Wedding Wednesday: Scripture

I haven't talked a whole lot about our wedding on here, but I wanted to talk about one part of our ceremony that I spent a long time working on: Scripture.

The ceremony was the most important part of the day for us. I spent hours pouring over the scripture and listening to different hymns that were presented to us by my family's church.

Today I wanted to focus on the scripture that we used in our ceremony. We had two different scripture pieces, one Psalm and one Gospel piece read during our ceremony.

Not included in those 4 pieces was a piece of scripture printed on the front our programs that we want to be the foundation of our marriage.

A three-fold cord is not easily broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12

We always want to have God at the center of our marriage. This scripture represents when you have God at the center of the relationship and you both are pursuing Him that it will not be easy to break apart your marriage. All things are possible through Him. Now that is my take on that scripture, and it may not be what everyone believes it to mean.

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
    as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
    jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
    the very flame of the Lord.
 Many waters cannot quench love,
    neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
    all the wealth of his house,
    he would be utterly despised.

Song of Solomon 8:6-7

Unless the Lord builds the house,
    those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early
    and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
    for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
    the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
    are the children of one's youth.
Blessed is the man
    who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
    when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Psalm 127

This Psalm spoke so deeply to us. God is the center of our marriage and we need to make sure our home is built according to His will. This is something that we are constantly working on, and I believe that it will always be something that we will have to work on. I love the reminder that children are a gift form the Lord. They are the greatest gift (besides the gift of Christ and his sacrifice) that we will ever receive. Whenever the day comes for us to have our own children (adopted or biological) we hope to bring them up in the ways of the Lord. We pray that they see the Lord working in our marriage and our lives. We pray that they will crave to have a relationship with the Lord all the days of their lives.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,  bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:12-17

This scripture is one that really spoke to my heart as I was surrounded by such a wonderful group of believers who were constantly pushing me to be a better version of myself and to become more Christ-like in college. It took on a whole new meaning as Pat and I were preparing ourselves for marriage. Marriage is really really hard, y'all. You have to be constantly prayerful in reminding yourself that your spouse is imperfect just as you are. I pray constantly that Pat continues to grow more in Christ and become more Christ-like. This also means that I pray that Pat sees Christ in me and my actions. That means forgiving him for a wrong even when my pride is telling me no and showing him love on his darkest days.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching,  for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”

Matthew 7:21, 24-29

I tried to tie all of our scripture together so it would give a strong message to all of those in the church that day. We both felt strongly (and still do!) about the foundation of our marriage being built on Christ and his love. By building our marriage on Christ we will always have someone to look to in all the hard times and know that a hard time is a teaching moment. A hard time is not a moment for our marriage covenant to fall apart, it is a time for us to grow stronger as a couple and to grow closer to Christ. Now I'm not saying that will be easy or that we will not want to buck the system (so to speak) from time-to-time, but it is so wonderful knowing that we will always have Christ and that he is always on our side. 

We both strongly believed in starting our marriage by taking part in Communion. Communion is a symbol of Christ's sacrifice for us when he died on the cross. It is such a beautiful picture and it meant a lot to us to start our marriage by taking part in Communion with our families and friends.

What scripture did you/do you want to use in your own ceremony? Picking out scripture and putting our ceremony together was such a fun time for us. We really hope that people walked away from our ceremony seeing Christ in every aspect and perhaps drawing closer to him.