3 Lessons On Love - From The Best Song Ever

After a while, married life can get in the way of your love life! I want to reinforce the importance of romantic love between you and your husband.

If you have never really read the book, Song of Songs, in the Bible, you really should! Apparently Songs of Songs means "The Best Song" when translated into Hebrew. God created romance and passion. Marriage is supposed to be physically and emotionally satisfying. Love, relationships, marriage, and sex are all gifts from God. The Song of Songs demonstrates and celebrates this time and time again. In the light of this part of the Scriptures, we should give grateful thanks to God for the wonderful mystery of human sexuality, and pray that He guides us into using it responsibly and rightfully; within a one-to-one marriage relationship where there is mutual trust, giving, love, total commitment and respect.

1. Love means giving one to another. The man is not to lord it over the woman, nor vice versa, but there is to be a mutual giving, one to another.
2. True love is a fire that burns strongly, and love like that is a gift from God that is not to be treated lightly. This is one of the major reasons, for example, that the Bible treats divorce so seriously, and why Jesus effectively banned it outright.
3. Love means remaining loyal and faithful to one another, no matter what the circumstances. It would have been all too easy for the maiden to give in to the advances of Solomon, betraying her shepherd lover. She would have done no wrong in marrying the king, for she was a virgin. But true love is loyal and faithful, and she could not turn her back on her shepherd. Love cannot be rushed or forced. In the advice that the maiden gives to the harem women, this is stressed time and time again throughout the poem; do not awaken love before it is ready.

As a Godly woman and as a Godly wife, you should spend time each day focusing your thoughts and efforts on your husband. Get your heart and even you person ready to receive his love in the evenings or whenever you are together. Give your love to him. Show him your love – with your words and with your actions.

"How beautiful you are, my darling,
How beautiful you are!
Your eyes are like doves behind your veil;
Your hair is like a flock of goats
That have descended from Mount Gilead. "

Focus your heart toward him. Think of those special moments you and your hubby have shared together in the past. Just by thinking about your love and reasons why you love him will help you feel more like connecting with him on a physical basis when he is home. “My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.” Song of Songs 2:16

A fun way to build intimacy together is to read Songs Of Songs together talk about what you like about each other, how you like to be touched, what things you would like to do together, your dreams and common goals. Look forward to your future together, pray concerning your future together. Confess a promise of love and commitment together each night. 

"His mouth is full of sweetness.
And he is wholly desirable.
This is my beloved and my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem." Songs of Songs 5:6

Song of Solomon is a beautiful poetic lesson in the importance of love. Love between a man and a woman is fundamental to all human experience; and in the poem we have the most supreme blueprint of what love is to be like. We learn that:

And finally, the poem paints a sad moral lesson as to what happens to those who try to flout God’s instructions, who do not understand that the relationship between a husband and wife is a special one-to-one relationship that leaves room for no others. We learn in the poem that by this time, Solomon had 140 wives and concubines. By the end of his reign, he had almost one thousand. Where was there room for love in the heart of a man who simply amassed women as playthings, marrying new maidens when he got bored of the old ones? Way back in Deuteronomy 17:17 God gave an important piece of law to the kings of Israel: "do not multiply wives." I.e. do not use your position and authority to do what Solomon had done, build a harem. God’s model in the Bible is monogamy, just as we see laid out in Genesis 2 which is quoted above. Why is it this way? Because the gift of love that God gives is a one-to-one love that leaves room for substitutes; just as the maiden and the shepherd’s love for one another was so strong, that there was no room for her or him to even consider another.

"Put me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as death,
Jealously is as severe as Sheol;
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
The very flame of the LORD.

Many waters cannot quench love,
Nor will rivers overflow it;
If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love,
It would be utterly despised."
Song of Songs 8:6-7

By Ijeoma Olujekun