Awaken Love

B21 is excited for the release of The Song in theaters tonight!

Pastor and best-selling author Kyle Idleman is a producer on The Song and has helped to write curriculum and a devotional for couples that will generate great discussions in your next small group. Check out Kyle’s guest post below, the resources available, and go to see The Song in theaters tonight!

Over Mother’s Day weekend I read an article titled “Your Mom Lied to You.” The article exposed a number of things our moms told us growing up that may have been well intentioned, but were not necessarily true. For example, my mother used to tell me, “You need to put some Hydrogen Peroxide on that.” But as it turns out, those “healing bubbles” didn’t do anything to heal my wounds and was, in reality, the hydrogen peroxide attacking me.

Another lie my mother told was, “Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis.” In truth, according to the latest “knuckle cracking” research—and yes, there are medical professionals who study this—cracking my knuckles will not lead to arthritis.

And then there is the ever-popular lie all moms like to tell, “Don’t swallow your gum because it takes seven years to pass through your digestive system.” Yet, advances in colonoscopy-based research (gross, I know) refute this claim.

My point is that there are certain things we have just accepted over the years. They sound reasonable and are reinforced by others, so we spend our lives pouring hydrogen peroxide onto our wounds, abstaining from the pleasures of knuckle popping, and feeling unnecessarily worried about swallowing our gum.

When it comes to the areas of love, sex, and marriage, we have similarly been told things that sound reasonable and have been reinforced by numerous cultural influences. Instead of questioning these things, we often just accept them. After all, the movies we watch, the music we listen to, and the magazines we read all seem in agreement when it comes to how we should think about our love lives. And yet God is the one who created these things. He has made us to have feelings of love and passion. Sex was His idea. He owns the copyright on marriage. So the default question we should be asking is, “What does God have to say about it?”

Around ten years ago I started teaching through the Song of Solomon with different audiences and was amazed at the relevance of this Old Testament book of poetry. That is one of the reasons I produced a film about the Song of Solomon called The Song. The Song is a modern-day adaptation of Solomon’s life, inspired by the writings in both the Song of Solomon and the book of Ecclesiastes. It will be released nationwide on September 26th. My prayer is that this film—as well as the video curriculum and couples devotional that go along with it—would awaken love in our marriages and point to the truths of Scripture as the authority for our love lives.

Let me share a few truths from the Song of Solomon that challenge what many of us have been told and what has been culturally reinforced over the years:

Beauty is more than outward appearance.

Love is more than a feeling.

Sex is more than a physical act.

Marriage is more than a piece of paper.

These teaching principles are helpful, but there is nothing like a story to engage our hearts. That is why I’m excited for this film to engage people in a different way than simply teaching and applying text.

I was thinking about the time my wife and I were newly married. Heavily influenced by Hollywood, we had all kinds of ideas and expectations about what marriage should be and how we should feel. But very quickly we were given the opportunity to watch a story unfold that showed us just how important it was to have a Christ-centered marriage built on a spiritual foundation. We didn’t watch this story on the big screen, however. We saw it play out in real life.

I was preaching at small community church where we became friends with Jim and Mary, a couple in their fifties who had been married for a long time. They were going through a difficult time with Jim battling lung cancer. One night, when my wife and I stopped by their house to pray with them, we noticed that Jim had become very weak and feeble. The most aggressive chemotherapy was being used, along with radiation treatments, and it had taken its toll. It was obvious that the cancer was strong—but the faith of Jim and Mary was even stronger.

Mary led us into Jim’s room where I opened up my Bible to read a few Scriptures. That’s when the smell made it clear that Jim had lost bowel control. Mary said, “Excuse us for a minute,” and we waited outside while she cleaned up. My wife and I stood in silence, holding hands in the living room—I had never previously considered that kind of moment in marriage. When Mary came back to get us, there was a smile on her face that I’ll never forget. “In sickness and in health,” she said.

That was an education for my wife and me—young and healthy and in love. We were given a front row seat to the difference Jesus makes in a marriage.

As Christians we live in a time when many people are trying to agree on a definition of marriage—and even more people are trying to figure out how to be happily married. What an incredible opportunity we have to celebrate God’s way and to set an example of the intimate, passionate partnership that marriage can be.

“Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.” -Song of Solomon 8:7(NIV)