Introduction
1. The joy of a wedding day. Celebrating the love a man and a woman have for each other. The culmination of dreams and the beginning of a new family. Like a story book ending in which they ride of into the sunset happily ever after.
2. Questions about what lies ahead. Will they be happy? Will they adjust? How will you adjust to each others families? What about the future - jobs, family? When will the honeymoon be over? Will you live happily ever after?
3. In midst of joy there is apprehension about what lies ahead.
4. Maybe should ignore this for today and just celebrate. But I want to give you something that will enable you to not need to worry. Something that will enable you to face the unknown and whatever difficulties might lie ahead.
5. Actually I cannot give this to you but I know someone who can and that is God Himself.
Teaching
1. You both have much to offer each other. But these things are of little value if you do not have what only God can give you - love.
2. Some see 1 Corinthians as the ideal portrait of love - a love that means all is well and there are no problems. Far from truth - passage looks at difficulties, realities of life and how love enables us to face them.
3. Love needs to be patient and kind - because there are times when we irritate each other. I’m sure that my wife here is not the only who has had to be patient with her husband and to a lessor extent, I’m not only husband who has had to be patient with his wife. We are each different and hard to accept certain peculiarities - even little
ones - putting down toilet seat or leaving clothes lying around.
4. Love keeps no record of rights. It does not envy or boast. It is not proud.Marriage to easily becomes a scorecard of "I told you so’s". Marriage is not a game we try to win.
5. Love keeps no record of wrongs. It is not rude, self-seeking, or easily angered. Even when the other wrongs you - seek to help them rather than to assert your rights. It is sensitive to the needs and struggles of the other. It is understanding.
6. Love seeks the truth, not evil. It admits when one is wrong and confesses its sins. As I have told you communication is important. Speak the truth in love. Don’t hold your feelings in for they will not go away. Even if they are difficult to express.
7. Love always protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres. We may not always feel the same. Sometimes it is hard to feel love but love is not a feeling. For love always fails.
8. Perhaps at this point I have given you even more to worry about. For who can love the way that Paul tells you to love each other. Only one - God who shows His love in sending Christ to die for us.
9. Love is a commitment to do the will of the Father. Jesus in Gethsemane did not want to go to the cross but He was committed to doing the Fathers will.
10. God says a man is to love His wife as Christ loved the church, as He gave His life for her. Love your wife in this way. A wife is to respect her husband and love him. Respect husband and encourage him to become all that God wants Him to be.
11. Base marriage in Christ. Make Him a partner in your marriage - third strand in braid. Each day read word and be reminded of His love for you and be filled with that love so you can give it to each other.
12. We do not know what lies over the sunset. We do not know what will happen but we know that God is with you and may both His love for you and your love for each other fill you with years of joy.
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. When my daughter was young she asked me to braid her hair. Each time it fell apart until I finally realized that it takes three not two strands to hold braid together. So Christ is third strand that holds marriage together.
