I WANT to quote a scripture and then discuss its implications about love, especially pertaining to marriage. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:7-21 Let’s look at one of the lessons on love in this passage. If you don’t have love for one another, there is a good chance that you have never experienced that love from the Father. He demonstrated true love by loving you when you didn’t deserve it. Once you have experienced that kind of forgiveness and acceptance knowing you did not deserve it, you are able to give that kind of love to others. As I talk about loving others who don’t “deserve” it, most would quickly think of our “enemies” — people who are not nice to us, people who are rude and mean, or people who have hurt us. Ironically, today I want to talk about the person you have at one point stated you loved more than anyone else in the world — your spouse! When we get married, we can’t imagine feeling anything, but love towards that person, but as life sinks in and stresses overwhelm you both, you find sometimes the “enemy” lives in your own home. You find the person you want to love is sometimes the most difficult! you find yourself saying, “it isn’t like i am cheating but i just don’t feel love anymore towards this person.” We have fallen out of love is another popular phrase used. Is there a solution? I believe there is. It is a multi-faceted solution which we can’t cover comprehensively in one column, but I am going to give two solutions today. Number one — get right with your Creator. Meditate on His promises to love you. Ponder on verses that speak of how He died for you and sings over you with His love! As you continue to be filled with love from the Holy Spirit, as you continue to feel unconditionally loved and forgiven by God, and as you grasp the concept He accepts you as you are then you are in a better place to give that same unconditional love to others. Number two is a little more complicated. It is the concept of love languages. We will address it in detail on our televison show in the episode titled Love Languages. You can download it off our website. Here is the problem. We do not always speak the same language. My love language is spending time so I will make this one personal to make it more practical. I feel very loved if someone considers me worthy of their time. For someone to say they love me, but can’t set apart quality time to hang out with me makes me doubt they are telling the truth. My rationale is if you really cared, you would w