One couple was once asked what their secret to a successful marriage was and the husband replied; “We were privileged that we never fell out of love at the same time.” The morale of the story is that as long as one person is still trying, there is hope.

The nuggets below apply to your relationship with yourself, your God and your better half. As you read them, may they minister to certain portions of your life that have been dead, and may new life spring forth from these dry places.

Many have tried to define love and the more people come up with new definitions, the more complicated the landscape of loves gets to understand. But this article takes us back to the basics because sometimes simplicity is ……

1.God Is Love

Cheesy? Well listen, I dare you to subscribe to any other worldly definition and I guarantee you that like many others, you will come back for this simple, true and most authentic embodiment of what love is. (1 John 4:16). If you have tried it other ways, try it the God way.

2.You can only love your neighbour as you love yourself

Do you know that how we love others is a reflection of how much or how little we love ourselves. In many cases, at the mention of this fact, we quickly repulse it because surely we much love ourselves. A moment of silence and a few minutes of quick introspection into your own life might reveal things you have not noticed. It is just that we hardly ever look within to face our own issues. Next time, take your issues in relationships as a revelation of yourself and start working on you instead of trying to change the person.

3.We attract our like

You could have dated a few frogs and the thought that you attracted at your own level irks you right now. I know, i feel the same. But when you look closely, you will realise that many of the people you were involved with (I hope not too many), you connected with because of many areas of commonality. The more you grew as a person, the better you attracted. The more work you put on being a better version of you, the more of your like you gravitated towards. (This is true even in friendships.

4.Love Yourself

The bible commands us to ‘love ourselves’ and then to project that love to our neighbour. We are only capable of loving others as much as are able to love ourselves. Make being comfortable with yourself a priority. How much care do you place on yourself? Do you value you? Do you spend time on making you better. Or your main goal has always been and continues to be ‘finding someone to love you’. When they finally knock on the door, may they find you already loving yourself. May they start intently watching how you do it and learn from you. Many men are entering into women’s lives and finding absolutely no standard and so they create their own, which in many cases is too low for you as woman.

5.You can intentionally grow and even measure your growth in love as it becomes more and more perfected in you. (1 John 4)

6.Love the Lord with all your heart

Loving God is hard when the focus is YOU. In Pastor Joseph Prince’s book ‘The power of right believing’ he speaks on ‘self-occupation’ and how difficult a relationship with God gets when we constantly focus on ourselves. We are humans and limited by nature. Even our love for God has dry seasons. But if we constantly think about his love for us, we always love him from the overflow of the love he is already pouring into us. Change your focus today! Focus on God!

7.The greatest is love

This world is filled with many laws, rules and regulations all set in place to enforce people to do what love was naturally made to help them to do. Love is the more excellent way. One person once said, “Everything done in love is done well.”

8.Rarely do you marry your first love and that’s okay too.

9.God heals broken hearts

Jesus came fully anointed for many things among which included ‘healing a broken heart’. A broken heart literally needs an anointing for it to heal right. So open up your heart to the healing touch of the Balm of Gilead and let him heal you, inside out.

10.Our duty is to respond to love

God designed us to be appreciated, cherished and to receive love. Even the church responded to the love Jesus displayed on the cross. We were loved before we loved. When the church had finally received the love proposal of the cross, it now carried a responsibility to work in sync with God to keep that love burning. The commitment raised a responsibility.

11.Be secure in God’s love for you

Some of the greatest weapons the Devil uses to get people out of the love covenant with God is condemnation, guilt and insecurity. God’s love is so ‘full-proof’ that where we fall short, grace comes over to carry us. All this is in an effort to keep and ever green - ever flourishing relationship with God. When grace is also continuously exercised in a relationship, both parties become secure in the love they share.

12.God is close to the brokenhearted

God can permit you to be broken just so he can use the cracks as access into your heart of stone. When he uses pain to amplify his voice over our lives, allow him. If he decides to use a broken heart to draw closer to you, allow him.

13.Love is not a feeling, it is a spirit

Love is a spirit and you need to catch it (2 Timothy 1:7). Spirits by nature never die, that is why love never fails. They can only move from one person to the next. The best way to allow a spirit to manifest in the physical realm is to kill the flesh. The more we die to ourselves, the more we see love being expressed in its purest of forms. Chose to make your life a channel of love.

14.Dysfunction too can bring people together. Make sure what brought you together is destiny.

15. “Love is never love until it is given away.”

Many broken women will give a de-service to their next relationship by being overly guarded to the point where the man has nothing to work with. They are in it but not fully in it. They never get to experience the joy of being vulnerable before someone. But listen, what you are giving to that man is not love until you give it away.

16.Love covers a multitude of sin (1 Peter 4:8)

We are all wrong a little. True love continues to cover our short comings and it amplifies our good.

17.Sow the good seeds you want to reap

Refuse to be in the wrong when any relationship ends. Rather be disappointed that disappoint someone. Sow good seeds. You might not reap them in that relationship but God who watches from above will reward you. When we take up the noble duty to teach those who do not know how to love, ‘how’, we receive a divine blessing over our own lives. Make sure you always leave a good seed before you start up to go through the exit door. People never forget the good we did for them when they move on. Many things only make sense once you have left them.

18. A record of ‘right’

The bible does not permit us to keep a record of wrong. I would assume that it must however be in favor of a record of right. Today, I want you to do a quick exercise and write down all the ‘right’ your spouse or boyfriend has done. Focus on them when the going gets tough. If it means thanking them for these things one more time, do it. Whatever we keep fixated on ‘grows’.

19.Love and fear cannot co-exist (1 John 4:18)

20. Nothing will be wasted

Somewhere out there, another woman is teaching the man that will marry you how to love you right. She is either planting good seeds in him or hurting him so he knows how to appreciate you better. God will not put what you went through to waste either! If you allow it to make you better.

Your turn….

You have probably gone through your unique journey and acquired your fair share of wisdom on love. In your opinion, what do you think we left out from the list above? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts and insights with us. We would love to hear from you.

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