As we continued our series, Love In Between the Lines, we dove into the topic of marriage. Why talk to high school students about marriage? Because, one day they'll get married and you shouldn't spend years of your life looking for the person to marry if you don't understand what marriage is truly about. Paul called it a mystery, but marriage is ultimately about Christ and the church.
That's probably not what I was thinking about when I asked Laura to marry me, but the longer I'm married the more I'm learning how true it actually is. The first marriage in the Bible was Adam and Eve and came because Adam needed a helper, someone to walk through life with. When we get married our spouse is supposed to help us as well. Not help with the laundry or cutting the grass, but to help us become more like Christ.
We also talked about a concept that most of us either have never noticed in Scripture or simply don't like to think about, marriage is temporary. I'm not eluding to falling out of love or divorce. God hates divorce. Marriage was meant to be for a lifetime, but only a lifetime. When a group of religious leaders tried to trap Jesus in a verbal argument, Jesus taught that in Heaven we won't be married anymore (Luke 20:27). We don't like to think about that very much, but we won't need marriage any more. When we get to Heaven we'll be with Christ!
The last idea was that marriage is about sacrifice. I got a great quote from Kevin Kalstad last week. Marriage isn't 50/50 it's 100/100. You are both called to give everything! Paul teaches the same thing in Ephesians 5. He tells women to submit to their husbands as they do to the Lord and for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Submitting isn't a popular idea these days and following Jesus' example of dying for the church isn't exactly our most common ideas of marriage, but marriage is supposed to be about sacrifice.
When we get it right, when we live out marriages that are about helping one another become more like Christ, when we remember that He is the our highest love, when we are willing to sacrifices for one another, we show the world just how incredible our God is. When I was in high school my senior pastor showed a video that has been an example of marriage for me that I still remember ten years later. It's a recording of the resignation speech of Robert McQuilken. He was the president of a university when his wife became sick. It's a story of helping, sacrificing, to the very end. It's a story of marriage and picture of Christ and the church.
Comments