Marriage vs. Dating

So as most of you know, the wedding day is approaching, not super fast but June 30th will be here before you know. So I've been thinking about wedding and the bond of marriage and I get excited about it and wanting to be that person for Courtney. But I've also been thinking about the difference it will be between dating and marriage and how much more of a commitment it is and how much deeper everything runs. Divorce is not an option in a marriage situation, not in my case at least and most of my friends. You don't just break up with each other in a marriage.

Marriage is one of the main metaphors God used to describe our relationship to Him. He uses this on an individual level and a corporate level, a husband and wife, Christ and the church and Christ obviously as the groom and we as his bride.

Well I've been thinking about the marriage vs dating situation and how much deeper everything goes. When you date someone, you do things so that the other person will think you're awesome and if they don't think your awesome then you usually take your show and go somewhere else and see if someone else likes it better. But if you are convinced that the other one likes you, and you don't want to take your show somewhere else, you then start to perform less and less and settle into something more like loving and serving that person and thats usually where marriage comes into play.

However when I think about the church, we tend to be more partial to dating, we still like to put on the show and we still like to do things that make us feel better and make us happy and make us comfortable and make us feel safe and so we have gotten to the point to where we have settled for simply talking about the Kingdom rather than actively living it out.

Think about this marriage metaphor, the people in attendance that day can obviously see that the husband and wife are in love. The minister asks the groom, "Do you take this woman to be your bride?" and with strength in his voice he says, "I do" and then he turns to the bride and asks, "Do you take this man to be your husband?" and as the bride, we say, "I want to" and we really do mean it and we really do want to be his bride, but we just can't say I do. Why is this?

You see, it seems to me that somewhere along this road we've been traveling on, we as the church and we as individuals have decided we'd rather just date.