Most of us have been to more than a couple of weddings over our life time and in those weddings we always hear, I take you (your wife's name), to be my wife, loving you now and as you grow and develop into all that God intends. I will love you when we are together and when we are apart; when our lives are at peace and when they are in turmoil; when I am proud of you and when I am disappointed in you; in times of rest and in times of work. I will honor your goals and dreams and help you to fulfill them. From the depth of my being, I will seek to be open and honest with you. I say these things believing that God is in the midst of them all. Or in simpler words, I promise to love, honor and respect you until death do us part."
Will we love our bride as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her? Will we love her as we love our self? Robert McQuilkin, the beloved former president of Columbia Bible College, and his wife, Muriel, who suffered with advanced signs of Alzheimer's disease. In march of 1990 Dr. McQuilkin announced his resignation with these words:
My dear wife, Muriel, has been in failing mental health for about eight years. So far I have been able to carry both her ever-growing needs and my leadership responsibilities at CBC. But recently it has become apparent that Muriel is contented most of the time she is with me and almost none of the time I am away from her. It is not just "discontent, " She is filled with fear-even terror-that she has lost me and always goes in search of me when I leave home. Then she may be full of anger when she cannot get to me. So it is clear to me that she needs me now, full time.
Perhaps it would help you to understand if I shared with you what I shared at the time of the announcement of my resignation in chapel. The decision was made, in a way, 42 years ago when I promised to care for Muriel "in sickness and in health... till death do us part." So, as I told the students and faculty, as a man of my word, integrity has something to do with it. But so does fairness. She has cared for me fully and sacrificially all these years; if I cared for her for the next 40 years I would not be out of dept. Duty, however, can be grim and stoic. But there is more; I love Muriel. She is a delight to me - her childlike dependence and confidence in me, her warm love, occasional flash of that wit I used to relish so, her happy spirit and tough resilience in the face of her continual distressing frustration. I do not have to care for her, I get to! It is a high honor to care for so wonderful a person.
Christlike love did not just happen. It came from a husband of who was disciplined and grounded in the word of God.
Have you ever noticed that old married people will tend to resemble each other? In Ephesians 5:31 Paul say, "When a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, the two will become one flesh. One flesh tends to resemble each other after 40 years. As Christians, in a marriage we have the same Lord, the same family, the same children, the same future, and the same ultimate destiny. We as married men have a call on our life to love with a willingness to sacrifice, even unto death.
Marriage is a call to die, and a man who does not die for his wife does not come close to the love to which he is called. Christian marriage vows are the inception of a lifelong practice of death, of giving over not only all you have, but all you are. In fact, those who lovingly die for their wives are those who know the most joy, hove the most fulfilling marriages, and experience the most love. When we can come to the point where her needs, worries and concerns are more important than our own, this is when we have learned selfless love. This takes strength, it takes a strong man to put her above himself. Are you strong enough?
Right from the start we make a huge commitment to love, honor and respect our wife till death do us part. Men we are called to self love, to love our wife as our own bodies, to care for them as Christ does the Church. Loving our wife's body as our own demands a physical, emotional and social incarnation. For the woman who is loved like this is envied, but even more is the man who loves his wife as Christ loved the Church.
It is time we look back and recall the promises we made right from the start...I do, how about you?
If you can change the heart of a MAN and save a marriage, then we have saved another mother and child from pain.
Reach a man, gain a family!
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