10 years ago today.
The Lord joined me to Jill Stephens a women who loves this old radical Bible thumper
I thought of becoming Stephen Stephens
He that finds a wife finds a good thing,
and obtains favor of the Lord.”
Prov. 18:22
Marriage is God’s idea.
God created everything and proclaimed
it all as very good
Genesis 1:31
But God saw Adam was lonely and He said,
“It is not good” Genesis 2:18
“It is not good that the man should be alone;
I will make him an help meet for him.”
God put Adam to sleep.
He went to sleep in the will of God
and when he awoke, there was Eve:
the perfect helpmeet,
the woman God had created just for him!
God married them and paradise was perfected.
Marriage is God’s perfect and beautiful idea.
It still is.
I was asleep for 61 years and 3 months
Then I found the wife God designed for me
Finding a wife is not the same
as finding a woman.
Solomon had no trouble finding women.
His position and power, his good looks
and his big bank account and personal charm,
and his wit and wisdom made him
attractive to women.
He collected a thousand women
one way or another,
but it is doubtful that he ever
found a wife among them
Ecclesiastes 7:27–28
He did genuinely lose his heart
to one woman and,
from all we know about her,
she could have been the perfect wife
for whom he longed.
However by the time he met her,
he had already been married
sixty times and was living
with another eighty women
Song of Solomon 6:8
so she turned him down cold.
Song of Solomon is a fascinating,
Christ-exalting,
pride-abasing, devil-exposing story
Phillips write of 7 Brides in the Bible
The brides of the Bible make an interesting study.
Seven of them taken together give us a picture of marriage and a
picture of the church.
Marriage, is supposed to mirror the relationship
of Christ and His church
Ephesians 5:22–33
In Eve we see the formation of the church.
She was a member of Adam’s body, complete and one in him
just as he was complete and one in her.
In Rebekah we see the faith of the church.
She was united to the one who had been to mount Moriah
and now stood on the resurrection side of death.
We see her journeying to Isaac; she is led
step by step by the one sent from his father.
Rachel’s story sets before us the foes of the church.
She gave her heart to her beloved, but she had to wait.
She had to face greed and envy in others.
She had to sow in tears before she could reap in joy.
In Asenath we see the future of the church.
She was made to sit with Joseph in high places.
She was joined to him who had a name above every name.
Before him every knee was made to bow.
Ruth depicts the footsteps of the church.
She walked from Moab—
the land under the curse of God—
to Boaz, the kinsman-redeemer
who loved her and bought her and made
her his very own.
Michal mirrors the failures of the church.
Although she was married to David,
she married another and lived
a life of ease when she should have been sharing the rejection of
the Lord’s anointed.
In contrast to Michal,
Abigail depicts the fervor of the church.
In her life we see Christ given His rightful place as Lord.
Fourteen times in eight short verses she referred to David as lord
1 Samuel 25:24–31
By the death of Nabal she was set free from the law of her husband
to be married to another, even to him who was the Lord’s anointed.
There is nothing accidental in the forming of this composite picture
of the church.
The types of the Old Testament, when properly understood,
are as accurate as mathematics.
Jill Stephens Midkiff is my perfect bride and my wonderful help mate,
as she completes me and adds to my life all God’s favor in amazing
abundance
A man may find a wife but finding a good wife is
discovering and adding to your life a priceless treasure.
A good wife is a token of the Lord’s favor
A good wife is a godly, helpful bride.
Finding a good wife is not blind chance
A good wife (not merely a woman) is from the Lord,
and is an expression of God’s loving favor.
We are unwise to give our affections to just any women,
God is the true producer and designer of the Hallmark romance saga
He’s our faithful guide to the proper object of loves
intentions for our life long committed attention.
There’s no unequal yoke,
there’s no hindrance to our souls-progress
and there’s spiritual rapture when we entwine our inner spirit
with a marriage that can’t be broken asunder.
God’s threefold cord with Christ in the middle
of Jesus perfect union is unbreakable.
“Joyous is the husband of a good wife;
And the number of his days shall be twofold.
A brave woman rejoices her husband;
And he shall fulfil his years in peace.
A good wife is a good portion:
She shall be given in the portion of such as fear the Lord.”
Ecclus. 26:1–3
Ecclus is The Book of Sirach, also called
the Wisdom of Sirach or Ben Sira,
A Jewish work of ethical teachings,
from approximately 200 to 175 BCE,
written by the Jewish scribe Ben Sira of Jerusalem
Proverbs 12:4 proclaims
A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband:
but a bad women brings shame and is as rottenness in a mans bones.
A good wife implies godliness.
Godliness is found when we marry in the Lord,
and we’re to only marry the one who is the Lord’s design for us.
To be unequally yoked is to be wed to a child of Satan,
It is dreadful
An unequal yoke is a deformity to our soul
The destruction of our world owes it’s chaos
to the self-pleasing delusion of wrong relationships.
Godliness on both sides of a marriage relationship creates beauty,
Where there is mutual fitness
God’s heart is opened in glorious blessings
There is mutual honor
There is holy wisdom
There is peaceful comfort for life—
There is miraculous help from heaven.
There is romantic communion and spiritual affections,
that lifts and elevates from earth to heavens glories.
Our best source for union is to place every relationship in Jesus hands
Pleading to our Lord too
“Choose thou mine inheritance for me”
Every good gift and perfect gift comes from above
from our Father of lights
As Adam received his wife—“from the Lord”—
I have received Jill Stephens Midkiff “from the Lord”
and she is good and perfect for me
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