Wedding Billings
John and Rejeana, Matthew 19:4-6, September 18, 2004
“Beginnings”
We gather with you today, John and Rejeana, to celebrate a beginning. We start before God and before all these people the celebration of your life together as husband and wife. Today you declare your love for each other before God and all these people. Today you commit all of yourselves to each other for all time. It is a good beginning. It is good to start your days together before God in worship, asking God’s blessing on your life together and praising God for all of the goodness God has given to you and to each of us.
To make this declaration of your love here today is to recognize that it is a very serious declaration indeed. We read the Word of God and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let no mans separate.” Today we begin a union made by God, with promises made before God.
In the beginning God gave us the gift of love and companionship. He has taught us about this love that man and woman should have for each other. He has taught us clearly what love is and what it is not. He shows us how to begin our lives together. It is important to have such a definition clear in your mind as you begin. This blueprint can be a guide for those days down the road when you feel anything but loving.
The love that God has given goes at life with a passion. It is a love that never gives up. It is a passionate love which made God willing to pursue us, not willing to give up on us no matter how much we run away. It is out of passionate love that God sent His own Son into the world to die on the cross for all people. It is out of passionate love that Jesus Christ continues to be with us no matter how much we resist. Such a passionate love is a love given by God which has the strength and courage to work through difficulties. This is the kind of love that God gives to us, to you as husband and wife. It is not the drippy love of romance novels or television where people abandon each other when the going gets rough or someone flashier comes along.
Such love requires work. It is hard work for a groom or a bride to break old ties and establish a new set of priorities and commitments. Everything else must come second to your marriage. This will not always be easy. Such a love requires work especially in those times when you really don’t like each other very much, when we let each other down. Then we model our love on God’s love which is always willing to forgive, even as you have been forgiven, no matter what you have done.
Such love comes from God. This love is deep and lasting, one of trust and commitment. It is a love which requires us to be open and vulnerable to our partner, ready to walk into unfamiliar territory together. It is a love of confession and forgiveness, one willing to admit you are wrong and to accept the admission of the other with grace. It is a love which might require you to bite your tongue once in awhile, to consider words and actions first.
So what is this love we set before you today? God has said, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. It bears all things endures all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” It sounds tough, actually impossible, if we try to do it on our own. This love set before you today as an ideal is a love which can be achieved only as a gift from God. You can only do it with God’s help. This is why we gather before God today. He alone can give you His passionate love for each other, for life and even a passion for God Himself.
May your marriage have within it a passion for God, the one who gives you the ability to love and to work at love. Stay close to Him because He is the source of this power and love.
This is where you begin with God’s blessing today. May God bless your beginnings today and may God bless your life together as you join together as one.