From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: What do you do if you've lost that loving feeling? What do you do if you're not communicating, you're not connecting anymore, and you used to be soulmates, and now you're just roommates? Is there a way to get back the excitement for your spouse? Well, there is. And the Lord gives us the prescription in Revelation Chapter 2.

Guest (Male): What do you do if you're not communicating or connecting anymore with your spouse? Is there a way to get over that hurdle and get back to the excitement that you experienced as newlyweds? Of course there is. And in today's message with Pastor Jeff Schreve, you'll discover three actions that you can take to reignite the love and passion you once had for your spouse.

The message today is entitled, "Have You Lost That Lovin' Feelin'?" from the new four-message series from Pastor Jeff Schreve called Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way. By the way, this is our fiscal year-end month, and this series is our special gift to you for your support this month of any amount. And we'll include Pastor Jeff's booklet, I Still Do.

Go to fromhisheart.org and make your timely gift today and receive the booklet and the series. Right now, though, open your Bible to the book of Revelation. Here's Pastor Jeff to begin the lesson that begs an answer to this question: "Have you lost that lovin' feelin'?"

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Marriage is a lot like golf. For those who have never played golf, if you watch golf on television, golf looks so easy. It's not like football or basketball. The guys aren't sweating—maybe sweating some because it's hot—but they're not running around. It's not like, "How fast? I'm going to throw this ball, you run after it and try and hit it before it hits the ground."

It's not like that in golf. You're standing there, looking around, talking to this guy, and you're toweling off. Then you're going to grab your club, and you're measuring everything. Then you'll back off because things weren't just quite right. And then you hit it, and it just goes. You see these pros, and they hit it, and it's just, man, that's just so easy.

And then you put a golf club in your hands. Golf is the hardest game on the planet. I've played a lot of games, and I wasn't a great athlete, although I get better and better the older I get. I remember I used to be really good. But golf is one of those games that you can't master. It's just very, very difficult.

Well, marriage is like that. It looks easy for those who aren't married. It looks easy like watching golf until you do it, and then you find out this is hard. And it's very easy to go into marriage all excited and all jazzed and so in love at the altar. And then something seems to happen, and you lose that lovin' feeling.

Well, we want to look at the prescription. What do you do if you've lost that lovin' feeling? What do you do if you're not communicating, you're not connecting anymore, and you used to be soulmates and now you're just roommates? Is there a way to get back the excitement for your spouse? Well, there is.

And the Lord gives us the prescription in Revelation chapter two. Now, Revelation chapter two begins the first of seven letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor. And you say, "Well, what does this have to do with marriage?" Well, the Bible calls the church the bride of Christ. Jesus is our bridegroom, and the church is His bride.

And in Ephesians 5, which is the most definitive chapter in the Bible on the marriage relationship between the husband and the wife, it likens it to Christ and the church. It says, "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church."

And so, a wife is to submit to her husband as she submits to the Lord. The husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. And so, there's that connection there. And so, what we read from the Lord's letter to the church in Ephesus gives us the program in the blueprint of what to do when you've lost that lovin' feeling.

"To the angel," Revelation 2:1, "to the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this: 'I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure—tolerate—evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake and have not grown weary.

But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent.'" Now, that's the Lord's word to the church in Ephesus. That's the Lord's word to us today in our relationship with Him.

But it also applies in the horizontal, in our relationship with our husband, with our wife. And there are three actions to take when you've lost that lovin' feeling. Action number one: honestly assess your relationship. Honestly look in the mirror. Don't put lipstick on a pig. Don't put on rose-colored glasses and say, "Well, I'm just going to see this the way I want to see it."

No, take off the rose-colored glasses. Honestly assess your relationship. Has your love grown cold? Have you, as it says in verse 4, "I have this against you, that you have left your first love"? That word "left" means abandoned, departed, or even neglected. The song by Robert Robinson, "Come Thou Fount," there's a line in that song that says, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love."

And so, in our vertical relationship with God, we can easily start to neglect our first love and depart from our first love and go after other loves. And we can do the same in our relationship with our spouse. And so, honestly assess that relationship. And remember this: things don't have to be terrible to be troubling.

As you honestly assess things, as in the business book Good to Great, face the brutal facts. As you look in the mirror and really face the brutal facts and look to see what kind of condition are we in. Well, just know this: things don't have to be terrible to be troubling. Now, when the Lord talked to the church in Ephesus, this wasn't a terrible church.

This was a good church, and He starts off by commenting on and commending them for the good things that they had done. Verse 2: "I know your deeds and your toil and your perseverance." Man, they were working hard for the Lord. "You cannot tolerate evil men." That's good. "You put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false."

You're not just welcoming anybody into the church, into the pulpit to preach. They call themselves apostles, you're putting them to the test. You're making sure that it's not just the devil's false apostles. He says that's a good thing. "You have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake and have not grown weary." Good things.

And if you and I would have been able to visit the church in Ephesus, we would have said, "Man, this is a great church. This is a solid church." Timothy is the pastor of the church of Ephesus. This is just a solid, solid, great church. They seem to have everything going on. They preach the Bible and they trust the Word of God and they are seeing miracles take place.

It would have been a great place. But the Lord—man sees the outward, the Lord looks at the heart—and when the Lord looked at their heart, He said, "I have this against you. You know what? You've departed from your first love. You don't love Me like you used to. You don't bring Me flowers, you don't sing Me love songs. It's not the way it used to be. Your heart has drifted from Me."

And so, even as you look in your marriage relationship, things might be okay, and they might even be going good in some areas, but if you check your heart, "Is my heart still excited and in love like I used to be for my spouse? The love I used to have, or am I not closing my eyes anymore when we kiss? Is there no tenderness like before in my fingertips?"

Things don't have to be terrible to be troubling and trending in the wrong direction. And remember this: your spouse may be more unhappy than you realize. Because if we don't do the assessment work, we can have some trouble in marriage, and you might have a spouse that doesn't tell you that they're very dissatisfied. And so you have to have conversations. You have to talk about that.

I had a man come talk to me some years ago. He was totally distraught. He said, "I just found out my wife is having an affair." He said, "I'm shocked and destroyed." And I said to him, "Well, I'm destroyed for you, but I'm not shocked. That shouldn't have been a shock." I said, "Anybody that knew you knew that your wife was very unhappy. It was written all over her face."

And I said, "You, the only person that didn't know that your wife was very unhappy and very vulnerable, was you. And when people tried to tell you that, you wouldn't listen." See, some people really, they like to put on the rose-colored glasses, and they say, "Well, everything is fine and dandy with us," and they don't look at the real score. And you have to do that.

So I challenge couples to do this: sit down together, find a quiet place where you can just be the two of you, and say, "Okay, we want to assess our relationship from one to 10. 10 is the absolute best, one is the worst." And you sit down, and she has a piece of paper and you have a piece of paper, and she gives a score and you give a score, and then you compare the scores.

Now, here's the thing: the wife generally is going to be more in tune to the relationship because she's more of an emotional creature. She has an emotional quotient that is higher typically than a guy—not in every situation, but typically. And so she is going to be more sensitive to where the relationship is at that given moment.

And marriage is a dynamic. That's why it's a good barometer or a good picture of our relationship with God, because our relationship with God is a dynamic. It's not just static. It doesn't just stay the same. Good marriages don't just happen. You have to keep feeding those marriages. It's like a roaring fire. If you want to keep the fire roaring, you got to keep adding the fuel to the fire, you got to keep adding the firewood.

And in your relationship with the Lord, you have to keep pursuing your relationship with the Lord. And you have to keep coming before Him, and you have to keep working through things in your heart. And you have to keep reading His word and talking to Him and doing the things that He tells us to do to have that vibrant relationship with Him. Because the current is always pushing against us.

And so, if this means my heart is on fire for the Lord, well, what does the world do? The world is coming at me constantly to push me away and drag me away from that. And I have to fight through that to stay grounded with the Lord. And you have to do that with your spouse, too. So, honestly assess.

Guest (Male): Pastor Jeff Schreve will return on From His Heart in just a moment to continue to encourage us to fight that current with godly weapons of war. Today, we've heard part one of the lesson called "Have You Lost That Lovin' Feelin'?" from Pastor Jeff's new four-message series, Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way.

Now, we pray that this lesson and all of them from this new series will continue to be an encouragement to you. That's why we exist and have for 21 years, sharing uncompromising biblical truth on radio, television, and digital platforms to more than 180 countries. And we know that God uses From His Heart.

Lives are being changed, families are being strengthened, people are finding real hope in God's word. And boy, does our world need hope today. In the book of Numbers, Chapter 6, verses 24 through 26, we're reminded to tell the world that "the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace."

We need peace, too, no doubt. From His Heart is seeking to bring eternal peace to the millions who listen and watch across the world. And together, we are standing strong for truth. This month is our fiscal year-end month, and we'd appreciate you joining with us this month especially with a gift to this ministry to help us fill a financial gap in our support that we're praying we can do by the end of the month.

And when you do send that fiscal year-end gift today, we'll send you Pastor Jeff's new series, Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way, and the companion booklet, I Still Do, written by Pastor Jeff and his wife, Debbie. It's our thanks for your gift today, for joining the effort to change hearts and homes.

To get yours, call 866-40-BIBLE, 866-40-BIBLE, or go online to fromhisheart.org. And know that what you give will be multiplied countless times through the faithful proclamation of God's word from Pastor Jeff Schreve. Now, let's get back to part one of the message, "Have You Lost That Lovin' Feelin'?"

Dr. Jeff Schreve: You know, I told you in this series that women are like butterflies and a man's like a buffalo. And that's why a woman is better at sensing where the relationship is. And you know, on a scale of one to 10, so the guy says, "Well, we're doing pretty good. I'd say we're at an eight." She says, "We're at a four." He's like, "A four?"

Yeah, she's a butterfly. She senses things that you don't because you're a buffalo. You know, if the temperature drops 10 degrees, the buffalo doesn't know it, but the butterfly does. If the wind picks up, the buffalo doesn't recognize it, the butterfly does. So really, when you say, "What's our relationship?" I would say 99 times out of 100, the wife is going to have a different score than the husband, and it's probably going to be lower.

So you have to listen to that, because your spouse may be more unhappy than you realize. So, honestly assess your relationship. Action point number two: remember how it used to be. Now, that's what the Lord tells the church in Ephesus. He said, "I have this against you," verse 4, "that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen."

Remember. Call to mind, rehearse, recollect. Remember how it used to be and remember what caused you to fall off the wagon, so to speak. Remember what it was like when you went on your honeymoon and everything was so exciting and it was so wonderful. Remember when you first fell in love, that first love, and you just couldn't wait to be together.

I told you before that when I first asked Debbie out on a date and she said yes, we went shopping. I hate shopping. But I would have gone anywhere with her because I just wanted to be with her. If she had said, "Debbie, where do you want to go? I want to go to the opera." Okay, the opera, that's fun. I would have gone because it would just be going with her.

And then, you know, you get married, and then it's like, "Jeff, do you want to go shopping?" Of course I don't want to go shopping. I hate shopping. You can go with some of your girlfriends, you know, and then take in the opera. You know, do some of that. And so we tend to change. But when we were at the first, when we remember what it was like at the first, we just wanted to be together.

So remember from where you have fallen. Remember where you fell off the wagon, so to speak, in this thing called love. Song of Solomon, Chapter 1: "How beautiful you are, my love. How your eyes shine with love. How handsome you are, my dearest. How you delight me." Oh, we want to get back to that place where she is so beautiful in your eyes and she is delighted in you.

How do you get back there? I heard about an older couple. They were driving in their old pickup truck, Paul behind the wheel and Ma in the passenger seat, and they were behind a younger couple. And they were also in an older pickup truck. And so, you know, the trucks that had the bench seats.

This was before the bucket seats came into being, and they had the bench seats. And they could tell they were younger. And the man is driving, the 20-year-old or whatever he was, he's driving, and the girl is just right up against him. They almost look like one body with two heads. You know, she's just right there.

And Ma sees that, and she says to Paul, she said, "Paul, Paul, look at that. Look at how in love they are. Look at how close they are. Paul, we used to be like that. What happened to us?" He looked at her and said, "I ain't moved." We tend to think it's always the other person that has moved. You know, "I'm doing everything right. You're the one that changed."

And the reality is we've both done things. So we remember how it used to be, and we remember why, you know, where did we fall off the wagon of love? Well, there are three reasons why marriage is difficult and why it's different from dating to marriage. First challenge is that we all face the challenges of life. We all face the difficulties of life.

How do we go from being so in love? How do we go from throwing the bouquet to throwing in the towel? Well, the challenges of life come in. It says in Song of Solomon 2:15, "Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes, that are ruining the vineyards, while our vineyards are in blossom." Those little foxes will chew up—the devil's little foxes will come and chew up your love and chew up your relationship if you don't catch those foxes.

The challenges of life. Now, when you're dating, and especially I'm talking about like fresh dating, you're in your 20s and you've never been married, and the girl in your sights, she's in her 20s, never been married. It doesn't have to be in your 20s, but you just, this is first go through the stall, right? First round.

And you don't have a lot on you. When Debbie and I first started dating, we didn't have a lot of outside pressures on us. Now Debbie lived in an apartment with a girlfriend, I lived at a place with my parents. It's called home, and I liked that because it was free. And so, you know, there wasn't—you'd go to work and then you're off. You're just free.

And so we began dating, and we would go out to dinner all the time and go do this and go to the pool. And you're young and you're healthy and there's not a lot on you, extra things on you. So there's not much stress. And then you get married, and then the stresses come, the challenges come.

And the challenge of a job and money and having enough money. And then if the Lord provides children, then you got kids. And kids are another big stressor all by itself. And then you have maybe in-law problems, and you have this issue and that issue and the other issue. And all of a sudden life becomes very complicated.

It wasn't complicated like that when you were dating. And so because you didn't face a whole lot of challenges dating, being in love seemed to be much easier. But we all face the challenges of life. And the challenges of life, like those little foxes, can chew up the vineyard and the blossom of love.

Secondly, we face the struggles with selfishness. Now, my big problem in marriage is me. It's selfishness. Your big problem in your marriage is you. The middle letter in the word "sin" is the letter "I." And if you want to know what the biggest problem in the Christian life is, what the biggest problem that you have, that I have, that we have, it's selfishness.

It's the big "I." It's "I want what I want when I want it." And we face struggles with selfishness. Now, we are selfish at heart. Debbie told me, she said, "You know, I didn't realize how selfish I was until we started having kids." And she said, "Then when we had kids, then I started to see, well, I'm just selfish with my time.

I want to do what I want to do, and Jill's not cooperating with that very well." Because little kids, they don't care what you're doing. It's what I need, and my needs come before your needs. I like what we learned at FamilyLife. It's this: we're all selfish at heart, and stress fuels selfishness.

So you don't see it as much dating because there's not a lot of stress. But stress as you get married and the difficulties of life come in and the challenges of life come in, stress fuels selfishness, and selfishness kills romance. And guys, listen to me: women love romance. They want to be nourished, they want to be cherished, they want to be pursued, they want to be protected.

They want to feel special and sacred and secure. And so romance is a big part of that. And a lot of guys aren't really—we use romance to get what we want, to get her to say, "I do." But romance is something that we're not all that jazzed about that. She's really jazzed about that.

And so, you know, the joke, "I ain't moved," Paul says to Ma, "I ain't moved." Well, he has moved because he used to romance her, and now he doesn't anymore. Because he's got her on the mantle. She's the trophy wife, so to speak. "Well, I won you, now I'm going to go do some other things." And we stop doing those things that we once did, and we stop romancing our wives. It's really critical to do that.

Guest (Male): Well, this has really been an important lesson about keeping that spark alive in your marriage. But there's much more to be covered about this subject on the next broadcast where, after a brief review, Pastor Jeff will continue the lesson entitled, "Have You Lost That Lovin' Feelin'?" Make sure you're with us then.

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It'll come into your inbox every Friday morning. Sign up right there on our homepage. And there is so much more, too, so go to fromhisheart.org. Thank you for connecting with us today and remember that From His Heart is a listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Schreve, whose mission is speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. Join Pastor Jeff Schreve next time as he concludes the lesson, "Have You Lost That Lovin' Feelin'?" here on From His Heart.