How appropriate that God had the study of this chapter fall upon the very day of my 25th wedding anniversary. It’s hard to believe that 27 years ago Margie walked into my life and right into my very heart. I’ll never forget the first time we saw each other, it taught me many more lessons than just awestruck love. Since it ties right in with our lesson, please allow me to wax about the way Margie and I met.
I was 21 and working as the night manager at a small-town grocery store in Crandall, Texas. For me it was full-time college during the days and work at nights. I grew up in an even smaller nearby town, Combine, but attended K-12 at Crandall schools. It was only fitting that I got a job bagging groceries after school at the only store in town. (a position we lovingly called a “sack dog.”) Margie’s family had moved into Crandall to enjoy the small-town life and it was there amongst the fruits and vegetables of the produce section that God wonderfully arranged our meeting. People might run on about love at first sight but it’s true, it does happen, I'm a witness. When our eyes first met, Hallmark movie music started playing and we ran into each other’s arms in slow motion as a wind machine blew our hair. Well, that’s what it felt like anyway.
I immediately asked her to dinner and the romance bloomed like a hibiscus in the early morning. But the lesson I truly learned came from Margie’s clarifying questions of me. One of the very fist things she asked me was where I went to church. Now at this time I was not attending any church, nor had I ever attended church. I had never heard the gospel, was oblivious to the grace of Jesus and absolutely oblivious to God’s Word and what it said about two hearts sharing the same foundation, that is, a foundation in Him.
As we started to date, I started to attend church with Margie. And it was in these months that the exposure to God’s Word did what it has done to countless fortunate souls before. It changed my heart. It changed my mind. It changed my thinking and it changed the way I saw and reacted to the world. On my knees, I cried out to Jesus in my apartment in Garland, Texas in 1994, desperate for the hand of Christ to take the reins of my life. And it was Margie that showed me the way, right by my side, on her knees alongside me. Soon after that I walked into the Baptismal waters, once again, Margie was by my side, right there in the water.
Now all this might truly sound like some kind of Hallmark movie but folks, the lesson taught was clear. Like hearts for Jesus will pull together. Dislike hearts will pull in opposite directions. A heart that doesn't know Christ married to a heart that does know Christ, is destined to slowly move in it’s own direction. Like a boat that loses its mooring, a heart without Christ will drift on the currents of the world, no clear destination in its future. God’s Word is crystal clear about the equal yoke of marriage being Christ. And I praise God that Margie, some 27 years ago, loved, honored and respected God’s Word enough to not only recognize it, but to walk in obedience to its command.
Today in 1 Kings chapter 11 we are shown one of the harshest examples of this in all of God’s Word, the fall of Solomon. And what a fall it was. The wisest man on Earth, maybe in all of history, takes a catastrophic fall at the hands of love. The richest man of Earth, maybe in all of history, experiences a meteoric tumble into disgrace at the hands of unequally yoked relationships. A man that God had blessed exponentially, throws it all away thinking he could somehow show immunity to the Words of God.
God told Solomon in His Word, do not collect many wives. He collected 1,000. God told Solomon very clearly, do not take foreign wives. The bulk of his wives were gentile foreigners that did not know the one true God. Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Hittites, and Sidonians. God told Solomon that these women would have the uncanny ability to turn his very heart from God. Something I think Solomon surely thought could never happen to him. Yet we soon see Solomon actively worshiping, making offerings to, and even building temples to the false gods of his wives. To Baal and Ashteroth, he would perform gross sexual acts as was customary. To Molech, child sacrifice was necessary. But throughout this, I’m sure that Solomon somehow used his great wisdom to justify his behavior. That somehow love could mask the division that was occurring within his heart. You see, the power of unequal hearts will affect each other. And the power of this division will not relent. Two hearts destined to drift apart, sharing no spiritual anchor in this world.
Friends, I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to recollect. A believer and follower of Jesus Christ meets an unbeliever. They fall madly in love and then proceed to believe the lie that the power of their love will make them immune to the power of God’s Word. I am sorry to tell you that God’s promises will ring true regardless of human motives, human hope or human determination. Two hearts that are not equally yoked in Jesus Christ will see the world and the one that controls it do what it does, destroy and damage.
We see this clear message from Paul in 2 Corinthians, we see it from Peter in 1 Peter, and we see it from Matthew in his gospel. We even see the same identical message from Moses and Amos, recorded thousands of years earlier in the Old Testament. Folks just as with countless other commands in God’s Word, it’s a clear as bell. All that matters is what you do with it.
I praise God each and every day for the Biblically blessed marriage that He has called Margie and I into. For being in obedience to God allows for His great blessings to flow. And even though the last 25 years has had ups and downs, I’m thankful that throughout all of it, God has been the center and core of our union. For it is only when the husband and wife are constantly striving and yearning to become closer to Christ, that they can truly become closer to each other.
God bless you as strive for obedience to God’s Word in all you do today.
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