In Elder Eyring's talk, Our Perfect Example, he encourages us to pray for four things when it comes to our marriages. He says, "I give counsel to husbands and wives. Pray for the love which allows you to see the good in your companion. Pray for the love that makes the weaknesses and mistakes seem small. Pray for the love to make your companion joy your own. Pray for the love to want to lessen the load and soften the sorrow of your companion." These four recommendations stood out as a wonderful place to start for me with my relationship with my husband.
It stood out to me that he said pray for the love... . It means that true love is required to find the good in our spouses or to over look there flaws. We have to have love to help create joy for our husbands or wives and we need to have love to help our companion in her heartaches. Otherwise, if we try to do these things without love we may become lazy at it or worse with time resent what we do as being taken advantage of. The key word here for sure is love.
Doctrine and Covenants says, "They are agents unto themselves." This means that we are, in fact, responsible to make decisions for ourselves. We fall in and out of love on purpose. Which makes me want to analyze, what is love. The world has its many cheap, knockoff, clones of what love is. It puts physical attraction on top of the list. If someone is sexually enticing the word "love" is thrown around liberally. Love and lust only have one thing in common, they both start with the letter L. However, to often "love" is the word used when lust comments are made. These two words are not interchangeable. Another, often used phrase is, "we just fell in love," It is even spoken when couples describe their first date. These words, can give the false meaning that falling in and out of love is uncontrollable experience that just magically happens. However, we are taught in the Doctrine and Covenants a principle which dismisses this false idea. It reads, "They are agents unto themselves." Meaning we have the choice of our own outcomes. In fact, it is a responsible to make these decisions for ourselves. We don't just fall in and out of love. It is a choice.
The prophet Mormon taught, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ.” If we are "true followers" of Jesus Christ we can be filled with this love. Christ like love.
Our Perfect Example
D&C 58:28
Moroni 7:48
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