Love is a Verb

My family and close friends know that one of my favorite pastimes is asking questions.  Perhaps I should have been a FBI interrogator or something but since I’m not, I use my “skill” on anyone in my general vicinity.  My children, now well accustomed to me asking them questions, lovingly (I think) refer to those times as an interrogation.  Since love is generally considered to be the basis for forming marriages and romantic relationships I like to ask questions about it.  Not too long ago my question to one of my daughters was “what is love?” and I was excited by the answer.  Her response was; “love is a verb”.  The reason this excited me was that this is not one of those things that those closest to me remember due to my incessant repetition, I don’t go around saying “love is a verb” all the time, in fact I don’t remember whether I have ever said it.  In the context of the conversation I wanted to discuss what real Christ-like love is.  Our culture’s version or definition of love goes something like this;

·         A man declares his “love” for a young lady based on a feeling.

·         There is almost no obstacle that can shake their love, (not even wise concern from parents or other authorities). 

·         This love quickly becomes roam-ance when there is no unshakeable foundation defining the nature of the relationship.

Obviously I am a proponent that true Christ-like love be the foundation of any relationship, but especially romantic ones.  Love being a verb is that foundation.  As believers we are to follow Christ’s example in loving others, especially our bride, and if we are to truly follow that example we must do oh so much more than verbalize our love, it is a verb, an action word.  True love doesn’t sit around waiting for exciting feelings to occur.  It creates excitement in a relationship by what it does.  In fact, love without actions is suspect at best, deceit at worst.

Christ set the perfect example of this, by choosing us to be the recipient of his love, knowing full well that we have not nor ever will deserve His affections or His actions toward us.  His brand of love acted on our behalf.  In fact never was there more action in an act than in the Love displayed on the cross of Jesus.  How much do we really think about that when we are saying things like “till death do us part” and “for better or worse”?  For Christ, there is no “worse”, He will not get roam-antic no matter what.  He will never leave us.  His love acts.  It is a verb.

My thanks cannot come close to the gratitude I should have for this amazing truth.  Tragically, Christ’s love, His actions on our behalf are un-thinkable in a society where love is merely a feeling and subject to change.  But perhaps living the great commission is easier than we think?  Maybe the things we do (action) in our relationships speak the love exhibited by Christ without our having to utter a single word?  Or perhaps they do the opposite and lie about He who made love an action word.

 May God grant that our love is truly a verb!

To Court or not to Date, That is the Question.

If only it were that easy!  Before you arrive at the conclusion that I am completely against dating and only for courtship in relationships between young men and young women and decide to tune me out, please know that my desire is to be obedient to God above all.  This includes knowing what He has to say about this topic and making individual choices based upon that knowledge.  Certainly there is no easy one-size-fits-all plan for getting our young people married off.  For that reason we must consult as much scripture as we possibly can and spend much time at the throne of grace to find out what God wants for us and for our young people.  In other words this takes a lot of work.  To make sure you understand my meaning allow me to re-phrase; parents, and especially fathers, who our young people will marry has more implications for the rest of their lives than any other decision in life with one exception-the decision to follow Christ.  For the sake of this conversation, I am assuming that you and your young people have made this decision and that it is evident in your life by the daily decisions you make. 

So, what method, plan, or program should a follower of Christ adopt for shepherding our children into adulthood, into being ready for marriage?  Christ’s program is a great answer!  Since salvation is a perfect picture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His plan is best.  From Ephesians 1:4 we understand His plan and know full well that our salvation, Christ’s marriage proposal to us, began long ago.  The Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.  So the plan for our marriage to Him began that long ago.  The goal of the choosing of a bride for Christ was to save and redeem us to a state of holiness and blamelessness which will be a glorious thing for the Father to do considering our blame and lack of holiness.  

Since marriage is a picture of salvation, we would do very well to put as much thought as possible into our own marriages and especially the eventual marriage of our young people.  The holiness and blamelessness of our young people, is exactly what is at stake.  Will we be fathers and parents who shepherd our children along toward a holy and blameless marriage, or will we approach this pinnacle of life moment with a haphazard and lazy attitude?  Will we enable and teach the next generation of marriages to be more able to picture Christ and the church to those around them?  How much are we willing to sacrifice for the holiness, purity and blamelessness of our young people?  Are we at all willing to put ourselves in uncomfortable and difficult positions that go against the grain of culture or friends for the sake of salvation?  It is my passionate contention that we as fathers and as parents are failing to make the issue of who our kids will marry as big as it ought to be.  This is my heart; to have us all understand that the marriage of the next generation is a big deal!  Again, there is only one bigger deal, and that is or can or should be greatly influenced by the marriages we live in today and tomorrow.

Marriage has never been more under attack than it is now.  This is no coincidence nor is it just a sign of the times.  It is a deadly plan designed by the father of lies to destroy or at least invalidate the most perfect picture of Christ’s plan for the salvation of mankind.  We cannot, we must not let this happen.  So before you write me off as being a crazy-courtship only kind of guy, consider the eternal implications of not making a careful premeditated plan for marriage could and will do.

More What and Why...

Before I give a bit more background on why I am doing this blog, let me address the “what” I am doing with this blog.  This will be more than just me writing what I think (or am pretty sure) that God’s Word has to say about marriage and the many topics related to it.  There may be some posts with links to things I find or have found helpful in my study of what a biblical marriage looks like and I hope to have real life examples of how the model of Christ and His bride are lived out in day to day life by many of you.  As I alluded to in The Beginning post this will hopefully include many issues concerning the preparation of our young people for marriage.  This is usually done in a pre-marital counseling session with a pastor, and while this is entirely good, I think there is a better option.  Fathers, we are called to shepherd our children and the institution of marriage is the one huge thing that has life-long implications or complications, we hope for the first in the lives of the next generation of Christ followers.  Would it not be a great new chapter in the life of the 21^st century American church if all the young couples going to those marriage sessions already knew a great deal about how we can reflect the gospel of Christ in our marriages?  And what if all our existing marriages began to learn more and apply biblical knowledge in real life marriage situations also reflecting the Gospel to those around us?  What a wonderful world that would be, eh?  In fact, I am convinced this would be an excellent thing with immeasurable results.  My plan is to continue to learn from God’s Word and other believers including you and then pass all that knowledge on to anyone.  So what I am doing has a clear direction but is not exactly written in stone, so on to why am I doing this?  First, in light of the great grace of God in and on my own marriage, what can I do but praise Him?  Learning as much as possible, passing what I have learned on to others is what my heart has wanted to do for some time.  Tonia and I are hopeful to be allowed the privilege of helping others, married and not yet married, find the grace that is so completely transforming us.  Second, if for no other result than to prepare our young people for their eventual marriage, this will be a profitable venture for both them and us.  So, I must stress that we hope this is a learning experience for all who care to read or share and we pray that the knowledge gained will become wisdom.  As a new young friend stated earlier this year Wisdom is “properly applied knowledge”, so let’s get wise together!

The Beginning

This is the beginning of a thought I have had for a very long time.  Much can be learned from the beginning.  Looking back to the beginning of a business, friendship, vacation, or most any endeavor, can yield much instruction and knowledge about where you have been, where you are, and where you are going.  The better the thing being examined is, the more we would do well to study its’ origins and apply that knowledge, which by definition is wisdom.  Oh, if only we were all wise…but I digress.  Although I think our culture indicates we are not concerned about this, marriage is no exception; we desperately need to return to the beginning model for our benefit.  In looking to define, transform, build, or completely redeem marriage, we must not pay too little attention to the model that God left us that we would diligently study and learn from it.  Since we now have the further revelation of the mystery that marriage is, we can and most definitely should connect as many dots as possible to the original marriage.  Even if we did not have the revelation of the salvation of mankind pictured in marriage, there is so much more insight, knowledge and possible wisdom gained from carefully examining the original marriage than this generation of the church cares about.  This could be the reason why there are statistics that show the divorce rate among evangelicals to be much higher than the rest of the world.  Of course as Mark Twain told us; “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable” so I will not dwell on those stats but rather examine the model, the “facts” we should all be true to follow.  If there is an intelligent God (and there is), if He is infinitely superior to us in every way (if He’s not we are in serious trouble), and if nothing takes him by surprise (as if), then His model and plan for marriage is altogether trustworthy.  Our current church culture seems only want to pick and choose the various parts of the first marriage that are easy to mimic.  Only the parts that are most comfortable and don’t make us look like anything less than completely cool and relevant to the culture need apply.  This is unacceptable.  We have the privilege and obligation to speak the gospel to the world surrounding us by being in or working toward the model marriage. What is at stake is the very gospel of Jesus Christ.  Hopefully there are more than one might have thought who are striving to be true to our Father’s model for and of marriage.

Why call this, the Salvation of Marriage?  First, I do not believe that I possess any power to save marriage, not yours not mine, not anyone’s.  However, any follower of Jesus Christ will be able to attest to the failing state of marriage both in the world and in the church.  In the church it is broken without much of a thought for real transformation and redemption and in the world it appears to have reached the status of some old-fashioned tradition that really doesn’t work so well, so why bother?  Even professing believers are adopting the self-idolatry of doing what you have to do to meet the “needs” of your spouse so that in return your spouse can meet your own “needs”.  This is no picture of our Great and Wonderful Savior or His plan of redeeming mankind.  In spite of the mounting difficulties in following God’s Word in, on and for our own marriages, this is our opportunity, we must show a lost and damned world that Christ can and will save in spite of our unworthiness to be saved.  Christ is the goal, pointing as many as possible to Him for salvation.  As believers, our marriages should be pointing in the largest most neon sign kind of way to Him, to the forgiveness that can be obtained by being the bride of Christ.  Because of the gracious redemption of my own marriage and at the encouragement of one friend in particular and with the future marriages of our children in view, I intend here to examine as many aspects as possible of the Salvation of Marriage; how Christ can save marriage and people.  As a new friend reminded me; Iron sharpens iron.  I look forward to any comments and discussions this will bring about.  Please help sharpen me as we look into the great mystery of marriage!

Thanks very much for reading,

Keith