June 28, 2010 Posted By: Mark Merrill

The Love Dare

How many times have you said it? “Just follow your heart.” or “Go where your heart leads you.” This can be very dangerous advice to give someone. As I mentioned today in The Family Minute, following your heart means throwing caution to the wind and pursuing your latest whim, even though it may not be logical. As the authors of The Love Dare, Stephen and Alex Kendrick tell us, we must learn to lead our hearts instead of following them. What better place to start then right in your own living room. Start making proactive decisions for yourself and take control of the situation. It’s time we stopped acting on our feelings and emotions, especially in our marriages. Why not get a copy of The Love Dare and see what a difference it can make in your marriage?

Until next time,

Mark

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  • Kendra

    My marrage was just turned upside down and a friend of my husband lent him the movie “Fireproof”. We sat down and watched it and it was so true and I knew it was God's sign to me of how to fix my relationship with God and my husband. I had bought the book “The Love Dare” about a year ago but when I started to read it all I saw was my husbands faults so I didn't continue… big mistake. After we watched the movie I then pulled the book out and read it every day… it was and is amazing. I have since re-started the book from the beginning again and again. If anyone wants to rekindle their marrage, watch the movie and read the book – miracles are possible. Amen.

  • Jackie

    My husband and I will be married 40 yrs in July. We have had many ups and downs. There were times when I was certain we would not make it in our marriage. We through the grace of God did make it though. I love my husband and I have always loved him. I have not read the Love Dare, but I have seen the movie Fireproof, and I thought it was excellent. I bought the Love Dare books for all my children who are now married and one for my husband and myself. I have to admit I haven't read it yet, but I will. Marriage is difficult and we need to keep focus on what is important. This book will definitely keep couples focused on each other instead of the multitude of things that try to divide them. The book is talked about in the movie so I know this even though I haven't read it yet. Yes, miracles can and do happen. Amen

  • Nickmae

    I am an avid listener of the family radio station… I have not yet bought the book. I need advice..I have been married for 17 years. 17 years of pain, verbal abuse, neglect, infidelty( on both parts). A loveless marriage. I have been praying to God for years..years. Three months ago, it was impressed upon my heart to leave this marriage. We have three teenage children and I have no love for my husband. I have watched fireproof and intend to read the book.. I want to leap out in faitth and separate, Please help!

  • Megan

    Nickmae, I of course don't know the specifics of your life other than what you have mentioned, but please don't think that an impression on your heart to separate from your husband is from God. Satan will go into overtime when he sees a crack in the heart and soul of any person. I know you are hurting, and God knows it, too, and wants you to be in a happy, loving marriage with the husband you have. Three months ago, when my husband and I had 3 year old, 2 year old, and 3 week old children, my husband left me to pursue a relationship with another woman, whom he worked with. I know that we were struggling in our marriage (I mean, we were exhausted and hardly spent time focusing on each other), but throughout the course of a few months, Satan was able to break down my husband's resolve and convince him that this other woman was better for him that me. During that separation, I spent most of my energy (that was left after rearing 3 small children) praying that God would first and foremost change me into the person He made me to be. I focused on changing myself and fixing my part of the problems we had been having. I also prayed for God to be able to break through the huge thick walls that were surrounding my husband's heart and that my husband would fall on his knees and come running back to God, and to me. I was praying all through this so hard, that when I would briefly wake up during the night to move around, I would continue praying aloud until I feel asleep again. Today, my husband has been back home for a month, and he is more changed and determined to lead this family than I have ever seen him. He has grown so much in his faith in the month that he has been back. He tells me that it was totally God who ultimately changed his heart, because it was not out of his will. He also tells me that it was basically no matter how deep he tried to dig himself away from me, I continued to reach down to pull him back out, and this is most of what made him decide to come back home. I don't know why I am telling you all of this other than that maybe it could give you some hope that, though it will take lots of work, your marriage is fixable (even with the infidelity). I encourage you to seek counseling with your husband and determine to work for this marriage. Please don't say you are considering leaping out in faith to separate from your husband. Take a leap of faith and prayerfully work for your marriage, and watch God bless it.

  • Debbie

    Please continue to trust in the best healer ever…. The Lord Jesus Christ. He is in the business of healing broken marriages. The advice from the folks above is well said. First start by changing the things about yourself that need to be changed….with the Lords help. You can't do it on your own…you need the Lord. The most important thing is to take everything to the Lord in Prayer….(EVERYTHING). So Important. HE LOVES “YOU” UNCONDITIONALLY…FLAWS AND ALL. Isn't that AWESOME? ONLY GOD IS GOOD. HE loves hearing from you. Even your tears are prayers to God. HE is collecting them all and when we go to greet HIM at the pearly gates HE will wash us white as snow. See, you have reason to HOPE because HE holds nothing against us. You are FORGIVEN! Woo Hoo! Hugsss to all of you who are struggling. Keep looking UP! GOD BLESS “YOU”!

  • Nickmae

    Thanks Megan. I have been praying for years and years. I have no Love for him. It is hard for me to be intimate with him on all levels. I have three teenage children 18, 16 and 13 and they have been in pain watching me be so unhappy. I must admit Megan that many years ago before I was as spirtually mature and I am now ( which doesn't seem) I had an affair with a very old friend. It was a great frienndship and lasted for many years… He got married and then divorced, I will say I always thought about us being together for over 20 years. There was a time when we ere not in contact and I thought of him. I rebuked it because I know that it is wrong to covet. Now that things seem so hopeless with my husband and I, I start to think about my friend. Making love to my husband is not pleasurable. I have always felt stiffled in my marriage due to the treatment. You love your husband… I dont and have not felt love in many, many many years. I received spirtual counsel and was encouraged to just submit regardless. Trust me I am praying to God to show my heart and change me. There was also some physical abuse (grabbing me and holding me down)… Im confused.. Where is the joy. ?
    Nicole

  • Crystal

    I too started and gave up on the Love Dare because I was so bitter after my husband walked out on me for a couple of weeks 2 years ago before his family talked him into coming back. He never really saw how awful that was and his other faults and without him asking for forgiveness I wasn't willing to give it. I see now that was wrong. Too little too late though. He left again more than 3 months ago and I don't know who he is anymore. We watched the movie together and I did all the Dares I could without him here. (I had also tried to do it a few months before he left but with his work schedule I'd go days without seeing him for more than 5 minutes and that made some of the dares impossible.) I'm still praying and believing that God can turn him around. He has a year under the terms of our legal separation…God is all powerful but I don't know what His Will is.

  • Crystal

    I am so encouraged by your story Megan. I am currently filing a “legal separation” from my husband who moved out 3 months ago. This is the second time in 2 years he's left. The first time was after he had developed feelings for a girl at work and even though she had not allowed herself to get involved, I think he still saw her as “greener grass.” I don't know who my husband is anymore. This is not the man I married, but I know that God can break down those walls he's put up in his heart. He's even running from God, his family, the church, and some of his friends. Not a single person that I know of in his life has given him any encouragement to leave me and our two children of 3 and 1 year. I am giving him a year under the legal separation so that I can protect my kids financially and not fight with him over taking responsibility for them, to come around and give his heart back over to God and to me. He has let hurt from me and his circumstances break him down and kill the loving feelings he had for me because he would not talk about it for fear of not being “normal.” He cannot accept that it's normal to be upset with your spouse at times and to not “feel” love for them. He says love isn't a choice for him and he can't make himself care about me. I am praying that somehow he learns that love and commitment in marriage IS a choice and that if we can stay committed to our marriage we can make it wonderful with God's leading.

  • http://www.FamilyMinute.com/ Mark Merrill

    Thank you for your honesty and vulnerability in sharing these comments. In topics as deep as these, it is best to turn to a trusted source of counsel. A place I trust fully is Focus on the Family (1-800-232-6459). You will receive counsel and then they can link you to a local counselor as well. Please let me know how it turns out, so I know how to continue praying for each of you.

  • Megan

    Crystal, my husband was the very same way. His heart started to harden to me quite a while before, I think, and then when he began having positive interactions with this other woman, he was just in a place where he was vulnerable. When it finally came out to me that he wanted to leave, he said that there was another woman and he was not in love with me anymore. He said that I am not the right woman for him. He said that he didn't believe in staying together just for the kids. He said lots of things like that. Once he moved out, the two of them began to have a physical relationship (he admitted this to me once we were back together), and I knew all along that they were telling each other that they loved each other. I said the very same things about my husband, this was not him, this was not who I married. I could really see how far Satan had taken him away from Christ. So many people tried to contact my husband, but he would not receive any calls from people who he thought would tell him that he should be doing anything other than what he was doing. My brother, step-father, mother, father, our friend who pastors our church, all tried to contact him, but he never returned any texts or phone calls. Finally, another friend of ours who works with my husband found out (I told his wife and him 2 weeks after my husband had moved out), and after taking a week to pray over what would be his best approach, he began coming along beside my husband and trying to stear him in the right direction. Even if it hadn't been for this friend, I know God would have been able to get through to my husband. Crystal, I encourage you to first pray for God to show you the areas in which you need to come closer to Him and be changed and renewed, and then then pray for God to change the heart of your husband. I know that it is hard to really believe that God can do that, because your husband still has free will. This was something that I really struggled with, believing that God could work in my husband's life when my husband was not seeking His will. But, God can work past our free will to change our hearts. And He can do that to your husband. He did it to mine. If you ask my husband he will tell you, that it was God that changed his heart and will, because it definitely was not him (yeah, even that part still hurts a little bit, but hey, it is what I prayed for, right?). There is so much work to be done here, Crystal, but don't let that discourage you. God can guide you through it, to the place where you realize that when it all is stripped away, God is still standing and is THE ONE you need more than anything. I have said that God needed to break me (and my marriage and my husband) completely apart so that He could put me (and my marriage and my husband) back together the right way. I pray that God would do that for you (and your marriage and your husband) as well. And finally, in rereading your post, I know that those things that your husband says to you hurt, very badly, but please know that Satan is convincing him of those. Satan is feeding him those lies and he is in a place where he believes them (my husband said this about a lot of the things he said to me, like that I was not the right woman for him). Oh, sister, I know it hurts, but please take encouragement that God IS working here, and He can bring healing to you, your husband, and your marriage.

  • Megan

    Nickmae, please don't think that I am saying that you should stay in a physically abusive relationship, or that you should feel joy in a situation like that. I am most assuredly not a professional, but I would say that if you are being physically abused, you should get to a place of safety.
    I was trying to share my experience with you so that you could see that, even when it seems hopeless, even when it seems like it is impossible to be happy with your spouse, God can work to make things good again, and He will. You are right, I do love my husband, but back before we started having problems (we went to a counselor for a few months before he left, and it seemed like things were going well, but all along he was spending time with and investing his heart in this other woman) I was tired, 7 months pregnant, a mother of a 3 and 1 year old, and no, I did not feel love feelings for him. I was committed to him, but was not feeling much but tired and depressed. At that point (when he first told me he was unhappy, which was 3 months before he left), I read and did the Love Dare. In doing that, in focusing on what I could change in myself and in the way I treated my husband, through the act of intentionally investing in my relationship, those feelings of love began to build back up in me. So by the time he left, I was very much in love with him. He was not, however, in love with me. Even when he made the decision to do the right thing and come back to his commitment, he still did not feel those love feelings for me. His head and his heart were telling him two very different things. However, he has been praying for God to build back up the way he feels about me and the way he looks at me and sees me, and now he is in a much better place. Without the scales of lies that Satan has put on him, he sees me as the woman he feel in love with and he has fallen in love with me again.
    Dear one, I am simply trying to give you encouragement in your plea for help, that though it seems hopeless, God can restore you, your husband, and your marriage. That, then will be where the joy comes.

  • http://www.FamilyMinute.com/ Mark Merrill

    Jackie, I have personally read The Love Dare book. It is very good. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone!

  • http://www.FamilyMinute.com/ Mark Merrill

    Kendra, thanks for sharing. Miracles happen in marriages everyday.

  • http://www.FamilyMinute.com/ Mark Merrill

    Nickmae, we would like to send you a resource that may be helpful. Please go to “Contact Us” at the bottom of the page, and we will get it to you.

  • Nickmae

    Thank so so much Megan. I appreciate your words of encouragement. I am joyful that all is going well for the two of you..We all have to be tested to share a testimony and that is a beautiful story. I am taking this week to seek God and rejoice in the spirit. God Bless you and your family.

  • Nickmae

    Thanks Mark.. I will call and seek wise counsel. I have been struggling with this for over 10 years.
    Nicole

  • Jackie

    I am now reading the Love Dare and I'm only into day 2 and we are already having positive results. It makes you think about the things that matter in life instead of being distracted by all the non-sense that can divide you and your spouse. Looking forward to day 3.

  • ceebee

    I have been left by my partner for about a year now. Almost immediately after the separation, he was introduced to a woman that he is in a relationship now. Throughout most of the past year I have continued to be in sin with the company I have (Parasites in the Love Dare) that I now see had encouraged me for the last 3-4 years to be sinning against a man who dearly worked towards being my husband. I had fallen into depression without knowing until the last half year when I was left alone. I had turned away from God and all were taken away from me. I became dishonored, disrespectful, sinful, quarrelsome, cruel, depressed. I was treacherous towards my partner. I was terribly abusive. But he continued to care and support me in spite of the depression that took a huge toll on him. Throughout half of last year, he was reaching out olive branches to me which I broke, to the influence and for the amusement of my false friends.
    Until one day (after I removed my false friends and external parasites- TV, gossips, magazine culture) God impressed upon me to pray and I was in a matter of 2 weeks Truly saved. I did the Love Dare as I continue to grow my faith. I completed some days slower and other days were really fast and easy. As I continue to pray, I could not be assured that my former partner is not the intended for me. He is lives with great example, I continued to fall for him anew. But I pray for healthy boundaries to stay away from covetuousness. Yet everyday that I could not see him, it is as if I could not breathe.
    He had told me at the start of our relationship repeatedly he wishes to return to the Lord and church (then I was spiritually stronger) and needed my help. Then I fell away. Now that I am back, I don’t know how to bring him Home to the Lord as he wishes and as God would welcome.