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Marriage & Wedding Related

 

Marriage

What do women really want to hear men say?  The following list may seem obvious, but the authors of "Why Men Don't Get Enough Sex and Women Don't Get Enough Love" insist men don't say the obvious often enough:

   *  "Put on your best dress.  I'm taking you out for a surprise evening."

   *  "Let's take a walk together. Just the two of us."

   *  "You are always so thoughtful (sensitive, caring)."

   *  "I love your eyes (legs, ears)."

   *  "You're the best wife a man could hope for.  You're my best friend."

   *  "When I think about you I get a warm feeling all over."

   *  "I'm taking your car in today for new tires because I love you and I want you to be safe."

   *  "I'm going to run an errand - is there something I can get for you while I'm out?"

   *  "It's just a little something I brought you to say I love you."

 

Marriage

Although we usually think of a marriage triangle as a dangerous situation, there is one sense in which a third person could create the right triangle.

   Viola Walden tells the story of a newly married couple riding a train on their honeymoon. A silver-haired man leaned across the aisle and asked, "Is there a third party going with you on your honeymoon?"  The couple looked at him strangely; then he added, "When Sarah and I were married, we invited Jesus to our marriage. One of the first things we did in our new home was to kneel and ask Jesus to make our marriage a love triangle - Sarah, myself, and Jesus.  And all three of us have been in love with each other for all 50 years of our married life."

 

Marriage

        Marriage is like a violin; it doesn’t work without the strings. And when the music stops, the strings are still attached.

 

Marriage

        Even if marriages are made in heaven, humans have to be responsible for their maintenance.

 

Marriage

        If a man has enough horse sense to treat his wife like a thoroughbred, she’ll never turn into an old nag.

 

Marriage

        Marriage is like flies on a screen door. Those on the outside want to get in, but some of those already inside want to get out.

 

Marriage

        Marriage is not finding the person with whom you can live, but finding that person with whom you cannot live without.—Howard Hendricks

 

Marriage

        Carl Sandburg’s daughter Helga wrote of her parents: “There were never loud arguments back and forth in our house. My father raged and roared, and often. But it was one-way. Mother coaxed him out of it. Once when he was very old, I saw him pull at a door that was stuck. He rattled the handle and shouted. My mother, a small woman, looked up at him and patted his chest, ‘What a fine strong voice!’ she said. Disarmed, he stood there in love. It was a thread established early and woven through their life.

 

Marriage

        A little girl had just heard the story Snow White for the first time. So full of enthusiasm that she could hardly contain herself, she retold the fairy tale to her mother. After telling about how Prince Charming had arrived on his beautiful white horse and kissed Snow White back to life, she asked her mother, “And do you know what happened then?”

        “Yes,” said her mom, “they lived happily ever after.”

        “No,” responded Suzie, with a frown, “they got married.”

        With childlike innocence, the little girl had spoken a partial truth without realizing it. For you see, getting married and living happily ever after are not necessarily synonymous.

 

Adjustment to Marriage

        A cynic once observed: “All marriages are happy. It’s the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.”

 

Adjustment to marriage

        Marriage has been described as the relationship of “two reasonable human beings who have agreed to abide by each other’s intolerabilities.”

 

Adjustment to Marriage

        Marriage is like taking an airplane to Florida for a relaxing vacation in January, and when you get off the plane you find you’re in the Swiss Alps. There’s cold and snow instead of swimming and sunshine.

        Well, after you buy winter clothes and learn how to ski, and learn how to talk in a new foreign language, I guess you can have just as good a vacation in the Swiss Alps as you can in Florida. But it is a surprise when you get off that honeymoon airplane and find that everything is far different from what you expected.

 

Adjustment to Marriage

        Unhappy spouse to marriage counselor:

        When I got married

        I was looking for an ideal.

        Then it became an ordeal.

        Now I want a new deal.

 

Adjustment to Marriage

        Someone has likened adjustment to marriage to two porcupines who lived in Alaska. When the deep and heavy snows came, they felt the cold and began to draw close together. However, when they drew close they began to stick one another with their quills. But when they drew apart they felt the cold once again. To keep warm they had to learn how to adjust to one another-very carefully.

 

Adjustment to Marriage

        ”For best result, follow instructions of maker.” So advised a brochure accompanying a bottle of a common cold remedy. If such advice is good for the relief of a simple physical ailment, how much more it is needed for the relief of sick marriage relationships! God, the Author of marriage, has given us clear instructions in the Bible.

 

Adjustment to Marriage

        All of us have seen two rivers flowing smoothly and quietly along until they meet and join to form one new river. When this happens they clash and hurl themselves at one another. However, as the newly formed river flows downstream, it gradually quiets down and flows smoothly again. And now it is broader and more majestic and has more power. So it is in a marriage: the forming of a new union may be tumultuous-but, when achieved, the result is far greater than either alone.

 

Adjustment to Marriage

        Some time ago, the Saturday Evening Post ran a humorous article that traced the tendency for marriage partners to drift from a height of bliss into the humdrum of routine attitudes. Called “The Seven Ages of the Married Cold,” the article likens the state of the marriage to the reaction of a husband to his wife’s colds during seven years of marriage.

        The first year: “Sugar dumpling, I’m worried about my baby girl. You’ve got a bad sniffle and there’s no telling about these things with all this strep around. I’m putting you in the hospital this afternoon for a general checkup and a good rest. I know the food’s lousy, but I’ll bring your meals in from Rossini’s. I’ve already got it arranged with the floor superintendent.”

        The second year: “Listen darling, I don’t like the sound of that cough and I’ve called Doc Miller to rush over here. Now you go to bed like a good girl, please? Just for Papa.”

        The third year: “Maybe you’d better lie down, honey; nothing like a little rest when you feel punk. I’ll bring you something to eat. Have we got any soup?”

        The fourth year: “Look, dear, be sensible. After you feed the kids and get the dishes washed, you’d better hit the sack.”

        The fifth year: “Why don’t you get yourself a couple of aspirin?”

        The sixth year: “If you’d just gargle or something, instead of sitting around barking like a seal!”

        The seventh year: “For Pete’s sake, stop sneezing! Whatcha trying to do, gimme pneumonia?”

 

Adjustment to Marriage

        People in our nation spend more time preparing to get their driver’s license than they do preparing for marriage or parenting.

 

Commitment in Marriage

        With the rising divorce rate and the trend toward total truthfulness these days, it is almost as though the marriage vows are being changed from “till death do us part” to “till something better comes along.”

 

Commitment in Marriage

        The ties of a durable marriage are not like the pretty silken ribbons attached to wedding presents. Instead, they must be forged like steel in the heat of daily life and the pressures of crisis in order to form a union that cannot be severed.

 

Commitment in Marriage

        The comic strip said a lot about the world’s view of marriage:

        One character said, “You know, it’s odd-but now that I’m actually engaged I’m starting to feel nervous about getting married!”

        The other character replied, “I know what you’re thinking. It’s only natural to be nervous! Marriage is a big commitment. Seven or eight years can be a long time!”

 

Commitment in Marriage

        A good many years ago, I knew a workingman in the north of England whose wife, soon after her marriage, drifted in vicious ways, and went rapidly form bad to worse. He came home one Sunday evening to find, as he had found a dozen times before, that she had gone on a new debauch. He knew in what condition she would return after two or three days of a nameless life. He sat down in the cheerless house to look the truth in the face and to find what he must do. The worst had happened too often to leave him much hope for amendment, and he saw in part what might be in store for him. He made his choice to hold by his wife to the end and to keep a home for her who would not make one for him. Now that a new and terrible meaning had passed into the words “for better or for worse,” he reaffirmed his marriage vow.

        Later, when someone who knew them both intimately ventured to commiserate with him, he answered, “Not a word! She is my wife! I loved her when she was a girl in our village and I shall love her as long as there is breath in my body.” She did not mend, and died in his house after some years in a shameful condition, with his hands spread over her in pity and prayer to the last.—W.R. Maltby

 

Adjustment in Marriage

        There is a scientific law called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law states that any closed system left to itself tends toward greater randomness; that is, it breaks down. It takes an ordered input of energy to keep anything together.

        This is readily seen with a house. Any homeowner knows that to maintain a house, one must daily, monthly, and yearly invest time and energy to keep the house enjoyable to live in. If no energy is expended on the house, it eventually comes to the point of needing a complete overhaul, or else it is knocked down.

        Although it is a law designed to describe material systems, the Second Law of Thermodynamics seems to describe other systems also. For example, consider the marriage relationship. It must have a daily, monthly, and yearly investment of time and energy so that it is enjoyable to live in. If no energy is expended, eventually the relationship needs a complete overhaul, or else it is knocked down.

        It is a wise couple who build into their marriage continually-rather than waiting passively for a complete overhaul in the counselor’s office or a knockdown in the courtroom.

 

Communication in Marriage

        Thomas Carlyle paid many pathetic postmortem tributes to his deceased wife, whom he sometimes neglected in life. In his diary there is what has been called the saddest sentence in English literature. Carlyle wrote: “Oh, that I had you yet for five minutes by my side that I might tell you all.”

 

Cost of Marriage

        It is often said that two can live as cheaply as one. That’s true-as long as one doesn’t eat and the other goes naked.

 

Role of Wife in Marriage

        Charles Swindoll tells of being married ten years before he became aware of the value of being grateful for the differences between his wife and himself. He was often irritated that she didn’t view things exactly as he did. She wasn’t argumentative, only expressive of her honest feelings. But he took this as a lack of submission and told her so. Time and time again they locked horns until finally God showed him from the Genesis 2:18~25 passage that his wife was different because God had made her different, and she was more valuable to him because of those differences. She was not designed to be his echo but to be his counterpart, a necessary and needed individual to help him become all God wanted him to be.

 

Obligations of Marriage

The pastor of a big city church ran an ad for a caretaker-housekeeper.  The next day, a well-dressed young man appeared at the pastor's door.  But before he could say more than, "Hello, I came to see about...," the pastor began questioning him.

   "Can you sweep, make beds, shovel walks, run errands, fix meals, balance a checkbook, and baby-sit?" the churchman asked?

   "Whoa," the young man said, "I only came to see about getting married, but if it's that much work, I'm not interested." --Virginia Myers, In Saturday Evening Post, April, 1990

 

Bachelorhood

Mr. Justice McCardie of the British High Court (him self a bachelor) said, “A bachelor is a man who looks before he leaps and, having looked, he does not leap.”

 

Virgins

In a world searching for the latest and best ways to have sex, virginity has become an embarrassment.  This is to be expected in a society that preaches pleasure, but not in the church where virtue is assumed but not taught.  After all, people reason, what is there to write about abstaining?  Sex is seen as a fulfillment; virginity, as a vacuum.  But it had better be more than that, especially for us single women who outnumber marriageable men by 7.3 million in the U.S. and most of the available ones are not in the church.  So unless we disobey God outright by marrying a non-Christian, let's face it:  many of us will never marry.  Well-meaning friends tell us to believe God for a mate.  But God doesn't promise us that we will ever marry.  He promises us Himself. --Julia Duin, Homemade - February, 1990

 

Marriage

Marriage is like a violin; it doesn’t work without the strings. And when the music stops, the strings are still attached. ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Marriage

Although we usually think of a marriage triangle as a dangerous situation, there is one sense in which a third person could create the right triangle.

Viola Walden tells the story of a newly married couple riding a train on their honeymoon. A silver-haired man leaned across the aisle and asked, "Is there a third party going with you on your honeymoon?"  The couple looked at him strangely; then he added, "When Sarah and I were married, we invited Jesus to our marriage. One of the first things we did in our new home was to kneel and ask Jesus to make our marriage a love triangle - Sarah, myself, and Jesus.  And all three of us have been in love with each other for all 50 years of our married life." ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Adjustment to Marriage

Marriage is like taking an airplane to Florida for a relaxing vacation in January, and when you get off the plane you find you’re in the Swiss Alps. There’s cold and snow instead of swimming and sunshine.

Well, after you buy winter clothes and learn how to ski, and learn how to talk in a new foreign language, I guess you can have just as good a vacation in the Swiss Alps as you can in Florida. But it is a surprise when you get off that honeymoon airplane and find that everything is far different from what you expected. ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Adjustment to Marriage

”For best result, follow instructions of maker.” So advised a brochure accompanying a bottle of a common cold remedy. If such advice is good for the relief of a simple physical ailment, how much more it is needed for the relief of sick marriage relationships! God, the Author of marriage, has given us clear instructions in the Bible. ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Adjustment to Marriage

All of us have seen two rivers flowing smoothly and quietly along until they meet and join to form one new river. When this happens they clash and hurl themselves at one another. However, as the newly formed river flows downstream, it gradually quiets down and flows smoothly again. And now it is broader and more majestic and has more power. So it is in a marriage: the forming of a new union may be tumultuous-but, when achieved, the result is far greater than either alone. ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Commitment in Marriage

The ties of a durable marriage are not like the pretty silken ribbons attached to wedding presents. Instead, they must be forged like steel in the heat of daily life and the pressures of crisis in order to form a union that cannot be severed. ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Obligations of Marriage

The pastor of a big city church ran an ad for a caretaker-housekeeper.  The next day, a well-dressed young man appeared at the pastor's door.  But before he could say more than, "Hello, I came to see about...," the pastor began questioning him.

"Can you sweep, make beds, shovel walks, run errands, fix meals, balance a checkbook, and baby-sit?" the churchman asked?

"Whoa," the young man said, "I only came to see about getting married, but if it's that much work, I'm not interested." -- Virginia Myers, In Saturday Evening Post, April, 1990

 

Marriage

Even if marriages are made in heaven, humans have to be responsible for their maintenance. ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Marriage

What do women really want to hear men say?  The following list may seem obvious, but the authors of "Why Men Don't Get Enough Sex and Women Don't Get Enough Love" insist men don't say the obvious often enough:

   *  "Put on your best dress.  I'm taking you out for a surprise evening."

   *  "Let's take a walk together. Just the two of us."

   *  "You are always so thoughtful (sensitive, caring)."

   *  "I love your eyes (legs, ears)."

   *  "You're the best wife a man could hope for.  You're my best friend."

   *  "When I think about you I get a warm feeling all over."

   *  "I'm taking your car in today for new tires because I love you and I want you to be safe."

   *  "I'm going to run an errand - is there something I can get for you while I'm out?"

   *  "It's just a little something I brought you to say I love you."

── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Adjustment to marriage

Marriage has been described as the relationship of “two reasonable human beings who have agreed to abide by each other’s intolerabilities.” ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Adjustment to Marriage

People in our nation spend more time preparing to get their driver’s license than they do preparing for marriage or parenting. ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching

 

Commitment in Marriage

With the rising divorce rate and the trend toward total truthfulness these days, it is almost as though the marriage vows are being changed from “till death do us part” to “till something better comes along.” ── Michael P. GreenIllustrations for Biblical Preaching