From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: I promise you by the authority of God's word, God who is able to raise the Lazarus from the dead, the Lord Jesus Christ, he can raise up your dead marriage. And he can give you a love for your spouse that you never thought was possible.

He can take your life if you've drifted away from the Lord. He can take you back to a place where you are so in love with him and so devoted to him and his word bursts alive in your heart again. Those things can happen.

Guest (Male): What do you do if you've lost that lovin' feeling in your marriage? What do you do if you're not communicating or connecting anymore? This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, and today, part two of the lesson called, Have You Lost That Lovin' Feeling? It's from Pastor Jeff's series, Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way.

In the lesson today, we'll reveal the way back to the excitement for your spouse by following the prescription found in Revelation chapter two. And you can listen to part one of this message that we heard last time when you go to fromhishart.org, click the listen link. You can also download a free MP3 of any broadcast there. We hope you will. Right now though, open your Bible to the book of Revelation and let's get started learning how to reconnect and get that lovin' feeling from your spouse again. Here now is Pastor Jeff.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: 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. 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 four, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. That word left means abandoned, departed, or even neglected. 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.

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 four, that you have left your first love. Therefore, remember from where you have fallen. So we remember how it used to be and we remember why, 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. 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. Secondly, we face the struggles with selfishness.

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. 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 Family Life. It's this, we're all selfish at heart and stress fuels selfishness. And selfishness kills romance. Now if you think about the word selfishness, the Bible tells us, Philippians chapter two, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than yourself. Selfishness is terrible. If you think about the word you write it out, selfishness, look at the middle of that word, it's the word fish.

Fish stink. Selfishness stinks. Nobody sees a selfish person and says, oh, I'm just so drawn to you. I like it that you're a selfish pig. No, selfishness is not very attractive to us. And so we have to be on guard for selfishness. Yesterday was a rainy day and Debbie, I try and play golf on Saturday mornings if I can, get out there early before anybody can see my swing, hide the kids, hide the wife, don't want to look at this. And so I try and play early and then get done.

Well, I wasn't able to play yesterday and so I was home all day and Debbie and I just had a great day together. We just hung out, we talked, we watched a movie together. And she said, she wrote me because she writes me every Sunday five things I love about you. I love getting these. And so the first one on her five things I love about you list, number one, a relaxed, lazy Saturday, just us all day, major fill. Because she loves being together. That is her love language, quality time.

And she told me, she said, I loved it that you didn't go to try and play golf. You weren't going to do something. You were just there with me. So the struggles with selfishness. And then we face the contempt of familiarity. We've been married, Debbie and I this Friday, Saturday, Saturday, I think, is going to be our 39th anniversary this Saturday. So we've been married for 39 years and went on our first date on May 10th of 1985.

And so we've been together a long time. And we know that expression, familiarity breeds contempt. When you're very familiar with somebody, you can take that person for granted. I remember Pastor Shook, my pastor at Champion Forest, he said to me one time, he said, Jeff, he said, when you've pastored for a long time, just know this, the church has a tendency to take you for granted as their pastor.

And he said, it's just the way things are, it's just human nature. And so the accolades that he got early in his ministry at Champion Forest, he wasn't getting those as much because the church just kind of took him for granted. Well, we can do that in our relationship with the Lord, we can do that in our relationship with our spouse. We just start taking that person for granted and that is a terrible thing to do. And we're not remembering what it used to be.

We're not remembering and we don't go back in our minds to remember, hey, I remember when we went out on our first date. Chris Schroder, he tells the guys this, hey, it's good to go back and remember those early dates and remember the fun you used to have and the things that you used to do when you were first starting out, when you were first getting to know each other. Remember those things so you don't get stale.

I heard about a couple, they'd been married for 30-plus years and it was a Sunday afternoon and the man was sitting on the couch, he had his glasses on and the wife was sitting in the chair next to him and he was just reading something. And she came up to him and she just lovingly took off his glasses and she looked at him and she said, you know honey, when I take your glasses off, you look like the same handsome man I married over 30 years ago. He said, well with my glasses off, you look pretty good too.

Honesty in the relationship, that was important. So, remember how it used to be and then action step number three, repent and re-engage with one another. Repent and re-engage with one another. What does the Lord say to the church in Ephesus? I have this against you that you've 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 I will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent.

Repent. Metanoia in the Greek means to change your mind. To amend with abhorrence of one's past sins. We see such a beautiful picture of repentance in the book of Jonah, Jonah chapter three, when the Ninevites were told that God was going to destroy them. Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. And the people repented before God. They put on sackcloth, they put ashes on their head, they fasted, and they cried out to the Lord for mercy.

That is repentance. They turned from their wicked way. That is repentance. And the Lord says, listen, if you've left your first love, me, the Lord Jesus, well then you need to repent. You need to change your mind and you need to get things right and return to me and start doing those things you did at first. So how do we do that in marriage? Well, first of all, we apologize for taking our spouse for granted.

We apologize for the selfish things that we've done, the things that we've said to our spouses and for the way we've treated them poorly, put them on the back burner, made them feel like they're not very important. We own that and we apologize for that. And listen, in every relationship this is where it breaks down between the vertical and the horizontal. In our relationship with Jesus, anytime we have left our first love, the fault is 100% on us.

He's faithful. He never stops being faithful to us. He never has to say, well, you know, Lord, I'm sorry I did XYZ and Jesus, well, you know Jeff, I'm sorry I did. He never says that, right? Because he's perfect. But in our relationship horizontally with our spouse, when we come and we say, oh, I've sinned, I have wronged you, please forgive me. Well, you might have a situation where there's a big rift in the relationship and maybe it's more your spouse's fault than your fault.

Maybe it's 60/40 or 70/30 or 80/20 or maybe even 90/10. But what do you do? You say this says to repent. Well, you take 100% responsibility for your part of the conflict. If your part of the conflict is only 10%, then take 100% responsibility over the 10% and own that and go humbly to your spouse and say, I was wrong for doing this, that, and the other. You name it and nail it to the cross and you say, please forgive me for doing this.

You don't just give a blanket, I'm sorry, sorry I hadn't just been myself lately, that just makes you feel better. But you have to be specific. I'm sorry Debbie that I put all these things ahead of you. You know one of the things and this drives Debbie crazy, I think there are a lot of wives where it drives them crazy, is this device. And then when you blow it up and it's an iPad, but you can spend a lot of time, guys, we can spend a lot of time on this and this can dominate our attention.

And then we're trying to talk to our spouse and we're looking through this. They don't like that. And you don't like it either when you're trying to talk to somebody and they're looking down and engaging their mind in other things. And so we have to say, I'm sorry, please forgive me.

Guest (Male): We'll continue this important train of thought with Pastor Jeff Schreve in just a moment when he returns on From His Heart. A big thank you so much for your generous gifts to the ongoing support of From His Heart. This month is a special month because it's our fiscal year end, a time that is vital for us as we seek to eliminate the substantial gap that we have in our budget requirements for this fiscal year.

If From His Heart is a part of your life each day and you're being blessed by the program and God is speaking to your heart through these broadcasts regularly, would you consider giving a gracious gift to From His Heart this month to help us? Pastor Jeff receives zero income from this ministry. He is our chief volunteer. All you give to From His Heart goes to helping us get these messages on this station and hundreds more with a word from God's heart to us.

And this month for your support to From His Heart, we'd like to say thank you by sending you his new four-message series, Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way. And today's lesson is included in this four-message series. You can get it in the format of your choice: USB flash drive, on CDs, you can watch it on DVDs, or a direct MP3 download for your gift today. Call 866-40-BIBLE or go online to fromhishart.org. And with that gift we'll also send you the bonus booklet, I Still Do. Call 866-40-BIBLE or go to fromhishart.org to make that secure gift. Now let's get back today to the message called, Have You Lost That Lovin' Feeling?

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Ephesians 4:32 says, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. And when your spouse comes broken before you and says, please forgive me, you forgive them. Now that doesn't mean everything's repaired in the relationship because forgiveness is granted but trust is earned. And that person, especially if there's been a big rift in the relationship, trust has to be earned.

And you earn trust a drop at a time, you lose it by the buckets full. You do something stupid, something major and something stupid and selfish, you can, the trust bank can be bankrupted just like that. You can't fill up the trust bank overnight. It takes time. But it can be restored. So repent and do the deeds you did at first. Apologize for taking your spouse for granted. Number two, focus on your spouse's strengths, not your spouse's weaknesses.

Now you've heard me say before, the tendency in dating is we see this person, every person has strengths and weaknesses. Nobody is just strength, strength, strength, strength, strength, no weakness. Just all positives, no negatives. Now when you're dating you notice the strengths, you notice the positives and you minimize the negatives. You minimize the weaknesses. It's not that you don't see that they're there. For instance, maybe she's always late.

You come to pick her up and she's always late. Maybe she's always messy. You go into her bedroom and it's like, did you call the bomb squad? Something blew up in here and it's just a disaster. And you see those things, but you minimize them. And then you get married and then all of a sudden those cute little things that you minimized, now they become irritations. Opposites attract and then they attack and they become irritations. And then you start really focusing in on the negatives and the weaknesses.

If you do that in marriage, your spouse becomes a negative, becomes a big weakness. Nobody's attracted to a negative. Nobody's attracted to a big weakness. So we have to train ourselves to remember our spouse and think about our spouse in her positives, in his positives, not in his negatives. It doesn't mean you're putting on rose-colored glasses, it just means you're really emphasizing those things that drew you to that person in the first place.

Focus on your spouse's strengths, not your spouse's weaknesses. And then thirdly, take time to talk and share and pray together. That is so critical. Communication is critical. And when the marriage starts to fall apart and you don't love each other, you don't bring me flowers, you don't talk to me anymore when I come through the door at the end of the day and there's no tenderness in your fingertips and all that stuff, and you don't close your eyes when we kiss, all those things that the songwriters talk about.

Well what has happened? Well you're not communicating like you were. You're not talking and sharing and taking time to do that. We need to be with our wives every day 15, at least 15 minutes a day face-to-face talking. Because a lot of us don't do that. We're talking, but we're looking at this. Oh yeah, what happened to your day today? And we're not really engaged, we're not giving undivided attention.

We do that with the Lord, the King of the universe, and he's saying, hey, what are you doing? Why are you looking at that? Talk to me. And Debbie will do that with me. I want you to give me your undivided attention. Put all that other stuff down. Your email to person XYZ can wait. And so 15 minutes a day of talking face-to-face, that's important. You say, well I don't know if I can do that. Well I promise you you did it at one time.

You did it when you won her heart, you did it when you romanced her. How do I know that you did that? Because she wouldn't have married you had you not been talking to her and sharing with her. Now the prayer, that's something that so many couples don't do. Even pastors, they don't pray with their wives really. They might pray at dinner time, but that's not quite the same thing. Now I still remember going to a Promise Keepers event and Bill McCartney, who was the founder of Promise Keepers, he coached the Colorado Buffaloes, won a national championship in 1990, then left coaching to start Promise Keepers. He just died in January of this year, 2024.

Well he was challenging the guys and he said, guys, if you will do this before you leave for work in the morning, he said if you'll take about 45 seconds to just put your hands on your wife's shoulders and pray over her and ask God to bless her and ask God to protect her and ask God to give her strength as she takes care of the kids and ask God to give her wisdom as she makes decisions about this, that, and the other and just pray for her day.

He said, you'll be amazed at how she will respond to that because she has been made by God, taken from the side of Adam to be protected and nourished and cherished and that shows her that you're thinking about her and you're praying God's blessings over her. So guys, I challenge you to do that as I challenge myself and not get out of the habit of that. Repent and do the deeds you did at first, talking and sharing and praying.

And then take time to enjoy and express your love together. That's important. We need to enjoy our time together the way we used to. And maybe a good thing that you can do is just say, hey let's think about one of our funnest dates. What did we do before we got married that we had so much fun? Maybe you can recreate that date. I remember this was early on in our marriage, I say early on, we still had our kids, but I guess we'd been married about 10 years or so.

Thursdays was my day off when I worked at Champion Forest. Thursdays were my day off and so I would take the kids to school and I would mow the yard and then Debbie and I would typically go out to lunch for a date. And so I remember I took a shower and I was getting my clothes on, putting on a pair of blue jeans and just comfortable clothes and then I thought to myself, wait a minute, if I were dating Debbie, if we weren't married and I was going out on a date with this beautiful brunette, would I wear this?

And I thought about what does ZZ Top say? Every girl crazy about a sharp dressed man. And so I went back into the closet and I put on a nice pair of slacks and I put on a nice shirt. I didn't put on a tie or anything like that, but I just looked good, really looked good. I combed the four hairs I had remaining, looking good. I came downstairs, smelled good, came downstairs and she looked at me and she goes, why are you all dressed up?

I said because I'm taking you out to lunch. That's why. And it did wonders for our relationship because it makes her feel like she's special and every woman wants to feel special. Hey, take time to enjoy your spouse and express your love. The physical expression of love which is so important in marriage. Ecclesiastes 9:9, enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which he has given to you under the sun, for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.

Listen, what the Lord says we do when we've drifted away from him are the same things we do when we've drifted away from our spouse, when we've lost that lovin' feeling. So we honestly assess and we remember how it used to be and then we repent and we re-engage with our spouse. And I promise you by the authority of God's word, God who is able to raise the Lazarus from the dead, the Lord Jesus Christ, he can raise up your dead marriage. And he can give you a love for your spouse that you never thought was possible.

And he can take your life if you've drifted away from the Lord. He can take you back to a place where you are so in love with him and so devoted to him and his word bursts alive in your heart again. Those things can happen.

Guest (Male): Are you willing to do what's necessary to put that spark back in your marriage today? If you'll practice all that we've heard from scripture today, you'll get back on track with that lovin' feeling. Today you heard part two of the lesson, Have You Lost That Lovin' Feeling? and you can revisit part one online at fromhishart.org, click the listen link.

And remember the entire series, unedited, is available on a USB flash drive, CDs, DVDs, or a direct MP3 download and Pastor Jeff's booklet, I Still Do, for your fiscal year end gift this month. We have a sizable gap to make up this month, so please pray about how you might contribute to help us this month. Call 866-40-BIBLE or go online to fromhishart.org to make that secure gift and receive the series, Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way, and the booklet, I Still Do.

Well, thank you for joining us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, reminding you that From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Schreve, whose mission is to speak the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. We also invite you to join us next time for the fourth lesson in this series, and the message is called Families That Flourish. Join Pastor Jeff Schreve then as he again speaks truth, love, and hope to a lost and hurting world, reminding you that no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more at fromhishart.org.