Half truths and lies of convenience are like a house of cards – the slightest breeze and they will fall! They render us incapable of sustaining a healthy marriage or friendship. Lack of complete candor and forthright transparency always leads to hurt, mistrust and confusion. Always.

Our words and how we speak them is always a strong indicator of what is really in our heart.

Stop and think with me about this for just moment: what do your words reveal about your heart in your marriage? Family? Friendships? Church? Do your words reveal the love and admiration you have for those closest to you? Do your words reveal your belief that you are building a cathedral for the glory of God? Do your words reveal that your heart longs to be a blessing to those closest to you?

Hear more this Sunday.

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Can we all agree that it is not easy to be us? All of us have baggage from our families of origin, hurts and scars from previous relationships, personalities and characters with good and not so good qualities; anxieties, fears and insecurities; and all of us are sinners. All of us. We are prone to not do what we should do, and do what we should not do.  It is not easy to be us….and even more fundamentally it is not easy to live with us.  Therefore every marriage produces trash that needs to be dealt with.

How do we take out the trash? Hear more this Sunday….

Marriage Morph: April 15 – May 27, 2012

Annie Dillard in her Pulitzer Prize winning work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek described a childhood memory involving a giant moth. The cocoon, discovered in winter, had been brought into her classroom and the combination of the indoor heating and all the children holding the cocoon led to its untimely and unfortunate emergence. The cocoon was placed in a large mason jar and the giant moth emerged to the delight and the wonder of the classroom. Mason jars however are not the intended location for giant moths to morph and the moth didn’t have room to spread its wings. Rather than opening to their full size and glory the wings hardened into a wrinkled, twisted and much smaller variation. Her final memory of the moth was watching it crawl away one day, unable to fly as intended.

That is, unfortunately, what is happening all too frequently with marriage.

Marriage was God’s idea. He created it, blessed it and said there was a very clear pathway that would make it work. But just like children who bring cocoons indoors and force things to happen out of the intended context, too often the same thing happens to marriage. Rather than being an incredible gift of mystery and beauty mirroring the love of Jesus for his people, marriage has instead become something similar to what Annie Dillard described. It may be a marriage but it is not the glory, grace and mystery that could have been.
Our era of relational brokenness has been normalized to the point that many no longer even believe that marriage can be beautiful. Some question whether marriage is even necessary. Still others point out that we are all just broken vessels and none of us should expect that anything in life, let alone marriage, will ever be anything other than broken.

I disagree.

There is a way to see marriages become experiences of beauty and grace. There is a way to see marriages flourish with life-long commitments and mutual growth. There is a way to see marriages start right, keep going and morph into relationships of incredible blessing. Just as a moth can morph and not end up twisted and broken if it morphs when and where it is supposed to, marriage can be beautiful if we understand what God intended. You won’t find the perfect marriage by searching for your soul mate, shacking up on a trial basis, procreating in hopes that “it will all work out”, or settling for something less- than.
You will find it when you simply return to what God designed, follow the path he created and work at it with his help. Your marriage can morph into something spectacular and you can avoid a lot of brokenness and pain but you need to do something unusual to people in our culture. You need to follow what the Creator intended. It really comes down to your choice: You can settle for a “normal” marriage or you can have something beautiful and amazing that will work as it was intended to work.

What will you choose?

I invite you on a journey this spring called “Marriage Morph”. If you are married, this series is for you. If you are getting married, you need to prayerfully consider these truths and weave them into the core of your marriage relationship. If you are divorced and recovering, you need to consider the beauty that God intended and not the brokenness you have endured. If you are not married but have children, or friends or grandchildren who are getting married you need to hear these truths to know how to pray and encourage them. If you hope to some day be married, do you not want the beauty, grace and mystery that God intended? If so then you need to hear these truths. All of us will benefit from reviewing again the beauty that God intended for marriage.

Marriages can morph and beauty can be found but we need to follow the pathway that was given. Please, don’t settle for less than what is possible; instead, join us on our journey to Marriage Morph.

Pastor Larry

April 15  – Starting Right
April 22 – Did you take out the Trash?
April 29 – Where is God in this story?
May 6 – Best Friends? Really?
May 13 – Blessings
May 20 – Friends Tell the Truth
May 27 – Don’t Quit

I love Velcro.

The way that Velcro hooks into and attaches itself to other fabrics is legendary and can be a lot of fun. Think about a Velcro wall for instance-the possibilities are limitless!

Velcro serves another purpose in my life however-every time I use it I am reminded of how marriage is supposed to work.

Hear more this Sunday at 9:15am and 11:00am