God

At the end of every wedding, the officiating minister usually says something like this: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

I’ve attended many weddings in my life, both as a simple guest and a musician. I’ve been to weddings that were extravagant, some simple, some very informal. My wife’s cousin married his wife in an outdoor chapel overlooking Lake Texoma, wearing Bermuda shorts and sandals on a hot summer day. Twas a beautiful wedding, but hotter than the dickens, and I was so happy to head for the reception in an air conditioned car.

Marriage is, in a sense, an act of physics, the merging of two cells, the mixing of chemistry and biology. It is synergistic, expecting the outcome of its union to be greater than the sum of its parts. There is an unadulterated presentation that takes place as bride and groom face each other, vowing to love, keep, and cherish their mate until death parts them.

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”

One flesh.

There are a handful of references to the ‘Bride of Christ’ found in the New Testament, most referring to end times, how the Groom would come for the Bride, the church. Particularly, in Ephesians 5:25-27, which reads:

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Modern day approaches to marriage have shifted from biblical teachings, structural beliefs, and family values. No longer is marriage considered, nor protected as a holy union, a scientific phenomenon.

Yesterday, I was in the home of a couple that has been married for 65 years. Talk about chemistry! Both are in their eighties, but the ‘super powers’ that they possessed was incredible. She could read his thoughts, he finished her sentences, and there was an energy field that seemed to surround and connect them, making them virtually invincible.

The Golden Anniversary page of the local newspaper is under attack, and fewer and fewer celebrations are taking place of long lives together. Instead, the column that displays the ‘Court Records’ grows, evidence of divorces requested and granted, while children are born to two individuals with different names.

But, believe it or not, this paper is not about the demise of marriage in the world today, and I ask forgiveness from you, the reader, for my side-track – ‘chasing bunnies’, I call it. This paper is truly about the connection between the bride and the groom, both as they make their vows, and as they live to carry them out.

This paper, in fact, is about the connection between God, the Groom, and me, the Bride.

Such a sentence can be sure to cause alarm - if all that is imagined is the thought of the author, a man, dressed in white linen and lace, carrying a bouquet down the aisle to wed another man. Such an imagination is one of the controversial topics of society today, and shallow thinking, at that, if the reader doesn’t press to go deeper into the meaning of the sentence.

The Union between God and man is easily construed if taken out of context and the intention of Scripture. In a sense, you could say that there came a time in my life when I encountered God for the first time, whether through the reading of Scripture, the preaching of Scripture, or the testimony of others. At any rate, I met Him who loved me greater than I’ve ever been loved, even in spite of my flaws.

This is the pattern by which we all encounter God, as Paul explained to the Thessalonians in 2 Thes 2:13-14:

As for us, we always thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. We are thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation, a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and by your belief in the truth. He called you to salvation when we told you the Good News; now you can share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But the mere encounter of God is not the basis for ‘salvation’, which is a hard word to swallow for those who don’t understand what it is they must be saved from. Just by knowing there is a God doesn’t procure security. Simply referring to God as one of your ‘friends in high places’ isn’t going to cut it.

I watched Dan Brown’s book-turned-movie entitled, “Angels and Demons” this morning. From the standpoint of entertainment, five stars in my books. I’ve read the book some time ago, and what I remember seemed to be fairly accurate with the movie – but my memory alludes me sometimes.

The point that kept coming up for me over and over and over again was how God was portrayed to need our help, almost as if He were a retarded sibling, incapable of absolute sovereignty without assistance, and we were charged with caring for Him, to help Him in the responsibility of being God.

What struck me was that relationship with God was never brought up, but the work of God, however fallible it was, was the purpose of the Church.

One of the greatest statements that I ever heard came from a fellow minister, my friend Jim, who said, “We ministers often times excuse ourselves from true God-encountering time, placing our sermon preparations and our course studies in its place. What would happen if we focused on our relationship with God to the point that the ‘ministering’ that took place to our churches would happen as an overflowing of what God was doing in us? (paraphrase)”

What would happen if I sat down, sat still, and looked at my relationship with God from the standpoint that He and I were one, unified through the marriage that He invited me into? What if God became the most important reality in my life, surpassing all other responsibilities and relationships?

What if my marriage with my God became so impassioned that I found it easy to obey the Greatest Commandment, which says to “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

What if, at the end of my life (and I pray, selfishly, that it’s a long one!), I see my relationship with God as the couple in their eighties, reading each other’s thoughts and finishing each other’s sentences?

And you, the reader, may at this point of this paper, be concerned with the idea of heresy, because God is God and we are not, and to consider the idea that we can be unified with God to the point of becoming one flesh… well, what is it that we call ‘being filled with the Holy Spirit’ then? Is it not, in essence, one flesh?

‘But we can’t comprehend God in His entirety, nor can we devote all of who we are to Him without sacrificing other responsibilities and relationships…’

Oh, really?

If that is your stance, then I challenge you to re-address your relationship with God. Not ‘is it’, but do you want it to be shallow or intimate? Superficial or genuine? Effort or over-flowing abundance?

If you are married, now consider your marriage to your spouse: Do you want it to be shallow or intimate, superficial or genuine, effort or over-flowing abundance?

Now, pull out your dictionary, study the word ‘synergy’, and determine if you and your God share it together.

And I close with this Scripture, for I don’t wish to lead you to believe that I’ve got it all together:

“I once thought all these things were so very important, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own goodness or my ability to obey God's law, but I trust Christ to save me. For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith. As a result, I can really know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I can learn what it means to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that, somehow, I can experience the resurrection from the dead!

I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven.” – Philippians 3:7-14 (NLT)