Love that Endures
When Love Learns to Endure: Building Marriages That Last
What does it mean to truly love someone? Not just in the butterflies-and-romance phase, but in the everyday grind of life—when the bills pile up, when bodies change, when disappointments accumulate like dishes in the sink?
The answer might surprise you: real love isn't primarily about how you feel. It's about how you choose to act.
The Paper or Plastic Question
Remember when grocery store clerks used to ask, "Paper or plastic?" It seemed like such a simple choice. Paper bags were convenient but fragile—one wrong move and everything spills out. Plastic bags, on the other hand, could stretch, bend, and hold up under pressure.
What if we applied that same question to our relationships? Is your love paper-thin, tearing easily when life gets messy? Or does it stretch like plastic, bending without breaking when stress comes?
In today's culture, love is often treated as fragile—something that tears when tested. We fall in and out of love based on fluctuating feelings. But there's a better way, a love that mirrors something far more powerful and enduring.
Love as a Command, Not Just an Emotion
Here's something that might shift your perspective entirely: throughout Scripture, love is presented as a command, not merely an emotion. We're told to love God, love our neighbors, love our enemies, and husbands are commanded to love their wives.
Think about that for a moment. You cannot be commanded to feel something on demand. But you can be commanded to act, to choose, and to commit. This reveals something profound: biblical love is primarily an act of obedience and will.
The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that "the heart is deceitful above all things." Our emotions are unreliable guides. They fluctuate with circumstances, moods, and personal desires. When everything's going well—bills paid, family getting along, work relationships smooth—our emotions soar. But when challenges arise, when we're robbing Peter to pay Paul (and Peter's broke too), our feelings shift dramatically.
If love is based only on feelings, it will fade when conflict arises, when attraction changes, when trials come, or when someone disappoints us. But biblical love is designed to endure beyond emotional highs.
Covenant-Based, Not Mood-Based
Here's the beautiful truth: God's love is covenant-based, not mood-based. Aren't you grateful we don't serve a moody God? Imagine if we could catch God on a bad day when He's frustrated with us. Instead, His love flows from His character and covenant faithfulness, not from emotional impulse.
In Jeremiah 31:3, God declares, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." Romans 5 tells us that God loved us while we were still sinners—before we cleaned up our act, before we broke our addictions, before we stopped responding in anger. His love doesn't start when we get our lives in order; it precedes our faith.
This is the foundation we're called to build on in marriage: a covenant, not a contract.
The Blueprint for Enduring Love
First Corinthians 13:4-7 provides a blueprint for what enduring love looks like in action:
"Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
These words sound beautiful, almost poetic. But have you ever thought about how hard they are to actually live out?
Patience and Kindness: The Foundation
Patience and kindness are often tested in the smallest, most ordinary moments—when your spouse forgets to take out the trash, when they're running late again, when they leave dishes in the sink.
Patience means choosing to be calm when you feel like snapping. Kindness means extending grace when frustration feels so much easier. These qualities create a safe, trusting environment.
Here's a challenging question: How would we feel if God treated us the way we treat our spouse? What would life look like if God responded to our imperfections the way we respond to theirs?
The Greek word for patience in this passage literally means "long-tempered"—not short-fused, but slow to anger. It means enduring without exploding, giving people room to grow, absorbing irritation without retaliation.
Think of a gardener planting a seed. He doesn't shout at the soil because it hasn't sprouted in 24 hours. He waters, waits, and trusts the process. Love understands that growth takes time. Psychologically speaking, patience creates emotional safety. When someone knows you won't erupt at their weakness, they can heal and mature.
Love Does Not Keep Score
Keeping score is one of the easiest traps to fall into in marriage. "I did the dishes last night, so it's your turn tonight." "You forgot my birthday last year, so why should I go out of my way for you now?"
But when we keep score, we're not loving selflessly—we're keeping track of what's fair. And here's the thing: God's love isn't fair. It's generous, forgiving, and unconditional.
The word translated "resentful" in some versions is actually an accounting term—it means to calculate, to reckon, to keep a ledger. Paul is literally saying love doesn't sit down and calculate the evil done to it. It doesn't maintain a spreadsheet of offenses.
Keeping score turns love into a business transaction. If you've hurt me twice, now I owe you coldness. But love isn't a contract; it's a covenant.
Psalm 130:3 asks, "If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?" Nobody. Not one of us. The only record heaven keeps for believers is what we sow into the kingdom, not our faults and failures.
Resentment is rehearsed anger—the more you replay it, the stronger it becomes. When you keep score with your spouse, you rehearse the wound, strengthen the bitterness, and harden your heart.
Here's the beautiful truth: God doesn't keep records against those in Christ. Colossians 2:14 says He "canceled the record of debt that stood against us" and nailed it to the cross. If God erased your eternal record, how can you justify keeping temporary ones?
Love Always Perseveres
Perseverance means sticking it out even when feelings fade and challenges seem overwhelming. Think about wedding vows: for better or worse, in richer and poorer, in sickness and in health.
Some of us are in the better seasons of marriage. Some are in the worst. Some are somewhere in between. Perseverance means keeping those vows not just when life is easy, but especially when it's hard.
Perseverance isn't about ignoring difficulties—it's about choosing to face them together, having the hard conversations, engaging in self-reflection and repentance.
The Challenge of Loving Like Jesus
A love that endures isn't built on feelings but on faithfulness. It's patient, kind, forgiving, and persevering through every challenge.
This kind of love doesn't come naturally. But it's the love God has poured out on us through Jesus Christ. When we align our love with God's definition rather than our own, we build marriages and relationships that can endure life's storms.
The people surrounding you—your spouse, your family—these are the ones who will one day carry flowers to your grave. They're the ones who will cry when you go to be with Jesus. Others may mourn you, but these love you the deepest.
Choose one quality this week. Work on patience. Focus on kindness. Practice forgiveness. Ask God to help you love your spouse in a way that reflects His perfect love.
Enduring love isn't easy. But with God at the center, everything is possible.
What does it mean to truly love someone? Not just in the butterflies-and-romance phase, but in the everyday grind of life—when the bills pile up, when bodies change, when disappointments accumulate like dishes in the sink?
The answer might surprise you: real love isn't primarily about how you feel. It's about how you choose to act.
The Paper or Plastic Question
Remember when grocery store clerks used to ask, "Paper or plastic?" It seemed like such a simple choice. Paper bags were convenient but fragile—one wrong move and everything spills out. Plastic bags, on the other hand, could stretch, bend, and hold up under pressure.
What if we applied that same question to our relationships? Is your love paper-thin, tearing easily when life gets messy? Or does it stretch like plastic, bending without breaking when stress comes?
In today's culture, love is often treated as fragile—something that tears when tested. We fall in and out of love based on fluctuating feelings. But there's a better way, a love that mirrors something far more powerful and enduring.
Love as a Command, Not Just an Emotion
Here's something that might shift your perspective entirely: throughout Scripture, love is presented as a command, not merely an emotion. We're told to love God, love our neighbors, love our enemies, and husbands are commanded to love their wives.
Think about that for a moment. You cannot be commanded to feel something on demand. But you can be commanded to act, to choose, and to commit. This reveals something profound: biblical love is primarily an act of obedience and will.
The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that "the heart is deceitful above all things." Our emotions are unreliable guides. They fluctuate with circumstances, moods, and personal desires. When everything's going well—bills paid, family getting along, work relationships smooth—our emotions soar. But when challenges arise, when we're robbing Peter to pay Paul (and Peter's broke too), our feelings shift dramatically.
If love is based only on feelings, it will fade when conflict arises, when attraction changes, when trials come, or when someone disappoints us. But biblical love is designed to endure beyond emotional highs.
Covenant-Based, Not Mood-Based
Here's the beautiful truth: God's love is covenant-based, not mood-based. Aren't you grateful we don't serve a moody God? Imagine if we could catch God on a bad day when He's frustrated with us. Instead, His love flows from His character and covenant faithfulness, not from emotional impulse.
In Jeremiah 31:3, God declares, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." Romans 5 tells us that God loved us while we were still sinners—before we cleaned up our act, before we broke our addictions, before we stopped responding in anger. His love doesn't start when we get our lives in order; it precedes our faith.
This is the foundation we're called to build on in marriage: a covenant, not a contract.
The Blueprint for Enduring Love
First Corinthians 13:4-7 provides a blueprint for what enduring love looks like in action:
"Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
These words sound beautiful, almost poetic. But have you ever thought about how hard they are to actually live out?
Patience and Kindness: The Foundation
Patience and kindness are often tested in the smallest, most ordinary moments—when your spouse forgets to take out the trash, when they're running late again, when they leave dishes in the sink.
Patience means choosing to be calm when you feel like snapping. Kindness means extending grace when frustration feels so much easier. These qualities create a safe, trusting environment.
Here's a challenging question: How would we feel if God treated us the way we treat our spouse? What would life look like if God responded to our imperfections the way we respond to theirs?
The Greek word for patience in this passage literally means "long-tempered"—not short-fused, but slow to anger. It means enduring without exploding, giving people room to grow, absorbing irritation without retaliation.
Think of a gardener planting a seed. He doesn't shout at the soil because it hasn't sprouted in 24 hours. He waters, waits, and trusts the process. Love understands that growth takes time. Psychologically speaking, patience creates emotional safety. When someone knows you won't erupt at their weakness, they can heal and mature.
Love Does Not Keep Score
Keeping score is one of the easiest traps to fall into in marriage. "I did the dishes last night, so it's your turn tonight." "You forgot my birthday last year, so why should I go out of my way for you now?"
But when we keep score, we're not loving selflessly—we're keeping track of what's fair. And here's the thing: God's love isn't fair. It's generous, forgiving, and unconditional.
The word translated "resentful" in some versions is actually an accounting term—it means to calculate, to reckon, to keep a ledger. Paul is literally saying love doesn't sit down and calculate the evil done to it. It doesn't maintain a spreadsheet of offenses.
Keeping score turns love into a business transaction. If you've hurt me twice, now I owe you coldness. But love isn't a contract; it's a covenant.
Psalm 130:3 asks, "If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?" Nobody. Not one of us. The only record heaven keeps for believers is what we sow into the kingdom, not our faults and failures.
Resentment is rehearsed anger—the more you replay it, the stronger it becomes. When you keep score with your spouse, you rehearse the wound, strengthen the bitterness, and harden your heart.
Here's the beautiful truth: God doesn't keep records against those in Christ. Colossians 2:14 says He "canceled the record of debt that stood against us" and nailed it to the cross. If God erased your eternal record, how can you justify keeping temporary ones?
Love Always Perseveres
Perseverance means sticking it out even when feelings fade and challenges seem overwhelming. Think about wedding vows: for better or worse, in richer and poorer, in sickness and in health.
Some of us are in the better seasons of marriage. Some are in the worst. Some are somewhere in between. Perseverance means keeping those vows not just when life is easy, but especially when it's hard.
Perseverance isn't about ignoring difficulties—it's about choosing to face them together, having the hard conversations, engaging in self-reflection and repentance.
The Challenge of Loving Like Jesus
A love that endures isn't built on feelings but on faithfulness. It's patient, kind, forgiving, and persevering through every challenge.
This kind of love doesn't come naturally. But it's the love God has poured out on us through Jesus Christ. When we align our love with God's definition rather than our own, we build marriages and relationships that can endure life's storms.
The people surrounding you—your spouse, your family—these are the ones who will one day carry flowers to your grave. They're the ones who will cry when you go to be with Jesus. Others may mourn you, but these love you the deepest.
Choose one quality this week. Work on patience. Focus on kindness. Practice forgiveness. Ask God to help you love your spouse in a way that reflects His perfect love.
Enduring love isn't easy. But with God at the center, everything is possible.
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