How do you KNOW you're in love?? (written by Pastor Piper)

Now, what about that sermon title: “Staying Married Is Not About Staying In Love”? What’s the issue with being “in love”? The problem with basing too much on it is that it is a fuzzy thing. Not as in warm fuzzy, but as in fuzzy photograph. The line between when it’s there and not there is vague. Am I in love with Noël? This is a test. You decide.

1) When she goes away, I miss her—not just because I might get tired of cereal (except that nice people bring us things), but also because there is a vacancy in the kitchen and in the living room and in the car and in the bed and in the air.

2) When my day off rolls around each week on Monday, I want to do something special with her. Admittedly not very special. I just want to be with her. Old Country Buffet. (No kidding—real people and all-you-can-eat for two for fifteen dollars. It’s a cultural experience!) Famous Dave’s. (Where else can you get corn on the cob in January?) Scrabble. (She almost always wins.) River walk in the summer? A long easy evening sitting in the same room reading. The point is: I like being with her in all this.

3) I am sexually attracted to her. Remember I am giving a test for you to judge if I am in love. God has been very good to me by giving me eyes only for Noël. The point is not that I am not tempted to look too long at risqué pictures. The point is that I am not now, and never have been for the last forty years, drawn to any other women. I have never had to kill a rising attraction to another woman. There never has been any. In fact, I have said to Noël that God has, so far, built a safeguard into our relationship that the thought of being romantically involved with another woman makes me physically nauseated—almost as much as a homosexual imagination. It doesn’t feel like a virtue. It feels like acid reflux. (Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Will do.) She is all I have ever been attracted to. And I still am.

4) Noël’s admiration matters uniquely to me. There are thousands of people who think John Piper is not admirable for all kinds of reasons—shouts too much in his preaching, too black and white, dogmatic, judgmental, too conservative, misogynist, hypocrite, proud, not separatistic enough, too separatistic, post-tribulational, hedonistic, Baptist, charismatic sympathizer, subjectivist, tolerates drums, uses questionable language, reclusive, too serious—for starters. That matters to me—some. But what Noël thinks about what I am and what I do matters uniquely. I would rather have her approval and commendation with a thousand emails of disapproval than the other way around.
However, things are not the way they used to be. I can remember the way it was the first time we held hands in 1966. It was not a small thing. It was romantic and sexual. Today we still hold hands. Often it is a sign of truce. I’m done being angry and I want things to be good. Other times it means: I’m glad you’re with me as we go to the doctor. Other times: God was good to give you to me. It’s different. The fruit has ripened. It is not flush with spring green. It is gnarled and worn with thick skin. When you live through fire, the fruit has to develop very thick skin to protect the vital, succulent core.
Unlike the early days of being in love, life is hugely practical. We talk about practicalities of home and work and children a lot. The relationship has a large business component. This home has been a little company: five children to raise, food to prepare, house to keep, car to maintain, health to tend to, clothes to buy and clean, education to plan and pay for, friendships to nurture, ministry to navigate, money to manage, etc. Romance does not dominate this relationship like it did at the beginning.
We know everything there is to know now about each other’s failures. Past failures. Ongoing failures. There is no idealization any more. Marriage is risky business and should not be entered without a huge confidence in the sovereignty of God. If the text is true (which it is), “They were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25), then the day is long past in world history, and in our marriage, when freedom from shame is based on having nothing to be ashamed of. Now it is true—God make it more and more true!—by the maturing of grace.
In the end, the gospel of Christ crucified for sinful husbands and wives is the ground of our marriage. Here is where we see grace. Here is where we receive grace. Here is where we learn to give grace. Growing in grace-received and grace-shared is how we are moving forward toward the day when Christ will be all in all and there will be no marrying or giving in marriage (Matthew 22:30). It is a precious gift while we have it. It is a painful and happy school for heaven. I am thankful for my wife. I am committed for life. Am I in love? You decide.
Pastor John

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Pastor Piper's comment during last Sunday's sermon - that it takes the grace of God to open eyes and hearts to see that marriage is so much deeper than butterflies ~ to rid the heart of the shallow expectations of love and marriage gives me hope for our culture....because it's up to my Father to turn the hearts of people.

It seems like many brothers and sisters that I know have convinced themselves that love should feel like ........umm.....well.......remember the knots in the stomach that we used to get in middle school (don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about!!!) when that certain girl or guy would be in study hall......the excited nervousness that never ceased due to the uncertainty and mystery of him or her ??

I think we need to get rid of the ideaology of what we think love should be......and soak up the beauty of the texts on love and pray that he bring it out of us.........

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
"Love is patient and kind;
Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends"

Song of Solomon 8:6
"For love is as strong as death, and it's jealousy is as enduring as the grave.
Love flashes like flashes of fire, The very flame of the LORD.
Many waters cannot quench love, Nor will rivers overflow it;
If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, his offer would be utterly despised."