Enter The Partner

How did we ever get to a place where we are at in society discussing the virtues of whether or not Marriage is this or Marriage is that?  Are we so daft as to believe that we can upend thousands of years of human history to re-define what a marriage relationship is?  While I won't answer that question outright, I can see that we didn't get here overnight as there has been a very subversive attempt at re-defining marriage into a secular institution,  Enter the "partner." 

We have all seen what has taken place over the last several years as corporations, political entities, clubs, advertisers, writers, reporters, bloggers and even religious organizations have supplanted the word "spouse" or "husband" and "wife" for "partner."  The insidiousness of this replacement is such that it relegates the idea of marriage to a legal partnership.  The law has been doing this for many years due to our inadequacy to truly deal with marriage relationships that results in the over abundance of divorce.  In a divorced situation you have legal parameters that treat everything as if  you were in a partnership.  Thus reducing the institution of marriage to a business deal and here's where the decline begins.  The reality is we can all identify with a business deal, a contract of "you do this and i'll do that," but can we truly identify with the institution of marriage, hence "the two shall become one flesh." 

You see God's view was always that those entering into a marriage covenant (stronger than a contract) were now inseparable and to be viewed as a single entity.  The physical makeup of a man and woman notwithstanding, this has been pilfered by secular interests to simply be a partnership, 50/50, and yet God's idea was 100/100 to the point that together "we own everything and together we lose everything."  Marriage in God's mind is an all or nothing deal, "all of me and I don't require anything of you."  We failed to get that somehow and now we have secular society trying to dictate what should be included as a marriage relationship by this very basis, partnership, not covenant.  How did we get here?  We bought into this idea of partnership a long time ago.  The church itself sees divorce rates that mirror the secular environment which means we only saw it as a partnership.  We weren't on guard, we weren't honoring the sanctity of an institution that we now so desperately need to protect. 

Nonetheless, whatever might come of the decisions of the courts, the states and our nation over the next several years, Marriage will never be a secular thing, though a law might say it is, it will always and forever be a God given institution that can never be re-defined for those who worship and serve the one who created male and female. He created them to be a perfect union of His image and nothing and no one can take that away.  
 

My Heart Cries

"My Heart Cries" is a beautiful worship song on Covenant Churches Heaven on Earth worship album that I would recommend everyone to download.  It's content should be the cry of every professing Christian on earth, More of Jesus.  In fact we all see that in essence we should desire to get closer and closer to Jesus, yet a question that proceeds from my thoughts tonight is this, do we really know how to get close to Jesus? 

For me, I learned in Sunday School and children's church many years ago that when I pray and accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior He comes to live on the inside of me.  In fact this is what we teach and over and over again there are those that accept this as truth and ask Jesus to live on the inside of them.  To come in and clean house and make a dwelling place for His Spirit.  After all Paul said that we are "Temples of the Holy Spirit."  A place for His presence to dwell.  Kind of a funny thought if you were to envision little temples with feet running around everywhere.  But seriously though, do we want to get close to Jesus or are we just saying that because it sounds good and religious?  What if it meant getting closer to those around us?  After all if Jesus really does dwell in them, wouldn't relationships with His people matter a whole lot more than we give them credit for?  Or are we too quick to dismiss this one or that one because they didn't do something we liked or said something we didn't agree with?  Maybe we just need to pray a little longer in our prayer closet to know Jesus more?  Or maybe Jesus is saying get up, get out and get in touch with me inside of someone else! 

The sad fact is that too many people are distancing themselves by claiming the church is full of bigoted people and I reject christianity becuase of its followers and claim to still follow Jesus, yet the reality is the closer you get to Jesus, the closer you must get to His followers.  "I don't like the organized structure or I don't like the control, they ask for my money, they this, they that, they, they, they"  Have you stopped to wonder about yourself in all of the they?  Or take it one step further, have you ever stopped to wonder about Him in they?  Let's even go further, have we stopped to look at Him in those who we don't agree with?  If the Bible says that we are made in His image, shouldn't we be able to see Him through the acts that people perform and the dumb decisions made?  After all I am more than positive that those of us who have accepted Him have made just as many mistakes with Him living in us as we made without Him living in us.  But the reality exists that we still bear His image, whether we are atheist, agnostic, pentecostal, catholic, muslim, buddhist, etc......there is no denying that the closer we get to Jesus the closer we must get to His people.  And boy is it messy. 

Ask yourself today just how close you are to Him, truly close.