His love is motivating

Day 29...Love's Motivation

Today's Dare: 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.  

The motivation to love is different for everybody.  We all have this natural instinct to love and be loved, but to love unconditionally for life doesn't come that easy.  Some animals mate for life and long ago we as humans used to as well, but now that divorce is so easy and not as taboo as before and also now because our world is focused on instant gratification, its harder and harder to find couples that have mated for life.

Its much easier to look for someone else to satisfy our needs when things get tough or start to head in a direction that we were not expecting.   Its easy to believe that our lives would be better if we didn't have to deal with our spouse's nagging or complaining.  We can get sucked into that old saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."  Its hard to see when you're in the middle of something tough that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and its not an oncoming train.

I wrote an entire series of posts about Jonah last year and I think the part that stuck with me the most is the moment that Jonah gets spit back onto the land after being in the whale for 3 days.  At that moment he had a choice.  He could have turned and run a second time or he could start walking towards Nineveh. You see Nineveh is still quite a ways off in the distance.  Jonah can't see Nineveh from where he is but he starts walking anyway. Jonah knows that He will guide his steps.  Relationships and especially marriage are like that, we often can't see our destination but when He is our guide we know that the way will be shown to us, so we keep walking.

Even when troubles come, we keep walking.  When the storms are raging, we keep walking.  When we can't imagine spending one more moment with our spouse, we keep walking hand in hand.  Step by step. Inch by inch.  Year by year.  Moment by moment, we keep walking because when He is in the middle He will show us the way.