“Let your wife be a fountain of blessings for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. She is a loving deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love”. That is from Proverbs 5:18-19

In today’s world with such a high price put on outer beauty; it makes me believe that certain elements of our society have created a false standard of love. Maybe our spouses or significant others started out as the most beautiful or handsome person on earth to us; but as our relationships developed their flaws became more and more apparent. Some would even go as far as to point out that their significant other completely lost their physical attractiveness. But my question to them is this: Is that what love is? Just a physical attraction? If that’s all love is to you then that’s not love at all, its lust. Lust is attraction based on physical desire; but its not love.

In relationships physical desire is required in the beginning because we don’t know the other person. However, lust will not carry us through to a lasting relationship which is where love comes in. The only person that one can love without seeing them first, besides God, is a child. A mother or father can love a child before they see them for the first time but in any other relationship love is developed over time. It’s only when Love has developed that we can see past the physical and see the inner beauty of our spouses.

As a matter of fact you can love your spouse so deeply that they become the most beautiful person on earth to you? I recall watching the movie “Shallow Hal” with Tony Robins and Jack Black. Tony Robins says something to Hal, played by Jack Black, and suddenly his world is turned upside down because he no longer can see the outside beauty of people, he only sees their inner beauty. At one point in the movie he tells his friend that he didn’t care that the girl that he had fallen in love with was unattractive according to some beauty standard held by the world because when he looked at her he saw a “knock-out” as he put it.

Sometimes Hollywood can mistakenly get something right. We may first fall in love with someone and take their outer beauty into consideration but over time the love that we have for them should shift to a love for their inner beauty regardless if their outer beauty stays the same or not. When you look into their eyes it should make your heart melt because you can see them the same way God sees them, through the eyes of love.

Let me just say that you don’t have to fall victim to the lie that Hollywood and other parts of society tell us, that we can only be in love with someone if they are cover model material or because of what they do for us. That is simply not how love works, love is about what you do for your significant other including telling them that when you see them you see a knock out.

Just imagine what this one shift in your relationship could do. If you started telling them how beautiful or handsome your significant other is. I’ll predict that at first it will be awkward for both of you but if you push through and keep doing it day after day, it will become a compliment to them and then they’ll start to believe that you really do see them as a knock out and then you’ll actually start to see them for how beautiful they are and not how beautiful they’re not.

Let me just leave you with this thought. How beautiful a person is, is only dependent on how we choose to see them. If you don’t like what you see change what part of them you’re looking at and you find that love and happiness are just a few choices away. Why not throw them a curve today and tell them that they are a knock out. Until next week, we pray that love takes over in your relationship.

In order to find a forever-kind-of-love, you must first understand what it means to be married and how you grow together. You see, when you’re dating, everything just seems to fit into its place just right. Your boyfriend or girlfriend seems to want to give you exactly what you need and even what you want, showering you with affection, buying you gifts, giving you his/her undivided attention, and taking you anywhere you want to go. So, the real question isn’t whether or not you can meet each other’s needs, but rather why the focus has changed. We believe the answer to that question can be found in the book of Matthew.
Matthew 19:5 (Message): He answered, "Haven't you read in your Bible that the Creator originally made man and woman for each other, male and female? And because of this, a man leaves father and mother and is firmly bonded to his wife, becoming one flesh—no longer two bodies but one. Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart."
We believe that when we first begin the courting process that we are two completely separate individuals with our own feelings and emotions. We hold our individuality in high regard because we have developed certain likes and dislikes, beliefs, and characteristics.
Once we marry, then our individuality ceases to exist and "two become one"; however, our individuality is still trying desperately to hold on and it fills us with conflicting feelings and emotions. But because in the beginning we are "in love", we tend to overlook many of the things that our new spouse does that we may not like, or that offend us. Let’s face it, at this stage most of us have been single all of our lives and it’s a transforming experience for us to have to be accountable to someone else. Unfortunately, once the "in love" experience begins to wear off, we start to express our offenses to each other; that is when love must conquer, because the melding process has now gone into full swing and the battle to become one flesh has begun. We believe that it’s through this struggle to become one that we grow to be a strong couple.
You have to think of it this way, a great marriage is much like the making of a great sword. Nearly everyone is amazed by the beauty, sophistication, and deadliness of a well- made sword; but most of us do not know the lengthy process it takes to make such a lethal work of art. It begins with carbon charcoal and iron sand. You combine these two elements by melting them together in a furnace. Once the elements are combined you are left with a block of raw material that hardly resembles a work of art, but more like a mangled lump of metal with an incredible amount of rough edges. Then the metal is put through a process where it’s superheated, beaten out, and then suddenly cooled. The amazing thing about this process is that each time the sword is superheated, more of the impurities come out of the metal, making it stronger and stronger.
It is only when nearly all the impurities have been removed and the desired shape has taken form does the sword smith polish his weapon, put the handle on it, and engrave it with the beautiful designs that we often see. Then the sword is filed to make it so sharp that it becomes not only a masterpiece but a deadly weapon as well. However, the unique thing about a sword is that even after it has been masterfully forged and sharpened to perfection, you must grind the blade frequently or it will become dull and it will not be capable of fulfilling its purpose.
The same can be said of marriage. Man and woman are two completely different beings, put together in the process of courtship, and then suddenly fused together in holy matrimony, and most often without fully and completely knowing each other.
In the beginning the newness feels incredible, it’s warm and we are getting closer together. However, the closer we get the more we start to see little flaws being exposed. Once the in love experience has ended we become aware of all the rough edges that our relationship has and rough edges can be very unattractive. Then the growing up together process begins and it has the potential to be a very rewarding experience if it is viewed correctly; but we firmly believe that this is the period when many couples’ relationship begins to fracture. However, if we want to weather all of these storms, we must learn to allow these processes to purify our relationship, and know that these challenges are only going to make us stronger as a couple and should serve to draw us closer together and never to tear us apart. Every time we overcome one of life’s challenges, we become more united, our relationship grows a little stronger, and the more valuable our love becomes.
Our marriages can and should be as valuable to us as a sword is in the hands of a skilled warrior. It should be our focus because we know that it can save us in the midst of a battle. A skilled warrior spends hours sharpening and grooming his sword in preparation for the battle that may never come, but he is always prepared if it does. Like a warrior we must spend the necessary time to sharpen and groom our marriage in preparation for the battles that we will inevitably face in life. There will be enemies that come to try to steal our treasure right out from under us and we must be prepared.
Anyone can enjoy the rich married life if they are willing to do whatever it takes to make the necessary preparations for all the challenges that are ahead of them and to allow the process to bring them closer together, making them united as one, and insulating them against the world that will do everything in its power to tear that unity apart.
If we were to place the equivalent value on our relationship that a warrior did in the making of his sword, then we would focus our energy on making it stronger. Each time we would put our marriages in the furnaces of life we would only see it as a process of strengthening our relationship and developing a marriage that can withstand the battles that every marriage will face. Our relationship is our sword and if we take care of it, it will serve us well as a weapon and when it becomes an antique it will be admired by all who see it.

Relationships, as with life, is about endurance. What makes us stronger is our ability to overcome conflicts, circumstances and temptations. With relationships it's about "love" and I don't mean the world view of love but the biblical view. The true meaning of love is about what we can do for each other not what they can do for us and when we love someone enough to allow them to grow at their own pace, that's when we'll start to see the victory in our relationships and marriages. We are called by Christ to be givers, just as He gave His life. We were never meant to be takers. When our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country come to that realization the world will have changed for the best.