Thoughts To Ponder
a monthly note from Richie

AGAPE LOVE & VALENTINE’S DAY

  I want to share this with you because of the special day society sets aside in the honor of love – Valentine’s Day.  My guess is many of you on February 14^th will receive a box of chocolates, a bouquet of roses, or that special card that says “I love you”!  Ah yes, love!   We’re told it’s what “makes the world go round”; it’s a “many splendid thing”!  How many songs have been recorded, poems written as the writer tries to express all that’s in their heart about love and the one they “love”?  I’ve written quite a few love songs myself; in fact, my last CD, The Heartbeat Of Love was devoted specifically to this subject.  Song writers and poets keep writin’ them though, because it never quite “gets it said”, at least the way they want to say it, and so, there’s a new “love song” every day! 

People of every generation have that special “song” that’s dear to their heart, reminding them of the day they “fell in love” – looked in each others eyes and knew – “you’re the one I love”, the one I want to share the rest of my life with, all of my hopes and dreams, all of the hard times and all of the good times – whatever might come our way!  In the marriage vows we make a “promise of love” to one another - it’s  for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do we part. 

But what is love?  One young man, an 8 year old was quoted when asked about fallin’ in love: ‘I think you’re suppose to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest isn’t supposed to be so painful!’  Another seven year old wrote when asked about love and marriage: it gives me a headache to think about it.   I’m just a kid.  I don’t need that kind of trouble!  The Bibles says:   love is strong, says it’s powerful, says it’s passionate!  It says “many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it” (Song of Solomon 8:7)!  So, love can make us laugh, it can make us sing, and yes, love can also hurt; it can make us cry – I know, I’ve experienced these emotions in my life.  Maybe some of you have experienced that or are experiencing it right now – your heart is broken or breaking right now because of love and maybe you’ve been thinkin’ about “giving up on love”.  Maybe this short message will give you a reason to ‘keep on tryin’ because love can also give you hope when it seems all hope is gone!  I know, because I’ve been there as well.

I wrote a song once called “For Someone I Love”!   It’s interesting because it turned out to be a prophetic song about Nancy and me!   I wrote it a year or so before I had any idea what it was about or the crisis that it would relate to one day in our lives!  I mentioned before – love can make you cry, it can make you hurt so bad you wonder where the tears you’re crying are coming from!  Well, I found out – love is a very deep well down in the heart. 

Nancy and I had been married for seven years when all of a sudden it looked like we’d never make it to eight!  Oh, on the surface, anyone looking on would have said we had the “perfect marriage”, but underneath, it was anything but.  Seven years into our marriage Nancy decided she wanted out, she wanted to start her life over again – without me.  In fact she told a counselor – she’d never loved me - ever, and never would! 

(Please understand, Nancy’s the sweetest, most loving woman there is, but this is a testimony - a testimony of God’s grace, His faithfulness and His love for us and the healing and restoration of love gone bad.)  So with a broken heart, I had move out of our home after seven years of marriage, leaving my wife and young daughter behind and went to stay with some friends in California to “figure things out” – what had gone so very wrong in our relationship. Needless to say, I was devastated – even to the point of suicide; yes life didn’t seem worth living at that moment!  At that moment, everything that meant anything to me was gone.  Could it ever be restored?  Could there ever be healing?  Could there eve be a renewed love for each other?  It’s interesting, this wasn’t the first time we’d tried to separate and divorce in our marriage, once before, earlier on, I was the one thinking it was over.  But this time, I was the one hurting so bad inside and I didn’t know if life was worth living!  Every attempt I made to reconcile only pushed Nancy further away!

You may have heard this story if you’ve read my book Pickin’ Up The Pieces” – but I remember one time driving down a freeway in Southern California.  It was all I could do to keep the car on the road because I was crying so hard and, on top of that, there was a real bad rain storm.  At one point I pulled over to the side of the road and as I sat there, I called out to Jesus and told Him how much I wanted my wife and how much I loved her!   I’ll never forget the words I heard - that still small voice of the Lord - as I pleaded with Him to heal and restore our marriage – to work a miracle! 

I’ll never forget the words He spoke, simple words of love - “that’s how much I want you to want me”!  He didn’t say He was gonna restore my marriage; He didn’t say “suck it and move on, it’s over” – He told me in no uncertain terms there were priorities I needed to evaluate in my life.  Love is about priorities – what’s important; who’s important and in those few words, the LORD challenged me.  

As I was thinking about that I remembered something I had read that Jesus said: "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).  In that moment, even though there was nothing “said” to me about my marriage – I experienced that “peace that passes all understanding” Paul wrote about in (Philippians 4:7) and I had a renewed hope for my desperate situation.  Something just clicked and I realized everything I had done to make my marriage work was missing the “key” element – The LORD God Himself.  He wanted to be a part of our special relationship.

About that time, I was encouraged with the song I mentioned earlier; a song I wrote few years before but now, I was beginning to see the meaning of it I’d never seen until then!  Nancy and I separated in the late summer of ‘74 and it was now winter (and believe me it was cold).  We’d be separated for seven months, but the words of this song began to give me hope; love is about hope - (I hope she’ll notice me; I hope he’ll ask me out; I hope she’ll say yes if I get up the nerve and I hope she’ll say yes when I ask her to marry me!  Then also, I hope our marriage can survive this storm; I hope we can find forgiveness in the love we once knew and on and on … …!) 

I found hope in these words when Nancy and I were separated!

Maybe just a little more time, when the winter snows

Melt and it’s spring and who knows

I hope the sun is a shinin’ and you ain’t pinein’ for someone you love  ‘Cause ain’t it just about right when you get a night

And there’s starlight above;

Yeah and the moon’s comin’ over your shoulder,

And oh how you want to hold her

Well love is just in bloom,

Move over and give ‘im some room – let Him take you

To places unknown, there’s more to be shown and soon

When you’re wonderin’ what you been doin’ -

Maybe just a little more time …

… and it goes on from there.  But just that much brought hope to my heart; hope that by the springtime we’d be back together, that we’d reconcile and our marriage would be restored.  A year or so earlier when I’d written that song I didn’t have any idea it was about this time in my life! 

As it turned out it would be the spring of ’75 that we’d find it in our hearts to start over again – this time though, with our Lord orchestrating everything!  This time the love in our marriage would be built on solid ground and would include Him.  I believe it’s impossible to know the depth of “real love” apart from Christ being in the marriage (a threefold cord is not quickly broken – Ecclesiastes 4:12).  In fact, knowing Him is knowing what “real love” is.  If it wasn’t for Him, no one could possibly know what love is at all!  The Bible says “God is love”.  How thankful I am I trusted Him to show me His love for me and my marriage.  In two weeks Nancy and I will celebrate our 40^th wedding anniversary!  God is good and I can tell you right now, if it hadn’t been for Him our marriage would have been over 33 years ago!  Let me close with just a few things the Bible says that might help in understanding what love really is and why it’s necessary for Him to be “in” the marriage, for it to have a depth that cannot be realized a part from Him.

1^st, we might think love is a human emotion – where we get that tingling feeling all over, but the Bible tells us it’s something quite different – it says love is an action!  Oh, there are feelings and emotions in love but when it’s just feelings and emotions – it’s not built on solid ground.  The love that Christians know in Christ is love that’s called “agape (a-gop-a) love” – this is love in action!  This is the love the Bibles tells us God is in His very nature, the essence of His being when it says God is love (1^st John 4:8, 16).   Agape love is love that gives expecting nothing in return.  It’s love that says “I love you no matter what.”; it sacrifices at any cost.  Yes, God is love - agape!  "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). That’s the Greek word used to describe God and the love the Apostle Paul writes has been poured out into the life of the Believer by His Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5)! 

There are several other Greek words for “love”.  Our English language has only one and quite frankly, that’s a little ridiculous because I can say I love my wife in one breath and in another say how much I love God because He made all the ingredients for hot fudge sundaes that I love soooooo much!  We have to use the same word to describe all these.  But the Greek language is so much more expressive – here’s a couple of other words.

Eros.  When we say God is love, we don’t mean He is eros.  We of course get our word erotic from this word. It describes that which is selfish in nature, this “love” is the exact opposite of agape in that it is a pleasure seeker; it is love that seeks only to satisfy one’s self and one’s sensual pleasures – God is anything but that!  But because of that, this love is thought of in the negative (it is a word never used in the Bible), but it does have a positive aspect in the marriage relationship.  It describes the romantic, physical and sensual aspect of love!  This aspect of love is very important in the marriage relationship, and can not be neglected, but it’s not the kind of love that will sustain a relationship because it is very emotional, and emotions can take one on a roller coaster ride.  This love does set things in motion through the eye-gate for deeper love.  It’s love that says I find something very attractive about you and I want to get to know you.

Another Greek word for love is phileo (phi-lay-o) a word from which we get our word philanthropist and Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love).  It’s a love of friendship!  This too, is vital to the marriage relationship, a husband and wife must be best friends; but this love of friendship will not sustain a relationship alone!  Why?  Because it’s love that needs to be loved if it’s going to love!  It says: “I’ll love you if you love me, I’ll be your friend – if you’ll be mine”!  It’s reciprocal – give and take, it can hold out only for so long if “love” is not returned!  For man, this is the highest “love” one can show another apart from being “born again” when Jesus truly becomes the center of one’s life!  Then the meaning of love truly changes!   

Eros & phileo are vital, important and necessary in the marriage relationship, but neither will be the glue that holds it together!  The only facet of love that can do that is agape, the love that God is.  It’s the love that love’s no matter what, with no strings attached!  It is unconditional love!  The Bible says this love believes all things, endures all things, hopes all things, - it never fails (1Corinthians 13:4-8)!  This is the love that sustains a marriage when the going gets tough!  It’s the love that’s known when one knows God in a personal way – when one’s heart has been opened to receive Him as personal Lord and Savior.   

I hope the love you have for your husband or your wife has its foundation built upon this love, the love that God is – agape love, because you’ve made Jesus the love of your life, then no matter what – there is love.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.