Remembering Our Wedding Vows

In light of our one-year of marriage (and looking forward to so many more to come!!), I pulled up a copy of our wedding vows and the sermon our friend and pastor preached on our wedding day when he officiated for us. And it was such a good reminder of what marriage is really all about.

Here's an excerpt from Dave's sermon from our wedding day, July 10, 2009:

" Michael and Carmen come to this ceremony today prepared to make some promises—vows—to each other. This is a “covenant”: One vows to keep their end of the agreement, even if the other fails to keep their end of the agreement.  

In your vows, you’re not saying one thing: better; richer; health. You’re saying two things: better or worse; richer or poorer; health or sickness.

May God give you the strength and the love to keep these promises at those times when you don’t want to, and it seems like it would be easier to break them. Make no mistake marriage is not always easy. However, marriage has many joys!  

Marriage is:

• Companionship in all of life’s paths
• Shared goals for happiness, family
• Unconditional support in good times and bad
• Knowing that two can do more than one
• Having someone to encourage you in the valleys of life
• Writing a story for your friends to read

As we close, I want to briefly look at why God designed marriage like He did:

• It is because he is so interested in YOU knowing how much He loves you that He was not content about being a big ‘ol invisible, intangible God out there in the universe that you only experience when you see a cool cloud arrangement in the sky with the sun shining through it… 

• The best way to describe it is this… Michael, He wants Carmen to know His physical, tangible, in-her-presence love so much that he is putting you in her life as an instrument, a channel, to reflect it…to lay your life down for her whether you think she deserves it or not because that is what Christ did for her…that’s how much He loves Carmen. Carmen, He wants Michael to know His physical, tangible, in-his-presence love so much that he is putting you in his life as an instrument, a channel, to reflect it…because that is what Christ did for him…that’s how much He loves Michael.

That is a huge responsibility. But wouldn't you want to be the recipient off that love?! That is the ideal and the target for marriage. This concept changes everything because it’s not about you…it’s about the love that God has for you both.

As followers of Christ you need conduct your marriage in the shadow of a cross, with the knowledge that He died for us. And if you truly want to say thank you to Him, then He wants you to go home and channel all that gratitude in the eye and heart of each other."

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