Morehouse Wedding

Friends and family of Aaron and Olivia, it is an honour to be included in this very special day. I very much love weddings and I am glad to be a part of this one. As a minister in the Christian church I am here not just to lead you through your vows but also to represent God’s blessing on this marriage.

God is the one who gave us the gift of marriage, when He first paired Adam and Eve in the garden to be partners in everything. He is a God of love, in fact the Bible says “God is love.” Though that means more than romantic love, it certainly doesn’t exclude romantic love. God I believe smiles on weddings like a proud Father.

Just like a loving Father God has some advice for you on your wedding day. We talk about love and often what we mean is that overwhelming passionate feeling that we have for one another. That feeling that compells us to say this one person is our person, and we are theirs. That is a wonderful beautiful thing, but there’s a part of love we don’t think about as much, and that is the work of love.

You see love is a verb. It’s the acts of self sacrifice that you live out for one another. There’s a passage of the Bible that gets quoted a lot at weddings for a reason. The famous “love chapter” of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. In verses four to seven it describes the character of God’s love and the love He wants us to show one another. Let me read this passage to you this morning.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 CSB

Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

This is the love that ideally we would show to all people. That being said, when you pledge to marry another, you are pledging to promise this one person that you will love them first. So when you think through that list of qualities of love, I want you to think of your new spouse. Will you be patient with one another? Will you be kind? Will you avoid envy, boasting, and arrogance? Will you be polite to one another? Will you avoid irritability and keep no record of each others wrongs? Will you find joy in truth and not in doing wrong? Will you bear all things for one another, believe in each other in all things, hold on to hope through all things and endure everything together?

Aaron and Olivia, that is the promise that you are making to one another here today in the eyes of these witnesses and under the loving approval of God. It is my hope and prayer that these words will inspire you to a greater service of love for one another, and that all gathered here will do their part to support you in building a solid foundation of marriage together.