our vows.....

Me to Claudio:

Claudio, I believe that our Sovereign Lord has brought us together and I Amy Elise, without reserve and with all my heart take you, Claudio Fabian, as my husband with all the promises, blessings, and responsibilities that the Loving God of the Scriptures has for me in being your wife.

I promise to submit intelligently, sincerely, and sacrificially to your leadership as deeply as obedience to Christ allows me. To encourage you in your God designed role as my head. And I choose to influence you spiritually primarily with fearless tranquility, holiness, and prayer.

I promise to be your help meet. Being honest and transparent in communication, avoiding all secrecy, and open to your exhortations; I will speak well of you in public, I will pray for you daily, and care for your needs before my own. I will support you creatively in whatever calling so that your spiritual influence will grow in the home, the church, and the world.

I promise to create a refuge for you in our home; A home where our children find eternal life and our visitors the goodness of God and His truth. I accept responsibility with you to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord sharing with you the teaching and discipline that they need and with my example teach them to respect and honor your leadership. I will make decisions that will increase the faith of the family and carry ahead the cause of Christ.

I give you my body for you to care for it as your own, being one flesh. Guarding my heart from temptation and always delighting myself in you. Looking to no other and loving you unconditionally.

Claudio to Me:

Amy, I believe that our Sovereign Lord has brought us together and I Claudio Fabian, without reserve and with all my heart take you, Amy Elise, as my wife with all the promises, blessings, and responsibilities that the Loving God of the Scriptures has for me in being your husband.

I promise to lead you intelligently, sensitively, and sacrificially with Christ as my example and guide. To encourage you in your God designed role as my help meet. And by the washing you with the water of the Word you be sanctified and pure.

I promise to give myself sacrificially as Christ to the Church being honest and transparent in communication avoiding all secrecy, and being open to your exhortations. I will speak well of you in public, I will pray for you daily, and care for your needs before my own. Guiding you in wisdom so that your spiritual influence will grow in the home, the church, and the world.

I promise to sustain our home so that you may always glean from my fields and not be ashamed (Ruth 2:7-17). A home where our children find eternal life and our visitors the goodness of God and His truth. I accept responsibility with you to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord sharing with you the teaching and discipline that they need and with my example teach them to respect and honor your position. I will make decisions that will increase the faith of the family and carry ahead the cause of Christ.

I give you my body for you to care for it as your own, being one flesh. Guarding my heart from temptation and always delighting myself in you. Looking to no other and loving you unconditionally. My eyes are only for you.

"reckless promises"

Mystery of Marriage: Vows

by Mike Mason

"In making such reckless promises we have freely admitted that we ourselves cannot keep them, yet equally freely have we confessed our unreserved faith in and dependence upon the God Who can, the God Whose very nature is expressed in faithfulness, that is, in the keeping of apparently impossible promises to His people.

A Church wedding makes it very clear that there is no security whatsoever in human passion and resolve, but only in the Lord's passion and the Lord's resolve. The wedding is a ceremonial declaration that God has brought two people together, and that He has already taken it upon Himself to keep them together. It is not any human power that has joined them, any more than a human power may "put them asunder" (Matthew 19.6)

The Wedding is an acceptance and proclaimation of God's power to take action of eternal significance in the lives of mortals, to step in and overrule the fickleness of the human heart. IT is not that the vows hold any guarantee that a couple shall always be "in love", but rather that through God's grace and strength they may continue in faith "to love". For that, once again, is the peculiar meaning of Christian love: not a feeling, but an action, and not ahuman nad limited action, but a supernatural and eternal one. Love is a deep, continuous, growing, and ever-renewing activity of the will, superintended by the Holy Spirit. There is no question of its failing or ceasing or letting anyone down. A wedding, therefore, declares openly and robustly that there is nothing romantic about love, nothing the least bit chancy or changeable. It is a gift from the Lord, whole and intact forever, a sure rock.

Naturally those who stubbornly refuse to believe this will fail to experience the reality of it."