Before we get started: I'm 21 years old. There's still a lifetime left for me to learn about relationships and love, to say the least. But hey, I feel like God is leading me to talk about this subject, so let's see what we can uncover. Sound fun?! I thought so!
Oftentimes, the closer we try and get to love, the farther away we end up sliding. It's a slippery slope when your only basis is what the world teaches. The world gives us this confound image of what relationships and love should look like, whether romanticized or downright dramatic. It advertises parties, orgies, and everything in between and we get sucked into its short-term promises of fulfillment, when all we're left with the next morning is an even stronger sense of longing and need for something better. The sad thing is that we keep on settling, night after night. We put on the blinders and begin to believe that this is the best we can do in the category of love. More specifically, we confuse "love" with "lust". I did and it was alarmingly easy to do at the time.
Really, love has nothing to do with lust. Lust treats women as objects. Love treats women as Christ treated the Church: with compassion, sacrifice, and grace. To be honest, we've perverted and beaten the idea of love beyond recognition. It's so mutilated that the only forensics we have left to identify it are its dental records. That's how badly we've misconstrued what we call love. But God demonstrates what real love is. He holds the dental records that we so desperately need.
Check it: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body." (Ephesians 5:25-30).
Beautiful. Christ saw the world, afflicted and stained by sin, but His love for it wasn't diminished. His passionate pursuit to love the world (that used the very breath He gave them to curse Him) led Him to the cross. His heart bled with glorious, forgiving, sacrificial love. Make no mistake, there has never been any greater love than this. What we call love in our relationships, even in the most spiritual sense, cannot compare to the love that was displayed by the holes in His hands. It's indescribably perfect. Christ's one flesh relationship to the Church perfectly depicts the blueprint for our marriages as humans. It is to be an exclusive, special, covenanted relationship.
Men, here's my message to you. Don't go out and try to "fall in love" with the girl you think you're perfect for. Believe me, no matter what grandiose plan you have for your life, God has a better one. Instead of trying to play God in your relationships, let God be God. He loves you so much that He gave His blameless, perfect Son to die for you, so I'm sure that He will take care of your dating scene as well. In all actuality, our duty is nothing less than to conform ourselves to the image of Christ, the ultimate husband (as shown by His love for the Church, His bride). In doing so, we are becoming the godly husbands that He has called us to be. He's equipping us for marriage as we transform our hearts and lives to mirror that of Christ's. Whoever God ultimately leads you to, "...sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word." Shower her with the encouragement of Scripture, the perfect Word of God. Grow together as one flesh in your relationship with Him. Read the Song of Solomon in the Bible. You'll thank me later. Nourish and cherish her as you do yourself. Lose the lust.
With love.
Nice job, Brandon!
ReplyDeleteThank you! :)
ReplyDelete