An old fashioned wedding

I'm developing a real good sense of humor with regards to my wedding. I'm tempted to sing this song. It starts around 1:50 ish. It's a medley of a couple of songs and they cut out some verses, but i included them below for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!


Frank:
We’ll have an old fashioned wedding
Blessed in the good old fashioned way
I’ll vow to love you forever
You’ll vow to love and honour and obey
Somewhere in some little chapel
Someday when orange blossoms bloom
We’ll have an old fashioned wedding
An simple wedding for an
Old-fashioned bride and groom

Annie:
I want a wedding in a big church
With bridesmaids and flower girls
A lot of ushers in tailcoats,
Reporters, and photographers
A ceremony with a bishop
who will tie the not and say
Do you agree to love and honour,
Love and honour yes, but not obey
I want a wedding ring surrounded
By diamonds and platinum
A big reception at the Waldorf
With Champaign and caviar
I want a wedding like the Vanderbilt’s had
Everything big not small
If I can’t have that kind of a wedding
I don’t want to be married at all.

A months roundup

A roundup of some good articles i've been reading lately:


Rejoice with those - Suzanne Hadley on Boundless
Seven Myths Single Women Believe - Suzanne Hadley on Boundless Webzine
What If He Leads Wrong? - Heather Koerner on Boundless Webzine

Could I love my husband as Titus 2 commanded me? I had no doubt. Could I be a "helpmeet" as I was created to be? I had every desire to.

But could I, really, submit to my husband?

I knew that the Lord created man, woman and marriage. Still, the deep-down, honest answer was: Of course, I could submit ... as long as he is right.

Of course, my husband should be the head of the household ... as long as I agree with what he's doing. Of course, he should lead ... as long as I have pre-approved the path.

But what exactly am I supposed to do, my gut wrenched, when he is wrong? When he wants to make (what I really believe to be) a mistake? When he's leading badly or choosing the wrong path for himself — or worse, for us?

Spirit-led Leadership: David vs Saul and 3 Leadership Differences between David & Saul on Resurgence blogs. They also feature these tiny Friday Proverbs...

Also from the short and sweet bites of gospel truths of The Blazing Center on A Year Without Toilet Paper.

Here Comes the Bride

Every summer you can always find me at the nearest Target a little more than usual. It's not that I get a sudden urge to shop there when the temperature rises, it is simply that my summers lately have been filled with weddings and wedding showers for friends. At the dawn of the first day of summer the wedding invitations begin pouring in, and our weekends are quickly booked with all of the festivities of our friends and loved one's happy nuptials.

As women, many of us have been planning our wedding since we were five years old, down to the color of the flowers and the number of attendants that we have already chosen. All we're really missing is the groom, and we are pretty certain that he will come soon to sweep us off of our feet and carry us off to wedded bliss. This is not wrong. In fact, we should desire marriage and look forward to that day, should God choose to give us that. But the end result of our wanting to be married should be a hope in a marriage as the corporate Bride to a very different man-the God man, Jesus Christ.

Marriage exists to point people to the Gospel, and it's really easy to lose sight of that when we desperately desire marriage here on earth. We often have a Hollywood understanding of marriage, thinking that our life will be complete when that "perfect man" comes to our doorstep and promises us love and happiness forever. The perfect man did come, and will come again to redeem His Bride, the Church.

For many of us, our days are spent dreaming of a marriage here on earth, even to the extent that with the first "hello" from an eligible bachelor we are planning the big event before we even know his name. And for others, we can probably confess that we are all too guilty of confusing a phone call with a marriage proposal. Are we content with our only marriage being the final marriage where we are eternally joined to our Bridegroom, Christ? Carolyn McCulley says that if Jesus came back tomorrow and you are disappointed because you aren't married yet, you are idolizing an earthly husband, and desiring the wrong marriage. I think she's right.
The marriage we should long for is the final marriage that all marriages should point to, Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). Jesus is not our own personal boyfriend/fiancé/husband. The marriage supper of the Lamb is not an individualized marriage. We will not each be personally walking down the aisle to Jesus in the last day, despite what some women's Bible studies and worship songs express. He is the Bridegroom of the Church collectively, of which we are a part if we are in Christ. In our preparation to meet our Groom, our lives should reflect less of an American, individualistic ideology, and more of the reality of the Christian community found in the book of Acts, where our brothers and sisters laid down their lives for the building up of the local church. This might mean that we should spend more time changing diapers in the nursery and sitting in the pews under the Word of God, than picking out our wedding songs and drooling over designer dresses.

We muddy the Gospel when we bank all of our happiness on a marriage here on earth. Instead, let us cry out with the whole earth "come quickly, Lord Jesus!" All of our right, earthly desires for a husband are here to give us a temporary picture of an eternal reality-the Gospel.

I am all for marriage here on earth, and I love going to weddings where God is glorified in the joining of two Christians declaring a covenant before God and His people. As Calvin said, our hearts are idol factories, and every good and biblical desire always has the potential to replace God as our object of worship. Whenever I am struggling with whether or not a desire is an idol, a question I always ask myself is "if God chose to never fulfill this desire in my life, would I still love Him? Would I still desire to serve Him?" Those are hard questions to ask, because more often than not, I find myself chaffing at the idea of not getting what I want. But as we seek to honor God with our desires, let us keep an eternal perspective. Resolve today, dear Christian, to love and serve your local congregation, members of the Church. And dream of the greatest wedding party of all, where thoughts of the Vera Wang dress will fade away in the face of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

"Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready."-Revelation 19:6-7

Courtney Tarter
October 1, 2007
from the CBMW website.

I swear...

I swear i will not spend more time prinking myself in the mirror than i am praying.
I swear i will not waste any minute with nonsensical chitchatter but have meaningful however-short-it-may-be conversations.
I swear to stop swearing at people. 

I swear i will hold on tight to my future husband's hand.
I swear i will trust him.
I swear i will pray even harder, knowing i trust him.

Dithering

You know it's funny huh, how the world works. You'd think people would be glad for us to take up a huge responsibility than to run away from it. Isn't it a relief we want to be married, not sleeping together while dating? Isn't it a happy occasion that we want to serve God together in marriage? Aren't responsible choices supposed to be celebrated?

Interesting how good things are made bad and bad things made good.. how irresponsibility and self-centredness is celebrated and the opposite frowned upon..

Maranatha!

some pretty bridesmaids outfits

Who says unmatched bridesmaids won't look nice? Who says they have to carry flowers? These look lovely!

See this cutesy wedding with a sense of humor? Well, it's not mine.

See this gorgeous one? Not mine either.

Lastly, see this level of happiness and joy? Sigh. Same as above.

"Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Just remember that Jesus rebuked that at his disciple. Not even at the Pharisees. HIS DISCIPLE.

It's just as easy for us to think we're okay. Be warned.
When you're not setting your mind on how to live how God wants you to, when your minds are so busy pleasing yourself and everyone else on earth, you're doing Satan's work. If you care more about what people think than what God thinks, you're helping Satan. If you are living life more committed to your studies, your family, yourself... you might as well be the same as Satan himself. Be ashamed to call yourself a disciple of Jesus. Be completely remorseful at calling yourself a Christian.

It's got us all unexcited now

Making people happy doesn't go anywhere, cos there's always more to make happy and there's no end to wanting happiness. Well, since its necessary, might as well make the best of it. I am determined to make sure that the both of us are happy too. So there. Read all you want out of that.

What Precisely Is the Gospel? - Jeff Purswell, reblogged post

What does the New Testament present as the gospel?

A good place to begin is Mark’s gospel. At the outset of the book, the author immediately alerts us to the significance of what will follow: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). this heading flows directly into the remainder of the prologue (Isaiah’s prophecy, John the Baptist, and Jesus’s baptism/temptations)—indicating that these introductory events are the “beginning of the gospel,” while the balance of Mark’s narrative presents the rest of the gospel.

What’s the point? For Mark, the gospel is the story about Jesus—the good news of all that Jesus did in his life and ministry and death and resurrection.

We see a similar idea in the early preaching of the church. When Peter is summoned to Cornelius’s home and discovers that God is behind this miraculous chain of events, his presentation of the gospel (“proclaiming the good news of peace”—Acts 10:36b) is an outline of Jesus’s ministry, beginning with John the Baptist on through to his resurrection and commissioning of the apostles to proclaim forgiveness through his name (Acts 10:36-41; cf. 2:22-24; 3:13-15).... Once again, the gospel is the news of what God was doing through Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection.

Paul uses the term gospel more than any other NT writer. Of course, one of the most familiar renditions of “gospel” in the NT is Paul’s summary statement in 1 Corinthians 15:1ff: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you...For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…” Again, the gospel consists of what Jesus did to save us.

So what is the gospel?

Although this brief survey is far from complete, it consistently reveals that the gospel is good news concerning Jesus and what he did to accomplish salvation for sinners. 

In other words, the gospel is objective. It tells us what God has done to save his people. It consists of concrete, historical events, rooted in Old Testament promises, types, and institutions that were fulfilled in Jesus. It promises that all who trust in Christ and his work will receive forgiveness and life. Of course, this isn’t merely a catalogue of events of only historical interest; all of this has massive implications for our lives. But we must not confuse the gospel message itself with the outworking of those implications.

So, for example, although the gospel calls me to respond to what Jesus has done, strictly speaking it doesn’t include my response—repentance is not the gospel. Although the gospel introduces me to a life lived in glad obedience to God, strictly speaking it doesn’t include that life of obedience. Our existence as Christians involves unspeakable privileges, significant responsibilities, and untold promise. But those things themselves are not the gospel.  

End of excerpt by me. Read the rest of the post here. 

Is it too much to ask for...

...to have a smiley happy wedding? A peaceful one? A solemn one? A pretty one? A creatively distinct one? One that's like the one i've been dreaming of?

Yes. Perhaps. I sorely wish it all be done my way or the highway, easy peasy.

Yet Lord, not my will but yours be done.

Give it up already

like any little girl playing dress up with mommy's veil and tee tottering high heels, i harbored dreams of a beautiful wedding. My wedding. It may not have been conventional, or normal, or even close to anything you could possible think of, but it was a dream no less.

I realize that i have to give it up, for the good of the gospel. I've got to seriously think of what my heart is like, whether i just want it cos my dreams are this fantastic certain way or whether its truly for the good of the gospel. In no way does that mean i am giving up the gospel in my wedding or in my life, but i am certainly having to reconsider a lot of things.

On an off tangent, did you know that artists works are most expensive after they die? Just a stray thought.

John Piper : Think Christ

At a recent conference in Germany, John Piper talked about why right thinking is so important for Christians:

1. It is possible to have strong feelings and be lost if the feelings are not based on knowledge (Romans 10:1-2).
2. God has planned that thinking about the Bible is the means he uses to give understanding (2 Timothy 2:7).
3. Paul is given as an example of reasoning with the Bible (Acts 17:2-3).
4. Jesus assumes and requires that we will use logic in understanding both what is natural and what is spiritual (Luke 12:54-57).
5. Jesus refuses to deal with people who use their reason to conceal truth (Matthew 21:23-27).
6. Thirteen times in Paul’s letters, he asks the question, “Do you not know?” Paul assumes that if his readers knew something, they would see things differently, feel differently, and act differently.
7. The Bible tells us that Christ has given pastors and teachers to the church and tells us that they should be apt to teach—because God intends that the Bible be explained to ordinary folks who don’t have the time or ability to go as deep as God wants them to go. Christ would not have given teachers to the church if he thought they were not needed.
8. The Bible declares that we should proclaim the whole council of God (Acts 20:27). That implies that there is a coherent unified whole, a body of doctrine, that should be given to the church. It is not easy to find this whole council in a book with 1,500 pages! It’s mainly mental labor. Finding the unified biblical theology that the people need to know takes hard thinking.
9. The Bible is a book, which means that it must be read.
10. An example of how thinking and valuing and acting relate to each other is Matthew 7:7-12.

Read the rest here.

Reposted from the Resurgenceblog.