LIVING JESUS’S DREAM

​Dear friends of mine got married recently, and i was blessed to be part of their wedding.  Jesus loves weddings and marriages, and His hope for that couple, and all married couples, is that their love for each other would continue to grow until it fully reflects God’s love for us.  Jesus said that the main way people would come to know Him is by the way we love each other.  He calls us into love in many different ways, by loving our neighbors, loving the nations, and even loving our enemies.  But one of the greatest ways He calls us into love is by leading us to give ourselves to each other as husband and wife.
 
It’s a huge honor, for Jesus to call us husbands to love our wives as fully as He loves us!  And it’s a huge honor for our wives to devote themselves as fully to us as Jesus devotes Himself to them and to the Father!  But what does that really mean?
 
The world has a script for love, which goes something like this:  Boy meets girl and girl meets boy, they fall madly in love, get married, enjoy incredible time in bed, have some wonderful kids together, and live happily ever after.  
 
Marital bliss is a very captivating notion, and many weddings are designed to help couples put their best foot forward and launch them toward a richly blessed life.  But if you talk to those who’ve actually been married for awhile, we’ll all have to admit that while weddings can approach the perfect, marriages never are.  All marriages fall short because we as husbands and wives aren’t perfect, and we bring all our shortcomings into our marriages and we have to confront them - our own shortcomings and those of our spouses - to move forward.
 
Some folks think that our flaws make marriage undesirable or unattainable, but i’m pretty sure that God doesn’t look at marriage that way.  God is the source of all love and He is the original creator of marriage - He is the one, after all, Who hooked Adam up with Eve - and His vision for a perfect marriage is starkly different than the one the world promotes.  
 
God knows that honeymoons don’t last, so He starts working, even before a couple first meets, to lay underneath them a foundation for their marriage that will stand the test of time and will serve them well, and serve Him well, for the rest of their lives here on this earth, and even farther, into eternity.
 
That foundation is Jesus.  The Bible says there’s no other foundation than Him.  If we try to build our marriages on mere romance, on nothing more than happy feelings and wishful thinking, it will crash.  But if we build our marriages on Jesus as our Rock, we’ll find that He will bless us with many amazing times, and He will sustain us during hard times.  He will be there to strengthen us husbands, on days when we have to figure out how to love our wives when we’re not sure if we even like them.  And He will be there to strengthen our wives, on days when they have to figure out how to honor us when they’re struggling to even respect us.
 
Which begs the question, how does He do that?  How does Jesus love?  God answered that question through the words of the Apostle Paul.
 
And now i will show you the most excellent way. . .
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy, and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor and and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 12:31b - 13:8a
 
Wow!  These words brings tears to my eyes, because love truly is the most excellent of ways, and what Paul wrote reminds me so much of Jesus!  Paul was a man who was so far from God that he was literally murdering anyone he could find who believed in Jesus, yet Jesus met Paul right where he was at, struck him with a lightning bolt, and turned his whole life upside down and inside out.  That’s how Jesus’s love still works today - it’s a lightning bolt that blasts away our old way of living, which tends to be about ourselves, and empowers us with an entirely new life, and a new way of living that’s about Jesus and His love for us!
 
When Jesus loves, He is patient and kind.  He is humble and tenderhearted, not proud and self-serving.  He honors others and quickly forgives.  He always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always endures!  And that’s how He is empowering us husbands to love our wives, and that’s how He is empowering our wives to love us, especially when neither of us deserve it.  That’s what wedding vows are really about; they’re about Jesus.  When we pledge ourselves to each other, we’re committing our marriage to Jesus and promising to love each other the way He loves us!
 
If that doesn’t make us afraid, it should, because Jesus’s love is scary!  It’s a crazy high standard; it’s highly sacrificial and impossible to meet.  But it’s also way cool, because Jesus knew we could never love His way on our own; we would continue to fall short, so He gave us His Spirit to live inside and help us stop fixating on ourselves, or the shortcomings of our spouses, and enable us to see ourselves and each other through His tender eyes.
 
And He does that really well, on days when everything seems to be unfolding according to plan, and on other days when our expectations get crushed and we don’t feel good about how well we’re following Him.
 
That’s because from the beginning that’s been one of His biggest dreams -  to empower us to love each other really well, no matter what comes our way.  And He moved huge mountains to make that happen.  Even when evil men nailed Him to a cross, He kept pouring out His love upon us, and through His death and resurrection He healed our broken hearts and restored our capacity for healthy relationships!
 
Do you know that you were so much on Jesus’s heart, that He prayed for you on His last night?  One of His last prayers before He went to the cross was that the we would be one in Him, as He is one with the Father!  We find that prayer in the book of John, Chapter 17, and it’s really bold, because Jesus and our Heavenly Father are really tight.  As Father and Son, they are so intimate with each other that they think each other’s thoughts, feel what each other feels and always seek to please each other, no matter what.  And that’s Jesus’s hope and dream for married couples, that we would also think each other’s thoughts, feel what each other feels, and always seek to please each other, no matter what.
 
It sounds impossible, but when we turn to Jesus and let Him love through us, His love never fails.  That’s because it’s God Himself Who makes us one, and our marriages are covered by the power of Jesus’s blood.  Many things may come against us and try to take our marriages out, but those attacks will fail, because Jesus is always victorious and He lives and loves victoriously, even in us!
 
The sacrament of marriage is a gift from God, a holy mystery in which a man and a woman become one.  If it seems impossible, that’s because it isn’t something any human can do.  It’s something God Himself does, because at its core the union of husband and wife isn’t merely physical, emotional, legal or practical.  While a marriage involves all those things, at its core, the union of husband and wife is spiritual.  Through our marriages, we come to share one heart, one Spirit, one faith, one hope, one love, and one life.  It’s holy because it’s smeared with Jesus’s blood and because our marriages mirror the union of Jesus Christ to His bride, the church.
 
Jesus’s love for us is rooted in His devotion and submission to the Father.  And so our love for one another is also rooted in our devotion and submission.  As we surrender to Jesus and let Him live and love through us, His devotion and submission becomes ours.  That’s why the core of our vows are about loving and obeying - because Jesus is all about loving and obeying!
 
When we love each other that way, it melts all boundaries between us.  When we love each other that way, we experience the highest form of intimacy.  For when we love each other that way, we enjoy the same sort of connection with each other that Jesus has with the Father!
 
So i’m praying for you who are married, that your hearts and life would overflow with passion for each other and passion for Jesus.  May you never stop honoring and cherishing each other, and patiently keep forgiving each other no matter what, just as Christ has forgiven you.  And may His Spirit fall upon you and fill you, keeping you faithful to Him and each other, as you joyfully embrace the fullness of your union in Christ!