TIME For Love

by Steve Wickham
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE is to learn how to love, and life is the learning ground toward that end. Time is the biggest barrier to love. Somehow we must reinvent our perception of time in order that we would endear ourselves to love.

We need T.I.M.E. for love.

TENDERNESS is the ideal input to love, whether it's romantic, compassionate, friendly, or passionate love. It melts empty love, breaking the ice, enabling the early vestiges of intimacy. Another name for tenderness is gentleness or meekness, and certainly patience - these all abide blissfully in time.
People who pose no threat to the other person find there is no barrier to trust.

INTIMACY is a transaction between two, and trust is the product. Little do we realise, tenderness finds us there. The wonderful thing about intimacy is the comfort we enjoy as we share time with another person, in mateship. There are no truly awkward silences, no fear of eye contact; no secrets.
God made us for these experiences. In all our relationships we should aim for intimacy, which is a bilateral honest transparency without the semblance of fear for being ourselves.

MOMENTUM is created and forward the journey continues toward varieties of consummate love, which can be enjoyed in any relationship.

If the goal of our lives is to learn how to love, surely we want to take our intimacy with the other person onto the track of momentum where rapport will become a sustaining event. (Because life is ever-changing, we are advantaged in viewing life as an elongated series of events.)

Maintaining momentum is not always an easy thing to do. Circumstances and a lack of reciprocation have a lot to say. But as we invest time, strangely the circumstances move more in our favour.

Time is the currency of relational commitment sustaining our momentum.

ETERNITY is where love is destined. The Bible tells us that faith, hope, and love will endure forever, and that the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13).

The raw truth is, as we stroke the momentum in our relationships we're creating a raft of blessing that we'll later redeem in eternity. God loves a lover and their practice of love will continue on and on.

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Time is the secret. Many wives and children may complain, within themselves and possibly with each other, that their husbands and fathers don't spend enough time with them. Relationships cannot be nurtured on the T.I.M.E. process unless the motive is right, and when the motive is right, time is no longer the issue.

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With tenderness we love, and intimacy is therefore nurtured. This creates momentum, and that forward motion, whilst love is present, is taking our love all the way to eternity.
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