It can be more than flowers, candy, red hearts and romance. We can choose to celebrate all love that God gives us. This week we will look at how God wants us to love others. However, today let’s look at the origin of Valentine’s Day. The man behind this holiday of love is St. Valentine. He was a Roman Priest at a time when there was an emperor called Claudias. Claudias persecuted the church and prohibited the marriage of young Christians. He felt unmarried soldiers fought better than married soldiers because married soldiers might be afraid of what might happen to them or their wives or families if they died. Their society was very much like ours today. It was very permissive. Polygamy was popular. Saint Valentine was committed to a monogamous Christian marriage and he disobeyed the emperor’s orders by secretly performing weddings. Eventually, Valentine was caught, imprisoned and tortured. There are legends surrounding Valentine's actions while in prison. All of the legends say that Valentine fell in love with a powerful person’s daughter. The most popular legend says he fell in love with the blind daughter of a man named Asterius. Asterius was supposed to be his judge but Valentine prayed and healed his daughter and it had such an effect on Asterius that he became a Christian. In the year 269 AD, Valentine was sentenced to a three part execution of a beating, stoning, and finally decapitation all because of his stand for Christian marriage. The story goes that the last words he wrote were in a note to Asterius' daughter. He inspired today's romantic signage, "from your Valentine."
There are several lessons we can learn from this faithful saint. One is that we need to honor Christian marriage in our society. Today Christian marriage is losing its value in the eyes of the world. There are many reasons for this: we have a high divorce rate, adultery and premarital sex has increased to astonishing numbers. People think nothing of living together, plus we're even in a fight to keep marriage as a union between one man and one woman. To make it worse, we do not see any difference in behavior between the Christian and non-Christian. How sad it is that Christians are choosing to dishonor marriage when God created it to show the world a picture of Jesus' love for the Church. It is time for the Christian body to stand together and bring honor back to marriage. We need to stand against the world just like Saint Valentine did!
How do you honor marriage? Do you stand up for a Godly marriage? Are you willing to fight for your marriage? There comes a time when you're going to have to suffer. It's not going to be easy to maintain your commitment and your vows in marriage. Don't be surprised if the 'gushing' love that you have for someone changes to something less "gushing". It is at those times we need to be prepared to stand in the power of the Holy Spirit and be faithful to our commitment. Are you ready to do that? If you aren’t married yet, are you willing to honor marriage in your premarital behavior? Can you stay committed to your future marriage? St. Valentine was willing to lay down his life for God’s gift of marriage. To what degree are you willing to stand?
God, not you, made marriage. His Spirit inhabits even the smallest details of marriage. And what does He want from marriage? Children of God, that’s what. So guard the spirit of marriage within you. Don’t cheat on your spouse.
Malachi 2:15
Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex.
Hebrews 13:4
2 comments:
The comercial I saw on T.V. speaks loud and clear on how our values have been comprised. A young lady says; I'm fresh out of school, have two kids and I need a job. This young lady has her priorities messed up. It always ends up the little ones pay the highest price. I don't think we'll ever see the day again when values and morals used to be the thing to do to honor God and your family.
It does make me sad that marriage in general seems so unimportant to so many people. I hear people all the time say things like "why get married nothing will change except that we have paper saying we are married" or "marriage makes you tied down and you aren't free to do what you want" I just want to smack those people. :-) Marriage is a big commitment but together through Christ it will work. I learn more and more the longer Jared and I are married.
Post a Comment