True Love in Your Marriage: A 3-Day Marriage PlanSample

Love at First Sight

Love is of God.

1 John 4:7

Some people believe that true love can occur the moment a man and woman lay eyes on each other. But “love at first sight” is a physical and emotional impossibility because you cannot love someone you don’t even know. You have simply been drawn to the package in which they live.

A lifelong emotional attachment is much more than a romantic feeling. It is more than a sexual attraction or the thrill of the chase or a desire to get married. Such feelings usually indicate infatuation and tend to be temporary and rather selfish in nature. A person may say, “I can’t believe what is happening to me. This is the most fantastic thing I’ve ever experienced! I must be in love.” Notice that those who make these statements are not talking about the other person—they’re excited about their own gratification. Such individuals haven’t fallen in love with someone else; they’ve fallen in love with love.

Genuine love is not something one “falls” into, as though he or she was tumbling into a ditch. One cannot love an unknown object, regardless of how beautiful or handsome it is. Only when a person begins to develop a deep appreciation and admiration for another—an intense awareness of his or her needs, strength, and character—has one begun to experience true love. From there, it should grow for a lifetime.

Just between us . . .

·Do you remember thinking that you were in love as a teenager, only to have that feeling fade over time?

·What did you think and feel when we first met?

How did God show you that I should be your marriage partner?

Excerpted from Night Light for Couples, used with permission.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. (1 Cor. 13:4-6, ESV)

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 Jn. 3:18, ESV)