Our Primary Need - The One Year Love Language Minute Devotional

Our Primary Need

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

LOVE AND MARRIAGE—they go together like a horse and carriage. Right? Well, they should, and in a healthy marriage, they do. Most people agree that our deepest emotional need is to feel loved. The apostle Paul even identified love as the greatest thing, and King David wrote that God’s “unfailing love is better than life itself” (Psalm 63:3). There’s no question that God’s steady love for us can be our emotional rock. But we also need to experience human love. And if we are married, the person whose love we long for the most is our spouse. In fact, if we feel loved, everything else is workable. If we don’t feel loved, our conflicts become battlefields.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that love is our only need. Psychologists have observed that we also have basic emotional needs for security, self-worth, and significance. However, love interfaces with all of these.

If I feel loved, then I can relax, knowing that my spouse will do me no ill. I feel secure in his or her presence. I can face the uncertainties in my vocation. I may have enemies in other areas of my life, but with my spouse I feel secure. In the next two days, I’ll talk about how to effectively meet your spouse’s need for emotional love.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your love that never fails. And thank you for the love I can share with my spouse. Please help me to love effectively, so that he or she will feel secure in our relationship.

Love