Bargaining With Love

Bargaining With Love

Judges 16:15 And she said to him, How can you say, I love you, when your heart [is] not with me? you have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength [lies]. (GMR)

The story of Samson is a classic example of how a person can use their love as a bargaining tool to get something from their spouse.

This is as old as the Garden of Eden, where Adam ate the forbidden fruit because he loved Eve and wanted to please her, instead of the obeying the Lord.

Probably the best passage to describe true love, is the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians. There Paul makes an interesting statement:

1 Corinthians 13:3 And though I give away all my possessions to feed [the poor], and though I give my body to be burned [as a martyr], and have not [agape] love, it benefits me nothing. (GMR)

The world continually makes a big thing about helping humanity and doing great charitable deeds, but they seldom do this with a true motive of love.

Usually the way of the world goes something like this:

I will help you when you are in trouble, and then when I am in trouble I will expect you to help me.

Or to put it as a symbolic picture:

I will scratch your back, and you can scratch my back.

The love that you give to your spouse should never be like this. It is never given as a trade or something that forces them to owe you something.

Your love must be given freely, without expecting anything in return. It is a bit like giving someone a gift in secret so that they do not know where it came from. Then they do not feel they have to pay you back again.

Have you been using your love to put your spouse under a debt to you? Then you are not doing it the Lord’s way.

Don’t ever give your love, expecting something in return. Just love because that is what you enjoy doing, and that is what your spouse enjoys getting. Seeing the joy on their face, and the effect it has on their lives should be more than enough reward for you.