Is it possible to love your spouse without expecting anything in return? Here at Focus on the Family, we're excited about Season 5 of the Loving Well Podcast. I'm John Fuller and I'll be joined by my friends and colleagues, Dr. Greg Smalley and his wife Erin, as we discuss practical ways you can show love and appreciation to your mate. You'll find the Loving Well Podcast at focusonthefamily.com slash loving well. That's focusonthefamily.com slash loving well. Well, on this Valentine's Day edition of Focus on the Family, we're going to be exploring the topic of love in marriage and what that love should and could look like in the day-to-day relationship you have with your spouse.
Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. And Jim, we're going to start by reviewing some rather goofy ways that couples have expressed their love for each other. These are like bad Valentine's Day cards. You're putting one of these in your card to Dean. I know you're going to. You're the macaroni to my cheese.
Will you be my Valentine, please? At least it rhymes. How about this one? They say Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. Obviously, they've never been in your arms.
Oh, that would win Gene over in a heartbeat. Words cannot espresso how much you mean to me. That's for the coffee lovers, obviously. Love is sharing your popcorn. You can have my I don't care. Oh, how about this, darling? You're like a Sharpie. You're super fine. I like that.
And of course, the last one. Let's commit the perfect crime. I'll steal your heart and you steal mine.
OK, those are some lines you can use in your Valentine's card today. And then let us know. Just Facebook us or send us an email or something. Let us know how that worked out for you. Maybe come up with your own. That would be an encouraging idea.
Listen, it's obvious some people do have strange ideas about love, and we've mentioned a few of them. So we're going to get some help on this topic today by a well-known radio personality, Bob Lapine, who is also a pastor, speaker and author, and does so much to communicate the importance of love within the kingdom. Bob, welcome back to focus on the family. Great to be here, Jim. John, great to be with you guys.
Everybody just recognized your voice. How many years did you work with Dennis Rainey at Family Life? So I started in 1992. We put Family Life Today on the air in 92.
And then Dennis stepped away back in 2018 and continued to work with Dave and Ann Wilson for a season. And now they have the con and they are full speed ahead of Family Life Today and doing a great job. And I'll just say, we have been allies and partners with you guys over the years on so many things, and we really look at the partnership, what we're doing together to advance the cause of Christ as it relates to marriages and families. We've cheered you on. You've cheered us on. So great to be here and be on Focus on the Family.
Yeah, it's good. We consider Family Life a great ally and your role, of course, very significant over the years. Bob also was a member of the National Religious Broadcasters Board. He's written a number of books.
We're going to be talking about one book in particular that I think really is solid. It's a biblical perspective on marriage. It's called Love Like You Mean It, The Heart of a Marriage That Honors God. And we have copies of that here at Focus on the Family.
You'll find all the details in the episode notes. Bob, you know, going back to the 60s, and you cover a bit of this in the book, I mean the whole free love kind of thing, the impact of that and the continual wave effect of that 60s, 70s era, we're certainly, I think, still feeling the ramifications of that. But it feels like in the last 10, 20 years, we've moved so quickly away from a definition of marriage.
What's happened? Well, I think in the 60s, we uncoupled marriage and sexuality and said these two don't necessarily have to belong together. You can have one without the other. That uncoupling was deleterious to families, to kids, to the culture. I mean, it's just had a tremendous impact on where we are today. And then in the last 10 to 15 years, we've said, in fact, what is marriage anyway?
Let's stop and think. And I'm old enough to remember the TV show Murphy Brown where they said marriage is just any people who live together and love each other. Well, they were using a cheap view of love that won't sustain a marriage.
They were mischaracterizing. In fact, this is what's at the heart of what I wrote in Love Like You Mean It is the idea that we have a shallow and sandy view of what love is. And you try to build a marriage on that kind of sand, and it's not going to stand.
You need something tougher and deeper. And the good news is the Bible gives us that tougher, deeper definition. Now, people listening are going to say, well, that's wonderful.
Bob Lapine knew that from the get-go. But when you met Marianne, I think in a cafeteria line, which is great. I love this.
Would you like an extra scoop of applesauce? I don't know how that worked. Were you in college or how did you bump into Marianne? We were in college together. Both of us were working with Young Life as volunteer leaders with Young Life. And we were on a retreat weekend, and we were in line for dinner. And I was a freshman. This was the beginning of my second semester my freshman year. I'm standing in line, and there's another coworker, a senior girl who was in line with me. And she said, you're a freshman? And I said, yeah. She said, oh, I thought you were like a junior or a senior.
Because my head is swelling. This is awesome. And Marianne was a few people back. But she'd overheard the conversation. And so a few minutes later, she said, you're a freshman, huh? And I said, yeah.
What did you think? She was going to lay it on thick, too. And she said, maybe a sophomore. And I went, okay.
Here's a woman who knows reality. So from that first little jab were the seeds of what became our relationship. Now the thing is, we started dating. And we'd been dating for like three weeks when I was already saying, you know, I love you.
I had no idea the power, the weight of that word. I meant, I like being around you. It's better being around you than when I'm not around you. You make me feel good. So I was just saying, I love you like I would say I love ice cream and I love little baby pigs, you know, whatever.
And that's what's so good about it because you learn from your own experience. Those terms that are should be weighty and carry something, you were throwing them around. I was so careless with it. And it threw her off because she's saying, what are you saying to me? I told my boys as I was raising them, the first time you say, I love you to a young woman, the next thing you say is, will you marry me? Wow. Okay. So that's that's how serious this is when you say, I love you. Don't say it until you're ready to say next.
Will you marry me? Yeah. Let me ask you in that regard, what was happening? I mean, you're a believer. You're working for Young Life. You're graduating college by this point. But when you married Marianne, but but what gave you that premise?
Why did you feel so light handed with it? Pop songs and rom coms. Honestly, you look at this and say we have a romantic view of love that has been shaped by pop music.
It's true. And romantic comedies in the movies. So you watch the Hallmark Channel and that's where we're catechized on what it means for love and marriage. And that's where we get that sandy view of of what love looks like. And if that's as deep as it goes, I mean, I had a highly romantic view. So if I'm having a certain feeling, I just say, you know, man, I love you.
I love this. I love the Bible takes a completely different tact. In fact, Paul, when he writes First Corinthians 13, which was the kind of the core of this book, what is real love look like?
He's scolding a church for a failure to love. We read this passage at weddings and we say love is patient. Love is kind. And we put it in romantic terms. Paul wasn't saying it that way.
He said, look, guys, love is patient. It's kind. It's not self-seeking. It doesn't demand its own way.
Doesn't keep a record of wrongs. I mean, he's scolding these people for their lack of love. Love is work boots you've got to put on if you're going to make a relationship be a truly loving relationship.
And it's so good. We're going to get into that over the half hour together that you know what love actually means. But in that regard, when you think of engaged couples, you encourage them in the book to read the fine print. I kind of had two responses to that.
One, I get it. Secondly, there's already a lot of fear and hesitation in family formation with 20, 30-somethings that are worried. So I was a little concerned about that. But it's wise to read the fine print.
What did you mean by that? Well, I think there are two different realities when it comes to thinking about marriage as engaged couples. You need to be aware that marriage is, in my view, a wonderful, glorious, it's the most magnificent, it's the deepest kind of a relationship that we can have as human beings. It's wonderful. And it's the hardest relationship you will ever have. Those two truths are simultaneously there. So if you go in with a Pollyanna, oh, this is just going to be wonderful, you go in with what the Beach Boys taught me, it's going to make it that much better when we can say goodnight and stay together.
Wouldn't it be nice? So if you just think dating is good, marriage is going to be double good, right? That's the naive view. The other view is what you're talking about, Jim, and I think a lot of young people today who watch their parents struggle or divorce or not make it work, they look around and go, who can do this? Can anybody do this? My friends can't.
My parents couldn't. And they're really afraid that this is an institution that is impossible to be good at. And so we have to say, no, you can thrive in a marriage relationship and it's going to be hard. And let's embrace that. And, you know, things that are hard are often the best things in life. Yeah. And, you know, Bob, you mentioned this, I don't think necessarily the science of it, but, you know, neuroscientists have looked at infatuation and love to the best of their ability, MRI scans, all that kind of thing.
That typically lasts a year and a half to two years. And then that evaporates. It's just normal. You get into the routine of relationship in the book. You mentioned this difference where in English we have the one word love, but in Greek we have Eros and Agape love. And there's a distinction there. And you're pointing to this drill into this. This is like Christian boot camp here where we really have to understand this distinction that even scientists recognize in our brain science. Right.
Yeah. So the Greeks had a variety of words. They had the word Storge that talks about family love and family bonding. They had the word Philos, which is a word for deep friendships. David and Jonathan were knit together as brothers. They had a Philos, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. And then there's Eros, which we get the word erotic.
It's for sexual love and sexual desire. And then there's Agape. And the interesting thing, and I didn't know this till I was digging in and studying this and writing the book, Agape was essentially a Christian invention as a word.
J.I. Packer said that this word was not prevalent in Greek literature outside and before the Bible came into being. This idea of self-sacrificing, self-denying love, the greater love that lays down its life for its friends, it didn't exist in the culture. The Greeks and Romans thought humility and laying down your life for somebody else was weakness, not strength. And Christians come along and say, this is the kind of love God has for us.
He sends his son who dies for us. We should have the same kind of self-emptying, self-sacrificing love, this Agape love. It's a completely different kind of love. There's a verse I love in 1 John 3, verse 1, where John says, Behold, what manner of love the Father has given to us. And the word behold means take a good hard look.
You've never seen anything like this before. This is a foreign kind of love. And he says, this is what God has lavished on us that we should be called sons of God. And then he goes on to say, and this is how we love one another.
This is what Christians do. We look at God's love for us. It pours into us.
We spill it out into the lives of others. And that is so good, Bob. I mean, this is Christianity 101 right here.
The fact that, you know, that the Lord brought this word into existence around the Christian faith, that right there is exciting and very intriguing and very like God. Yes. To say, oh, I have a different idea of what love means. Exactly. The difficulty, Bob, there's so much of our flesh in us. And I mean, the whole thing seems to be how God can empty us as we become more like him. We become less selfish right down the line. Yeah. So this agape love that you're describing, it might be even easy to show it to others out there.
You know, you could take care of somebody who has a need, a neighbor who has a need. It sometimes becomes really difficult to show it to your spouse. Oh, I don't know how many times. And button pushing. Exactly.
All of it. I mean, so why the most important person in our life do we struggle sometimes showing the greatest love that we should show? I've talked to couples who say, we'll be in the middle of some intense fellowship.
Because Christians don't already answer. So there's a fight going on between the husband and wife and they're loud and they're angry and then the phone rings and all of a sudden they go, hello? Yeah. They just switch it off. So we can be nice to the person on the phone or the person at the door. We can shut it all down. But I think this goes to the fact that the people who are close to us are the ones who can wound us most deeply. And so we often have this kind of a reaction to the wounding.
But it also goes, Jim, to what you're saying. The flesh wars against the spirit. So Paul in Romans 7 said, there are things I want to do that I don't do. There are things I do I hate. Right. Wretched man that I am.
This is our battle. And so to say we want to have agape love, you don't just say, well, that's a nice thought. I think I'll do that tomorrow.
No, you have to strap this on every day. You've got to get up every day and say, I need a self-emptying. I need to have this mind in me that was in Christ Jesus who emptied himself for us. Philippians 2 is also an area of scripture. I think we've got 1 Corinthians covered. Philippians 2, what is that verse and why is it significant when it comes to marriage? This is a lesson I learned early on. When Marianne and I were dating, she came to me at some point.
We've been dating for a couple of years. She said, what do you think about us memorizing some Bible verses together? And here's what I thought. I thought, well, why would you memorize them? I mean, if you need them, they're in the book, just go look them up. Easy reference.
Memorize, yeah. Did you say that? I did know because we're dating. We were dating. So I said, oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm thinking crazy, but okay, I'll go on with that.
To get the girl. Then I said, did you have any verses in mind? And she said, well, I was actually thinking about a whole chapter. Well, I did this bug-eyed look like a chapter.
Are you out of – who memorizes a chapter in the Bible? But I said to her, wow. You know, I didn't say much more than that. I said, wow. I said, did you have a chapter in mind? She said, I was thinking Philippians chapter 2. And I went, oh, like I knew what that was?
I didn't know if it was – I love that honesty. I didn't know if it was Old Testament or New Testament. I was still – oh, okay.
Well, I think she'd picked it out because of the boy she was dating because it's all about humility. That's what Philippians 2 is all about. So we started memorizing this together. And I don't know that we got all the way through, but when we got to verse 3, it kind of locked on – I memorized it quickly. I didn't have to work at it. I think it was just God saying, you're going to need this for the rest of your life. Do nothing from selfishness.
And I've done the work now. The Greek word for nothing means nothing, okay? Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself. And it goes on to say, have this mind – do not merely look out for your own interests but also for the interests of others. I'm convinced 90 percent of the marriage problems I've seen in my life, you apply that verse. You say, have this mind in you, look out for the interests of the others, make it your goal to please someone else.
You'd fix most of the problems. Now, there's a 10 percent factor out there, right? But most of the problems we have in marriage are because of pride and selfishness. And we've got to attend to that, and we've got to be cultivating humility. It's really foundational to what healthy love looks like in America. It's so true, Bob. I mean, you are hitting it. And I think that's exactly why we do a four-day intensive, Hope Restored, and they have an 80 percent success rate.
And these are – a lot of them have signed divorce papers, so they're done. But the reason it's successful is it gets to these basic principles, and that's what you're going to learn there. And rather than go and spend that time, start applying what Bob's talking about. It would be my recommendation. And I love the way that those intensives have helped so many couples over the years and the testimonies I've heard from people who have been through them.
And we've sent people. I mean, I have friends who have said, we don't know how – we're stuck. And I say, go do the hard work. You've got such a history of accumulated pain and bad habits and patterns.
Let some people help identify those and then help replace bad habits with good habits. Of course, it's all going to come back to an understanding of the gospel as the foundation, but that's really what you do. That's what they apply, and that's what's so exciting, is that – and this is roughly 40 hours. Yes.
So you can do in 40 hours what will change your life and keep your commitment to Christ intact, right, with that love for better or for worse verse that you talked about or commitment to each other. Let me ask you, Bob, another concept that you mentioned in the book is the fact that marital love needs to be tenacious. I love that. You compare that to the bulldog.
I think I get that, but describe what you're going after there. Yeah, it was a Winston Churchill quote. Churchill was the one who said, a bulldog's nose is slanted backwards so that he can keep breathing without letting go.
Yeah. And that's a great – you latch on and you keep breathing without letting go. It's that kind of tenacious bulldog love that says, I'm in this. The end of the passage in 1 Corinthians 13 says love never fails, never quits, never gives up.
It believes all things, bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. There is this tenacity with love that says, I'm not going anywhere. I've said to couples for so many years, I've said, if I told you today the car you get when you get married, this is the only car you'll ever have for the rest of your life. That's a problem. Well, two things would happen. First of all, you would take better care of that car than you'd take care of your car now because you go, I've got to take care of this. It's the only one I'll ever have.
And you would have chosen more wisely. The pinto is not going to make it. But the second thing is, when it breaks, you'll take it in and get it fixed because you need the car.
Oh, interesting. Well, if we would start off by saying, this marriage is the only marriage I'm ever going to have, and so I'm going to take better care of it, and when it breaks, because you'll go see a counselor, go see your pastor, get some help, get some, you can fix it. Don't just, most couples wait until they've lost hope and they don't know where to turn. No, when things get bad, go and say, look, we need a tuneup, an alignment. We're in the ditch and we need a tow truck to tow us out. That is so good.
And I don't know what keeps people from going. I mean, it makes total sense, you know. It's a pride thing, isn't it?
It really is, yeah. Bob, I was going to jump on that bulldog analogy because in so many ways, the older I get, the more I realize the Lord's simplicity with life. He shows us his love through marriage and what he wants to do with us. He shows us humility through child rearing, right? You think you're so good?
Well, have a couple of kids and we'll see how that goes. And the point of that is, the Lord's love is like that bulldog. He's never going to let go.
In fact, Paul says that. He will never let you go. He's got you. And what a great confidence we have knowing that we are safe and secure. When a couple knows, look, I'm not going anywhere. You're not going anywhere.
There's a security here. Now, we've got issues and we can fix them. But I've said to couples over the years, when you pull out the D word and you say, you know, maybe it'd be better if we'd never gotten married.
Right. Or maybe we ought to get a divorce. What you've done is you've threatened the entire foundation.
Now nobody feels safe in that marriage anymore. Because if I do something, you may be out of here. But when Mary Ann knows, I'm not going anywhere. We're stuck. I'm not sure how we get out of this. We're going to get some help. But I'm not going anywhere.
You can't get rid of me. Yeah. And I'm here for you.
There's a safety and a security there that says, okay, we can get through this. You know, Gene and I had that early moment, second, third year of our marriage. And it was, you know, I said to her that it's either going to be miserable or happy. Yeah.
So let's choose happy. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
But there's no exit plan. That's right. And that's the truth. Bottom line, it's impossible to love our spouse unconditionally. I mean, maybe in heaven, you know, we're going to have that ability to express unconditional love because we'll get it from the Lord in that perfect environment. But in this life and the way we work and the way we operate with the sin nature, still at war with our spirit. It's hard to be unconditionally loving toward everybody unless we have that regular supply from God. And it's still going to be imperfect even in that environment.
Perhaps we'll get to 98% octane. Describe what you were telling us there in the book. Yeah.
There is this ongoing war that will be present. Our motives will always be mixed motives. We can say I'm doing this sacrificially, but there's always this little hidden what's in it for me. That's just a part of its endemic to the human condition. But couples need to understand that our love for one another needs to flow out of the supply of love that we receive from God. I think a lot of times couples think, okay, I can love you. As long as you fill my love tank, then I've got love to pour back to you and we just kind of slosh our love tank, love supply back. Well the problem is some spills out over time and we got less and less to give to one another. We can't depend on each other as the source for the love we give to one another.
Boy, that's good. We have to depend on an outside source. And so I think of this like I think of, I don't know if you ever grew up with a cistern or with a rain collector, but a cistern is where you'd fill up the water supply for the house with the rain that comes off the roof. And if it's raining well, then the cistern's full and you got plenty of water.
If it's a dry season, the cistern dries up. The good thing about God's love is he rains it, he pours it lavishly on us so that we always have access to an endless supply of God's love for us. And it's out of the overflow of God's love for us that we spill it out onto one another. So if you're saying, I just don't feel love for my spouse, I would say, go fill yourself up on God's love. Get God's perspective on your spouse because God loves your spouse. Fill yourself up with God's love for you. Get God's perspective of his love for your spouse and then let God's love for you pour it into you, spill out onto your spouse.
And now you've got a whole different love source for your marriage. Man, Bob, this has been so full of wisdom. I've really enjoyed this and it's been great.
I hope people have caught it. It's not complicated. Be humble. Think of others.
Think of your spouse more highly than yourself and things are going to go well. And that's what your book Love Like You Mean It really addresses. Love the scriptures that you have talked about. Thanks for being with us and let us encourage you to get a copy of the book. If you can make a gift of any amount, we'll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. If you can't afford it, we're into getting this information into your hands. Just let us know that you need it and you can't afford to help us, but we want to help you. We're going to trust others will help us. So do that. We'll get the book into your hands as our way of saying thank you.
Yeah. Donate as you can. A monthly pledge is great.
Be a sustaining member of this ministry by making a monthly donation or a one time pledge. Either way, we'll send Bob's great book, Love Like You Mean It, and our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, or look for the details in the episode notes. And while you're at the website, we have a free marriage assessment and also have information about Hope Restored, the marriage intensives that we've been so privileged to offer to folks. Coming up next time on Focus on the Family, sometimes it is hard to have the relationship you'd like with your daughter when you just don't know what's going on inside her head and heart. Join us as we talk with Jesse Manassian about helping your teenager get along with the family. More often, we're seeing these teens who, surprise, have brokenness in their families, and they don't want to repeat that for the next generation. And so they're wondering, how do I get along with my family, first of all, but then also how do I keep this from entering into my future family? On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family.
I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. So many married couples today are struggling, hurting, even on the brink of divorce, and some can't afford to get help. But you can make a difference in their lives. Your gift of $125 could help a couple attend a Hope Restored marriage intensive. They'll get three to five days with a Christian counselor in a distraction-free environment, building the foundation they need to stay together. Give today and help give them hope. Call 1-800-A-FAMILY or go to focusonthefamily.com-slash-safe-marriages.
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