Journey to Surrender

So here we go.

Today I begin writing publicly on the topic of marriage for the first time, and I have to admit that I am starting this endeavor with some trepidation.

You see, I’m well aware of the heated contention in the church around the topic of authority and submission in marriage. I fully expect even some friends and family to take exception to some of what I will write in this blog.  I’m even more sure of the general disdain many unchurched people who stumble upon this blog will hold for what the Bible says on this controversial topic.

Yes, I know full well the violently negative reaction some will have to what I intend to write here.  Yet, I feel compelled to write anyway. So why?

You can start by reading the general information about me and this blog by clicking the "about" button at the top of this page, but the real story of what started me on my own Journey to Surrender requires a bit more explanation. So bear with me as I backtrack to where this all started.

My journey began several years ago, during a season of intensive personal Bible study on the topic of marriage, which for the most part was an effort to fully understand my own role as a husband from a biblical perspective. I’d always had a good, solid marriage and always believed that marriage was a sacred and holy institution, ordained by God, as traditional wedding vows state. Yet I felt God calling me to a deeper understanding.

At around the same time came a great awakening in my soul as to how God actually feels about me personally. Through a number of amazing personal encounters with God and some relevant teachings I began to realize that His love for me is so much more than the somewhat cerebral understanding I’d always had about the love of God. I discovered that God is full of intense emotion, fiery passion, and unstoppable zeal toward me. I began to see how much He delights in me, just as I am, weak and fallible though I am. I realized that God is not some mostly mad, mostly sad remote dictator, angrily and precariously dangling me by my feet over the pit of hell, waiting for me to screw up one more time before he lets go. Rather, I found out that the Bible really means it when it says, “God is love.” It’s who he is. He can’t help it. Love is his very nature. What an amazing and life-changing discovery that was for me.

Part of my understanding about the love of God came from a concept some call “the bridal paradigm,” which is nothing more than an understanding of the biblical declaration that we, as the church, are the bride of Christ. In light of this revelation, I saw the extent to which the Bible is really a love story – a love story that ends in a wedding. Jesus is the groom that God sent to the world to make a way for us to be with him forever, and you and I are the bride in this eternal love story. So we know that marriage has been on the heart of God since before there was time. And certainly when he thought up marriage, he had something specific in mind. What kind of God would he be if he didn’t?

Suddenly, as these seemingly unrelated truths all started to fit together, a startling realization began to overtake me: God, the one who created marriage in the first place, designed it to operate in a very specific way, and he gave us an incredible template of that design through the marriage of his Son, Jesus, to the church, His bride.

So there you have it: the essence of the genesis of this blog. The following quote appears in the sidebar, but bears repeating here as the summation of its theme:

• Having our hearts awakened to the love relationship that Jesus has with us as His bride, I believe, is the key to a vibrant, passionate and intimate relationship between husband and wife.

Still not sure about all this? Well, I challenge you to keep an open mind and to stick with me as we start this journey, the one I call The Journey to Surrender.