Tag Archives: Wedding

More Like Falling in Love

Posted on by
Reply

My BelovedYesterday my wife and I celebrated nineteen years of marriage. The memories of our meeting for the first time are still so clear in my mind. I was turning in my resume’ at the Office of Institutional Advancement so that my name could be added to the supply preaching list. There sitting at the desk was this incredibly beautiful twenty-year-old girl (I had used the word “woman” and my wife said she was a sweet young twenty-year-old) . As I talked to her boss I wanted to introduce myself to her, but I was at school to get a Theology Degree so I could be a better pastor. I just didn’t have time for dating. A few days later I showed up for my first New Testament class and guess who was sitting beside me? Yep, Shirley! I was determined to just focus on school, so I didn’t pay her much attention. After class she walked up to me and introduced herself. Needless to say I was surprised.

I wasn’t surprised because she approached me; even though that had never happened to me before. I was surprised because I had been praying for my wife since I was sixteen. My prayers had developed over the years, and because I was scared that I would not be smart enough to recognize God’s gift to me, I developed a very specific prayer. I prayed that when the right girl came along I would know it because she would ask if she could water my camels. This specific prayer came from the Old Testament when Abraham wanted a wife for his son Isaac, so he sends his servant to find her. In Genesis 24.12-14 we see the prayer of this faithful servant:

“Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. 13 See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. 14 May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I can’t miss a sign from God when some girl asks to water my camels!

Over the next few months our relationship and love for each other grew deeper and deeper. The more I learned about her the more I wanted to know. I eventually realized that I could go on living my life alone and be happy; however, I also figured out just how much better life would be if she was by my side as my wife. Just six months after we met we were married. The joy of falling in love was awesome, but it didn’t compare to indescribable joy of being loved unconditionally. The way she has sacrificed, served, and supported me over the years has been a constant reassurance that we are one, and that nothing will ever separate us in this life.

On my way to work this morning I was thinking about the last nineteen years, when a song by Jason Gray came on the radio, “More Like Falling in Love.” The song is about falling in love with Jesus. Throughout the Bible God compares His great love for us to that of a marriage. In fact, throughout the New Testament those who are followers of Jesus are called the “Bride of Christ.” The song continually repeats the theme that following Jesus is more like falling in love rather than just believing, keeping some rules, or declaring your allegiance to Him. Religion is what I try to do to make myself acceptable to Jesus; whereas, being in love with Jesus means everything I do is an overflow of my love because I am already accepted by Him.

When we don’t know Jesus we can’t understand why anyone would give up so many things this world has to offer. It seems like you cut your weekend short by one day, you cut your income by at least ten percent, and you cut out all the things in life that are really fun. But just like my growing relationship with Shirley, the more we know about Jesus, the more we want to know. The more we experience His love the more we want to experience. Falling in love with Jesus brings growing joy and love into your life each and every day. Understanding all that He sacrificed, the ways He serves us, as well as His constant support even when we’re too weak to carry on reassures us that we are His beloved. He will never leave or forsake us. Even when we fail to live up to His commandments He still sees us as His holy bride dressed in the radiant white rob of righteousness.

When Christianity is more like falling in love there are no rules to keep, stories to believe, or even sacrifices to make. All of these and many more become the overflow of a love relationship that will last throughout all eternity. That love affair will one day carry us to heaven where we will see Him and be like Him.

Won’t you fall in love with Jesus today?

 Here is the song by Jason Gray “More Like Falling in Love.”

Here Comes the Groom!

Posted on by
Reply

I have performed many weddings over my eighteen years in ministry. Just before the wedding starts I always tell the groom, “Be sure to watch as the doors open and you see your bride for the first time. It will be a memory you will never forget.” They usually nod out of respect not understanding exactly why I gave them that simple piece of advice. But then it happens, the doors open and standing there before them is their bride. The grooms eyes widen, his smile grows, and then a mental picture is taken that he will always remember. The long-awaited day of receiving his bride has arrived, and now they get to spend the rest of their lives together.

Jason Johnson writes in his post, “Easter and the Great Wedding to Come,” some of the truths from Scripture about the coming of The Groom for His bride—the church. One day Jesus will return for His bride, and their will be a great wedding on that day. It is a future day which should bring great anticipation, expectation, and preparation.

Johnson writes:

Throughout Scripture the marriage relationship is used as a picture of God’s relationship with his people. The bride and groom imagery highlights not only the covenantal love of God for his people but also their position within that relationship as the beneficiaries of his redemptive pursuit. A common theme woven within the thread of Scripture, from the Old to the New Testament, is God’s unwavering, unalterable, unceasing pursuit of his people into the consecrating and cleansing relationship of eternal marriage.

This is why the hallmark of all God’s grievances against his people is spiritual adultery, a heinous infidelity on the part of his people as they pursue lesser lovers and stray outside the conditions of the covenantal relationship (Jeremiah 13:27; Mark 8:38). God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:3-5; Deuteronomy 6:14-15), not because he lacks in companionship but because he longs for the exclusive affections of his people, as a groom does for his bride.

Jesus adopts the imagery of bride and groom as it pertains to his present application of the New Covenant and his future consummation of salvation through the great, eternal marriage with the church. In the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13), Jesus allegorizes himself as the bridegroom and urges his disciples to stay alert, because they do not know the day or the hour he will return and take them to the eternal wedding celebration, i.e., the kingdom. He again refers to himself as the bridegroom while instructing his disciples on the proper purpose and function of fasting (Mark 2:18-20). As the bridegroom he will return to take his bride home, yet in the meantime, while he is present with them, fasting and longing for his return is not necessary.

Anticipation, Expectation, Preparation

The central focus of the wedding imagery in Scripture is anticipation, expectation, and preparation. It closely mirrors the traditional order of a first-century wedding, which involved a father arranging a bride for his son and paying the predetermined “bride price” on her behalf. The son would then return to his father’s house to make arrangements while the bride consecrated herself in eager anticipation for his final return for her. The terms of the relationship were sealed with ceremonial sharing of a glass of wine before the two parted ways and entered a time of anticipation and preparation leading up to the final wedding feast.

In strikingly similar fashion, God the Father has sent Jesus the Son to secure his bride, the church. The terms of the covenantal relationship between God and his people have been outlined in the gospel, and a great price has been paid by the Father to secure the relationship, namely, through the sacrifice of the Son on the Cross (1 Corinthians 6:20). The night before he would go to the Cross, Jesus shared a cup with his disciples as a means of symbolically sealing their new covenantal relationship. He instructed them to partake of this cup after his departure in remembrance of the price he paid for them and in anticipation of his future and final return for them.

Upon departure he will go to his Father’s house to prepare a place but will return one day to bring his bride home with him forever (John 14:2-3). The day and the hour of his return are unknown by all but the Father (Matthew 24:26). The bride of Christ, the church, eagerly waits and makes herself ready, setting herself apart for him and him alone, purifying herself for the day when he will return for her forever (1 Peter 1:13-16). He will come, and when he does the eternal wedding feast will commence (Revelation 19:7-8).

The recognition of the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter is not an isolated act of God but a pinnacle point in the ongoing bride-groom narrative running throughout the current of Scripture. It’s the celebration of God acquiring a bride for his Son through the ultimate price of death paid on the Cross. It’s the height of God’s radical, redemptive pursuit of a sinful and broken people to secure them as his beautifully treasured Bride.

Wonder of the Gospel

Easter is the joyous celebration of the wonder of the gospel—that God has gone to great lengths to secure us for his Son. We are forever bound to Jesus by his death that purchased us and his resurrection that secured us into a future inheritance that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:4-5).

So we live in this present day as those who are consecrated to our future Groom—holy, set apart, uniquely and distinctively his. We live today with an eager sense of anticipation for the return of our Groom on a tomorrow yet to come. We live today as those who are valued not by the standards of this world but by the infinite price our Savior was willing to pay for us on the Cross. We are invaluably his, and he is ours.

We anticipate, we expect, and we prepare. Our Groom is coming back to take us home.