Pastor Jason Small, Community Church Flamborough

Valentine’s Day; the holiday of hearts, chocolate and romance movies. It is the one time on the calendar when the nation pauses to consider love and romance.

As a pastor in Waterdown, I have the great privilege of being involved with people on the most important day of their lives – their wedding day.   Weddings are exciting. Love oozes from young couples as they gush over each other. They affectionately pledge themselves to each other for the rest of their lives with a genuine love and passion.

Everyone who gets married wants the closeness they feel toward each other on their wedding day to continue forever, but those of us who have been married awhile know it can be a challenge to maintain this closeness.

Feb. 14 is the  day when we consider our closeness to those we love. Are you closer now to your spouse than you were on your wedding day? Or has your love drifted? In a world that puts so much pressure on relationships, it can be tricky to keep close.

I heard someone say once that falling in love only requires a pulse, but staying in love requires a plan. What is your plan to stay close with your spouse? Closeness in a relationship isn’t something that happens by accident, and it isn’t guaranteed because you are married. So how do you keep that level of intimacy and closeness in your relationships?

I believe the answer is found in God. Scripture is a wonderful blueprint for successful relationships. The wise King Solomon, who through life let relationships get the best of him, wrote in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else guard your hearts because it is the wellspring of life.”

The highest priority in our lives needs to be guarding our relationships. To guard a relationship is to actively engage in fighting for it.

How can we guard and fight for these key relationships in our lives? It starts with being aware that there is a battle for your heart,  and then committing to invest whatever is necessary to keep the fires of intimacy burning. Our actions must be intentional and we must actively fight for our relationships…yes “fight for” our relationships.

I often get couples in my office who tell me that they don’t know how they drifted so far apart. It starts as a slow drift, and one day you wake up and all intimacy is lost and you can hardly imagine how there was closeness at one time.

This year, in the wake of Valentine’s Day, decide to stop drifting. I encourage you to work toward regaining this closeness, to actively fight for your relationships and ask God to help you guard your heart and bring a closeness between you and your spouse.

Why not look into God’s great plan for success in your marriage?