Growing a Love That Lasts - Part 1

September 28, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Growing a Love That Lasts – Part 1

Rick Warren opens with a striking claim: God's love for you will never change—never increase, never decrease—and that unchanging love is the only reliable foundation for a stable life. Then comes the hard part. God commands people to love each other the same way. Warren acknowledges the immediate pushback: we prefer conditional love for ourselves, love that must be earned. But the biblical standard, he argues, is an everlasting love that requires deliberate, repeated choices.

The problem is that falling in love is easy. Staying in love is not. Warren cites sobering statistics: the divorce rate for first marriages is 41 percent, rising to 60 percent for second marriages and 73 percent for third. The track record gets worse, not better. People who have been married 25 or 40 years, he notes, did not have an easy path. Their love was tested by what he calls "the big D's"—doubt, despair, differences, disagreements, disappointments, defeats, distance, delays, dead ends, debt, disease, and demands. What they did was avoid the biggest D: divorce. And they did it by making tough choices.

Love Is a Choice, Not a Feeling

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What you'll learn

1 (00:02) **Introduction: The Foundation of Lasting Love** - Rick Warren opens by stating that everyone longs for deep, lasting love, but strong relationships require intentional effort, not chance.
2 (01:57) **The Problem: Falling in Love vs. Staying in Love** - Rick contrasts the ease of "falling in love" with the difficulty of staying in love, citing rising divorce rates for first, second, and third marriages.
3 (07:04) **The Four Choices for Everlasting Love** - Rick introduces 1 Corinthians 13:7 as the blueprint, which lists four actions of love: it never stops being patient, believing, hoping, and giving up.
4 (08:02) **Choice 1: Lasting Love Extends Grace** - Rick introduces the first and most time-intensive choice: the daily decision to extend grace, mercy, and forgiveness in relationships.
5 (09:46) **When to Extend Grace: Flaws and Faults** - The first specific situation requiring grace is when a partner's flaws and faults become irritating.
6 (13:49) **When to Extend Grace: Hurtful Words and Actions** - The second situation requiring grace is when a partner's words or actions cause pain, whether intentional or unintentional.
7 (16:54) **The Choice to Release Hurt** - Rick concludes the first point by explaining that lasting love requires letting go of hurts rather than stockpiling them as ammunition for future arguments.

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Show Notes

The longer you're married, the easier it is to become ungracious. No marriage can last without grace, forgiveness, acceptance, and a lot of patience. In this message, Pastor Rick shares that to make your marriage last, you must learn to extend grace.