7 Things to Know about the Future Wedding

Do you ever find that when you attend a wedding, you get a bucket-load of ideas for your own far-off wedding?

Me too.

For instance, when of my cousins got married when I was 16, Aunt Nita (not my cousin’s mom, a different aunt) asked me if I had thought about my future wedding at all.

Flustered, I couldn’t say that I had. What sort of info was she looking for here??

As if she had read my thoughts, Aunt Nita pressed on: “C’mon, bridesmaids dresses? Flowers? Wedding colors??”

Ah. That’s what she meant. Hmmm… I had thought about it a little, but not in great depth. After all, I had AP History to be worrying about right now.

“I think I want the bridesmaids dresses to be blue,” I told her. In a fictional book series I had recently read, blue was a symbolic color for purity, and I really liked that.

“Ah ha!” Aunt Nita gave a knowing smile, “See! You have thought about it!”

I fell into silence, confused and slightly embarrassed. I was only 16 after all. My wedding was a long ways off. I didn’t feel like I should be worried about planning my wedding anytime soon.

. . .

As I mentioned in this post, my roommate wants to be a wedding planner someday, so she and I discuss weddings on a semi-regular basis. And I think it’s fun to brainstorm ideas for my future wedding, especially when I attend a wedding (I get good inspiration there!).

As much fun as it can be to imagine what my future wedding will be like, I also wonder a lot about what THE future wedding will be like.

The one where the Church marries Jesus.

Throughout the Bible, there is wedding imagery EVERYWHERE! I dig it! Whenever I stumble across a verse talking about our future wedding to Jesus or about how God is our husband, I get so excited!

I think that in a way God wired us girls to dream about weddings. We long for weddings at a young age. Heck- sometimes it’s our favorite thing to play-pretend with our friends.

I don’t think this longing for a wedding is necessarily a bad thing. We will, after all, be one day wed to Christ.

Here are 7 things we need to know about our future wedding:

1. God is our husband.

“For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name…” (Isaiah 54:5 ESV).

I once read a blog post where the author talked about how if God knows who we’re going to one day marry then in His eyes we’re already engaged so we should act accordingly. I don’t necessarily agree with that. We are not engaged until we are engaged, even though God does know our futures.

However, in a sense, we are engaged. We’re engaged to Jesus. The moment we said “Yes!” to living a life with Him is the moment that His Holy Spirit entered us and we began to have a relationship with Him.

Related: How to Live a Life that’s Engaged

2. The Holy Spirit is our engagement ring.

When I was in the 6th grade, every morning my dad would quote to us Ephesians 4:29-32. Not really sure why he chose that passage, but eventually my brother and I memorized it.

I never really understood what verse 30 meant though until I grew older. “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

…What??

Anywho, like I said, as I grew older I began to think about that verse more often. “Sealed…” What does that mean? At first, I thought it meant sealed like how you seal a letter in an envelope. You put it there to keep it safe.

But then I thought about it like how an engagement ring “seals the deal” for a future wedding.

When we get to Heaven, there will be a wedding between Christ and His Church. The Holy Spirit is evidence of Him being a part of our lives and that we will be a part of this future wedding. Just like how an engagement ring symbolizes that a woman and a man are going to marry.

3. Our spirits unite with God’s Spirit

“But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.” 1 Corinthians 6:17 ESV

This verse is under the “Flee Sexual Immorality” section of my Bible. These are the verses surrounding it:

For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexual immoral person sins against his own body.

-1 Cor. 6:16b-18 ESV

Honestly, I really don’t have any idea what this verse means, but I think it’s interesting. It raises a bunch of questions in my mind:

• Is Paul making a comparison of sex to what will happen someday when we marry Jesus?
• What does he mean by “becomes one spirit with him???”
• Is he merely saying that since we have the Holy Spirit in us we need to be careful with what we do with our bodies?

Yup. I have no idea here. But it’s interesting to ponder nonetheless.

4. This is the only wedding that lasts forever.

No, I’m not saying that every earthly wedding ends in divorce. I’m actually referring to when the Sadducees ask Jesus about the resurrection. (Note: Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection so they were trying to trick Jesus.)

You can read the whole passage in Matthew 22:23-33, but here’s the gist of it.

According to the Mosaic Law, if a husband dies childless, his brother is to marry his wife and raise a family with her for his brother. The Sadducees ask Jesus what would happen in the case of seven brothers. Each one dies childless, leaving his wife to his brother. Then the wife dies. They then ask Him “In this so-called ‘Resurrection,’ whose wife would she be? For she was married to all of them.”

That’s when Jesus responded with, “In the resurrection, they will neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (verse 30).

So pretty much, this passage teaches that there won’t be marriages in Heaven. Therefore, the only marriage that truly lasts forever is the marriage between Jesus and His Church, since it is the only one that will exist in Heaven.

(This isn’t to say that we won’t recognize our loved ones in Heaven. See Matthew 8:11 and Luke 9:30, 33.)

5. Not everyone can attend this wedding.

Jesus told many parables about weddings. One of which is commonly referred to as “The Parable of the Ten Virgins” and can be found in Matthew 25:1-13.

In this parable, there are five virgins (does this correspond to bridesmaids today??) who are waiting for the groom to arrive at the wedding. They took lamps with them with oil so they would be ready when he got there. The other five virgins (bridesmaids?) brought their lamps but didn’t bring their oil.

When the groom arrived, those who didn’t have the oil ended up having to go buy some from the market. When they returned to the wedding, the door was shut and they asked to be let in. But the groom said to them, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you” (verse 12).

This parable is seen as a comparison to the second coming of Jesus. We need to make sure our hearts are ready for Him to return. Not everyone will be welcomed to attend the wedding feast of Jesus. Only those who belong to Him can come.

Are you one of those people? Has Jesus made you new? Have you RSVP-ed to this wedding?

6. We are called to send out wedding invitations.

If you have RSVP-ed for this wedding (AKA- have the Holy Spirit living in you), then you are blessed with the opportunity to invite more people to attend!

After Jesus came back to life from the dead, He appeared to His followers during forty days (Acts 1:3). Then, He gave what is known as “The Great Commission” and ascended into Heaven.

The Great Commission is our charge to go invite people to attend His wedding. “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15 ESV).

Related: 3 Fears of Evangelism Debunked

7. Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

This last point comes directly from Revelation 19.

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,
“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God

the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult

and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his bride has made herself ready;

it was granted to her to clothe herself

with fine linen, bright and pure”

-for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

 

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the words of God.”

 

-Revelation 19:6-9 ESV

Bonus: Jesus rides in on a white horse.

The perfect ending to any fairy tale ;)

(See Revelation 19:11.)

There you have it: The 7 things we need to know about our future wedding.

The aunt who asked me about my wedding plans back when I was sixteen died this past January. Although Aunt Nita won’t be at my earthly wedding to see if my bridesmaids’ dresses do turn out to be blue, she will be at the heavenly wedding, and that’s the one that counts for eternity. :)

Hallelujah!

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Posted by Kara Beth & filed under Devotionals, Singleness. This post has one comment.