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Kalamazoo SDA Church

Daniel Ferraz

Husbands Love Your Wives as Christ Loves the Church

The sermon today is entitled, The Better Half.

You know, Sometimes husband and wife refer to themselves as the other half, you know, vice versa.

And I want to talk today about the better half.

And as Jasper so rightly reminded us, the month of February is Marriage Emphasis Month.

So next, tomorrow we'll be having a Valentine's Banquet, and I want to see you all here with your wives and husbands.

I'll be here too with my wife and my wife will be here too with her husband.

And that's the way it's going to be for all eternity.

So today I want to talk about the better half, but before I begin, somebody once wrote that if you took any 12 wedded couples, 6 of them will jump overboard and divorce.

4 will stay on deck without joy or love and only 2 will have a complete marriage.

Father in heaven, We don't understand just how much you want for us.

But Lord, we're here to listen to your voice this morning.

Help husbands and wives to love 1 another.

But Father, I want to talk about my bride and your bride.

So please guide and bless, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

You know, wedding is, marriage I should say, Marriage is a wonderful thing.

And I don't know, husbands and wives, if you remember your wedding day.

And I remember my wedding day for various reasons.

You know, for a young man and a young woman, it's probably the most exciting day of your life, or the most exciting event, to get married.

I remember being a little boy and wondering, who will I marry?

And I just want to share with you something that happened at our wedding day.

And I think my wife knows where I'm going.

I haven't told her yet what I was going to say.

I hate to tell her what's coming up in the sermon, otherwise she'll say, you know, I've heard it already.

But you know, I've also learned, I've also learned, men, please pay attention, I've also learned that communicating with my wife is like talking with the other half of my brain.

You see, You have to get this thing about marriage.

I guess I can tell a little bit of story, but I have to watch the time.

We've actually done the wedding pictures before the wedding.

We get wedding pictures after the wedding as well and during, but it's kind of nice to get some wedding pictures when you're not all flustered and sweating up and tired out.

We got to the wedding and it was in the church, in the main church there.

And I remember being so nervous, but happy.

And It was kind of going on long, you know how weddings go too long.

But the part I want to share with you was the reception.

Wedding cake was all fruit cake, all the way down to the bottom.

But anyway, my wife had let me into this kind of strange custom that they had, I think way back in Germany, where if the husband wasn't man enough to keep hold of his wife, somebody might come and steal her.

So she told me this before the wedding, and I was a little bit concerned about this, as I would be rightly, right?

You don't want to get your wife, your bride stolen from you on your wedding day.

So I thought, and I thought, well, let me try and make sure this doesn't happen." And so I secretly was in Watford 1 time and I saw a pair of toy handcuffs.

I thought, yes, I'll buy me some of those.

And so I took those and I thought, this will be my safety.

When I see any danger, I'm just going to put 1 side on me and 1 side on her, and where she goes, I'm going, and that's going to spoil the game.

This thing had been planned in advance to steal my bride, like calculated well, the escape route, the car, the people involved, where she was going to go.

Notes had already been written as to the trail that I should follow to try and find my wife.

Could you imagine the upheaval to the reception and everything, going to play this game?

Anyway, so my mom, my mother was really on my side, praise God for mothers.

She said, now you make sure she was in the know and she was keeping an eye out for me.

So there's music, there's speeches, we're having beautiful food, and you can get distracted.

And I, after a while, was forgetting about this thing, about the wife getting stolen.

And I don't know how it happened, because I have to cut the long story short.

It's a really nice story, kind of fun, but I have to cut it short.

After a while, suddenly my mom is nudging me for all she's worth and saying, she's gone, they got her.

And the thing was, I'm remembering it just now, you had to get the bride's bouquet and the bride for it to really count.

And the bouquet was gone, and Petra was nowhere to be seen.

And suddenly I look around and I see going down the pathway, it's a really nice area and gardens and so on, and my bride in a white dress was running away from her husband.

Well, men, I don't know what happened, but I had a rush of adrenaline.

I was not about to let my wife get stolen from me.

And so I grabbed the hand that was on my wife's arm, flung it away, and I pushed this guy away, and I picked up my bride in my arms, and I took her, carried her right the way back up the hill again and put her back where she should be, sitting next to me.

Now I spoiled a lot of people's fun that day.

But I want to turn this a little serious because that's not the only time that somebody's trying to steal a bride or a husband.

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Husbands Love Your Wives as Christ Loves the Church

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