You fell in love. You married. You thought God would be in the center of your marriage.

Can it be easy to love like Jesus? Yes. If you surrender to His Spirit and keep yourself saturated in His love for you, it can overflow to your spouse!

But things seemed to change. You started to feel like you were headed in one direction and your spouse in a different direction. Soon the reality of being spiritually “unequally yoked,” became your everyday experience.

Now what? 

You want the two of you to keep God in the center of your marriage because you truly believe that, “Two are better than one … a cord of three strands is not easily broken.”  Ecclesiastes 4:9a,12b (NIV).  But, your spouse simply doesn’t have the same conviction. Don’t lose heart!God “… is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we  ask or think …”  Ephesians 3:20 (NKJV).    

Does that mean you are guaranteed that your spouse will come around? No, it does not. 

But it does mean that God can do in you what you can’t do on your own. You can experience a different kind of love for your spouse. It will be His love – the “unconditional” agape love that Jesus Himself has shown you. This is the love Paul talks about in Romans when he says “because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  Romans 5:5 (NIV)

God can do in you what you can’t do on your own.

Practically speaking, Paul describes love like this … “Love is patient and kind; love 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. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”  1Corinthians 13:4-8 (NIV)

Notice how that definition has little to do with emotions but instead focuses on actions?

Even with the knowledge of that truth, sometimes reading these things in the Bible or hearing a sermon about them just doesn’t seem to cut it. You know it is true but you don’t seem to be actually experiencing it in day to day life with your spouse.

Here are five truths you can put into practice to help you make it real. 

1. Recall and rehearse God’s unconditional love toward you. You can’t possibly love like Jesus until you believe and receive the love Jesus has for you. It has to be real for you before you can give it to someone else. So, start reviewing all the times that you were undeserving of His unconditional love. Keep embracing His forgiveness and love for you. As you do, you will find yourself doing the same for your spouse.
2. Camp out on the “common ground.”  Identify all the things you do have in common and how they drew you to each other. Reenforce all your compatibilities. Celebrate all the good in your spouse. List out those character traits and behaviors and speak them out in positive ways with gratitude.
3. Drop the expectations. Your spouse will not come around if they feel your judgment or the pressure of having to be the way you expect them to be before they are deserving of your love. Let them go. Set them free. Deny your feelings of self-pity and hopelessness and embrace the opportunity to see God at work in ways you’ve never seen before.
4. Find good role models. You are not alone. There are others going through exactly what you are experiencing. And if they are doing it right you can learn from them and be encouraged. I am constantly challenged by the way my friend Bob loves his wife who is not a believer. She loves him deeply but just isn’t on the same page with him spiritually … at least not yet. Married now for over 15 years, I see firsthand what unconditional love looks like when I see the way he treats his wife with such grace and unconditional love. It is possible and he is proof.
5. Live it out. Your claim to be a Christian must line up with how the apostle John defines it in 1 John 2:6 (NLT) which says “Those who say they live in God, should live their lives as Jesus did.”  Jesus is undeniably attractive and His love draws people to Himself. “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to Myself.” John 12:32 (NIV).  You have His Spirit in you and He can and will draw your spouse to His love through you!

Is loving someone unconditionally easy? NO. Not if you keep trying to do it in your own strength drawing on your own reserves. You’ll run out quickly and grow frustrated and hopeless. 

But can it be easy to love like Jesus? YES. If you surrender to His Spirit and keep yourself saturated in His love for you, it can overflow to your spouse!