Nothing much but a broken Hallelujah.

It was minutes before their wedding ceremony,Pat wanted to be sure they started their marriage off right, so without seeing the bride before the ceremony, they sat around the corner from one another, held hands and prayed.

Moments before she was to walk down the aisle her soon to be mother in law came in the dressing room where her bridesmaids and her were all gushing with giggles and fluttering about finishing last minute details.

"Dear, your groom has called for you!".

In a nervous tizzy she said, "What?! I'm not ready! I have to get my shoes and..."She had already taken her hand and led her to a corner, where her groom was waiting. She barely sat down; She was filled with so much anticipation! So much excitement! So many nerves!

"Is he going to like my dress? Does my hair look pretty? Can he see me?!"

Right around the corner sat her soon to be husband, She so was nervous he might see her yet secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of him. In her excited state she was the first to speak,

"Hi sweetie! We're getting married today!"

"I know baby and I want to pray with you before we do."

There they sat around the corner hand in hand, and together they bowed their heads. People were rushing about; the wedding coordinator directing people here and there, the photographers snapping photos and the bridal party enjoying each others company. Yet in that moment, in the quietness of their hearts and minds, her husband and her were alone in the presence of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Her husband prayed that God would bless their marriage, that through thick or thin together they would never lose hope in one another. That instead of focusing on each others imperfections they would always rely on Christ's perfection. That they would wake up every day and chose to love one another not through their own strength but by the power of Christ's perfect love.

With their hands clenched tightly to one another together they said "Amen", both with shaky voice and just like that she was whisked away to blot the tears off her face and put on her veil.This was momentous,she had never seen that before.Couldn’t hold back her tears because right there was the right foundation,a spiritual head and a priest of their own home.

After her bridesmaids, mother, mother-in-law and every other girl in the room had finished zipping, curling, tucking and blushing her up She looked in the mirror. There she stood wearing her pure white wedding dress, ready to walk down the aisle to herr Prince Charming.

He is not only her Prince Charming because of his incredibly handsome looks, or wonderful humor, or the fact that they have so much in common yet so much different. He is her Prince Charming because he helped her protect the most precious gift that she owned, her purity.

Soon after they had started dating she told her Prince how she valued purity and planned to be until the night of her wedding; to which he replied he would have it no other way.

Throughout their dating relationship and engagement they constantly fought, what at times felt like a losing battle. They fought temptation with prayer, scripture and accountability. She had friends checking up on her if they knew we were together late at night and he regularly met with other men to pray for strength. At times, especially as the wedding grew closer, they thought they were attempting to do the impossible.

"Why are we doing this?" She would ask in her weakness, and he would remind her, that it's because God had told them too.

"I can't do it, I can't... this is too hard!" he would confess to her and she would pray for his strength.

When she walked down the aisle in her white dress, she looked straight into the eyes of the man that had laid himself down to protect and honor the wife that God had given him.

When his eyes first caught her he looked into the face of the woman that had waited for him, the woman that would support him and love him for the rest of His life, through good times and bad.

They prayed,they asked the Lord to use their wedding to bring Him all of the glory that He rightfully deserved. They had not gotten where they were by their own strength, but by His hand of protection on our relationship.

They wanted to take it a step further and give God praise and thanks for how they arrived at that quiet 

corner, holding hands and ready to start their lives together.

Whom you marry,matters

My mom,a profound lady, once told me “who you marry matters”.You might think that the way he treats you isn’t so bad. It’s going to get better after the wedding. You might think that he’ll change. It’s possible, but most don’t. You might think that you’ll be able to minister to him and help him. Possibly, but if you can’t now, you won’t then, and you will be at risk yourself. A husband should lead and cherish you, not need your counsel for basic personality or behavior issues.Thats why we are always advised,Do not be unequally yorked to a non-believer.

Unless someone married is very frank with you, you can’t understand how much a husband will impact your entire life. Next to salvation there is no other long term event that will change so many areas of your life so deeply. She said marriage impacts every aspect of your life. 

 It will impact you spiritually. 

If the guy is not a believer, you can stop right there. You have no business yoking a redeemed soul with an unregenerate one, even if he seems open to change. Christ has bought you with a price and it is not an option to give away that blood bought heart to someone who doesn’t know and love your Lord. It will cripple your spiritual development, open up a host of temptations, stifle your prayer life, make regular church going difficult, and cause massive parenting conflict if you have children.

Will he lead you in prayer, Bible reading, family devotions, and public worship? Or will you be on your own? Is he going to make spiritual growth a priority or do other things come first? Is he going to ask you how it’s going with your soul so he can help you grow in holiness and love for Christ, or will he leave that to your pastor? Is he going to lead the children in this, or will you have to spearhead that? In church, is he going to help the kids sit well, pray, find the hymn, or will you be the one pointing out what is happening next and helping the family keep up? 

 It will impact you emotionally.

 

Is the guy you’re thinking of going to encourage you, love you, be kind to you, and seek to understand you, or will he want to go out with the guys when you’re having a hard night? Will he listen when you are struggling with something or will he be preoccupied with a video game? Is he going to be annoyed when you cry or will he get you designer jamia shoes and give you a hug? Is he going to going to understand that you are probably more tender than he is, more sensitive to issues and comments, or is he regularly going to run rough shod over your feelings? 

A husband can cripple or foster emotional health.

 It will impact you physically. 

Is the guy you’re with going to provide for your basic needs? Will he be able to shelter, clothe and feed you? A man who doesn’t provide for his household is worse than an infidel (I Tim. 5:8). You might have to help ease the financial burden, but unless your husband is disabled or there is another unusual circumstance, you shouldn’t have to carry it yourself.

Will the man you are with care for your body or abuse it? Is he going to honour the marriage bed in physical and mental faithfulness to you? Will he be accountable to God for your family?.

It will impact you mentally. 

Is the man that you’re thinking of going to be a source of worry or will he help you deal with your worries? Is he going to encourage your intellectual development, or will he neglect it? Is he going to value your opinions and listen to what you are thinking, or will he disregard your thoughts? Is he going to help you manage stress so that your mind is not burdened that way, or is he going to let you struggle through issues alone?

 Is he going to care for you and be thoughtful of you if you are experiencing mental strain, or will he ignore it? I used to think that the intellectual or mental side of a marriage is small.I learnt through PMC classes that it’s a whole lot important.

 It will impact you relationally. 

How’s your relationship with your mother? Your dad? Fast forward ten years: you tell your husband that your mother is coming for the weekend. Is he excited? Disappointed? Angry? Making snide jokes with his friends? Of course, a husband should come first in your priority of relationships, as you both leave father and mother and cleave to one another. But parents are still a big part of the picture. Whatever negative feelings he has about your parents now will probably be amplified after marriage. Your marriage will either strengthen or damage – even destroy – your relationship with your parents. The people who know you best and love you most right now could be cut out of the picture by a husband who hates them.

It’s the same with sisters and friends. Will they be welcomed, at reasonable times, in your home? Will the guy who you’re with encourage healthy relationships with other women, or will he be jealous of normal, biblical friendships? Will he help you mentor younger women and be thankful when older women mentor you, or will he belittle that?

Don’t sacrifice many good relationships for the sake of one guy who can’t value the people who love you.

So how will your boyfriend do after the vows? Because this is just a sampling of the ways that a husband can bless or curse his wife. The effects are far reaching, long lasting, and either wonderful or difficult. True, there are no perfect men out there. But there are great ones in the process of perfection through Christ. Don’t be so desperate to get married that your marriage is a grief. If you are in an unhappy marriage, there are ways to get help. But if you’re not married, don’t put yourself in that situation.

 Don’t marry someone whose leadership you can’t follow, whose accountability is not to God. Don’t marry someone who is not seeking to love you as Christ loved the church. Marry someone who knows and demonstrates the love of Christ.

  

Masculinity,Gods Strength And Love

Marriage was instituted by God as the foundational institution of society, the place where God’s love for His people and His people’s reverence and love for God would be on display every day in the example of the love and respect between a husband and wife.  The husband is to represent the love and servant leadership of Christ and the wife is to represent the adoration, devotion and submission of the church to Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33). Marriage is where children learn about relationships, love, God, life, manhood, womanhood, family and learn to become godly people themselves.

Strength

At its core, masculinity is about strength of body/mind/spirit. God designed husbands to represent the powerful, extravagantly generous, self-sacrificing love of Christ to their wives (and children).

Husbands are clearly not deity, they are fallen, sinful men, but their role in the parable of marriage is to portray Christ. Christ is powerful and strong on every level. Christ is the Head of the church. He is the Leader. He is the sole Provider of everything His people need. He is the Protector of His flock. He is the One Who gave His life up that His beloved might live – the ultimate love story of a brave Prince rescuing His princess so that they might live happily ever after together.

And masculinity is also about being fierce when necessary to fight for what is right, to defend the weak and to protect those he loves from danger.  It is about being a hero.

Steadfast Love

The love of God for us does not change. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Men tend to have a basically unchanging love for their wives, even if they don’t verbalize it. Men tend to think of their love as being constant and not something that could be easily lost.  They are often baffled that their wives need constant reassurance of their love.  To them, they married us – they are here – so that means they love us and they don’t plan for that to change.  I believe that is why God built men to generally be so emotionally and spiritually stable and largely unchanging – contrasted with the  wives who represent God’s people.

Creativity

Just as God is the Creator of the universe and the world, He put into the hearts and minds of men His spark of creativity and desire to build. Think of the civilizations that have been built by the power, strength, intelligence, creativity and problem-solving skills of men.

Gentleness/Tenderness

The combination of God’s unlimited and terrifying power and His identity as being Love Itself is the essence of God’s design for manhood. Raw muscle and strength meets tender love and compassion – that is the grandeur of manhood, the design that God has in mind for His men.

Yes, He designed them to be leaders, but not to lord their power over their wives or families but to be gentle, humble, servant-leaders like Christ. This is where the real power is for men in marriage! Godly masculinity is about self-sacrifice for the good of the marriage, for the good of the wife, for the good of the family.

Self Sacrifice

God designed men to represent the sacrificial love of Jesus for His bride, the church.  When men feel respected and know their wives believe in them and have total faith  in them – God wired them to want to respond to that honor by serving.  Respect fuels a man’s desire to give of himself to protect others.  He is often at his very best when he knows that his wife and family are depending on him and feels the daily affirmation, encouragement and appreciation from his wife in particular.

A Different Perspective on Life

God gave men a different kind of brain than He gave women. A man’s brain is much less complex (in that there are millions less connections between the two halves of the brain) and it is streamlined to focus on one thing at a time and to generally see the big picture and not be bogged down in intricate details.

A man is designed by God to be able to handle more weight physically, emotionally and spiritually than women are.

He Needs to Lead and Know His Wife Trusts and Believes Him

A man is built to need respect in order to thrive. Without his wife’s faith in him, life can seem like torture.

“Without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 6:11) and without faith in our men, it is impossible for them to become all they are meant to be and impossible for us to have the intimacy we long for in our marriages.

Masculinity is so beautifully designed by God to be a reflection of His character – it is not a perfect reflection (because of sin), but a godly man’s patience, tendency not to hold grudges, quickness to forgive, generosity, drive to be the provider and breadwinner, motivation to be the protector, tender love and affection towards his wife, attraction for her, and the desire to make his wife happy – these are all qualities of Christ towards us!

We dare not tamper with the mystery of Christ and the church by demanding that husbands become more feminine or by declaring that masculinity is “wrong.”  Men are DIFFERENT from women.  That’s a good thing!  It’s something to be celebrated.  They are not wrong to be men(God's handwork).

Feminity,Gods Design And Masterpiece

At its core, femininity is about being receptive, gentle, soft, delicate, beautiful, graceful, peaceful, nurturing, priceless, worthy of being adored and cherished physically, emotionally and spiritually. God designed wives to represent the kind of devotion, love, reverence, adoration and willingness to submit that God desires His people to have for Christ.

A Counter-Intuitive Brand of Power and Influence

God gave women a more subtle kind of power than He gave men. But our power in marriage is almost unimaginable to attract and draw our husbands towards us if we can tap into our abilities to use our immense verbal skills to build up our men, to praise them for everything we see that we appreciate and admire, and if we are willing to step down from the leadership role and become cheerful, joyful, prayerful, willing followers of our husbands.

We have been taught that to be powerful, we must be masculine (as the world defines masculinity) and force, demand and manipulate our way in marriage. And when our husbands turn on us in anger or withdraw from us and stonewall, we just turn up the volume and the pressure – not even realizing that we are destroying our marriages and our men and becoming the women we never wanted to be.

Our power is in our gentle, peaceful femininity that is full of trust and not consumed by fear and worry!

Our power in marriage is in our ability to be delighted whenever our husband does something kind, generous, loving or thoughtful.

Our smiles, our joy, our praise, our admiration, our respect, our willingness to trust our men – this is where our God-given strength and influence is in marriage!

Our Appearance

There is power in our feminine appearance. There is power and beauty in our  delicate features. There is power in looking and acting like a God-fearing, self-respecting, men-respecting lady.

Dressing femininely (and modestly in public) reminds our husbands of our softness and that we are so very different from them. Our husbands are attracted to our beauty – but they are also attracted to our feminine spirit.

God gave us beautiful bodies and beautiful, soft, receptive hearts and souls that are precious, valuable and meant to be prized and cherished by our husbands.

We are generally more delicate physically/emotionally/spiritually than our men are

We are more easily unbalanced, upset, wounded, destroyed and broken if we are treated harshly or handled roughly. God gave us our strong husbands to protect us and keep us safe – not just from physical threats but also from emotional and spiritual threats.

We as wives represent the church and our husbands represent Christ. 

God made us the givers of life!

He designed our bodies to bear children and nurse babies and gave us very complex brains that can handle many tasks and intricate details all at the same time so that we can care for our children, homes, cooking, husbands and all the details of all the responsibilities that are ours efficiently.

He designed us to focus on relationships, love and details – that we might be the perfect helpmeets for our husbands.

The Gift of Our Strong Emotions

God gave us powerful emotions to be a barometer of how things are going in our marriages and relationships so that we could detect problems and address them before they get out of control. But sometimes we must lean on God’s Word and our husband’s word and not listen to our emotions when they are undependable – just like God admonishes us to “trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding” in Proverbs.

I believe that a wife’s emotions are very important for her to share with her husband.  But she can share them in a way that doesn’t blame him

The husband needs that information – and then he can decide how best to handle the situation.  He is able to make the wisest decisions when he understands my feelings, my perspective and my desires.  I believe it is a wife’s duty to share these things with her husband respectfully.

A Unique Perspective

God designed women to NEED love. We are made to need WORDS of love and ACTS of love from those we hold dear.  I believe that our needs are very purposeful so that we demonstrate how God’s people, His church, needs His Word and needs to see His acts of provision and love to be able to trust in Him and worship Him properly.

We actually get a big rush of oxytocin (the bonding hormone) when we read our loved ones’ love messages to us.  We feel so connected to them by words – written and spoken.  Isn’t that amazing how we represent the church with Christ and how the church can’t see Jesus, but we have His Word to meditate on and to delight in?   I love that parallel!

The greater connections between the halves of a woman’s brain and the huge connection between emotion and memories makes it very easy for women to bring up past hurts and makes it much harder for us to forgive generally than it is for men. I don’t think that is by accident, either!

The many facets of our thinking, our emotions, our spiritual needs for security, the way our bodies are designed – it is all to work in complement to our husbands to demonstrate the mystery of Christ and the church.

God says that our greatest beauty comes from a “gentle and peaceful (quiet) spirit that does not give way to fear” (I Peter 3:4). There is also incredible beauty in us when we are willing to do things God’s way and show respect to our men and be willing to follow them and honor their position as leader in our marriages.

When I show genuine admiration and respect for my husband, and demonstrate that am trusting his leadership and allowing him to carry the weight of decisions, trusting that he will do what is best for me and my family – my respect and submission to his leadership make him want to cherish and adore me (unless he is VERY far from God or involved in extremely serious sin). He wants to please me and make me happy. He wants to do the best possible job and not disappoint me when he sees all my faith is in him. Following him doesn’t make him want to abuse and hurt me, it makes him want to serve, protect and provide for me.

My Prayer

I pray that we might hold both genders and the design of God for manhood, womanhood and marriage in awe. I pray we might embrace our men being masculine and not try to make them be like us. I pray that we might be willing to give up our attempts to be masculine that drain us of life and energy and embrace our femininity and discover the power that God has given us as women to build up our homes, our men and our children. Such a burden is lifted off of our shoulders when we aren’t trying to be something we aren’t!!  Embracing God’s design for me brings me fulfillment, peace, joy, power and freedom!  I pray we might boldly show the world that we cherish the gift of femininity that God has given us and that we might set Godly examples for our children so that the gender lines won’t be blurred, but that God might be richly glorified in our marriages and homes.