This reminiscing only prefaced the pain God felt toward his unfaithful and unloving bride:
Long ago you broke off your yoke and tore off your bonds; you said, ‘I will not serve you!’ Indeed, on every high hill and under every spreading tree you lay down as a prostitute. You are a swift she-camel running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in her craving—in her heat who can restrain her? Any males that pursue her need not tire themselves; at mating time they will find her. (Jeremiah 2:20, 23-24)
God knows what it feels like to be unloved by a spouse. He knows your pain and he longs to hold you and comfort you. But more than just comfort you, God also modeled to us a path of freedom through the pain.
We are, after all, God’s spouse. The same rebellious and unfaithful spouse written about in Jeremiah is the one Jesus came and died for in Romans 5:9-10. The path of freedom to love an unloving spouse is the same one God himself traveled.
This path begins with taking our eyes off our spouse and on to Jesus as the power source for our love. The reason a “love language” strategy won’t sustain a marriage for the long haul is because it requires that we look to another human being as our motivator and source for love.
This is like plugging one end of an extension cord into its other end. What happens?
Nothing happens. You just have a dead wire.
For an extension cord to work and to be full of life, it must be plugged into a power outlet. This power outlet in your marriage is God’s unconditional love for you. It is knowing you are God’s child (Romans 8:14), an heir to his kingdom (Romans 8:17), beautifully and wonderfully made by him (Psalm 139:1-18), and that He is sovereign and knows what He’s doing (Romans 8:28, 31).
I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to marriage counseling or read marriage books, but you need to understand that they aren’t a silver bullet and the ultimate solution will not be found in these things. These often bring short-term solutions and sometimes will give you long lasting tools that can help your marriage, and sometimes they don’t help at all because your spouse simply isn’t going to change right now.
The key to finding the path of freedom in your marriage isn’t that God will change your spouse, it’s that God will change you. Not necessary to change you into a “better spouse” but to change your heart and perspective to find your sustenance in God’s love for you, not in your spouse’s love.
It’s removing marriage and your spouse as idols in your life and putting the person of God and the sufficiency of his love front and center as your life-source.
It’s removing the scoreboard that love languages create (“I’m doing my part, why isn’t my spouse doing theirs?”) and soaking in the grace and mercy of God; focusing on what he’s given us that we don’t deserve rather than feeling entitled to and idolizing the marital carrot on a stick that is always just out of reach.
It’s going to the Father, the way Jesus did (Matthew 3:17; Luke 23:46), to know He accepts us and approves of us (Colossians 1:22; Romans 8:4), when no one else in our lives is giving us that message.
Two beauties come from this divine power connection. One is that your spouse will be shown the supernatural love of Jesus in spite of how they are treating you. Even more profound than this though is that you, the extension cord, will be full of vibrant life at all times, regardless of how your spouse is treating you. How else could Jesus tell you that your joy will be complete when you lay down your life in love for another in John 15:11-13? These two things don’t seem to go together.
Laying down one’s life can only equate to complete joy when a power source is involved who transcends both the one giving and the one receiving.
No wonder so many of us are starved for a love that satisfies. We are looking for it everywhere except from the Source itself.
**This post appeared originally on Covenant Eyes.
About the Author: Noah Filipiak is the founding pastor of Crossroads Church in Lansing, Michigan. He has two daughters and has been married for 11 years to his wife Jennifer. He blogs at AtACrossroads.net and hosts the “Behind the Curtain” Ministry Podcast. He is pursuing publishing for his book Beyond the Battle, a guide for men on finding their identity in Christ in an over sexualized world.