This past weekend we hosted a marriage conference.  The overall theme was “The Love Choice.”  One of the couples shared an amazing story about the example of his grandparents that were married some 76 years.  With tears in his eyes, he described a time when both his grandparents were sick.  His grandfather’s health had improved and was placed in the same room as his grandmother.  To let her know he was there, the grandfather reached over with his hand to hold onto his wife...he did so for six straight days.  With each day, the man’s grandfather, 103 years old, held fast to his wife while his arm swelled to the size of his leg.  His grandmother, 96 years old, did get better.  His grandfather passed on during this time.

Love is an act of will...it is a choice (Hebrew- to prove, try, choose, select, distinguish, love , like, to be pleasing, to be especially chosen...Usually a word expressing choices of eternal consequences.

• Deuteronomy 7:7: “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set His love on You and chose you...”
• Deuteronomy 10:15: “Yet the LORD set His heart on your fathers and chose their offspring after them...”
• 1 Corinthians 12:18: “But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as He chose.”
• 2 Thessalonians 2:13: “...brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.”
• Ephesians 1:4: “even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him, In love”

A Commitment...Steadfast

• Genesis 24:27:  “...Blessed by the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken His steadfast love and His faithfulness...”
• Genesis 39:21: “But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.”
• Exodus 15:13: “You have led in Your steadfast love the people whom You have redeemed...”
• Exodus 34:7 “keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin...”
• Numbers 14:18: “The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love...”
• 1 Kings 8:23: “...keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to Your servants...”
• Romans 8:38-39: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

At the heart of marriage is a God-given love, a covenantal choice that chooses to love beyond circumstances, feelings, and life’s greatest trials.  It is commitment personified. It is a choice of love that God first pours into us, and then we pour into each other (John 13:34-35).

My parents recently celebrated their wedding anniversary.  They are just one year shy of 50 years together.  I can honestly say that their greatest life teaching to me as Christian parents is their marriage.  If you would ask my three older children, now 14, 16, and 19, they would say the same thing.  I know my parents have seen difficult times--as every couple will. My parents would be the first to say that their marriage is far from perfect.  Yet, as they cling to the Author of marriage- in and through Jesus Christ, He clings to them (James 4:8).

A Christian marriage can be one of the greatest demonstrations of the gospel lived out (Ephesians 5:21-25).  It also represents one of the greatest ways to teach the gospel to the next generation.  How awesome would the gospel shine through our homes if Christian marriages saw their husband-wife relationships as God’s platform of His love? How would the next generation be impacted?