love « Power and Compassion Christian Marriage Retreats

A Closer Look At The Five Love Languages

Thursday, May 30th, 2013

[Strengthening Your Marriage With The 5 Love Languages - Part 2]

Last week we discussed the true value and importance of love and why it is important to learn which of the five love languages your spouse most identifies with so that you can effectively communicate your love to them in a way that will make them feel special and appreciated. This week we are going to delve in deeper and take a closer look at the five love languages. I will teach you how to discover what your spouses love language is, and how to communicate that love to them in a genuine and practical way.

It is not so important that you and your spouse identify with the same love language, what is important is that you take the time to learn what your spouses love language is, and that you make it a habit to communicate that love language to your spouse as often and as purposefully as you can. The point is, if you want your marriage to stand the test of time and continue to grow stronger throughout the years, then you need to make it a daily practice to speak your spouses love language to them as often as you can, and not begrudgingly, but from the heart.

With that in mind, lets take a closer look at each of the five love languages mentioned above…

Words of Affirmation

Some people experience the greatest feelings of love and emotion from being praised for the good things they do, no matter how small or insignificant they might seem. In fact, if you notice and compliment them on the small things, that will actually have the greatest impact on them and show them that you really love and appreciate them in a profound way.

How this looks practically:

Wives, does your husband work hard at his job to provide food and shelter for the family? Let him know that you appreciate his effort. Tell him on a regular basis how good it makes you feel to know that you are secure and well-cared for because of his dedication and sacrifice. Does he take out the trash without you having to ask repeatedly over and over again? Tell him that you are thankful for his thoughtfulness and let him know that his efforts are not going unnoticed. These may seem like ordinary routine things to you, but when someone is noticed and praised for their good works, it will often lead to a greater desire on their part to do even more good in return.

Husbands, does your wife do an amazing job taking care of the kids? Does she keep a clean house and make sure that you never leave for work in the morning on an empty stomach? Make sure she knows how much that means to you! Tell her how great the house looks, tell her how proud you are of the children and how great a job she is doing in raising them. Or maybe your wife is holding down a regular job in order to help pay the mortgage and feed the family. If that is the case, let her know how much her contribution helps and how proud you are of her for what she does. She need to hear that she is doing a good job, and that her contribution is helpful and important.

As you provide these affirmations to your spouse, watch his/her emotions and read how they respond. If words of affirmation is one of your spouses primary love languages, you will know it. Their eyes will light up when you compliment them for their work, and they will respond with love and affection back towards you.

Acts of Service

For some people, words are not enough. Maybe they have been lied to and deceived to much in the past, so they are distrusting of mere words, or maybe their self-esteem is low, so they just don’t accept words of encouragement and affirmations very well. Whatever the case, sometimes, in order to show your love in a way that your spouse will respond to you have got to put some action behind your words.

Instead of just telling your spouse that you appreciate the dinners that they make every night, maybe you should offer to lend a helping hand in the kitchen, in addition to telling them how much you appreciate their service. Tell them how delicious the dinner is, but also offer to clean the kitchen up after dinner.

If your spouse works hard at their job everyday, maybe you should show them how much you appreciate their diligence by preparing a special evening for them when they get home, complete with a candlelight dinner and a back-massage.

Try to think of little ways that you can put action behind your words when you want to tell your spouse how much you appreciate what they do.

Again, remember to watch how they respond to these acts of service, as you are doing them. If your spouse really responds with an upbeat demeanor and reciprocal feelings of love and affection, then you know that you are on the right track!

Receiving Gifts

Gift giving is a natural extension and expression of love. When you love someone you just want to give them good things to express that love. For some people, receiving heartfelt gifts is their primary love language. If your spouse is a person who’s primary love language is receiving gifts, then you will see their face light up with exuberance each time you give them something special, whether it is on a birthday, holiday or ‘just because.’

The gifts you give don’t necessarily always need to be expensive gifts. In fact often times the more simple and heart-felt gifts speak the loudest. A homemade card that says “I Love You” … a couple of flowers that you picked from the garden, or a single rose that you purchased from the corner market on the way home from work. Perhaps it is just a coffee, or a special lunch or dinner out that you treat your spouse to some day during the week. These types of things speak volumes to the person who’s love language is receiving gifts. Make sure you give these special gifts not just on special occasions, but other times as well. If receiving gifts is the love language your spouse identifies with then I recommend you do special things for your spouse often, and for no apparent reason.

Quality Time

Time is one of our most precious resources in life. We only have a finite amount of it to work with, and it seems there is never enough of it in any given day. For these reasons, and because of our own selfish nature, we often times neglect giving quality time to those that we love. However for some people, spending quality time together with you and receiving your undivided attention is the only way that they will really feel your love. Notice I said ‘undivided attention’ that doesn’t mean simply going to the game with your spouse, or sitting down and watching TV for an hour with your spouse. For the individual who’s love language is spending quality time with you, those kinds of activities, even though done together, simply is not going to cut it.

If your spouse is a ‘quality time’ kind of person, you need to shut off the TV and the cell phone and go for a walk together in the park. Talk. Share what’s on your mind, and listen to what is on theirs. Have a quiet candle-lit dinner together. Or just carve out an hour or two in your day after work to kick back on the sofa and talk, or snuggle. The important thing to remember is your spouse needs to connect with you on a personal and intimate level. He/she needs to know that you find them valuable, more valuable than the one-hundred and one other things that you could be doing with your time. You need to take drastic measures to prove to them that this is true, and that means doing whatever it takes to give them your undivided attention for however long it takes.

Physical Touch

Touch has always been an important part of romantic relationships, and relationships in general. We coddle little babies, we hug our children, we kiss and caress our spouses. Infants learn to recognize feelings of love from a parents touch long before they ever learn or understand the meaning of the word love. Touch cuts straight through the noise and confusion of this world and speaks straight to the heart with the message of love.

When it comes to marriage love can be displayed through physical touch in many ways including kisses, a loving embrace, holding hands as you walk, or caressing the back of your spouses neck. It can be touching your partners knee as you are driving or sitting together, or something as powerful and intimate as sexual intercourse. Touch is a powerful emotional connection in any relationship, but for some, it is the single most important way that they feel and experience love.

Once again, with this love language, as with all of the aforementioned ones, watch closely as you communicate your feelings of love to your spouse through touch. If this is the love language that most clearly communicates your love to your spouse, they will let you know know it. They almost immediately light up and get emotional as you begin ‘communicating’ with them on their level. And they will begin to reciprocate that love back towards you in their own way.

One last thing before we close down this article. As you are talking with your spouse, don’t be afraid to open up and share with them what your love language is. Let them know by saying “You know I really love it when you { insert your love language here }.” And encourage them to share their feelings and emotional desires with you as well.

In order to have a strong and passionate marriage and romance, it is vitally important that you discover what your spouses love language is and practice communicating your love to them using that language in the most honest and genuine way possible.

You can learn much more about how to effectively communicate your love to your spouse by attending one of Power & Compassion’s Christian Marriage Retreat weekends. Learn more by visiting our main website here.

30.05.2013 marriage advice, relationships, tips for a happy marriage No Comments

The Three Kinds of Love & What They Mean To Your Marriage

Monday, April 29th, 2013

Most people do not enter into a marriage having any doubt or hesitation that their marriage will last forever. When we walk the isle and say our vows we do so with nothing but pure love and infatuation in our hearts. Newlyweds look at their relationship and their future together with their new spouse through rose-colored glasses, choosing only to see the good things. You might even say that they are blinded by their love for one another. So, if nearly all marriages start out this way, in this perpetual state of bliss, why is it that so many marriages (nearly 50%) today end in heart-ache and divorce?

A big reason why so many of today’s marriages which start out so happy and ‘in love’ end up crumbling into divorce, is because most couples who get married today are not honestly committing to ‘true love’ when they walk down the isle and say their vows. They are getting married on the euphoric feelings of infatuation, based solely on “Hollywood’s” version of love. A version of love that is based strictly on emotional passion and sexual gratification rather than a true commitment to eternal and sacrificial love that God said should be the foundation of a lasting marriage.

Sadly most people don’t even realize that there is more than one kind of love, and in the fervor of their emotional romance, they think that their infatuation is all that is needed to stay in love forever, and they assume that it will be enough to make the marriage last. Indeed when you find yourself in the midst of a new romance, the chemistry and the electricity of new love does make you feel like your romance will last forever. Unfortunately history and statistics show us a very different truth.

The reality is there are several different types of love that are required to make a marriage strong enough to last the test of time. In fact there are three unique kinds of love that I want to talk to you about today – Affinity; Passion; and Genuine Love. Each of these loves are important, and even necessary at some point in a relationship, but the most important one that will help a marriage to stay strong for the duration is Genuine Love.

Let’s take a look at each one of these loves today and find out why each is important to a happy relationship. First we will look at Affinity.

Affinity

Affinity is that initial spark of attraction that you feel towards the opposite sex. It is that “I like you” feeling. That feeling that makes you want to spend more time with a person. Affinity is the butterflies in your stomach, it is what makes you want to get to know a person on a more personal basis, because you see attributes in them that make you feel alive. Most relationships are birthed out of affinity. We all experience time of affinity in our lives, those moments when we notice attractive features in others that make us want to get to know them better.

Affinity is a very important part of getting a relationship started, but it is not a strong enough love to make a marriage last. Affinity is too superficial to stand the test of time. It is too emotion-driven to be a foundational love. The truth is our emotions are fickle feelings at best. Affinity is often based on appearance alone, or appearance coupled with a few personality traits which are often subject to change as our lives progress. After several years of marriage, your partners physical appearance is bound to change, it happens to all of us. With age come more wrinkles, extra pounds of body weight, and many other factors that will change our physical appearance. The point is that a relationship that is based only on affinity is bound to fizzle as aspects of our life begin to change. If affinity is all that is holding a marriage together, then something needs to happen to build a closer bond that will have the strength to hold you together when the times get more difficult.

Passion

The next type of love is passion. Passion is an emotion-driven love too. Like affinity, passion is often connected with physical attraction, but passion is a much stronger force than just affinity. It is the kind of love that makes the heart beat faster, and makes you go out of your way to be with your object of desire. The Grecian people called it Eros… it is a sensual and physical form of love that usually drives the romance and sexual connection in a marriage. Passion is certainly an important aspect of a good healthy marriage, and for a marriage to be strong their should be a good deal of passion. However passion is not a deep enough love to hold a marriage together on it’s own. Passion can quickly turn to disgust and hate if other areas of your relationship turn sour. Read the biblical account of Amnon and Tamar in (2 Samuel 13.15).

Genuine Love

The last type of love we are going to talk about today is Genuine Love. Genuine love is radically different than the other types of love. One of the big things that sets genuine love apart is that genuine love is not focused on satisfying its own desires. Genuine love is ‘others focused.’ Genuine love says “I see a need that you have, and it brings me great joy and satisfaction to fulfill that need for you to make your life better.” Genuine love is selfless, it is sacrificial, it is about giving of yourself to make your partners life more fulfilling and more enjoyable. Genuine love seeks no gain, it is not a reciprocal love it is a choice, a decision, a commitment.

As I close this article, I am reminded of one of my favorite passages of scripture from the bible. Paul talking in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 gives perhaps the best definition of what genuine love is all about:

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

Visit http://www.ChristianMarriageRetreats.net to learn more about how to build your relationship on genuine love!

29.04.2013 marriage advice, relationships No Comments

Living With Gods Love

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Listen! My beloved!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.
My beloved spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, come with me.
~ Song of Solomon 2(8-10) New International Version

Are you intrigued by the possibility of encountering the glorious love of the Living God in and through the eyes of your spouse?

Are you wishing that your spouse would experience God’s loving touch through you?

What is your desire for intimacy and oneness? Is it incarnate love? It can be. . .

I would like to elaborate a little bit more on last weeks revelation about the Mystery of Marriage and Love that we gleaned from Mike Masons exceptional book “The Mystery of Marriage 20th Anniversary Edition: Meditations on the Miracle .” In this book, Mike depicts the unfolding mystery of living a loving marriage relationship as follows:

“Marriage is, before it is anything else, an act of contemplation. It is a divine pondering, an exercise in amazement. This is evident from the very start, from the moment a man and a woman first lay eyes on one another and realize they are in love. The whole thing begins with a wondrous looking, a helpless staring, an irresistible compulsion simply to behold. For suddenly there is so much to see! So much is revealed when two people dare to stand in the radiance of one another’s love. And so there is a divine paralysis of adoration: Everything else stops, or at least fades into the background, and love itself takes center stage. Suddenly, for what seems the first time in life, one is presented physically and three-dimensionally with an object that is entirely worthy of one’s wholehearted love and devotion.”

Do you remember that first glance of love and adoration that you experienced when you first laid eyes on your spouse? If you want your marriage to remain strong and vibrant, you need to train yourself not to lose that love and adoration for your spouse. You need to practice it everyday. I know that things come up in life that will try and distract you from the wild and unbridled love and romance that you experienced when your relationship was new and exciting. It is easy to let time and familiarity turn into complacency and you can easily take your relationship for granted if you are not careful. But you need to learn to actively pursue that love and romance everyday. You need to look beyond your spouses faults and shortcomings and recognize them for the beautiful creation and gift from God that they are.

Mr. Masons description of a loving marriage relationship continues like this…

“That is what “falling in love” means. Naturally one cannot believe one’s eyes. That love should come embodied, encased in flesh, walking and talking and loving in return —for that we are never quite prepared. Of course we are programmed for it, to anticipate and to long for love to enter our lives in this dramatic and personal fashion, but that is not to say we are not bowled over when it actually happens. For we are skeptics by nature, and as much as we may want and even expect miracles to occur, we do not really believe in them. When the miracle of love erupts before our eyes, we cannot help being swept off our feet, dumbfounded, incapacitated for any other action or response except that of love itself: gazing, marveling, contemplating, loving. When this event takes place between a man and a woman, it means that forever afterward these two will be doomed in the situation in which they shall have no business whatsoever in being together at all unless it is first and foremost the business of continuing this same wondrous gazing into one another’s eyes, this helpless contemplation of the mystery of their love. ”

What do you see when you look at your spouse? Are you looking at their faults? Are you looking at their selfish tendencies? Are you looking at the way they get too caught up in their daily tasks and the way they seem to not give you the time and attention that you deserve? Are you looking at the way they seem to nag you about all the things you are not doing right? Or are you looking at them the way that God looks at you? Yes, your spouse has faults. No, they are not perfect and yes, they will disappoint you. But let me ask you. Are you perfect? Do you always do everything right and never sin? Far from it! Yet God looks at you with unconditional love because of what Christ did for us on the cross. Christ makes us look perfect in the eyes of God. Learn to look at your spouse with the same mercy, grace and unconditional forgiveness that God does when He looks at you.

Lets see how Mr. Mason wraps up his advice for how to live a loving marriage relationship…

“…marriage, as simply as it can be defined, is the contemplation of the love of God in and through the form of another human being. It is spellbound fascination with the sheer incarnation of something so purely spiritual. Without this activity (which is no activity at all, really, but a heavenly stasis, a simple gazing into the depths of love), all the other motions and duties and activities of marriage will be empty. When a marriage loses this, when it loses the power to stop a couple in their tracks and arrest them into the rest of loving contemplation, when simple love for its own sake no longer holds center stage, then a marriage has lost its heart. To lose this simplest and most obvious thing of all is to lose everything. Marriage is living with glory. It is living with an embodied revelation, with a daily unveiling and unraveling of the mystery of love in such a way that our intense yet shy curiosity about such things is in a constant state of being satisfied, being fed, yet without ever becoming sated. It is living with a mystery that is fully visible, with a flesh-and-blood person who can be touched and held,
questioned and probed and examined and even made love to, to our heart’s content, but who nevertheless proves to be utterly and impenetrably mysterious, infinitely contemplable.”

Mason, Mike (2010-11-03). The Mystery of Marriage 20th Anniversary Edition: Meditations on the Miracle (p. 42). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

19.04.2013 inspiration, marriage advice, relationships No Comments

Commit To Love, Even When You Don’t Feel Like It…The Emotions Will Follow.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

It is easy to love your spouse when everything is going good in your marriage. When the romance is alive and things are going well. When your spouse and you are getting along great and the lines of communication are active and amicable. It is easy to commit to love and affection in those times. But we all know that those magical moments only make up a small percentage of a real marriage. Every married couple will be quick to let you know that there are also times, many times, when you feel as though your spouse is just to preoccupied with their job, or the kids to give you the love and attention that you need and crave from your relationship. There will be times when you feel yourself wanting to scream out to the world…”What About ME!!!” Times when you feel like you have been abandoned inside your own marriage. What do you do during these times, when you certainly are not “feeling” love. When you find yourself becoming calloused and angry because you feel like you are being neglected and ignored in your marriage.

I am going to be completely honest with you here. You will face these moments in your marriage. Every married person does at some point. I am not saying that it is right, or okay that your spouse may at times “forget” to treat you with the love and respect that you deserve in your relationship. It is not right that we allow our jobs, our children, our passions and our pastimes to creep into and overshadow our relationships with our spouses at times. But it does happen. And when it does, you need to know how to handle the situation. So what do you do? How do you effectively handle the situation in a fashion that will lead to a more healthy and positive marriage in the long term?

Well, for starters, you must remember to always take your difficult and trying circumstances before the Lord in prayer. After all it is only God who can give us the stamina and the grace we need to get through any of the difficult situations in our lives. But beyond that, the most effective practical thing you can do to get through these difficult moments is to make a choice.

Make a choice to love. Make a choice to stand by your commitment, the commitment that you made when you stood at the alter and said “I DO…Till death do us part.” That is not a promise that is made lightly. It is a promise that is meant to serve you and your spouse in those times when the going gets rough. It is a promise to stay committed to love even when you don’t feel like it. Love is easy to do when everyone is happy, and everything is good. Commitment is second nature when things are going good. It is when you don’t feel like loving that you must love all the stronger. It is when you don’t feel like your own needs are being met and when your feelings are hurt that you must commit to loving and serving your spouse all the more.

Love is not a emotion, it is an action. Commitment is not a reaction, it is a promise.

Scripture clearly demonstrates Gods example of this love for us in Romans 5 verse 8 where it says…

“But God shows and clearly proves His [own] love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for us.”

Did God wait for the people of this earth to show Him love and meet His needs before He came down and laid down His own life as a sacrifice for our sins and condemnation? No He did not. He actively chose to love us in spite of our sins and selfishness and failures. He made a commitment to love us and serve us and die for us, even as we were cursing Him, and spitting in His face, and making fun of Him and turning our back on Him in hatred and shame.

The King James version puts it this way… ” God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The word ‘commendeth’ here means ” to show, prove, establish, or exhibit” … “to bring together or fuse together as one.” So even as we were hating and mocking God, He CHOSE to love us and commit to us His blood and His life, that we might be saved and set free.

And because He first loved us, we…(those of us who are walking the true Christian life)… came to realize that love and in that realization, we understand that we owe Christ our everything, and we in turn give all of our love and affection back to Him.

This is the design and the example that God has set forth for us to follow in our marriages and in our lives. It is God’s plan for your marriage that you CHOOSE to love and make a PROMISE of commitment, regardless of what your feelings may suggest. Remember, love is not about feelings, it is about a promise that you made. As we chose to love our spouse, the feelings and emotions will follow.

You can learn more ways to love your spouse even when you don’t feel like it, and pick up tips and strategies for dealing with hurt and anxiety in your marriage by visiting www.ChristianMarriageRetreats.net.

20.02.2013 emotional health, inspiration, tips for a happy marriage No Comments

Love Is A Choice, Not A Feeling

Saturday, March 17th, 2012

Often times couples, after having been married for several years, start to allow the romance and passion of their marriage to fade. They get caught up in the mundane monotony of everyday life… working hard to pay the bills… taking care of the kids… keeping a clean house… caring for aging parents… all of these things and so much more can easily crowd in and distract us from taking the time to love and appreciate our spouse they way we need to in order to keep the romance alive in our marriage.

When people find themselves in this type of situation their feelings of love and affection towards their spouse can often get pushed aside and begin to fade or be forgotten. But the truth is, love is not a feeling. Love is a promise. Love is a decision and a commitment that you made when you said your vows to one another at the altar of marriage before your family, your friends, and God. Love is a choice that you made “for better or for worse…til death do us part.”

Love is an action, not a feeling. It is something that you must control, not something that you are controlled by.

People who are having problems in their marriage often say things like “I just don’t feel like I am in love with her any more,” or “I’ve just fallen out of love with him.” But when you understand that love is a choice…a decision…a promise, not a feeling that you are controlled by, then you will understand that love is not something that you can “fall out of” or something that “fades away.” Passion and romance is something that we can easily let fade away, when we are not careful, but our commitment to love is something that you can never “fall out of” of give up on.

Because love is a choice and a promise it is something that you cannot give up on or choose not to do. It is something that you must fight for and something that you must take drastic measures in order to preserve and keep alive. It is something that you plan for and budget for and treat the same way as you would any other important thing in your life like your job or your hobby.

This might look like setting aside one night each week as a “date night” with your spouse where you go out for a nice dinner, or go to a movie or play, or simply take a quite and romantic walk together down town or in a park… anything that allows you guys to step out of the everyday mundane and focus your attention on one another.

It also means you should set aside some time every few months, or at least once or twice a year to do something really special together like a special holiday or romantic vacation. It doesn’t have to be anything expensive if your budget cannot afford it, but it does have to be something that shows your thoughtfulness and care for one another. An example of this could be planning a romantic getaway to a place you have never been before and creating an itinerary that focuses your time and attention during this holiday specifically on one another. Many people enjoy and receive great romantic and emotional benefits from planning a weekend getaway to Power & Compassion’s Marriage Retreat’s in northwest Montana for this very reason.

Whatever you decide to do, remember, that love is a choice and a promise that you made to your spouse. Love is not a feeling that you are controlled by or that you can loose or fall out of. It is something that you must harness and control yourself. It is an action and a promise. Fight for it!

17.03.2012 christian marriage counseling, christian marriage retreats, tips for a happy marriage, weekend marriage retreat No Comments