It truly has been too long! Summer is here and she is hot and busy as usual! Sometimes writing is like anything else - when you don’t use it, you lose it. I almost feel as if I have forgotten how to do this thing and I get overwhelmed. Summertime is notorious for a lack of creativity in my brain. I think it must be the heat that drains the life and mind out of a person. It would seem to be a reasonable explanation for why we flock to swimming pools or the nearest body of water to sit for hours and do nothing but bake in the sun!
I think I mentioned at one point, several posts ago, that we have a lot of couples getting married from our church this summer. Love is in the air! Likewise, we have just finished a marriage study at our church by John Piper entitled “This Momentary Marriage”. (As a side note, this is my very enthusiastic endorsement for this series which is a 9 part podcast downloaded for free at desiringgod.org or you can purchase the book by the same title. If you want to understand the true meaning of marriage along with the highly esteemed roles of husband and wife, run to get this book!!! Excellent, must read, etc;.) Having been a wedding and event planner for nearly six years now I have seen A LOT of weddings. And with A LOT of weddings come a lot of ideas about marriage. Unfortunately, most are getting more wrong than they are right - which is very disheartening from a believer’s point of view. It seems that there are three mistakes that are repeated over and over. I hope that this might serve to elevate your view of marriage if nothing else!
First, most couples are basing their marriage on love. Before you cast me out as a heretic of all things romantic, let me explain! Love is hardly even definable these days. Love is a “junk draw” term. You know, the kitchen junk draw that is the catch-all for inkless pens, random screws, the 80’s broken cassette tape, a dated phone book and any other useless thing that is only needed the day AFTER you throw it away! You get my drift! I love Mexican and I love my husband, but, I don’t love Kraig in the same way I love Mexican (some days it is close - notice I didn’t use shoes as the analogy, HA!). The reality is, we love everything that makes us feel good for the moment but if that person or thing ceases to make us feel good we are out! Why? Because marriage is based on the feeling of love not a covenant promise or a deliberate choice. Why? Because we don’t understand the covenant of marriage.
“Marriage is not something to be entered into lightly.” If you have attended many wedding ceremonies you may have heard the officiant make this statement. The world would say, “marriage is not to be entered into lightly because you might make the wrong choice and beg to be released.” The truth: I can promise no matter how wonderful things are there will be days when you want to be released - and he will too! But the real reason marriage is not to be entered into lightly is that it is a reflection of the relationship between Christ and the church. You have a noble challenge to uphold the glorious relationship of Jesus and His bride, the church. So, marriage is not really about love as a feeling; it is more about love as a commitment to the Lord first. Mainly because your spouse is not going to be able to be a sustaining source for your joy.
Which is precisely point number two. Your spouse will not be a sustaining source of pleasure, joy, passion, happiness and all things fulfilling in your life. I fall short on a regular basis of being to Kraig and for Kraig all that he needs. I am simply not made to sustain him or even be a foundation for his joy. (I am mostly a source of sanctification more than anything but we’ll make that another conversation entirely - when he starts writing!) My point is that when we make our spouses into a type of Messiah then we set them and ourselves up for failure. There is no person created for you to complete you. Until we know the lover of our souls in the person of Jesus Christ we will continue to put unreasonable expectations on those that we date and marry. Although this may not end in divorce, it can make for a very unhappy home and many doubts of having “chosen the wrong one.”
Lastly, we don’t wait in expectation for the consummation, literally and figuratively. This seems like a literal statement about abstinence and it is, but I want to address the figurative side for now. Consummation is the culmination or completion of something. In the Jewish culture once a man was betrothed to a woman he went away to prepare a place for them to live. Traditionally, he was building onto his parent’s home and once his task was complete he would come to receive his bride and consummate their relationship through marriage but the couple typically remained separated until that time. Keep in mind that this was way before the times of cell service, home phones, pony express or even the telegraph so there wasn’t any notice for the bride. Her role was to watch, wait and prepare from the day he left until he returned, not knowing when he would return. Hopefully sooner rather than later she would look up and see a caravan coming from far off. As they approached, she would hear shouts of “the bridegroom is coming, the bridegroom is coming” at which point she would quickly veil and ready herself for a glorious wedding celebration that would last for days! Now, you want to talk about romantic? I am smitten!
The bride never takes her eyes off of the horizon. She never looks for another bridegroom and she waits...patiently with joy and expectation. We are the eternal bride of Christ but we rarely live life in faithful, patient expectation, awaiting the arrival of our bridegroom. He has indeed gone to “prepare a place for us” and will return at a time that no one, not even the Son is knows. How would our lives and our marriages be different if we were busy about readying ourselves for the return of our Savior? Suddenly, all of the misconstrued feelings, emotional letdowns and unmet expectations pale in comparison to the eternal weight of glory that will be our future!
Marriage is wonderful, marriage is hard and marriage is glorious not because of the two people that make the union but because of the God who joins the two together. The mystery of what occurs in a wedding ceremony is not based on man but based on God, the author and designer of the marriage covenant. “What God has joined together, let no man separate” (Mark 10:9) Congratulations to all of our couples and may the God of our Lord Jesus Christ richly bless you as you seek to reflect His glory as husband and wife!
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