Love Is A Many Splendored Thing

LOVE: An intense deep tenderness; and strong affection for or attachment to another person. An expression of one’s affection (send them my love).

SPLENDOR: To shine, magnificent display, illustriousness. The Bride, Bridegroom and the Good part! What an Occasion Let’s Celebrate.

Through the hustle and bustle of preparing for my wedding I distinctly remembered the song that was playing as I and my bride maids and other attendants who participated in my illustrious wedding marched down the aisle in the church. It was the lyrics “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing”.
LOVE is a many Splendored thing it’s the April rose that only grows in the early spring. Love is nature’s way of giving a reason to be living, the golden crown that makes a man a king. Once on a high and windy hill in the morning mist two lovers kissed and the world stood still and your finger touched my silent heart and taught it how to sing. Yes true loves a many splendor thing. Nat King Cole

MARRIAGE: The Stages of Love
Love has several aspects, and each is designed or intended to be an integral part of a marriage relationship. There is first the magnetic drawing of two people together, which is usually termed desire [Genesis 29:18] and which should remain a very important facet of every marriage. This progresses to romantic, sentimental love which is strong, sweet, and absorbing but cannot alone sustain the relationship. The stage is one of satisfaction with each other, a sense of assurance and belonging that enables partners to care for one another and to bequeath the promise of loyalty [Ruth 3: 9-11]. The next facet of love is friendship, with an emphasis on communicating and being close, sharing thoughts and feelings, and dreaming together [Song 2: 14].

These special aspects of love are apprehended together with God’s love, which is absolutely essential if the marriage is going to endure. God’s love is unconditional; it is given with no thought of response. Self-sacrificing love [agape] is an act of the will and not emotions [1 Corinthians 13: 4: 8]. Agape love is unselfish and undemanding, realizes the importance of the loved one, recognizes responsibility for the beloved, continues to grow, never fades, and is pure [1 Corinthians 13: 12, 13].

God demands permanence in marriage [Malachi 2: 16], but He intended for it to be a growing, loving relationship from beginning to end [Eccl. 9: 9]. This is a veracity bound up in God’s will, and thus it is possible for Christians to attain it.
As all these aspects of love come to discover expression in a marriage relationship, permanence or durability is assured. The house will be built, established, and filled with precious and pleasant riches.

SEXUALITY: A Gift from the Creator
Though the word “sex” does not occur in Scripture, the biblical language does describe God’s plan for human sexual behavior, including procreation of the next generation and sexual pleasure within marriage. Sex was designed by the Creator as a special gift that allows a husband and wife to express oneness in intimate and exclusive love and to share in His plan for procreation. Sexual drives are given by God as the most natural high human bodies can experience. They are destructive only when uncontrolled or misused. Certain facts about sex should be remembered: 1) Sex is God-given [Genesis 2:8]. Satan can offer nothing in the realm of sexuality except distortion and emptiness. The open discussion of sex is not wrong in itself, but it is wrong when such considerations are outside the divinely assigned context. 2) Sex in the human intimacy is a whole union and thus both powerful and mysterious. God approves the relationship in which husband and wife meet their physical needs in sexual interaction [Proverbs 5:18-20]. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her be as a loving deer and an amiable doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; And be thou ravished, enraptured always with her love. For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, and be embraced in the arms of a stranger or seductress.

God’s view of sex in marriage: An attractive parallel is drawn between the quenching of thirst by drinks of cool, fresh water and the satisfaction of a couple’s sexual thirst with usual, exciting sexual intimacy in marriage. Both husband and wife have sexual desires that are to be met in marriage, and each is to meet the needs of the other and not his own. Sexual intimacy is a special gift from God to express the deepest physical and spiritual unity between husband and wife as well as being God’s seal on the marriage. Thus, God expects us to take very seriously the safeguards He has established for that exclusive and intimate union. The Woman’s Study Bible Nelson [NKJV] [KJV]