Marriage from A to Z

“When Love Becomes Difficult”

Who wants to talk about love when it’s difficult?  No one, but if you love a person for any length of time, you will experience a season where love becomes difficult.   This can be experienced in a marriage, with family, friends or any relationship.  I know we would like for our relationships to always be sweet and easy, but the truth of the matter is that loving a person can become difficult.

 Love becomes difficult when people become difficult.  People can become difficult when they experience various challenges in life.  The dictionary defines difficult in the following way:  (Think of each definition as it relates to being in a relationship)

1. Not easily or readily done
2. Requiring much labor, skill or planning to be performed successfully, hard.
3. Hard to understand or solve.
4. Hard to deal with or get on with.
5. Hard to please or satisfy
6. Hard to persuade or induce; stubborn
7. Disadvantageous; trying hampering
8. Filled with hardship; especially financial hardship

In many cases, the flesh wants to stop loving and give up during the difficult season.  But this is a time when  you have to go to LOVE/God (I John 4:8)  and get some love to give.

When love becomes difficult, God wants us to keep on loving.    He will help us to continue loving no matter how challenging.  God is love, and He gets the glory every time we make the decision to love no matter how difficult.   Choose to put on love each day, just like you put on your clothes.   You will be rewarded for loving those who are difficult to love. Luke 6:32 says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners love  those. .  .”  Matthew 5:46 says, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?”  In other words, don’t just love those who love you, but love the ones who may not show you love or who may be difficult. Your love is evidence that Jesus is Lord in your life.  You can’t operate in your feelings, you must operate in the Spirit of God.  Trust the Holy Spirit to give you love when you don’t feel love.  

Challenge:  Put on Love even when its difficult!  Colossians 3:12-14 . “Therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering:  bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.  But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.”

Until next week . . .

Carolyn