Journey to Surrender

What does it mean to put on love?

I promised last time that I would continue with a few practical suggestions for how you can "put on love."  It is what we are called to do in Col 3:14. In case you missed that post, here’s a reminder:

"The most important piece of clothing you must wear is love. Love is what binds us all together in perfect harmony." (Col 3:14 NLT)

Want harmony in your marriage? Put on love!

Putting on love is not donning fake emotions or trying to wamp it up when you don’t feel it. Putting on love is a decision to give of yourself, generously and frequently, no matter what.

Ten Ways to Dress Yourself with Love

Here is the promised list of tips for putting on love. Before I give the list, though, be aware that your spouse’s love languages play into this greatly (see suggestion one!). What looks like a really nice love outfit to you is likely not the same to your spouse. To wear love well, you have to be a student not only of Jesus and how he loves, but of your husband or wife and what love means to them. This is HUGE!

1. Take the five love languages quiz together if you haven’t already. Do something specific this week to meet your spouse’s top need.
2. Pursue your husband by wearing something sexy to bed or by initiating sex. Pursue your wife by asking her on a date and making all the arrangement or paying her genuine compliments on her appearance. More pursuit tips on this post.
3. Choose to make a sacrifice of your own preference in order to honor your spouse’s preference, like picking a movie they would rather watch or a restaurant they would rather go to. But don't play the martyr!
4. Do something to serve your husband or wife. Do a chore of theirs they’ve been meaning to get to for a while. Serve him or her breakfast in bed.
5. Put your love down on paper. By this I mean write a love letter (not in an email, but using real paper, written by hand). Do it out of the blue, for no special reason except to convey your love. Husbands without the gift of prose can check this link from The Art of Manliness. Here is a link of suggestions for wives from The Intimate Couple.
6. Share the gift of non-sexual touch. Hold hands. Walk arm in arm. Hug. Give a neck or foot massage while you are watching TV. Be generous with your touch.
7. Ask an intimate question and be ready to really listen. Husbands, ask “Is there anything I do that makes you feel unloved?”  Wives, ask “Is there anything I do that makes you feel disrespected?”
8. Give public praise to your spouse. Brag on him or her in front of others. Post a picture of something great they did on Facebook. Tweet your undying devotion.
9. Practice listening well. Make eye contact. Be empathetic. Don’t try to fix everything, but be willing to just be a compassionate shoulder.
10. Say it!!  Regularly tell your spouse how much you love and adore him or her. Say it often. Don’t assume they know. And say specifically why!

Of course this list is only a small starting point. Hopefully it got your own creative juices flowing and you will be able to come up with many more ways to put on love for your spouse.

Help my readers!  Leave a comment with your own specific ideas on how you put on love for your husband or wife!

In truth, the rest of this series is also about putting on love in various ways. Kindness, patience, forgiveness, etc. are all expressions of love. So be sure to come back for the rest of the series. Better yet, sign up to get my posts sent directly to your inbox by entering your email address below (will not be shared with anyone, ever).

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Next in the series: Put on Kindness

Love is not simply an emotion you feel. It’s something you choose to wear.

Best New Year wishes to all my readers!

I’m kicking off the year with a series challenging you to revamp your marriage wardrobe for 2013. If you read my last post, then you know I’m not talking about clothing or fashion.

No, instead I’m talking about the kind of behaviors and attitudes that the Bible challenges us to put on in Colossians 3. “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (Col 3:9-10NIV)

This great scripture passage describes in detail the kind of “wardrobe” that we can put on to help build a successful marriage.  Today, we will start where the passage concludes:

The most important piece of clothing you must wear is love. Love is what binds us all together in perfect harmony.

(Col 3:14 NLT)

A New View of Love

Did you ever think of love as something you choose to put on, something you wear on purpose?

I love that image, because it refutes the notion that love is just something you feel or don’t feel, a giddy emotion that might be there one day and gone the next.  When you limit love to an emotion, it makes it fickle and fleeting. And if this is love, then it is easy to put the onus of “staying in love” on our partner and their behavior.

When you think of love as something you wear on a daily basis it completely changes the game. It becomes my personal choice.

Learning to Wear Love

How do you put on love? Let me point you to a fabulous piece of advice from scripture. It’s one that I quote often around here:

Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents.  Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

Ephesians 5:1-2 (MSG)

Love like that. Yeah, that’s it. Be like Jesus. Extravagant. Selfless. Giving everything for the sake of intimacy with us. He held nothing back. Neither should we.

I’m not kidding about how important getting to know Jesus' love is! The best way to put on love is to put on Jesus. And to do that, you have to know him and be a student of his love.  Here's how the Apostle Paul sums it up a few chapters earlier.

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV)

The key to fullness in life is also the key to fullness in marriage. Paul makes it clear in this passage that we cannot fully know the dimensions of Christ’s love. It’s a lifelong pursuit. Don’t assume you get it. You don’t. I don’t. We can't. It’s impossible. There is always way more that can be revealed to our “inner being” by the Holy Spirit.

So if you make only one New Years resolution for your marriage this year, make it this: to go hard after knowing the love of Christ. Then, whatever you learn, be determined to wear it every day.

I hear the protests, “Okay, that's great, but what do I actually DO?”  So, if you must have a punch list, a starting point for your love outfit, I’ll get to that next time. Until then think really hard about what you are going to do this year to pursue the knowledge the love of Christ. 

Meanwhile, what do you think it means to “put on love?” Leave a comment and let us know! 


Next in the series:  Put on Love Part 2