By Monica Dwi Chresnayani
“How do you not get tired of each other after all these years?” That’s what people often wonder. They know that my husband and I have been together for almost 40 years, and we met when we were 16. He has been my husband for nearly 25 years, but he has been my best friend for much longer. We have grown old together, but we have never grown apart.
I was head over heels for him from the moment I fell in love with him. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, and I was lucky that our families supported us. We tied the knot in October 1999, after a long and exciting journey.
But our marriage was not a fairy tale. We faced many obstacles and challenges along the way. We had to deal with personality clashes, different parenting styles, mistakes that hurt each other, financial troubles, unmet expectations, and more.
Falling in love was easy (we fell for each other in just three days, at a youth camp), but staying in love was hard. It was not easy to keep loving the same person for years, especially after seeing their flaws and suffering from their errors. How did we make it work?
To be honest, there were times when we felt like giving up and walking away. Especially when we had to bear the consequences of our partner’s bad choices; it seemed easier to just divorce and start over.
My husband made a poor choice that cost us our first home in the first five years of our marriage. We got through that hard time, but then another big problem came up. We made a mistake running the clinic business, and it messed up our finances in our 11th year of marriage. Then, when we should have been settled and stable, over 20 years into our marriage, I made a mistake that created a mess that took years of hard work and perseverance to fix.
Those were the times when I realized that loving your spouse requires hard work! It was not easy to forgive our partner’s faults and stand by them through the storm. If we managed to overcome those difficulties, it was only because of one thing: love.
The reason we should love is because God is love: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).
This truth made us learn more about what God’s love looks like. We learned three key things:
1. Love is giving
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
God gave Jesus to us while we were still sinners. Grace is more than a gift; it is a gift that we don’t deserve. When we follow this example in marriage, we will be able to love our spouse even when they don’t deserve it. When their mistakes ruin our household. When their betrayal wounds and breaks not only our heart, but also our children’s. When their poor choice shatters our dreams. But just as God loved us first, we are also called to love our spouse, no matter what.
To love is to give and initiate. We don’t wait for our partner to make a move. We embrace them with their imperfections, not with our expectations. We don’t put off our love until the circumstances improve. I still love my husband when he fails to keep his promise to restore our lost house. He also loves me even though my errors in handling our family finances caused years of hardship and struggle. Easy? Of course not. When I struggle to love my spouse when they are unlovable, I always go back to the verse above to remember that God loved me when I was unlovable.
2. Love is obeying God’s commands
“If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15).
What are His commands? In John 13:34-35, Jesus gives us a new command to love each other: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
In the past, staying married was enough for us. We had many reasons to stay, but none of them were love. We argued that marriage is a divine vow with God, not just with people. Yet, the trouble is that we often make it the main reason to stay in the marriage without loving our spouse. Then, marriage becomes hell. Because, we follow our own path, not concerned about our partner’s life anymore. “Who cares, as long as we don’t divorce. I don’t care if he falls into a pit, if he dies, I don’t care!”
Or, we chose to stay together for our children’s sake. But that’s also impossible without love. Because when the “bond” is gone (in this case the children have left and have their own lives), there is nothing to keep the couple together. So it often occurs that couples in their old age divorce after 30-40 years of marriage. And the children would suffer from growing up in a marriage without love. They witness how miserable it is for their parents to live for decades without love. It is understandable that many of these children are afraid or hesitant to get married when they grow up.
It’s different when we make love the main reason to stay. Because, God’s Word says: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). In fact, if we read the whole chapter, we will see that everything we do is worthless if we don’t have love.
Without love for our partner, our attempts to keep our marriage will be futile. If we fail to obey His main command, which is to love others, all our worship and service will be worthless.
3. Love means being receptive to the Holy Spirit’s aid
We kept going because we understood that love is the essential basis of our relationship. Sure, we still had arguments and clashes sometimes. But the understanding of the two principles above enabled us to keep loving each other. Yes, loving takes work. But can we do it?
On our own, we certainly can’t. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit.
John 16:13-14 says: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.”
Sin has affected all of humanity, making us lose God’s glory. The consequence is that we have no longer wanted to obey God. This is because we want to have everything under our control, so we often refuse to live in the truth. We tend to prioritize our wants and live away from God’s law, or at least pick the law that fits us.
But the Spirit of Truth in our lives will lead us to the truth, and help us to know the real truth through Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit’s guidance is what enables us to follow God’s will. So we will glorify Christ more and more in our lives and demonstrate it in what we do every day, as evidence that we have learned and lived the truth in Christ.
Enjoy the hard work of nurturing love in your marriage!
Our Daily Bread Ministries in Indonesia is supported by the freewill offering of individuals in Indonesia, who through their gifts enable us to continue to bring the life-changing wisdom of the Bible to many here. We are not funded by any church or organisation.
