Persue God’s Love

When a husband and a wife walk in the love of God, their marriage will be blessed.
Walking in love with each other is the bottom line to a good marriage. When a husband and a wife both develop the habit of walking in the love of God, their marriage—and their family—will be blessed.

In the Word of God, there is what I consider to be a happy marriage formula. It’s found in 1 Corinthians 13, a portion of Scripture that reveals the very heart of the love walk.

Verses 1 and 2 say: “If I [can] speak in the tongues of men and [even] of angels … If I have prophetic powers … if I have [sufficient] faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love (God’s love in me) I am nothing (a useless nobody)” (The Amplified Bible).

We may have the gifts of the Spirit operating in our lives, but if we don’t have love—we are useless nobodies! Nothing we do counts! That’s how important love is.

Verses 4 through 8 give us a clear picture of the life of love:
“Love endures long and is patient and kind. … Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. … Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person. … Love never fails.”

In marriage you have to practice walking in the love of God. It comes not naturally, but supernaturally as you obey the Holy Spirit and the written Word.

First Corinthians 13 is our guidepost for love. And verse 5 is perhaps the greatest marriage Scripture I have ever found about how to walk in love. It says love is “not touchy or fretful or resentful … [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].”

This verse helped me so much when I was just learning to walk in love! Today it is ingrained in my spirit. It’s not even hard to do anymore—it’s a way of life.

As born-again children of God, our habit should be to yield to the nature of the Spirit of God in us. His nature is love, and we must decide to yield to that.

First Corinthians 13:13 in The Amplified Bible defines “love” as “true affection for God and man, growing out of God’s love for and in us.”

As we love God, we are able to love the people around us, even when it isn’t easy. In marriage, it’s vital for a husband and wife to walk in love and have respect for the other’s opinions. And most importantly, we must determine to give the Word of God and the love of God first place.

But to improve your marriage—your life—you must take the Word of God literally and actually do what it says.

My husband, Ken, and I were Spirit-filled Christians for quite a while before we discovered this truth. Of course, we had been changed on the inside the moment we were born again.

But we didn’t experience a significant outward change in our lives immediately. We were still selfish, miserable and defeated. It wasn’t until we began to take the Word literally and apply it that our lives dramatically changed.

We have learned to put 1 Corinthians 13 in our hearts, speak it out our mouths and expect ourselves to come up to that standard.

Do we always do everything it says? No. But the more we yield to it, the more we progress. Since we consider not acting out of love as sin, we quickly repent and make things right with God and each other.

If you want to live a happy life and experience the blessings of God, then go after and eagerly pursue the love of God. First Corinthians 14:1 says, “Eagerly pursue and seek to acquire [this] love [make it your aim, your great quest].” Nothing will come across your path that love can’t conquer.

---

Gloria Copeland is co-founder and vice president of Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Fort Worth, Texas. She and her husband, Kenneth, are known for their teachings on faith, healing and victorious Christian living. Their daily TV broadcast, Believer’s Voice of Victory, airs globally on more than 300 stations. Gloria is also an
internationally known author whose works include To Know Him and Blessed Beyond Measure (Harrison House).