Getting into the conversation...Love and marriage.

I recently read this post by the love sick soul. Who asked what we think about a conversation on love and dating that has carried in our community for several days now.

As a mother of young adults this conversation is vital to me. I pray every day for my children to have the courage to let their hearts love and to take action on that love. I previously wrote about encouraging my young men to date in another post, Kiss Dating Goodbye, Why? This may have been a little misunderstood but I don't encourage them to be serial daters but to not fear dating that they can learn relationship and mature to take a wife. Or in my sweet girls case a husband.

I do not believe it is a healthy state of our culture to be anti-marriage and so self dependent, self reliant. I believe it is a sign of the sin in our world and the state of wounded-ness and broken people.

One of the most beautiful pictures of Christ's love for the church is the imagery of the bride of Christ. This teaches us about a God that not only died for us and has adopted us into His family or Fathered us, but more importantly and even more complex is that He, God is a passionate lover of our soul. If you are not convinced of that statement, you are not alone, many believers do not receive that and are in need of some healing and learning of God because His word says He is, many times over.

As a women who prayed several years for that revelation I know from experience the love of God that Paul so passionately prays for the church in Ephesians 3:14-19.

What does that have to do with marriage? It is the selfless love of Christ that people need to see mirrored in our lives and it is a gift and favor from the Lord to be blessed with a family actively pursuing this kind of love to model.

God is able to do this, able to keep two very diffrent people from completely different backgrounds together in marriage. Able to overcome our personal histories, our wounded hearts, our fears, our false ideals. God is able to make our lives look different from those in our society. God can conquer the pain of divorce and the brokenness of abandoned children.

I say we are in a time that is so close to the last days, God would redeem the concept of marriage and family in our Christian communities, if we let Him and I am stirred to pray for it.

The question has come up about how absent the topic of dating actually is in the bible. I have a few observations on this topic. First that they married much younger, for the most part, and that they also had arranged marriages. Negotiations were made and the choice was a family decision and there was not this waiting of a love to fall on your heart out of nowhere that would be your SIGNAL to marry. But rather a choice was made, a decision and plan set in motion I believe that was the work of God and then I believe following that choice, love was stirred.

One of my favorite stories of love in the Old Testament is Isaac and Rebekah. What wonderful trust and belief in God Isaac displayed in sending his servant to go to find him a wife among the acceptable choices of his family. And how even more beautiful this servant asking the Lord for the direction in that and then this young girl so ready and willing to follow the will of her God to be taken to marry a man she barely knew of and had never seen.

Do I think we should be arranging marriages? Not realy but the concepts here are amazing. Courage, decision, action, prayer, faith in God not the person, wise council from a close trusted source, and then love. Such love.

I have been married 22 years. Lionel and I are from broken families. Marriage was not sacred. But with God in our hearts and faith in our lives we set out to do something daring, something no one in our families had done before, to break the chain of divorce and pass on a heritage of healthy love in our family as a testimony to God. We were young and dreamers and didn't know any better than to believe that God would and could do it in us, praise Him, He is!

Praying for all of our young adults! Praying against the enemy trying to steal this God designed plan from the church. Praying for healing in families and marriages and healthy right thinking from the Lord about His heart for love and marriage.

Living single is not a curse, but marriage isn't either. And if you are single and reading this and have found your heart saddened in anyway, please know that I am speaking for you. And please ask the Lord to reveal to you what is in your heart that He wants to bring to light and bring into truth. He is the lover of your soul and will fill you completely in or out of marriage, as it should be.

Love you all!