By Jeff Klick

Sometimes we forget that God is love, and He is the one that came up with the whole love idea, not the sin, sick world we live in that has perverted everything.  God is the Creator of us, all of us, including our emotions, romantic feelings, physical desires, and our brains. Human love was His idea from the beginning, and the Bible is a love story from beginning to end!

In the very middle of the Bible is the Song of Songs, a love story, a human love story. There are of course Messianic implications about Jesus, but the book is primarily dealing with love between a man and a woman.  Human love is normal, desirable, and part of God’s plan. Remember God is the One who said, “It is not good for man to be alone!” Man was not alone, he had God, yet God said man needed something more.

I know some of you have been burned, suffered in bad relationships, and are a bit skittish about this topic, but that does not change the pattern or God’s original intent. Fallen man, with the aid of our foe, has often attempted to distort and pervert what God has created, and love is no different. If you need help, get it, and get it quickly! However, let’s not throw out everything because some have messed it up. Here is a good principle to live by:

The correction to abuse is not disuse but proper use.

God’s plan includes men and women falling in human love (then choosing to walk in God-graced love), getting married, having children, and passing along their faith to them! This is good; in fact, God said it was very good after He created male and female.  (See Genesis 2)

The vast majority of young people should find someone to marry, produce children, and change our world through the power of a godly family – that is good and God’s typical method from the beginning of time. Christians should be pro-family, pro-life, and pro-marriage between a man and woman, because God is!

I recently spoke on Psalm 45 during a Sunday message. This Psalm is a love song that presents a picture of a king and his bride. The king is a real Prince Charming and is described in the first five verses. The bride is pictured just as one would expect for a wedding. Her attendants are there and she is dressed to the max with expectations abounding.

During this message, I said that just about every little girl, beginning at a very young age, begins to dream about her wedding. While little boys are making animal noises and throwing dirt around, many little girls are having their dolls get married. To verify this I circulated around our church after the service popping into the various groups of young ladies standing around chatting. I asked each group, “Did you all do what I talked about today and pretend to have your dolls get married?” Their replies were humorous to me and each was repeated several times depending on the group I invaded.

“I didn’t have my dolls get married but my stuffed animals.”

“I used my brother’s little cars.”

“I didn’t have dolls, but used marbles.” Marbles?

Planes, toys, rocks, marbles, stuffed animals, and yes, even dolls all marched down an imaginary isle and took vows before some sort of preacher. Interesting. Perhaps God placed this in all of these little girl’s hearts after all. My own grandchildren performed a “marriage ceremony” for their dogs when they were going to go into the puppy business because after all, they couldn’t very well make puppies and not be married!

The point to all of this is that God is the one that made us the way. He did, and it is not weird but godly. God is pro-marriage and pro-family and so should we be! God is the One that chose to be called our Father. Jesus is referred to as our brother. We who are born again are called a family, and we are headed to a wedding feast described in Revelation 19. God is pro-family.

Part of the mystery of marriage between a man and a woman is what God was after by joining them together in the first place. Paul, in Ephesians 5:32, says that marriage is a profound mystery and refers to Christ and the Church, and your guess is as good as mine is as to what all Paul meant. In addition to presenting a mysterious picture, God also expects marriage to reproduce.

Some couples can have multiple children and some cannot. Some will adopt and others will choose not to have children, but God still expects marriage to reproduce. Even if physical children do come from a marriage, God expects all of us to have spiritual ones. That is called discipleship. For those that do adopt or procreate children, the Word of God addresses what God is after in Malachi 2. Many see only tithing in Malachi, but read what God states here:

And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord‘s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.  Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.  “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.” (ESV)

What was God seeking by the marriage union? Godly offspring. God expects us to reproduce, and He has designed marriage to be an integral part of the spiritual, generational implementation process. God hates divorce (not the divorcee by the way) partially because of what happens to the next generation. God is pro-family and pro-marriage and so should we be.

The next time you walk by a little girl playing with two of something like cars or marbles, slow down a bit and listen … you might just drop in on a wedding, and I bet God smiles every time.

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