As part of our centennial celebrations, we’ve borrowed the idea of a renewal of wedding vows for those married in this church from the Okanogan Presbyterian Church who celebrated their centennial last year. It is a wonderful way to celebrate a piece of our history as we have couples spanning many years here today. But, also, I want us to draw inspiration from the promises they’ve kept. For, I don’t need to tell you, in our day, far too few are keeping those marriage promises. Do you realize that since 1960, the divorce rate in our country has doubled? And this must be viewed in the light of a ten-fold increase in the number of unmarried couples living together. Last year, nearly 4 in10 babies born were to unmarried couples. And, for these children born to cohabiting couples, three-fourths of them will see their parents split up before they reach age 16. And, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, single-parent households have displaced two-parent families as the most common household.

I think it is clear that we have a crisis today in maintaining healthy marriages. So today, I want us to think about the gift of marriage God has given us and learn how we can strengthen our marriages. The home is the basic social unit of society. If things go well there, they will go well in most of the rest of our society.

While I talk this morning about marriage vows, I’m well aware that not all of you are currently married. But most of what I’ll say is applicable to any relationship– so, apply it to your friendships or other family commitments or if marriage is in your future, to that time. And on this Father’s Day, it is always good to remind those of us who are fathers that the best gift we can give to our children is to love our wives.

PROMISES
What is the most important ingredient for a good marriage? While love comes to mind, I’m sure for most of us, I would suggest there is something even more foundational– making and keeping a promise. Romance is wonderful and falling in love is certainly one of life’s most thrilling experiences. But there comes a time in every relationship when you no longer feel the love you once felt. That does not mean you married the wrong person. It is an invitation to move on to a deeper level of love. Feelings are fickle– they come and go. True love, real love, the highest level of love modeled for us in Christ, is not tied to feelings. It involves action, doing what love would do regardless of how we feel. Love is something you do. Do loving things and the feelings will follow. That’s why I say the promise you make “to love and to cherish” is more important than the love you feel toward one another.

Stephen Covey in his best seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, makes this point in a memorable way.
            “At one seminar where I was speaking on the concept of proactivity, a man came up and said, ‘Stephen, I like what you’re saying. But every situation is different. Look at my marriage. I’m really worried. My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don’t love her anymore and she doesn’t love me. What can I do?”
            ‘The feeling isn’t there anymore?’ I asked.
            ‘That’s right,’ he reaffirmed. ‘And we have three children we’re really concerned about. What do you suggest?’
                        ‘Love her,’ I replied.
                        ‘I told you, the feeling just isn’t there anymore.’
                        ‘Love her.’
‘You don’t understand. The ...love just isn’t there.’
‘Then love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.’
‘How do you love when you don’t love?’
            ‘My friend, love is a verb. Love– the feeling– is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?’”
Stephen Covey’s counsel is thoroughly Biblical in this area.

The promises we make in our marriage vows are a powerful means of grace in holding us on course when our feelings might tempt us to do otherwise. In my premarital counseling I try to get  couples to think through the awesome declaration they are making in these vows. I tell them that there is much they don’t know about their future. One or both may face devastating disease or be a quadriplegic. Bad times beyond imagining may come. Losses will come and dreams be destroyed. We even list them in the marriage vows lest we be naive about this:
-           “For better, for worse;
-           for richer, for poorer;
-           in sickness and in health...”
But, on these unsettled seas of uncertainty about the future, a human promise is a truly awesome thing. You are saying to each other amid all these unknowns, there is one thing you can count on– I promise to be there (“to have and to hold”) and “to love and to cherish” you as long as we both shall live! No matter what, you can count on me. We will share the rest of our lives together. And by being there for each other, we will make the best better and the worst bearable. As Lewis Smedes says it so well,
“When we make a promise we take on our feeble wills to keep a future rendezvous with someone in circumstances we cannot possibly predict. We take it on ourselves to create our future with someone else no matter what fate or destiny may have in store. This is almost the ultimate freedom.”

It is this promise we made to each other before God that I submit is the most essential ingredient in your marriage. That is what will hold you together when everything within you wants to jump ship. Change is hard. Facing and dealing with our anger, our impatience, our selfishness, our laziness, and everything else that is un-Christlike in our hearts is difficult. It is much easier in the short-run to see the imperfections of our mate and look for someone more suitable. But the promise holds us, along with the command of our Lord, “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mtt. 19:6). And, in the staying and humbly examining your heart, you discover all sorts of garbage that God, in His grace, is using your spouse to help you understand.

 

GROWING THROUGH MARRIAGE
While we often look at marriage as something to make us happy, that is rather short-sighted. Making that our goal will lead to no end of problems because it is self-centered– “My spouse is here to make me happy!” Gary Thomas asks the question, “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?” Yes, that is Scriptural and the clear message of our text from Ephesians. Let me also hasten to add that happiness in general will be a byproduct of our growth in character, our growth in doing what love calls us to do in our marriages. I am convinced that once you’re married, forget about whether you married the right person. The point is to become the right person. Don’t question your choice, but decide to live with your choice. You’ve entered into a God-ordained life created to help you model Christ to the world. You do that by growing and developing in ways you could not by yourself. In so doing, there will be great joy in your relationship and you will be participating in God’s plan to redeem the world.

Good marriages don’t “just happen.” They require effort. Often it’s the little things that we let go that cause us to drift apart.

You may remember in 1990, the cargo ship, Hansa Carreir was caught in a severe tempest on its journey from South Korea to the U.S. A huge wave swept 21 shipping containers off its deck, 5 of which contained Nike shoes. Six months later, Steve McLeod, spotted a large clump of Nike shoes floating into shore along the Oregon coast. He took them to his Cannon Beach apartment to match them up. But, almost all the shoes were left-footed. This caught the attention of some local scientists working to decipher the Pacific’s ocean currents. They theorized the slight toe curvature caused the left-footed Nikes to slide easier into the southeast-bound California Current and the right-footed Nikes were better suited to the northeastward-bound Alaska Current. This tiny physical difference caused the mates to drift farther and farther from each other.

Checking with other scavengers, he found that indeed, a large number of shoes had beached in Queen Charlotte Sound, north of Vancouver Island. And, as predicted, they were right shoes. A meeting was arranged and in one day, 1,200 pairs of Nikes were re-united with their mates!

Often it is the little things, the little differences that cause us to drift apart in marriage. The longer we let things go and build, the more difficult it becomes to get back together. Yet, even then, if we will come to God for help and decide to keep our promise, we will be restored to the intimate relationship we desire.

Notice some of the main words in Eph. 5:21-33 in The Message paraphrase. Marriage should be based upon an attitude of “reverence,” being in awe of the person God has placed you with. It means “honoring,” building one another up and “cherishing” your spouse. And, it talks about “giving” in sacrificial ways that Christ modeled for us in laying down His life for our salvation. These are the daily things practiced in little ways that will keep us moving together.

CONCLUSION
I know that this may be uncomfortable for some of you who have had marriages fail. You may have done everything within your power to save it or you may feel like you gave up too soon. The point this morning is not blame or put anyone under a burden of guilt. God’s grace is sufficient. He forgives our penitent hearts. He gives new beginnings.

But it is good for us to draw courage and inspiration from those who have weathered the storms and hung in there– perhaps not perfectly, but nonetheless have been there because of a promise made. We need to hear that message in an age when promises are often broken when the going gets tough. There is no vow we take in this life of greater consequence than those we take in marriage. Around us we hear:“Go with your feelings, maximize your potential. If the person you married is holding you back, dump him or her for someone who meets your needs.” Because we know we may one day feel like that, we make a promise. And, in keeping it, we enter into a priceless school for character and growth into the nature of Jesus if we will let it be that.

As I was writing this, I learned that Ruth Graham, the 87-year-old wife of Billy Graham died. Just before her death, Billy said:
“Ruth is my soul mate and best friend, and I cannot imagine living a single day without her by my side. I am more in love with her today than when we first met over 65 years ago as students at Wheaton College."
That inspires me and makes we want to be vigilant in keeping those promises I made to Polly 39 years ago. And yes, love does grow deeper as we let God shape us through the mate He has blessed us with.

At weddings I perform, I almost always read from 1 Cor. 13, the way J. B. Phillips paraphrases it. There is no greater definition of love– love that goes beyond feelings to action. I close with those words.
Love is slow to lose patience,
it looks for a way of being constructive.
It is not possessive;
it is neither anxious to impress, nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.
It is not touchy.
It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. 
On the contrary it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.

Love knows no limit to its endurance,
no end to its trust, no fading of its hope;
it can outlast anything.

It still stands when all else has fallen.

In this life we have three lasting qualities:
faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.