Robert and Bethany, our hope for you is that in your marriage you will be able to live the dream. D R E A M. Dream.
D is for daring.
Dare to dream that you will be able to keep your wedding vows.
You are about to make a commitment to one another that includes the words “for better or for worse until death do us part.” I’ve often wondered if some couples would be more honest if they were to promise “to have and to hold as long as you don’t get on my nerves too much, in which case I’ll drop you like a bad habit!”
Your wedding vows, the promises that you make to one another in the sight of God, are the foundation of your marriage. By understanding what you are actually promising and making a whole hearted commitment to those vows you start off on the right path in your journey together. By looking back on those vows and recommitting to them when the going gets tough you stay on course in your determination to live your lives according to the will of God. Your wedding ring is a symbol of those sacred promises. Every time you look at it or adjust it on your finger, may you be reminded of the sacred promises that you will make this day.
As you dare to believe that you will keep your wedding promises, may you also …
Dare to believe that you can keep the flame of romance alight.
Romance is like a fire; it will burn as long as it has fuel. Most marriages don’t maintain an even heat when it comes to the fire of romance, and that’s okay. To some extent it’s probably inevitable. But when things begin to cool off, it’s up to somebody to get up and put some wood on that fire.
If you ever end up staying in a cabin in the winter where the only heat source is a wood fire in an old iron stove, along about 3:00 AM somebody is going to have to make a decision. Do I stay in bed under the covers, where I’m actually quite warm, or do I get up and expose my body to the chill that is creeping into this room so that I can put some wood on the fire? Do I sacrifice comfort now, or do I wait until the morning when I’ll have to get up in spite of the fact that it will probably be about 35 degrees in this cabin?
Don’t think that marriage is the end of flirting and “putting the moves” on the other person. If it’s getting a little chilly, get up out of that bed and throw some wood of the fire. You’ve already learned how to capture each other’s hearts. Don’t let those skills atrophy. Continue in hot pursuit of one another. Dare to dream that you can keep romantic love alive. It takes a little work, but it’s certainly better than the alternative, which is emotional frostbite.
R is for being realistic
One thing I believe with all my heart: you take Robert and add Bethany and you end up with something the world has never seen before and will never see again. That’s not to say that you can’t learn from what others have experienced; you can. But when you take two human personalities and mix them together there is a sense in which you are like a mad scientist mixing together two chemical compounds that have never been mixed together before. It’s like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
The next few years may be among the happiest of your life, but they could also be some of the most challenging times you will ever face. More than likely they will fall somewhere in the middle of that scale, but the fact of the matter is, no one knows exactly what will happen.
This is what we do know. The materials you are mixing together are both wonderful and terrible. You have two people born in the image of God and born again by the Spirit of God. And that’s wonderful. But you also have two sinners washed clean by the blood of Christ but not yet made perfect. And therein lies the potential for difficulties.
If I might offer you some simple advice, I would suggest that you both go ahead and skip your first marriage and consider this your second marriage. In a first marriage people have a tendency to love, not what they are marrying, but a collection of spare parts that they believe they can rearrange and reconstruct into a suitable spouse. They are excited to be marrying this person, but of course, there are a number of changes that will need to be made. And they honestly expect the other person to make all of these changes while the other person has their own little secret laundry list of improvements that they intend to make on the first person.
Five to six years later after a great deal of heart break and thousands of dollars in legal fees they are done with their first marriage and they then go on to marry the person that they will probably spend the rest of their life with. Battle scarred and much wiser, they now realize that “what you see is what you are pretty much going to be stuck with” and they are much more willing to be realistic and accepting of the second person.
“What you see is pretty much what you are going to be stuck with.” Yes, there will be some compromises along the way and you will change each other to some extent, but you have to be realistic. And that’s just another way of saying that you have to be wise. And now I think that it would be wise for us to go on to the letter “e.”
E is for enjoy
The apostle Paul tells us that “whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence, and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” (Phil. 4:8) And that would make a great motto for any marriage.
I told you a few minutes ago that there were wonderful ingredients about to be combined as you join your life together. What Paul is telling you to do is to focus on those wonderful things and to remain focused on them.
I just got done telling you to be realistic. Now I’m going to tell you to be realistically idealistic. Most people will tell you to that you can’t keep the kind of feelings you are experiencing right now alive. Most people will tell you that you can’t really keep the magic alive. And most people would be wrong.
Let me give you an example. I’m going to get personal here. This is what you get when you ask a family member to do the service. You get personal fatherly advice mixed in with the sermon. Thirty three years ago I asked a young woman to marry me and she said yes. And this amazed me. I’m an oddball. I know this about myself. And it was amazing to me that anyone would want to spend her life loving and living with me. And it amazes me still. I’ve never gotten over it because I’ve decided that I don’t want to get over it. I’ve decided that I won’t take it for granted. I focus on it. I dwell on it.
For as long as Bob can remember he’s been listening to me rant about his mother. People who listen to me talk about my wife are fascinated when they finally get to meet her. They keep checking out her back, expecting to see little bumps in her shirt where the angel wings are folded.
All these years I’ve been telling you something about your mom. True things about your mom. But I’ve also been showing you something about me. I’ve been showing you what I have chosen to dwell on. I’ve been demonstrating what Paul meant when he said “whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence, and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
There will be irritants and there will be disappointments. The power of sin within and the example of the world around you will move you to dwell on the negative. And you must not allow yourself to do that. You must continue to keep at the forefront of your hearts and minds the things you are thinking and the thoughts you are feeling this day. Your soul is like a garden and the positive things about your spouse, the things that made you fall in love in the first place, are the flowers that you must grown in that garden. You must, as the apostle says, “dwell on these things.”
And let continue, for just a moment longer, to develop this whole idea of your soul being a garden. You want the flowers of love to bloom there, but you must always be vigilant to keep the weeds out, and that leads us to the letter “a.”
A is for always forgive and forget
God is omniscient. He knows everything. How many grains of sand on this beach? He knows. How many sparrows are alive at this moment in North America? He knows. But there is one thing He has chosen not to know; there is one thing God has chosen to forget. God refuses to remember any sin He has forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ.
If your soul is a garden then anger, bitterness, and resentment are the weeds; and since you are both imperfect people things will happen that will make those weeds grow – if you let them. Those weeds will eventually strangle the flowers of love and leave you barren and empty inside. And someday, in a season of testing and temptation, some dark spirit will be delighted to find all of that garbage in your soul, and he will know exactly how to use it as he attempts to destroy your marriage.
So if you find yourself starting to dwell on some defect in your spouse, make yourself stop. Pray for your spouse and then make yourself think of all the reasons why you choose to spend your life with that person in the first place.
Is it really possible to live this way? Can you train your heart and mind to be like this? Can your love, as it says in 1 Corinthians 13, really “keep no record of being wronged?” Can you be like God and actually forgive and forget?
Yes.
You can do this and if you will do this you will find that this is nothing more or less than the gateway to joy.
So let us boldly go through this gateway to joy for it is on the other side that we will find the letter “m.” And “m” is a very happy letter indeed because it’s rather hot out here and I will soon have to stop because I am about to run out of letters!
M is for maintaining your walk with the Lord
If you want to keep your love alive, live as closely as you can with the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of love. There can be no substitute for time spent in His presence, speaking to Him, listening for His voice, and meditating on His word. These spiritual disciplines will continually renew and refresh the life force of God that dwells within you. Communion with God is the path of blessing. Never forget that, and never, ever stray from that path; and if you do this God will comfort you, strengthen you, guide you and bless you all the days of your life.
2 comments:
What's this? Your son gets an sermon acronym, but your brother doesn't?
It's good that you wrote it down for Bob and Beth to remember. I'm not sure I recall much about what you said at my wedding (25 year ago in September). I think I was focusing mostly on the ravaging beauty standing beside me. Bob may have had the same experience. But if you had just given *us* a sermon acronym maybe I would have remembered. :)
I remembered the acronym but not much else. It's pretty cool to be able to look back. Her beauty was a little too overwhelming for me to think straight at the time.
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