LoveQuest Incorporated

LoveQuest Incorporated © All rights reserved.

358 Avery Landing  Augusta, GA 30907

Because Your Family Matters​

Preface
     Several years into my marriage, I found out that I had no clue how
to love my wife. I thought I did. In fact, I was under the impression
that I was doing very well. Then, I found it, a page that had fallen out
of her journal. I didn’t read it to be nosy. I’d found a piece of paper
in a desk we were cleaning and simply looked at it before throwing
it away. What it said was as cold as it was desperate with a blade that
cut like an axe.
     “He just tolerates my presence. I’m no good to the ministry.
I don’t know how much longer he’s going to let me stay,” it said.
Heart palpitations and panic ran through my body. Surely, this wasn’t
Kaye—not my wife. But it was. The handwriting was unmistakable.
I don’t know if it was the shock of what was happening or the fact
that this was totally unknown to me that ripped me first, but both
realities rocked my world.
     I was deeply in love with my wife, yet something had been lost
in the translation of that love into words, attitudes, and actions to
convey that love to her. Apparently, we were not speaking the same
language. By the grace of God, I had enough sense to pick up the
phone and call for help. These events then became the beginning of
a lifelong journey to the true meaning of genuine love and how it
works and flourishes.

     Our marriage began like most; we had fallen deeply in love and
could not imagine how things could ever be any different. On several
occasions, we had been quite offended by people who implied that
one day, it probably would. Kaye had never pondered leaving me,
but she had obviously concluded that what we had would be all she
could expect. Thinking I felt the same, she had existed for some time
in fear of being told to leave. It still breaks my heart to think of what it must have been like for her.

     With the problem now revealed, you’d think the road to recovery would be apparent. But no—we then faced the problem every couple does at some point in their relationship. Like so many others, we had “fallen” in love. In other words, we did little to bring about the emotions that had been so intense in the beginning. Consequently, now that things were flatlining, we had no idea what to do to get them back. Some said, “Do the things you did in the beginning.” And sometimes, that’s helpful for a while. But we had never really stopped doing those things. And anyway, if you just do what you did the first time, doesn’t that mean you’ll just arrive back in the same place at some point in the future? Albert Einstein is credited with saying that the “insanity of man is doing the same thing today that you did yesterday and expecting a different result.”

     We since have learned that in our initial passion for each other, we had captured only one of several dynamics of genuine love. There was so much more for us to learn and so much more for us to experience. There was baggage to be unloaded, issues to be resolved, and wounds to be healed. Ahead of us was freedom to be discovered, liberty to be gained, and intimacy to be experienced that we didn’t even know existed.

     Scripture tells us that God is love. Therefore, becoming a skilled lover will always involve capturing a larger vision of God and who He is. Your ability to love is directly proportional to your experience with God and your conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. This is great news because you’ll never learn all there is to know about God, so you’ll never lack for something new to learn about love and loving people, especially your spouse. Conflict in marriage—whether confrontational or just passive suffering—is God, by His grace, drawing us, even driving us, back to Himself and His Word for additional wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.

This book is about the things I wished I had known the first day of our life together. It’s not about compatibility. Love and marriage is not about compatibility. In fact, Chuck and Barb Snyder have labeled incompatibility as “one of the vital keys to having a harmonious marriage relationship.” Compatibility on its best day is temporal. It comes, and it goes. Love is forever, for it takes incompatibility and makes it complimentary taking two people with different backgrounds, different aptitudes, interests, talents, and abilities and unites them into a divinely synchronous union that functions on a plane never possible as individuals.

     The greatest love we’ve ever known has come to us through Jesus Christ as He put aside His heavenly garments and adorned Himself with human flesh. He did that to die for you and me and redeem us from a life of sin and hopelessness. Tell me, in what way were we compatible with Him prior to His choosing to love us as He did? Was it not His pure love that reached beyond our incompatibility with all its faults and flaws and has bound us together for eternity? Is it not that very love that binds us to Him yet today rather than some foolish and futile system of religious compatibility?
This is a book about love—the love God has shown us and the love that has the power to bind your marriage in deep intimacy, spirit, soul, and body for a lifetime. It’s just an introduction, but I pray it will challenge you and inspire you to pursue God and your mate for the rest of your life.

Available Soon on This Website