1 John 3:18 “Our love should not be just words and talk. It must be true love which shows itself in action.”
The number one question people ask marriage counselors is “Why don’t we love each other the way we used to?” The truth is every marriage is always either growing together or growing apart. Because it’s a relationship, a living, breathing thing, it never stands still.
Relationships never stand still. There are five things which keep a marriage and your love growing.
First, keep on paying attention. Attention means love. It’s the most loving thing you do when you give somebody your attention. When you’re paying attention to somebody you’re saying to them, “I value you. You matter to me.
You’re worth listening to.” When you give somebody your attention, you’re actually giving them your life because your time is your life and you’re never going to get that time back. So the most valuable thing you can give your spouse is your attention. When you give them that you are actually giving them a part of yourself.
Marriage takes a lot of attention. Do you remember how much attention you used to give to your husband or your wife before you got married? You bought flowers, you wrote notes, you made phone calls. You talked for hours. You spent a lot of time together. In many, many ways during courting and engagement you said, “You have my undivided attention”. In fact, you thought about them all the time when you weren’t with them.
What happened?
You don’t think about your husband/wife all the time now. Your attention shifted. You got complacent. You began to take things for granted. And over time we tend to pay less and less attention to our spouse and more attention to things like bills, babies, budgets, career, hobbies and sports. All of a sudden your husband/wife is no longer the focus of attention of your life. When that happens, the marriage begins to deteriorate.
If your marriage is going to keep on growing you’ve got to figure out a way to keep on paying attention to each other. If you don’t do that, your marriage is going to start to crumble. You’ve got to keep on paying attention.