Men and women are meant to get married. Of course, not all do and that’s perfectly fine, but most do. And after five or ten years most marriages aren’t what they should be. Right? So let me shock you here. You, if you’re married – yes, you – are meant to have an absolutely fantastic marriage.

Last week on the program we spent just one day chatting about marriage, It was the last week of a series that I called “The Art of Living”, all about living a fantastic life and you can’t talk about that without at least touching on the subject of marriage. But marriage is such a huge topic you can’t just spend a few minutes of one day talking about it. So today, this week, in fact over the next few weeks we’re going to chatting about marriage, and here’s why.

Marriage is one of the most common things we do in life. Okay, not everyone is called to be married but at some point in their lives, most people enter into what’s meant to be a permanent, lifelong union between a man and a woman. It’s a completely natural thing to do. And this thing – marriage – has the potential to be the most sublime, wonderful relationship and part of our lives imaginable. Sadly, very sadly, that’s not how most marriages turn out.

In the West divorce rates at a staggeringly high 40% and north of that. But even in cultures where divorce isn’t a big thing, even in marriages that don’t end up in divorce, the relationship between husband and wife a few years on can end up as anything but sublime and wonderful. What starts off in most cases as a passionate relationship between two people, passionate at all levels, can often end up in a kind of a cold war with massive emotional, spiritual and oft times physical Berlin Wall running straight through the middle of that relationship. Husband on one side, wife on the other and never the twain shall meet.

Just stop and think about this. Marriage, the most natural thing in the world – man and woman coming together as one, most commonly bringing children into the world; family, this basic unit of our society that has so much potential for many let me say for most – ends up as something that falls way short of what it could be. It makes you want to cry. It’s a staggering, global pandemic that’s reaping havoc in the lives of way too many people. It’s a tragedy that’s unfolding in countless lives and relationships and families around the globe. Marriages that fall way short of what they could be.

Well, what goes wrong? Why does it happen? Lets just wind the clock back; if you’re married or if you’ve ever been married, do you remember how it all began? Boys meets girl, there’s a courtship, there’s a romance being completely besotted with one another, being totally, madly, passionately in love. Hey, that’s why you married your wife or your husband in the first place. You were passionate one about the other. There was no one else for you.

Let me ask you these years on. Is it still like that? Do you still feel that amazing passion? I just don’t mean the physical passion; I mean that total passion you felt for her or for him way back then on that day that you exchanged your vows.

I’ve recently been reading one of the best books I have ever read. Now, I don’t say that lightly. It numbers in my top five books of all time. It’s written by a man whose been counselling married couples for a couple of decades – an American called Dr David Clarke. The book is called “Kiss Me Like You Mean It – Solomon’s Crazy In-Love How To Manual”. It’s wickedly funny, it’s incredibly insightful and yet it unpacks God’s plan for a man and a women to have a passionate marriage relationship.

We’re going to talk quite a bit about that book over the coming weeks. It’s had a huge impact on me and I know it will have a huge impact on your marriage relationship too. Have a list to what Clarke says about passion in a marriage:

“You wonder: ‘Can we ever get our passion back? Can we ever again be crazy in love?’ God has an answer for you. It is a big yes! You can’t help losing your passion. That happens to every married couple. What you can do is what Sandy and I did. You can get it back.”

Did you pick that after 21 years of counselling – I don’t know, hundreds, thousands of married couples; that’s all this guy does, marriage counselling – he concludes that every married couple loses the passion. Every married couple loses the passion. In fact in the second sentence of the very first paragraph of the first chapter of the book he asks this question: why in 100% of all marriages does passion disappear just a handful of years after the wedding?

You see, it’s not just your marriage, it’s not just my marriage, it happens to 100% of all marriages and that’s a pretty definitive statistic. Why? Because this world conspires to tear us apart; husband from wife, wife from husband. Work responsibilities, paying the mortgage, putting food on the table, dealing with the pressures and the stresses of life. You know, stress is the single most widely felt problem in the lives of people around the globe today.

The man’s bad habits start annoying his wife. ‘Why does he have to be like that?’ And her bad habits are driving him crazy too, just quietly. And with the kids demanding attention and the job taking more hours out of the day than it has a right too, there you have it. The passion’s gone.

So exactly what is passion? Here’s what my dictionary tells me: “A strong, barely controllable emotion of love”.

Everyone who has been married will probably remember that feeling of passion from way back in the dim distant past. And if you’ve only been married for a short time it’s highly probably an emotion that seems to elude you these days. But this same man that’s counselled thousands of couples over the last 20-something years has something else to say about passion. Listen to what he says again:

“What you can do is what Sandy and I did. You can get it back.”

And it’s that getting it back that we’re going to chat about over the coming days and weeks on the program. Why? Because God’s plan for your marriage, for every marriage, is that a man and a women, a husband and wife should be passionately, madly, crazily in love with one another. Not in theory, not as some elusive ideal that no one can attain, but in actual reality.

Just stop and think about that in the context of your marriage. Imagine not just recapturing the initial passion in your marriage relationship but discovering a passion that’s all the more rich and deep for the many, many miles and trials that you’ve travelled through together. God’s dedicated a whole book, a complete book of the Bible to the passionate love between a man and a women, The Song of Songs sometimes called the Song of Solomon, in the Old Testament. It’s the story about the love between King Solomon and the Shulammite woman. Listen to the passion they have for one another:

“Like a lily among the thorns so is my darling among the maidens” writes Solomon in Chapter 2 verse 2. And the women, the Shulammite writes: “My beloved is dazzling and ruddy, outstanding among 10,000” about her man.

True passion, writes David Clarke, is not a phase of marriage it’s designed by God to be a permanent part of our marriages. That’s an amazing challenge to many, I know. And that’s why we’re going to spend some time over these coming days and weeks in the company of Solomon and the Shulammite women through the Bible’s exposition of passionate marriage, and in the company of David Clarke through his fantastic book “Kiss Me Like You Mean It”, because God wants to put the passion back into your marriage. It’s that simple.

Let me ask you, if you’re married who or what are you putting ahead of your wife or your husband? Come on, what is it that’s crept in to supplant them from being your Number-1 person on the planet. Because I bet you anything that there’s something. And when we each deal with that something, what we can rediscover is the passion in our marriage.

Anyone who’s married will remember those first weeks and months after their wedding, maybe even the first year or two – a time of intense passion at every level, the spiritual level, the emotional level and especially the physical level. You couldn’t keep your eyes off one another; you couldn’t keep your hands off one another; you left little love notes around the place; you sent love SMS’s; you called each other during the day whenever it was possible. You know what that is called? It’s called passion.

It’s the thing that most married couples experience in those early days, and sadly it’s the thing that, between two and fourteen years into every marriage evaporates. That’s what marriage counsellor of twenty-something years, Dr David Clarke, writes in his fantastic book ‘Kiss Me Like You Mean It’. In fact one of the major reasons that he cites for this, based on all the clinical counselling that he’s done, is that somewhere along the line we have managed to put something or someone ahead of our marriage partner.

You know, in those early days of passion of your typical marriage nothing comes ahead of your wife or your husband, absolutely nothing. But little by little … well you know how it goes. One of the most confronting chapters of Clarke’s book is Chapter 3. It’s called, ‘Even the Dog is More Important Than I Am’. That’s a good title. And there are six biggies that he sets out in that chapter – the main things that we put ahead of our spouse. Let’s see if you recognise any of these.

Number 1 – is our children. Now parents we know its hard work bringing up children. Boy it’s hard. It’s a gruelling marathon that goes on for years. And so the kind of besotted set of priorities we had in those passionate times when we were first married, well, they are naturally displaced by the very real demands of child rearing. But we also know there’s a line we can step over, where, especially mothers – not always, but mostly mothers – displace the deep emotional connection they should have with their spouse by attaching themselves to their children. Now all of a sudden your former Number-1 is coming in a poor second, third, fourth, fifth. And by the way he knows it and it hurts.

Number 2 – is our job. Now this is one mostly for us guys, although increasingly it’s happening among women as well. But we men rationalise that we’re trying to establish our careers, working to build a future, creating wealth for a happy retirement and yet we’re working so hard that there’s nothing left for our wives. This was my biggy and I’m still a reforming workaholic. What made it even more plausible for me is that I work for God. I’m doing important work and yet I duped myself into believing that my work was more important than my wife.

Number 3 – is the home. For some people, how their home looks and feels is way more important than how their spouse feels. ‘Why does she leave such a mess?’ ‘How come he doesn’t appreciate how much work is involved in keeping the house. If he did he’d help.’ And so having a nice home becomes more important than having a great marriage.

Number 4 – is your hobbies. It’s great to have a hobby or two. Something that you do just for yourself because it sparks your creativity or it burns your energy, or it relaxes you. I’m all for that, but we all know that at some point, watching sport on television all the time can rob a marriage from the intimate time that it needs to thrive and survive.

Number 5 – is your pets. Absolutely. For some people their pet has become more important than their former Number-1 person, their wife or their husband. David Clarke recounts the story of a disgruntled husband in his book during a counselling session. Have a listen to this. I love what he writes:

When she comes home in the evening she goes right to our dog Buddy, “How’s my little man. Mummy loves you so much. Mummy missed you today. Let me kiss your face and hug you, you sweet little fur ball.” After a few minutes of loving Buddy she gives me a peck on the cheek. The rest of the evening I have to watch as this four-footed mongrel gets most of the love and attention from my wife. She says many more sweet, loving and complimentary things to the dog than she does to me.

Number 6 – is our family and friends. A husband who continues to hang out with his old single friends at their homes; a wife who spends on average and hour and a half each night talking to family and friends are putting family and friends before their Number-1 priority.

Those are the top six. And I’d be very surprised indeed if you didn’t recognise at least one of those top six things that maybe, just maybe, have pushed your Number-1 to second or third position in your life. And you know the hardest part of dealing with this is admitting that you’ve allowed it to happen. It’s admitting that someone or something has become more important in your life than the man or woman who should be the most important one in your life.

It’s hard for a man to admit that he’s putting his career first. Believe me, I know. It’s just as hard for a women to admit that she’s putting the emotional attachment with her children ahead of her emotional attachment with this man of hers who promised so much at the outset, but well … you know, look at him now.

The single most important insight that hit me between the eyes when reading Clarke’s book, ‘Kiss Me Like You Mean It’ is this. Listen carefully because this is the key to unlocking the passion in our marriage.

If anyone or anything is more important than your spouse your marriage cannot be deeply intimate and passionate.

Let’s read it again: “If anyone or anything is more important than your spouse your marriage cannot be deeply intimate and passionate.”

Husbands, it’s no good killing yourself in your job, coming home and complaining that your love life with your wife isn’t what it used to be. Well of course it’s not, because your works is more important now than she is. And wives, it’s no good pouring yourself out on your children or perhaps your pet cat or dog, come on, and then complaining ‘Well, you know, he never talks to me anymore”. Well of course he doesn’t. You’re showing him that he is no longer the Number-1 in your life.

If you want passion in your marriage, then first get your priorities right. Right priorities come ahead of great passion. Do you want to hear what your wife or your husband has to say ahead of what anyone else has to say? Do you want to spend time with your spouse before your work, your children, your pets, your family, your friends, your football game. It’s about priority.

Let’s have a look at Solomon’s priorities in the beautiful book in the Old Testament, “The Song of Songs”, which is all about the passionate love between a man and a women

“The voice of my beloved. Look he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills”. – She wants to hear his voice, she longs for his voice (2:8). And he says: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, O my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice.” (2:13,14).

What’s the Lord our God saying to you and me about the passion that should exist between husband and wife? He’s saying that priority comes first. Priority precedes passion.
And God’s heart is to see you put your wife or your husband before all those other things. Yes He should be the very first and foremost in your life – but putting God first inevitably means loving your God given soul mate above all the other things on this planet – because that sort of love comes directly out of the very nature of God. God is love.

Let me put it as bluntly and directly as this. Until your spouse goes back to number one in your priorities, there will be no passion. But within days and weeks of you changing and living out a new set of priorities, this is what’s going to happen – your former Number-1, your soul mate will begin to notice. Absolutely. And not just notice, they’ll respond.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but men and women are profoundly different. “Well Berni, that’s stating the blindingly, glimpsingly obvious.” Well, yes, I agree. So how come we try to love our wives or our husbands the way we need to be loved instead of the way that they need to be loved. You’d think that would be pretty obvious too, wouldn’t you.

Well it is an obvious mistake, but it’s a mistake that many people make. We have certain needs in life; there are certain boxes that we need to have ticked before we feel loved. And so we assume that’s what our spouse needs. We men are incredibly good at this. We figure that if our wives don’t agree with us, if they don’t see the world the same way that we do, they are quite obviously wrong and they need to be reformed. They need changing because obviously they just have it wrong. It’s as plain as the nose on our face. Right?

Well we’re chatting today, and if fact over the coming days and weeks about marriage and specifically rediscovering the passion that once existed in our marriages. I’ve called this series of messages, ‘Kiss Me Like You Mean’ inspired by Dr David Clarke’s book of the same name. Certainly the very best book I’ve ever read on marriage and a book that numbers in the top five books that I’ve ever read, and that’s saying a lot.

Here’s the central thesis of his book derived over two decades of experience as a marriage counsellor. He says the initial passion that we all have in our marriages fails in 100% of cases. It takes between two and fourteen years, but eventually the passion disappears. But God’s plan is not for us to live some suboptimal marriage relationship; His plan is not for us to have a dull, boring or even terrible marriage.

God wants each husband and wife to be madly, passionately, crazily in love with one another, not just during the early stage of marriage when passion seems to come more naturally, but for the whole of our marriage until death us do part. And not only is it God’s plan, but his word, the Bible actually contains the godly wisdom to tell us how to do that.

That’s not a bad thesis, and having read his book, I have learnt so much, discovered so much. See, we all want to love our spouses in a way that makes for a passionate, fantastic marriage. Of course we do. Is there any married man or woman alive on the planet today who doesn’t wish for and hope for and long for a passionate marriage? The problem is that well…most of the time we just don’t know how. Most of the time we men don’t know what a woman needs in order for her to feel loved; and most of the time, you women don’t what we men need in order to feel loved and valued.

Imagine a marriage where both wife and husband not only knows what the other needs but learn to give their loved one the love that they need most of the time. Do you think that would make for a great marriage? It would be a fantastic marriage, wouldn’t it? That would make for precisely the sort of passionate marriage that each one of us is looking for. So right now men, let’s discover what it is that your wives really need and tomorrow we’ll do the same in helping wives to discover what their husbands really need to feel loved.

I’m going to go back at this point to David Clarke’s book about having a passionate marriage – ‘Kiss Me Like You Mean It’ – because he’s been in the marriage counselling game for over twenty years so he knows a whole bunch more than I do. This is what he writes:

Nearly every wife would list unconditional love, protection and security and emotional connection in her list of top five needs.” Let’s read them again: “Nearly every wife would list unconditional love, protection and security and emotional connection in her list of top five needs.

In other words, husbands, she needs to know that she is your Number-1 no matter what she does. She needs to know that you would crawl over broken glass to save her and protect her and she needs to communicate with you and be connected with you at a deeply emotional level.

If you’re a husband, let me ask you, how do you score on those three criteria? When her hormones are playing havoc with her emotions, what does she get from you? Reassurance, encouragement, a hug OR anger followed by prolonged silence. Do you behave that demonstrates to her that you are in the business of protecting? If someone a bit odd or a bit menacing walks towards you both on the street, do you make sure that you put yourself between her and that person?

And when you come home from work do you listen to how she feels, and do you tell her not just the executive summary of your day – three short dot points – but also how you feel? What you enjoyed, what you didn’t enjoy, what you found hard, what made you angry, what made you laugh? Because those are the very things that are going to make her feel loved. If you start doing those things, develop the habits, pretty quickly she’s going to notice the change and pretty quickly she’s going to start feeling very, very loved.

One of Dr Clarke’s very practical tips for making this happen is to be sure that your wife is the first person to receive the news of your day. Remember the things that really matter to you during the day and make sure that you treat her as your very best friend – the person who you want to be connected with – by telling them to her first. Isn’t that a great suggestion? If you can, give her a quick call during the day to tell her a bit of your news as it happens.

That’s fantastic, that’s practical, that’s how we can love our wives. She wants to hear your news; she wants to know how you felt about this and that during your day. And when you tell her first, words cannot describe how loved that will make her feel.

She needs you to tell her in detail, over and over again why it is that you love her. What is it about her that you love? What makes you delight in her? Women need that reassurance of your unconditional love. She needs to ask her what she needs today. “Sweetheart, how can I help you today?” “Well, it would be really great if on the way home from work you could stop by the supermarket and pick up some lettuce, rice and some yoghurt”.

Men, that’s loving your wife. That’s how she needs to be loved. And you know something, it’s not that hard. It’s about developing the habits. And the more you give her what she needs, the more she’ll give you, what you need.

I guess the one thing that’s particularly hard as a husband is the fact that your wife’s emotions are so prone to the hormonal onslaught that her body goes through on a monthly basis with PMT. I remember with one of the classes I was taking a few years back at Bible College; one of the older men was sharing the pain that he’d been going through with his wife’s menopause where she would lash out at him for no reason at all. And choked up and teary as he was, he said this to us: “The one Scripture verse that helps me to love her unconditionally through all that is Ephesians Chapter 5 verse 25 (and it’s a verse that I have to tell you that I have memorised since then)”. It says this:

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.

Last time I checked, Jesus was nailed to a Cross, hands and feet; He suffered there as He choked and died there for me. Last time I checked, Jesus gave His all-in-all for me and that’s how He’s calling me to love my wife through the difficult times. That’s how He’s calling you men to love your wives through the difficult times. That’s how He’s calling us to give ourselves to our wives in the difficult times.

God’s wisdom is so awesome. Remember, your wife’s top three needs are unconditional love, safety and security, and a deep emotional connection. Husbands, start doing those things. Just do them, say them, live them, breathe them and that passion that you are looking for, trust me, it will be back real soon.

If you are a wife you might just have noticed that your man is profoundly different to you. He enjoys different things, he thinks differently, he’s sees things differently, he reacts differently. It’s almost like you’re living with an alien. Have you noticed that?

Most wives are intrigued by their husbands’ odd behaviours and responses. Well, maybe intrigued is a bit of an understatement. How about perplexed, frustrated, driven absolutely crazy, hurt, disappointed. Whatever happened to that romantic knight in his shining armour who swept you off your feet? Now he just sits there in front of the television and watches his sports. Seriously, he’s impossible. That’s where a lot of wives are.

After the first few years it’s like … it’s like you’re married to a Martian. And that’s exactly the point that Dr Clarke makes in his book about rediscovering passion in your marriage called, ‘Kiss Me Like You Mean It’. This is what he writes:

After two decades of intense marital research I have discovered a shocking truth about our passion. Here are my findings: something complete unexpected and terrible and happens between two and fourteen years into every marriage. The person you fell passionately in love with is replaced by an alien. I’m not kidding. The alien looks exactly like the wonderful person you once married but it’s behaviour is bazaar, unbelievably annoying and obviously designed to drive you insane. That’s where many a wife is when she looks at the podgy slob sitting on the sofa, remote control in hand, surfing through the sporting channels, she says, “My real life experience 100% confirms Dr Clarke’s research findings.

What went wrong? Yesterday we looked at what husbands need to know about their wives in order to love them the way they need to be loved. So right now we’re going to put the shoe on the other foot and try to do the same for wives in understanding the love needs of their husbands.

Girls, the first thing you need to know about your man is that his love needs are profoundly different to yours. Loving him the way you like to be loved doesn’t work. It didn’t work yesterday, it doesn’t work today, it’s not going to work tomorrow and what’s more, it’s never, ever, ever going to work. Have you got it?

We saw yesterday that most women have these three needs in their top five for feeling love: unconditional love, safety and security, and emotional connection. That’s why you need him to talk to you and tell you how he feels and it drives you nuts that he doesn’t seem to want to do that, which is a large part of why you feel so unloved. So if you are a wife with a husband, would you like to know what his three top needs are? Well here they are, again from Dr David Clarke’s book:

Respect, honour and sexual intimacy are three of nearly every husband’s most important needs.

Let me read it again:

Respect, honour and sexual intimacy are three of nearly every husband’s most important needs.

Now as you can probably tell, I’m a bloke, I’m a man, I’m also a husband, and I can tell you with a 100% rock solid level of certainty that Clarke is absolutely right. He’s hit the nail bang on the head. Not only in the three things that he puts on the list but also in their sequence.

Respect and honour come first. Interesting when there’s absolutely nothing new in this. This is not a recent phenomenon. 2000 years ago, this is what the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesian Church, a letter which these days is part of what Christians call the New Testament of the Bible. I’m reading from Chapter 5 beginning at verse 22:

He says, ‘Wives be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the Church, the body of which He is the saviour. Just as the Church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be in everything to their husbands.

Now that little Scripture right there causes a lot of contention in many societies and cultures. But wherever you are whatever your cultural background and context is, what this is talking about it is the fact that the husband is wired to be a leader and his deepest need is to be respected and honoured by his wife. Now I could spend an hour or two sharing with you my understanding of how this ‘obey’ should play itself out in contemporary culture and how it works its way out in my marriage with my beautiful wife. But that’s not where we’re going today.

My point is simply this. When a wife sneers at her husband, when she pulls him down in front of the children or in front of other people, then she dishonours him. When she hen-pecks – which, by the way women, is never going to work; have you got that – it only has the effect of him pulling up his drawbridge and locking himself inside his castle. When she does that she robs him of the two most important needs that he has: respect and honour.

Of course he is going to get things wrong. Of course he is going to make mistakes. But in exactly the same way that a wife needs to experience a husband’s unconditional love when she’s making a hash of things, he needs to experience your respect and honour when he’s not having one of his best days. If you rob him of that he will close down. Guaranteed.

Start respecting him and honouring him in practical ways and he’ll open up. Add to that physical intimacy which, I have to tell you, is almost as much a physical need for him as oxygen, water and food and you’ll have a new man. Wives, you are the only person on this planet that can legitimately meet this deep need of your husband’s. If you rob him of that, if you make it difficult for him, then he’s going to feel like the most unloved person on this earth.

Yesterday I implored men to develop the habits and behaviours that will make their wives feel loved. Right now I’m imploring you wives, do exactly the same for your husbands. He’s different to you. That much you already know. But now you know his love needs which are different to yours: respect, honour and physical intimacy.

Give him those things over and over and over again and the alien on your sofa will pretty quickly start behaving a whole bunch more like the man who swept you off your feet. Just imagine both of you giving the other what they need to make them feel loved. Now, there is a recipe for a passionate marriage.

We’ve all heard the saying, that the husband may well be the head of the house but the wife is the neck that turns the head. You know, there’s a lot of truth in that. Wives, I don’t think that most of you can even begin to realise the awesome influence that you have in your husband’s heart with your physical beauty and your ability to enjoy physical intimacy with him. I know that many of you are thinking right now, “Oh no, I’m not that beautiful; I’ve put on a few pounds; gravity’s taken over my body parts.”

Let me tell you something. Your man thinks that you are beautiful. Absolutely he does. How often do you hear someone in my position talking about the importance of physical intimacy in a marriage? Not that often, right? But you know what, Jesus talked about. He talked about it because it is vitally important, especially to your husband. When will wives get that? Husbands feel instantly loved.

A wife’s realisation of the importance of this one thing in the way that he’s wired, will literally transform her man before her very eyes. Trust me. This is what Jesus said, quoting the book of Genesis, God’s own plan:

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined, be cleaved, to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh so they are no longer two but one flesh. (Matthew Chapter 19:5-6)

You know what I love about the Word of God? He is so honest, He is so direct, He is so practical in His Word, the Bible. God deals with everything including marriage and including intimacy.

Marriage. It starts off with such a fanfare of passion and romance and yet for many ends up being something far less than that – for some, just mundane and boring; for others a living hell. It was never meant to be that way. And today we’re going talk about recommitting your heart to your marriage.

Over the course of this week we’ve been chatting about marriage, specifically rediscovering the passion that seemed to be there in bucket loads in those first few weeks, months even years; that passion that seems to have evaporated into thin air. If you’re someone who’s married, can I ask you, how committed are you to your marriage? With all that’s gone on, with where things are at at the moment, where are you in terms of your marriage, specifically in terms of your commitment to your wife or your husband?

Is your commitment absolutely rock solid till death us do part? Is it strong but maybe there are just a few niggling doubts. Are you at the point where you are so bored with your marriage and your relationship that if someone a bit more exciting came along well … you know. Are you at the point of completely giving up on him or giving up on her? They’ve hurt you one too many times. They’ve rejected you and misunderstood you and criticised you one too many times. That’s it. I’ll go to marriage counselling if I have too but it’s an absolute last resort and in any case nothing good could possibly come out of it.

There’s quite a range there, isn’t there. I believe, in fact I know for a fact that pretty much any marriage is not only salvageable but pretty much any marriage has the potential to be full of passion and joy. But as someone said, the journey of a thousand miles has to begin with the first step.

The reason that we’ve been chatting a lot about Dr David Clarke’s book, ‘Kiss Me Like You Mean It’ is that he’s been counselling married couples for over two decades and he knows rather a lot more on the subject of marriage than I do. Here’s a guy who has seen thousands of different couples in different circumstances. There’s one story in this book that really grabbed my attention. It’s the story of a couple he was counselling who were at the point of, well lets put it how he tells the story.

One time I saw a couple in their 50’s in marital therapy. They told me their story and it was an ugly one. About half way through the session I thought to myself, this is one of the worst marriages I’ve ever seen. At the end of the session when it was time to give my evaluation, I said, ‘I have to be honest with you; your marriage is awful, unbelievably bad. It’s not even a marriage it’s more of an ongoing feud but with God’s help and hard work your marriage can be fixed. It can be a great marriage. The first step is to create some positive flow in your relationship. As you can see’, he told the couple, ‘this window has a complete view of the parking lot. I’ll be standing here and I want to see you two holding hands as you walk to your car. If you’re not holding hands I’ll rap on the window.’

If looks could kill I would have been murdered on the spot. They thought I was crazy and they told me so, but they did it. As I watched they held hands on the way to their car. It was awkward and forced for the first ten steps. But then something clicked and I could tell they were enjoying it. There was a spark of life between them. They had a lot of work to do over the coming months but the change in their marriage began with the simple act of holding hands.

The point of that story is that the feelings of passion and love flow on from the actions of loving our marriage partner in the way he or she needs to be loved which is what we’ve been talking about over the last few days on the program. Here’s where we mostly go wrong. Once your wife’s or your husband’s habits become really annoying, and come on they do at some point, we focus on negatives.

“He never helps around the house, he never talks to me, he never does this or that, he never …” “And she, well all she does she henpecks me and when I get home the house is always a mess and the kids are running riot and she expects me to pick up the pieces.”

You see we focus purely on the negatives completely forgetting all the positives that made us fall in love with this fantastic individual in the first place. But when we start doing love, holding hands, thanking them, praising them, remembering their great qualities, when we start taking those baby steps the passion starts to come back. We remember why we loved them in the first place all those years ago.

They key is to start doing love. After all love isn’t just a noun it’s also a verb. At school they taught us that a noun was a ‘thing’ and a verb was a ‘doing’ word. Start loving each other, start doing love, start praising each other. Just do it. Have a listen to Solomon and Shulammite woman in the opening verses of that beautiful book about passionate love in the Old Testament of the Bible. The woman. Song of Solomon Chapter 1 verses 2 to 4. She says:

Let me kiss him with the kisses of his mouth for your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out, therefore the maidens love you. Draw me after you, let me make haste.

And Solomon, the man, Chapter 4 beginning at verse one:

How beautiful you are my darling, how beautiful you are. Your eyes are like doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats that have descended from Mount Gilead.

And on he goes.

What are they doing? They’re praising each other, they’re telling each other why it is that they love one another. Okay, maybe guys, we would use the ‘flock of goats’ line these days, but you get the drift. Start doing love. Hold each other’s hands. Decide to compliment one another, to praise one another, to encourage one another, to tell one another why you love each other in detail.

No, don’t just sit there, do it. Sitting there is not going to make a difference. Holding hands is. Silence is not going to make a difference. Praising one another, complimenting one another, encouraging one another is. Thinking bad thoughts isn’t going to make a positive difference, but focusing on your spouses qualities, on the things that you fell in love with, that is going to make a positive difference. Loving them the way you want to be loved isn’t going to make a difference, but loving them the way they need to be loved is going to make a difference. So don’t just sit there, start doing it because love is a doing word.

Now you may be thinking that God’s asking us to do something that He wouldn’t do. Let me share a totally mind-blowing passage of Scripture with you. It comes from Ephesians Chapter 1, a millennium on from when the Song of Songs was written. Listen to this, verse 3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.

Now that word ‘to bless’ comes from the Greek word, ‘eulogia’ and that’s the word from we derive the English word, ‘eulogy’. You know, when someone gives a eulogy at a funeral they stand up and they say nice things about the person who has just died. In other words, despite what you and I have done to hurt Him and to offend Him – and that’s rather a lot, wouldn’t you agree – God is speaking every spiritual blessing over us in heavenly places. He’s speaking well of us, He’s speaking blessings, every blessing into existence. And that is mind-blowing.

And that’s what God is calling you to do today with your wife or your husband, precisely that. I don’t care what your wife has done to you or he hasn’t done; I don’t care what your husband has done to you or he’s failed to do, commit to your marriage partner. Commit to them the way God is committed to you. Take those first steps: hold hands, praise them, bless them. Yes, that’s right, just start blessing them the way God blesses you.

Why? Well, how well has criticism worked so far; how well has shutting yourself off from the worked for you so far? Maybe it’s time today to try something different. Maybe today’s the day to take that first step, do you think?