I have a vivid memory from my teenage years of a wedding. A quiet 30-ish librarian-type married a demure, smiling kindergarten teacher. The setting was Westminster Abbey, the Bishop of Canterbury performed the ceremony and most of the heads of states from around the world were in attendance. Although this wedding took place some 25 years ago, it remains, even today, one of the most highly watched televised events of all time. It was a storybook wedding unlike anything I've ever seen.

Twelve years after the pomp and circumstance, Prince Charles and Princess Diana'a marriage appeared to be like so many others ? ended with a statement of their formal seperation. Not exactly a divorce - being royalty does have its privileges - but an announcement that theirs were two separate lives, not one united in marriage any more.

The picture that our culture is burning into another generation's brain about marriage, is today no more real or positive than Charles and Diana's wedding was two decades ago. Today's marriage portrait is seen in TV reality shows like ?Bachelor' and ?Bachelorette.' Those are the shows where one man or woman moves into a house with 25 potential partners, and then tries them all on until they decide which one they want. All while America and the world watches.

Or there is ?Joe Millionaire' - which is Bachelor with a twist. Joe is choosing his potential mate at a castle that all the girls are led to believe belongs to him. At least this show mirrors reality - dating is the time when lots of guys tells lots of lies to try and get what they want. At least, that's what I keep telling my girls.

And if you are already paired up, but getting bored you can go to ?Temptation Island' or ?The Last Resort.' The first is the place where relationships go to be tested -- can we survive if you sleep with 2 other people? What about three? ?Last Resort' is voyeur village on a tropical island that couples go , so that TV audiences can watch their marriages disintegrate.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised - after all America has been getting it's marriage advice from Oprah (who's not married) and Jerry Springer (who from the content of his show seems to believe that most marriages involve cross-dressing prostitutes having affairs with their father-in-laws.) If Jenny Jones and Rikki Lake failed, we could go to Judge Judy and Divorce Court. And America lived happily ever after. NOT!!!

Marriage in America has a bad reputation. Las Vegas oddsmakers have an official betting line on whether Jennifer Lopez's new marriage to Ben Affleck will last less than or more than 2 years. And we are past being shocked. Past being amazed. Hopefully NOT past being worried.

Beginning today, and for the next three weeks, I want to talk about Building a Lasting Marriage, because despite our opinions and practices, marriage is not man's creation --- it's an integral part of God's design. God calls some people into sacred lives of singleness as a demonstration of His love, and others are called into the holy trust that is matrimony. Both serve God's purpose and plan, but in our arrogance, man has decided that he can mess with God's design.

This is a series of sermons that I am passionate about. The church is on the front lines of the war to save our families, and building lasting marriages is one of the primary ways that will be accomplished. At stake is the faith and health of our children, the credibility and effectiveness of our witness and the happiness and wholeness of all of us. Broken homes are often the cause of broken lives. I want to prevent that, wherever possible.

I want a lot out of marriage ?. Because God wants a lot out of our marriages. And He has offered a lot in our marriages. I know that becausse it is inherent in His introduction to this relationship, all the way back in the Garden of Eden.

(ill) A group of Kentuckians wanted to go hiking in the Daniel Boone National Forest in the southern part of the state, so they hired the best guide in the state to lead them. On the trail for 2 days they found themselves going around and around in a circle. Realizing they were lost, the hikers turned on the guide. "I thought you were the best guide in Kentucky?" they asked. "I am," he answered. "But I think we're in Tennessee now."

T/S: The moral of the story is: if you follow the wrong guide, you are bound to get lost. Not just in hiking but in marriage. When we build our marriages on our personal feelings, or on society's expectations or on anything other than God's blueprint, we are bound to get off track. The foundation of building a lasting marriage is in understanding God's design for marriage. Three principles given to the first couple and expected of all couples.

Let's look at them one at a time.

"For this reason?." Begs us to look back. The picture of marriage we have is of a new creation. A relationship where two individuals are made complete in each other. Two identities become one. If the apron strings are never cut, they serve as a tether that keeps the new relationship grounded and unable to grow.

(ill) After a Sunday School lesson on Adam and Eve, and he whole rib incident, a young boy complained to his mother of a stomach ache. When his mother asked what was the matter he held his side and said, "I think I'm having a wife."

This principle gets really tested in four ways:

Somebody has to come first in priority, and if it is not your spouse, you're making a mistake.. And parents, beware of putting pressure on your married children to "prove' they still love you. They do, but you come second.

(ill) A soon to be bride came into her mother's house crying, "Mom, I can't marry Bill. He's Christian, but he doesn't believe in hell." Her mother said, "You go ahead and marry Bill , and we will prove to him that there's a hell."

Tension between spouses and inlaw parents will almost always equal tension in a marriage. Someone is going to feel like they have to choose sides. Parents, remember this when you are tempted to talk badly about your son or daughter in law. Men and women, before you start in on your inlaws, remember the pressure you are putting on your spouse.

At the heart of God's instruction is the wisdom that to make a lasting future together, you have to put the past behind you. One of the areas of concern in remarriages is just this. With ex-wives and ex-husbands, ex-inlaws and step-children there is always a tension between the past and the future.

Is it a fatal tension? It doesn't have to be, but in my experience it is the leading cause of divorce in second marriages. It's countered with loving openness and vulnerability and honesty. It's confronted with an attitude Paul expressed to the Philippian church:

Before we lay all of the burdens of coping with parents on young newly married people, we need to grasp the realities of modern medicine and longer lifespans. More and more adult children are facing incredibly difficult decisions about how best to care for their aging parents.

(ill) Both of Robin's grandmothers moved in with her parents. During that time, Robin's parents have had two heart attacks, one bypass surgery and the progression of a crippling disease. We would be fools to not recognize the stress and strain that can put on a marriage.

And to be honest, there is not a simple answer. Not a formula for curing that dilemna. Only a prescription for building a whole and healthy marriage that not only copes and endures, but grows and thrives in times of trouble.

I've heard people say that they didn't want to date or marry someone because "We're too good of friends." I have a vey spiritual answer to that: BALONEY! God intended for us to marry our best friends. At the heart of a lasting marriage is a friendship where two people crave spending time together, are able to share the deepest moments of life and consider troubles a time to work together and work things out.

(ill) There was a man in a coma in the hospital, who regained consciousness and motioned for his wife to come closer to him. "Sue Ann you've been right there next to me through a whole lot in life. You were there when I had my heart attack. You were there when my business failed. You were there when I had that bad car wrecck. You're here with me in the hospital now. Sue Ann .. I've been thinking ? you're bad luck."

T/S: It's almost become a cliché about men's inability to communicate their feelings and a woman's tendency to overemotionalize everything ? but somewhere in that cliché is the truth that husbands and wives are meant to be emotionally connected at the a level deeper than any other relationship on earth. If there are secrets that you are telling someonee other than your spouse, you're endangering this emotional level of your marriage.

Intimacy is a word that we use often in church, but often leave fuzzy in interpretation. (ill) I once watched my Dad graft a fruit tree, and realized that it was the perfect picture of intimacy. He had a tree rooted in the ground that he made an incision on. Then he skinned the truck of another tree and slid into the incision, matching up the sap lines. He wrapped and protected the graft from the elements and waited for it to grow.

T/S: When two people open up their hearts and bare themselves to each other exclusively, protecting and nurturing that bond, they experience intimacy. It's easy to see why we use the word intimacy to describe sexual relations, but in this verse, God is specifically talking about emotional intimacy. We know that because He addresses our sexuality in the very next sentence.

Powerful words about a powerful part of human life. How powerful is sex? The obvious answer is to point at the advertising and entertainment industries in our country that literally drive our economic survival. Madison Avenue and Hollywood sell sex, plain and simple. And America and the world buy.

In Napolean Hill's book The Secret of Success the author noted than when studying the 100 most influential figures in world history, all of them but one, Alexander the Great, achieved their historically significant status AFTER they were 40 years old. Hill theorized that men, freed from the urgency of their sexual drive with middle age, were able to concentrate and focus on their life work. The one exception, Alexander the Great, suffered so severe depression, that he died of alcoholism related liver ailments at age 33.

If a frank discussion of sex makes you nervous, or if you think it's not something wqe should talk about in polite company, I would invite you to read Song of Solomon. Better yet, if you are really brave, read it in a modern translation. God created us as sexual beings, with intercourse being the one of the most powerful and intense expressions of love and intimacy possible. To leave it out of the marital equation is like leaving flour out of a bread recipe. God created marriage to be the parameter for our sexual satisfaction. He planned for husbands and wives to be faithful, to be tender and to be exciting. To breach any of those qualities is to introduce peril into your relationship.

(ill) The KY Fish & Wildlife Service estimate that 23, 000 deer get hit on KY roads each year. The numbers peak in Nov and in the Spring .. during the rut. Deer preoccupied with reproduction, forget to look both ways.

T/S: Many a marriage where one or the other party is preoccupied with sex have been train wrecked as well.

I introduce these principles as a way of introducing this topic from God's perspective.. Next week we'll look specifically at what the Bible says about being a Godly wife. After that, we'll look at what it takes to be a Godly husband. But neither of those discussions can happen without an understanding of love (last weeek) and a recognition of God's marriage designs for us.

Society is trying its best to make marriage be what man wants it to be, rather than what God says it is. I read a while back about a former Mr. Universe who was married by a Unitarian minister to another man. Gay marriages and their legality are a political hot potato. But God already defined marriage a lifelong, binding relationship between one man and one woman.

Partnerships and unions and live-ins and housemates may sound lovely, but they fail God's test for a Biblical marriage. Does a piece of paper really matter, I've heard it asked? ABSOLUTELY, God says, not because of the paper, but because of the commitment represented by that paper.

And as surely as modern culture races to embrace co-habitation before marriage and homosexual marriages, we have like lemming over the cliff, rushed to follow the divorce trend.

(ill) I read a story in Reader's Digest about 2 men who worked from the gas company who decided to race down the street after finishing a job, to see who was the fastest. They huffed and puffed to the end of the block, only to find the woman whose house they had beeen working at running after them.

What's the matter? They asked her. "When I see two men from the gas company running ful speed awayt fro my house, I'm going to run too."

T/S; In the age of the sexual revolution and no fault divorce, a lot of America raced to the court system to eend marriage conflicts. Christians have sadly, too often raced right along, without good reason. Divorce is wwhat happens when marriages fall apart, instead of marrying with the commitment that it was until somebody died.

(qu) Ruth Bell Graham was once asked if she ever considered divorcing her husband, Billy Graham,. Divorce, no. Murder, yes.

T/S; I recently saw a TV show about a wedding I which the couple reccited vows that promised to honor, obey, resopect and cherish each other as long as we both shall love.

They only changed one letter, but it makes all the difference. Love becomes conditionall, marriage beecomes temporary. Neither are what God intended.

So how do we talk about marriage and address the reality of divorce. The same way the Bible does.

1 John 1:9

• unfaithfulness: I am persuaded that if marriage is defined in Genesis 2, then unfaithfulness here is more than just sexualk unfaithfulness. Emotional unfaithfulness breachees the marriage covenant, just as certainly as sexual straying does.

Marriage was one way God demonstrates His love. Two imperfect people, sweating out life's conflicts, savoring life's victories?.. TOGETHER. Oit's only possible when there is a thrid party in that mariage, namely Jeesus Christ.

He is the Deliverer of grace, the Bringer of forgiveness, the Prince of Peacee. He is the Author of Love and the Savior od our sins. And He is available to be brought into every life and every marriage. By faith.