I think we’ve all fallen into the trap of thinking about love and marriage in emotional and self-focused terms.  We’ve developed a view of marital love that has been influenced more by pop songs and romantic comedies than by what the Bible says love is.  It’s only when people start to think about love and marriage from a biblical perspective that our marriages start to become all God wants them to be.

Love Like You Mean It dives into what a marriage would look like if we took the definition of love provided for us in 1 Corinthians 13—the well known “love chapter” in the Bible—and made it the foundation for our marriages.  My hope is that this book will help couples rethink what love and marriage are supposed to look like according to God’s design.

First Corinthians 13 addresses the subject of love on a broad level.  While I have sought to apply these verses in a marriage context, every follower of Jesus is called to make love the foundation of our faith.  Without love, the Bible says, everything else about our lives is meaningless. My hope is that this book will be helpful for married or engaged couples, but it’s also helpful for anyone who wants their life to be characterized by love.

Most of the marriage books I’ve read over the years have taken the approach of identifying common relational challenges and then providing biblical wisdom to those issues.  I’ve taken a different approach. “Love Like You Mean It” starts with one passage of scripture and then dives deeply into what we can learn from that passage and how we can apply it in our marriages.   

I think there are two big misconceptions.  The first is that marriage should be easy. Engaged couples often think, “How hard can it be?  We’re in love!” But it takes work for two sinful, self-focused people to live together and love each other well.

The second misconception is that my biggest problem in marriage is something outside of me—like my circumstances or my spouse.  I think the Bible tells us that the biggest problem we have in our marriages is inside of us. It’s the log in our own eye. For most of us, that’s where our focus ought to be.  

Our understanding of marriage comes from somewhere.  For most people, it comes from a combination of what we saw in the homes where we grew up and what is modeled for us in our culture.  If that’s the template someone is using to try to build a strong marriage, they’ll be disappointed. They’ll be trying to build their house—their marriage—on sand.  The words of scripture are the rock on which a marriage must be built if we want that marriage to stand strong when the storms hit.

I hope readers will come away from this book with a new understanding of what love in marriage is supposed to look like.  I’m hoping the Holy Spirit will prompt people to make the necessary adjustments to how they live and love with one another so their marriages can thrive for the glory of God!