reaction was my choice, and though he did not have the best attitude this morning, my love is my choice.  When I choose to love, it is not dependant on his perfect attitude.

I honestly did not expect to be fulfilling this dare with anything but the Organic Chicken Better Than Bouillon.  God's grace was more than sufficient, and He gave me the strength to show my love this morning.  I really surprised myself by not getting mad.  I think I surprised James too.  The more I open up my heart to true unconditional love, the more I realize that I am opening up my marriage to God's power.  Not only is The Love Dare teaching me how to love my husband, it is teaching me to open up my life to God's love.