I think it is beautiful that the best model God could give of marriage is the relationship that He has with the church. God looked at all the world and the closest thing He could use to give us the full idea of what marriage is, is you and Him *mind-explosion*. The more you study the relationship that exists between Jesus and the church, the more you study on marriage, even if you didn’t know they were related.

I got thinking about how totally abandoned most of us are with our relationship with God, by that I mean how totally trusting we are of Him and how eager we are to hear and do when it comes to our relationship with Him. It is almost like we are excited to submit to God on whatever He says and most times we make excuses to submit and give it all.

On the other hand, when I have conversations with regards marriage which should mirror the description above, it’s mostly filled with cynical thoughts and ideas of why there should be that level of submission in the context of marriage. I wonder if it is because we cannot see God, but we can see the person that we marry, or if it might just be a lack of understanding as to why God would use Himself and us to mirror us and our spouses here on earth.

One of my best identities in Christ is as ‘The bride of Christ‘, i’ll never hear the Holy spirit call me that and not experience jubilation in my spirit. it is an identity that is encompassing of some deep connections that we have with God by being His bride. The openness, the trust, the intimacy, the humour, whooosh! It is really beautiful.

I wonder if this is why God calls us to have a relationship with Him first before chasing any others in the world, so that we can see and experience what it means to be loved so that even here in the world, we can recognise it when it comes our way. We can only be lied to when we do not know the truth. So the devil is only able to give you lies to the extent that you don’t know the truth.

If we studied the one true lover of our souls, the way He chooses us over and over again and the way He has decided to love us, it’ll be very easy to recognise substandard love when it comes our way, but if we don’t know how He loves us, we’ll settle for any other thing that appears acceptable to us.

If we must be married to our spouses as Christ is married to His church, then we must be in the state of the church that Jesus cleansed and our spouses must be in the state of Christ. To break this down, it means that you must fully embrace all that came to you by the death of Christ and your spouse must have had Christ formed in them to be able to love as Christ does.

In this state, when you see or hear ‘submit’, it becomes more a thing of joy than a thing of apprehension. In these times, more than ever, I sense a call of God to step up to our identity as The bride of Christ. There’s so many proposal and engagement parties every other Saturday, often my thought and heart just pray that we know fully what it means and understand that we’ve been given practice before the real thing. The practice is your relationship with God and this practice is gracious enough to continue even when you enter this sacred union called marriage.

For me, I get sooo excited when I think about my future marriage cause if it is going to mirror my relationship with God, then i’m in for some crazy, holy fun, and to think that it gets better through the years, whooosh! Only God sees my heart. So, dear bride of Christ, your husband is seeking you, please heed the call.