HOW IS YOUR HEART?

 “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

1 Peter 4:8 NIV

 “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”                                                                                            1 Corinthians 13:1-2 NIV

When a couple can’t love, many times they’ll do things for one another, but they don’t really ever connect. A husband can repair things around the house, cut the lawn, and repair things for his wife … but doing things for another person is different than connecting emotionally.

“The 5 Love Languages” is great, material but unless you somehow connect emotionally with your spouse, he or she will not feel loved.

When we don’t feel loved in a relationship, we have an emotional problem.

The worse possible scenario for a couple is when both the husband and the wife have locked hearts so that both are unable to give or receive love.

LOCKED HEARTS ILLUSTRATION 

 

The very best scenario for a couple would look like the below illustration where both the husband and the wife's heart are open so they are unhampered and free to both give and receive love.

UNLOCKED HEARTS ILLUSTRATION

Questions for couples to consider or for caregivers to contemplate when seeking to help a couple:

      Can each spouse receive love from someone when it is offered? Or is the heart locked to this possibility through self-protective vows and strategies that come from damaging relational events in the past?

·                    Is each spouse able to give love or is it inaccessible?

·                    Evaluate both sides of the marriage with a couple. Draw or show them the above Locked Hearts and Unlocked Hearts illustrations so they can see what you mean graphically.

·                    What would it be like if I were to use a bolt cutter to cut the padlocks off so that both of the husband and the wife would be able to give and receive love from each other?

·      The two aspects of love that we are most interested in seeing develop are:

1.     The capacity to lavishly extend love to others, and

2.     The facility to receive love appreciatively when it is given.

Taken from the teaching of John Regier, "Caring for the Heart Ministries"