To Honor and Obey

“My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you”

Proverbs 7:1 ESV

I’ve been married for about six and half months now. It’s awesome, but not really because of me. I’m nothing special. I have red hair, but that’s about it. On the other hand, my wife is fantastic! She bakes and cleans like a fiend, is the most beautiful drop of sunshine I’ve ever seen, and she has a soothing way about her. I love her so much; I’d do just about anything for her. But that’s not all of it. That’s not all of it… there is something more.

I think that that something is that we spend time together and do things together and do things for each other. We participate in life together. I’ve heard for years that my relationship with Christ should be like that. We – the church – should be His Bride and He the Bridegroom and I thought “Oh! What a wonderful picture of how we as Christians should live our lives” and left it at that. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? Just because two people are in the same room doesn’t mean they doing life together or living intimately. There must be something more to our relationship with Christ.

If I love my wife, I’ll listen and treasure what she has to say. I’ll remember to pick up my clothes or make the bed or take out the trash. Certainly I will forget sometimes, and I won’t always tell or show her how much I love her, but I will always come back to her and serve and tell her “I love you” and train myself to do these things as second nature. How much more I should be doing the same thing with Christ! He is always present with me; His Spirit dwells within my heart; He is my redeemer! Surely if I can learn the second nature of marriage I can learn the first nature of Christhood. Should it be anymore difficult? Do I make it more difficult than it ought to be? What a simple request from a God who has poured out such an expensive perfume over me: to keep His words and treasure his commandments. Are his other commands so costly, so difficult?

I pray that we, as his Church and as a people, will stand up in devotion to Christ rather than remain his demanding, reluctant, and adulterous bride.