People who have been Christians a long time often don’t feel the depth of passion for Jesus they once did. While this in itself is not something we can control, we should be striving to glorify God in all we do, to live out of love for Jesus. That will mean reminding ourselves of God’s goodness often, to make effort in prayer, and to grow in knowledge and service.

Song of Songs is a book that is full of passion. The woman dreams of being with the man, and the man looks at the woman and sees the one who has captivated his heart. They speak to one another in poetry and use colourful metaphors to describe each other’s body parts. When they are apart, they dream of being together.

Maybe you’ve seen a couple who are like this. People usually early on their relationship who cannot get enough of one another. The way they look at each other and their body language screams to you that they have passion for each other.

When a couple has been married for a long time, things change. They settle down. The emotions calm down and things become more comfortable. The compliments become less frequent and the practicalities of life start to dominate instead of the poetry and joy of an early-stage relationship. Sexual activity often drops a lot. And it can happen that, before you know it, the marriage has become more like a flatmate kind of relationship. It works, it is functional, but the passion has gone away.

Why does this happen? Part of it is just a natural progression of life. Emotions change and mature. We don’t always need to manufacture some kind of feeling. The problem becomes when we no longer make the effort and stop to appreciate what we have in the other person.

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