5 Things God Will Use to Give You a Love that Will Last

Here are 5 things God often uses to prepare a man and woman to have a lasting love for each other.

1. A Difficult Season of Trials Before You Two Even Meet Will Often Be Used to Prepare You Both to Have a Love That Will Last for Each Other Once You Do Meet

So often the reason a relationship becomes toxic is because the man and woman were not prepared for the relationship before it even started.

As the old sports saying goes, “Championships aren’t won during the game. Championships are won in practice.” This means that if you don’t train hard and prepare for the challenge, you’ve already lost that challenge before it even came into your life. This is true in relationships too. As 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 states:

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

When you’ve been delivered from storms in your past, it prepares you to have hope in God during the storms that will come in the future.

If your character and spiritual maturity in Christ is not high before you get into a relationship, it will be very difficult to have a lasting love once you do enter into a relationship. In kindness, because God wants you to have a lasting love one day in a relationship, oftentimes God will put you and your future spouse through a difficult season of personal growth before you two even meet each other.

2. When God Teaches You How to Weather the Storms of Life Rather Than Always Trying to Run from the Storms, He’s Also Preparing You to Have a Love that Will Last

If you want to have a deep, lasting love with someone that will endure for years and years, you have to change your mindset towards problems, issues, and storms. It’s natural to have an avoidance mindset. But the more experience you get in trying to really love someone, the more you realize it’s never a matter of “if” when it comes to issues and it’s always a matter of “when” and “how bad.”

If you want to have a lasting love with someone one day, you have to prepare yourself for the issues you two will have. You have to accept that it’s not going to be easy. Certainly you want to try to choose a partner where you two are not constantly fighting. Constant issues should not be accepted as normal and acceptable.

But no matter who you are and no matter how great a couple is, the rains are always going to come. So you have be ready to deal with the storms rather than always trying to run from them. In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus taught:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

3. When God Teaches You That Commitment Is the Fuel to Lasting Passion but Passion Can Never Be the Fuel to Lasting Commitment, He’s Also Preparing You to Have a Lasting Love

We all want to be in a passionate love relationship. But so few really know the secret to lasting love. Most people settle for the passion that only comes at the beginning of a new relationship. But when that relationship gets older, people often have to jump ship and find a new relationship with someone else to find that passion that they crave which comes at the beginning of a new relationship.

If you want a lasting, deepening love rather than always needing to find a new love that quickly fades, you have to have a paradigm shift in regards to commitment and passion. The world says you should commit to the person you are passionate about. That works when starting a relationship. But as the relationship matures, you have to switch the order and realize that your commitment is actually what is going to keep your passion alive.

When you choose to stay committed even when it gets hard, that’s when your passion for each other can endure. People often comment that this is bad advice because it encourages people to stay in abusive situations. I agree that you shouldn’t endure abuse and just stay committed to someone if they are endlessly mistreating you. But if that is happening to you, your love isn’t going to last anyways.

I’m not talking about staying in a truly abusive situation. I’m talking about the ugly sins we all will see in each other if we get to know each other deep enough. Forgiveness and perseverance are always going to be needed if you want to stay with someone for a long time.

So overall, the principle still remains that if you want lasting love, you have to learn how to commit to someone and stay even when things get hard. As Galatians 6:9 states, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

4. God Will Prepare You to Have a Love that Will Last By Teaching You the Importance of the Marriage Covenant

When it comes to a romantic relationship between a man and woman, I believe the only context in which a lasting love can thrive is in marriage. Marriage alone provides the level of commitment that is required to provide a safe enough shelter around the intimacy a man and woman crave from each other. You can certainly have a budding love for someone you are not married to, but over a long period of time that love cannot flourish unless it is protected with the highest form of commitment.

I believe our intimacy should always be matched by our commitment. You will hurt your heart if you get more intimate with someone than you are committed to each other. Marriage is the highest commitment you can make to someone, therefore marriage alone provides the context for which the deepest levels of intimacy can safely thrive.

Sex, opening your heart deeply, and sharing every aspect of your life with someone are deeply vulnerable acts of intimacy that should only be performed in the safety of the covenant bond of marriage. If you want to be one flesh and then never divide that flesh while you are on this earth, you have to become a husband and wife (Genesis 2:24).

If God is teaching you about the value of the covenant bond of marriage, this is a good sign he’s preparing you to have a lasting love one day.

5. God Will Prepare You to Have a Love that Will Last By Helping You Both Experience His Enduring Love that Will Last Forever

Every human loves imperfectly. The only person who loves perfectly is God himself. If you want this lasting love to give, you first need to receive this love from God so you can give it even when it’s not deserved, just like God keeps loving us when we don’t deserve it.

The only way for a man and woman to have a lasting love with each other is for them both to experience God’s lasting love for them first. As Hebrews 13:5 states, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”