Everybody in a relationship should keep this posted in plain sight: “Of course we experience relationship struggles, becoming one can and will be a struggle.”  

 

Relationships that believe otherwise are doomed to sink in the quicksand of unrealistic expectations.  It might survive but love will be a recess between the hell.  What makes us all, Christians, have to deal with relationship struggle with purposeful intent is that we know that God did not put us on this earth or in a relationship to suffer (Jeremiah 29:11).

 

The devil wants you to play emotional ping pong with hurt and to keep wounding each other with friendly fire.  Here it, the devil is at the center of mess.  When I say the devil, I’m not talking about the spooky, I’m talking about familiar spirits.

 

Familiar spirits activate familiar, toxic behavior.  You’re sitting in the relationship, you’re going back and forth over a problem but you’re talking about everything except the problem.  You’re talking about what they did and why you did what you did, and on and on, knowing good and well you’re not solving anything. 

 

 

When relationships waste time throwing tantrums, revisiting and rehashing symptoms, staying in old feelings instead of healing feelings, you have a mess on your hands that messes relationships up. We’ve all been there.  Don’t look at the grass next door, it’s only green because they’ve done their work. They did the work if the grass is not artificial.

  

Most of us have heard, “Do your work.”  But most of us don’t learn how to do the work until we lose the job.  Lose the love, lose the relationship.  Familiar spirits activate emotional demons, dysfunction and feelings that keep us from doing our work. Everybody has to agree to cut the mess out if you’re going to put the devil out. 

 

Familiar spirits are the enemy of love.  They speak into the problem to bait ego, pride and, unrealistic, unhealthy and even fantasy emotions that deceptively justify tantrums and division.  Doing the work is a decision that can only be made after agreeng that the love you signed up for is the love that you’re going to fight for.

 

The bible says, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it” (Habakkuk 2:2).  Don’t do another thing until you write the love vision down and make it plain. Not a thing. Did you hear the point and purpose of this scripture: “So he may run who reads it.”  You cannot run without knowing where you’re going.

 

The recovery, the healing, the restoration is not possible unless there is a vision that all minds, emotions and intentions agree to (Amos 3:3).  Getting and using the tools, resources or whatever is takes to run in the direction of the vision is what love has to do to love on purpose.  You cannot have an outcome that requires two people if only one person is working or both people aren’t working towards the same goal.  Write the vision and make it plain, then be clear that everybody is on board and ready to die to self for the cause of love.

 

Is it ever easy? No. But if you’re with the right one, the one God assigned to you, all things are possible. It takes commitment, vision and complete and total surrender to your goal of having the best love daily. It takes abiding in the Holy Spirit and a dedication to casting down all contrary spirits, emotions and thoughts that exalt themselves above the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5).  

 

Don’t let anybody tell you that great love does not require great work and — The ability to forgive, to be vulnerable, to extend grace, to move past the past, to shut down familiar spirits, to prioritize actions that produce healthy love, and the ability to love the love of your life even when you don’t like them or what they did.  Green grass, not artificial grass, is the result of serious work, compassion, desire and motivation that never stops — can’t stop.

 

It’s not a secret.  It’s not magic.  It’s work.  It’s knowing the price before you pay it. We can and do lose the love of our life when familiar spirits overrule and override love, and the will to prioritize actions that run after the vision as opposed to division.  Love is in the work — and work is for those who are ready and able to submit to God’s plan for relationship to be the most incredible love that two people will ever experience on earth (Ephesians 5:21-33).

 

Remember, you aren’t love.  God is love (1 John 4:8).  How much love we give is based on how much of us we move out of loves way: “He must increase but I must decrease.”  That’s intentional love work.

 

 

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