08/25/2025
Today I will celebrate my wife's birthday. I have lived with her longer than I have with any other human being on earth, and in that time I have loved her without reservation. My love for her forms one of the foundation stones of my life, and like my love for Jesus Christ, it rests firmly upon a covenant I made with God himself.
Have you ever heard someone say that they have dedicated their entire life to this thing or that? Dedicating one's life… I have thought about that a great deal lately and have concluded that although we can dedicate ourselves to certain people, ideas, and things, there are three things that we will never be able to say we have dedicated ourselves to, and all three involve a love that defies description.
The first one is going to surprise you; I can't say that we can dedicate ourselves to God... are you taken aback? The reason I say this is because it would be impossible for us to say that we dedicate ourselves to Him when in fact our lives have always belonged to Him. Our consciousness of Him can come to us when we are quite young, but in fact He was already there waiting in us, and the love that wells up at that moment of realization is so profound and deeply rooted that there can never be a reality in which we are living or loving without Him.
“even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,”
Ephesians 1:4-5 ESV
Years ago my brother-in-law and I built my house. I recall the day the foundation was dug and the phone call that I received from him; it went like this...
"Rich, we really need to go down another foot so that the house doesn't sit too high, but we have hit a solid slab of stone that runs under the entire house. We could blast, but that is expensive, however we can form up on top of it. What would you like to do?"
I thought for a moment and said... "Form the foundation on top of the solid rock." When we come to know Jesus and accept God the Father, this is the relationship they represent in our lives... God is the bedrock beneath all we are and all we have ever been; while Jesus is the corner of our foundation that rests upon this stone underlayment, God is without a doubt the bedrock of life.
Saying we have dedicated our lives to God sounds so foreign to me... how could I dedicate to Him what is already His? In fact, we are His and He has given some of our life back to us to do with as we see fit. It is like a child's allowance... will they spend it wisely? Will they manage it well? As you may have guessed, I am not really talking about money... I am talking about the very essence of who we are, the love we have, the humility we embody... everything about us.
The second thing we can't dedicate our lives to is Jesus Christ. From the moment we meet Him He is our constant guide, companion, and savior. We might wander off to do things on our own from time to time, but we should never doubt that He is waiting for our return, with open arms. This isn't a dedication it is a joining with. Jesus abides in us.
“In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
John 14:20 ESV
Finally there is our spouse... in my case I made a covenant with Ann that in a few months will have been in existence for 50 years before God, and on that bedrock foundation I have stood until this day. This makes my relationship with her one of my foundation stones and it sits abutted to Jesus Christ. It isn't what I would call dedicating... it is a union and a joining that makes us one.
“and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh.”
Mark 10:8 ESV
How could I possibly dedicate myself to myself? The winds blow, the rains fall, lightning strikes, and earthquakes shake us, but I stand on the unmovable promise I made to her before God, and we were joined together as one by Him. People can divorce, but there is no scriptural reference made that refers to us taking the one and making it two again.
Some spouses won't share a commitment to the covenant bond that the other honors, and some will be unfaithful to it or walk away and abandon it; they will break the covenant. But those occurrences should be catastrophic events and not treated as casual options for us to call upon as a matter of course. Once our covenant is made, we should love even when that love is not reciprocated. Scripture instructs a man to love his wife as Christ loved he church, and for a woman to submit herself to her husband as to the Lord. In this we understand that Christ loves the church, and we are all commanded to love the Lord our God.
“In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”
Ephesians 5:28 ESV
This idea of covenant marriage is almost lost to today's society. Fingers are poised on the trigger of divorce and the hammer is pulled back on the gun. It is almost as though someone had changed the marriage vows to read "until I get tired of you or until in boredom or anger we do part." I call upon all those taking the vow to love one another in marriage to make it a true covenant and a holy one before God. If you don't do this then there is no righteous union at all in the eyes of the Father, and He really doesn't care what man’s government might call it… it holds no promise in Him.
So, what about the other things in life? Yes we dedicate ourselves to our family, friends, church, and those other things, and they can be powerful commitments, but the most powerful and binding of all are those that we make before God... the covenants, the joining, the uniting, and the acknowledgement we make before He who has owned us from before the moment of creation.
Today I celebrate my wife's birthday, the day that Ann came into this world and joined me as we began a journey that would one day lead her to marry me. In all reality today is my birthday as well... because we truly are one flesh and no longer two.
Prayer:
Father I thank you for this day, the day Ann was born, and the person that we are together began its earthly journey to unite us. I thank you for the revelation that Jesus is in you and that I am in Him and He in me... no longer individually, but as one flesh together containing souls bound by the same covenant of marriage. I thank you Father for providing the foundation on which I have built my life, and I am blessed to know that we have been yours since before the creation of the universe. Father I am awe struck when I think of how far you have brought me just to meet my wife who is the one person that you perfect for me. You prepared us for the covenant of marriage before our conception, and you brought us together in it as one flesh in a remarkable miracle involving distance, time, faith, and love. I devote myself to many things in life, but I will forever be one with you, Jesus, and my wife. In our joining, uniting, and consummation we are far more than devoted... we are one in each other, you, Jesus, and Ann. Thus I am made perfect by your will as I love… bound by covenant. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you my God who can join two as one. Holy are you who joins us in marriage with our earthly wife and Jesus Christ.
Amen!
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
Genesis 2:24 ESV
“I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.”
2 Corinthians:1-2 ESV
“Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”
Revelation 19:7-9 ESV
Rich Forbes