I have some marital confessions to make. First:

• I Love Lissette Harned, my Blessing.

Lissette is not the wife of my youth, but she is the wife of my vows and covenant and continued pouring out of love.

Song of Solomon 4

English Standard Version (ESV)

Solomon Admires His Bride’s Beauty

Behold, you are beautiful, my love,
behold, you are beautiful!
Your eyes are doves
behind your veil…

Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
behind your veil…

Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle,
that graze among the lilies…

I will go away to the mountain of myrrh
and the hill of frankincense.

You are altogether beautiful, my love;
there is no flaw in you…

Let my beloved come to his garden,
and eat its choicest fruits.

BEAUTIFUL! The intimate, romantic, sexual love of a husband and his wife is beautiful.

I must confess that I am too easily lured to the romance of this ideal love. The lost beauty of the love of my wife causes my heart to remember sadly an ideal of love that should have been, yet can never fully be realized in marriage.

For even in Christ, two sinners are joined as one.

Marriages are not perfect, but preferred.

My wife was a professed Christian when we married in 2007. Her witness is not against me, but against the Lord in divorcing me last year. (More on that later.)

Solomon, too, had the luxury of love. Though he is known for the reputation of his wisdom, Solomon had a problem: too many wives.

1 Kings 3:13 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.

For any one man (or any one wife) it takes only one other to turn our heart away.

In fact, the heart of a man and the heart of a woman are joined inseparably from the moment they have sexual intercourse – married, or not.

Hear the advice of Proverbs 5, the advice of a wise father to his son:

3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil,
4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.

18 Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19     a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

•  Adultery? A sin against your husband or wife.
• Sex before marriage? A sin against your family and theirs; sin against each other: the sin of no commitment.
• ALL (other than marital intercourse) a sin against God, who is our Father of intimate relationship;
• And also, for Christians, a sin against Christ Jesus. (More about that later, too.)

So you see that by example, though I have never been an adulterer, I am not an example for you of a Christian husband. In marriage I have failed miserably.

• Another confession: a previous wife (who also claimed to be a christian) forced divorce on us as well. In both cases, the children were of another father, previously divorced  by these christian women. My child, was of yet another wife.
• The mother of my daughter was taken by the Lord (and cancer) after twenty-three years of marriage. She had been a virgin; I was not.
• The wife of my youth (who did not claim Christ, though I did while I lusted after her) divorced me after just one year of the marriage of our youth.

How could Solomon have possibly handled all those wives? I could not even handle one at a time.

The concern for Christian marriage and threat to marriage in these last days is real, hardly confessed, and rarely preached (beyond the ideal).

Love, sexual love between a husband and a wife – the wife of your youth – was God’s intention from the beginning. Love and marriage are more encompassing for a man and a woman than what we will humbly allow God to full receive credit.

I would NEVER put away my wife! I will never choose my wife or children or any family over Christ Jesus. For my wife or other beloved family members to receive me, they must also know that they receive Christ in me.

Please pray for my wife, Lissette, and other family members of ours who have turned their back on the Lord. For Jesus loves us, this we know.

God blesses the marriage of two committed to Christ.

God does not break His covenants and the Lord looks for your return, for which I also pray.

We have it backwards. We have missed God’s standards, ignored the commands of God and turned away from God’s Laws of love for our marriages and families.

Next:  christian marriages… to be continued?