I woke up this morning remembering the moment my son received Jesus as his savior. It was almost Easter and we were reading the Arther Maxwell Bible stories about Jesus’ death and resurrection.  He began to cry and said he wanted to ask Jesus into his heart.  After we prayed, I asked him how he felt.  He described it as tingling inside.  He was only four years old, and seems not to remember it except that I remind him of the story from time to time.

That moment is like a marriage proposal. Actually, it is not “like” a proposal, it is one.  God, the Father, is asking us to say “yes” to marry, His Son, Jesus. Even as I type these words, I am remembering several moments when the proposal was before me, and I said “no, not interested.”  But They (God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus} are so persistent, never insistent, coercive, or threatening, but loving, kind, and patient, until we will say “yes.”   

If you are married, think back to the moment of your proposal.    Maybe we asked ourselves if we were ready, or if this is the right person for me? Do I love him enough to say “I do” for the rest of my life?   Or maybe our feelings of love are enough that we say yes without asking ourselves these questions. Hopefully, our yeses come from both affection and confidence in our choice.  If you are the man in this scenario, you had the opportunity to consider these questions before proposing.  Perhaps your worries centered around whether or not she would say yes, or whether you had the means to support a wife and eventually a family. Of course, I am speaking of marriage as a 74 year-old who has been married for 45 years. In today’s culture, many young people view marriage as a failed institution. If it isn’t going to last, what is the point of entering into a covenant that will likely end in heart ache, divorce, and financial hardship.

I participated in church as long as I can remember.  Not just attending church on Sundays with my family, but Sunday school, youth groups, choir, Christmas pageants, and even a few summers of Christian camps. When I first began to get invitations from the LORD to believe, I had no sense of His love for me or any love on my part for Jesus.  I had no understanding of the being who was presenting Himself to me, a King, the Lord of lords, the Son of God Himself. Nor did I recognize my complete lack of worthiness for such a proposal.  I had little or no realization that I needed to be saved from myself and my life choices.  The questions in my mind were what would I have to give up or stop doing if I accepted an offer to believe in this Jesus. 

When I finally said yes, I did not see this as a proposal of marriage or a contract or covenant.  I did finally see that my life was a complete mess and that I needed to be rescued from myself.  And, I had something I had never had before, and that was faith.  It was not something I grew or mustered up in the moment, or acquired from life experience.  Faith was a gift from the Father who presented the Son to me as my rescue.  In spite of my insight into the mess of my life, I was far from understanding how unworthy I was to receive this gift of faith or the salvation I was being given.  Elohim brought every thing to the relationship, and I brought nothing but my weary heart.

But, don’t think for a minute that I was being tricked into a relationship that I did not fully comprehend.  My decision was my own.  And while Jesus was fully committed, I had and still possess the freedom to walk away at any time.  Not only did God give me the faith to make this choice, but the bride price they paid for me was Jesus’ blood, shed and His death on a cross.  To a very small extent, I could understand the significance of this transaction.  I had some serious sins that needed forgiving.  The concept that the wages of my sin was death had somehow eluded me during my early life in the church community.  At the moment I was saved, I grasped the enormity of it, and took ahold of the offer like a drowning man grabs a life ring.  And the Holy Spirit pours into us like breath returning to waterlogged lungs, bringing hope and peace where there were fear and despair.

This first stage of the betrothal process is the servant covenant.  That may seem like a downer to the uninitiated, but to a soul who has finally realized they were a slave to sin, suffering the consequences of lousy life choices, being a servant in the King’s house is a huge step up.  It is a safe place, a place of learning under a kind and generous master.  Jesus taught His disciples to serve one another by serving them. He told them that to be great in the kingdom, they had to be last, not first.  Earthly marriages may start out with love of one sort, but we quickly learn that we need to serve each other, to set our own needs aside to make a marriage work and a family flourish.  While we hope that love and friendship will continue throughout marriage, serving one another never stops.  In our relationship with Jesus, He invites us continually to grow in friendship and love with Him, but we will never stop serving our King, even when He becomes our groom.  

If being a servant of the Most High God is as deep as we go in this relationship, we have the assurance of being raised to everlasting life and going to heaven.  These are wonderful, undeserved gifts.  But the truth is, Jesus longs to be our friend.  God desires that we dwell with Him as His children.  Jesus is aching for the children of God to grow up and become His Bride. We don’t have to wait until we die to receive the fruit of a closer relationship with Elohim.  All most people want is to be seen, to be needed, to be loved, to have peace and hope.  Forty years of experiencing His love and patience as He erased my sins over and over again, gradually transforming me into a new person, has led me to love Him, more than anything the world has to offer.  If we see our relationship with Elohim as a courtship while we wait for Jesus to return, we can have peace and joy every day, even in the midst of trials and disappointments.