Do you have a clear picture of what the end times will look like? Learn more in our online study End Times Events

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready”  (Revelation 19:7).

I’ve been photographing families for years and recently a couple asked me to shoot their wedding. After I pulled up to the gardens and gathered my gear, I made my way toward the bride’s chamber.

With no make-up, her hair a mess, and standing there in an oversized button down shirt, the bride-to-be beamed. As her closest friends and family gathered around her she gushed over details about the next few hours to come. After I sneaked out the door, I took shots of the empty chapel filled with white lace, tree branches, and temperature so low it felt like a winter wonderland.

It hit me at that moment. What did the writers of the New Testament mean when they said Christ represents the bridegroom and the Church represents the bride? In my early days of Sunday School my teachers never taught the meaning of the Second Coming. They never equated the excitement I should have for Christ’s return to the excitement of a new marriage.

When Paul mentioned that he desired to die to spend eternity with Christ, I always felt guilty for my apathy about the future. For some reason floating on clouds playing harps for eternity never appealed to me like I thought it should. But as I studied the Bible, I realized God never intended eternity to look like that. As Revelation 21: 1¬4 says, “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth’, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’”

With truth like that how can we act apathetic about Christ’s return? As I entered into the bride’s chambers once again I saw her with her hair curled around her face, her make-up flawlessly done, and her lacy, white dress enveloped around her. Her preparation of meeting the bridegroom stirred my heart.

One day Christ will return and the Church adorned, as a beautiful bride about to walk down the aisle, will meet Him. We will enter into a place where death is no more and crying, sickness, and suffering will cease to exist. With this truth, I find the perseverance to live my life.

Questions: What do you visualize as you think about Christ coming again to take His people home?

Related:
Want To Experience True Love?

When someone asks that famous question, “Will you marry me?” and another responds with a “Yes,” a journey toward an event starts. Two people often involve family and friends in the preparation for a wedding, a gala celebration of love, romance and relationship. The countdown begins, and then comes the day these two say, “I do.” As one journey concludes, another begins. The couple together embark on a journey called marriage.

How can you make an effective transition from the event called “wedding” to the journey called “marriage”? Let’s look once more at a few practical observations about beginning marriage well.

Furnishing your first home or apartment together is an exciting task! Whether you’ve lived there on your own or it’s a new place to you, the two of you will create a place to call your own. Beyond the colors of the walls or the choice of furniture and appliances, you will also be furnishing your home with many intangibles. What is it that you most want in your new home? How do you want it to be known? Let’s look at a few that you cannot see or touch, but you won’t want lacking in your home!

A well-tended flowerbed adds so much to a landscape! The plants and flowers create an invitation to slow down the pace of our busy lives. They add color to our days. Some bloom for a season and then die. Others die back after a time, only to once again break out into bloom the next year.
Like a well-tended flowerbed, the atmosphere of love in a home adds color to our lives as well as an invitation to linger. Yet like the plants in a garden or yard, our love will face seasons and storms. Can your love endure the storms, remaining strong enough to grow and bless others once again?

There may come a day in your marriage when you find something that amused you or intrigued you about your husband now is an irritant. How on earth is a girl to respond? Is there something you can do to fix the problem? Should you? Explore this critical area of living with an imperfect man in this online study.

Suggested Resource: Bold Love by Dr Dan B Allender and Dr Tremper Longman III.

Have you been to a wedding where a “Unity Candle” is a part of the ceremony? Many couples symbolize their desire to be united by each taking an individual candle, and together uniting them as they light a third candle in the center, and extinguishing their individual flames.

What a beautiful picture it makes. It is not just the groom or the bride lighting the marriage candle while the other watches, but both are involved. As they extinguish their own flames, they are symbolically saying that they are no longer going to go their own way, independent of the other. They each bring something to the marriage, and move forward with shared hopes and dreams. Let’s consider together how this can be worked out as a couple begins life together.