Our Goal for Our Wedding

Our dream for our wedding day is for each person to be inspired by God’s love through our love story. Not in just the “neat” way that God lead us together, or the little perks of being romantic, but in the way that we’ve exposed ourselves to so much of God’s love simply by believing and following Jesus in our lives. The principle of faith is uniquely defining of our relationship, yet is universally applicable for every person in their own individual walks with God.

Here’s how we feel that faith has played such an important part in our story: First of all, we met each other while we were already fully committed to following God’s plan for our lives. We were contented in the paths that he was leading us on and not desperate for some other special person to fill any gapping void in our lives. As we were, we were complete in Christ. This allowed us to enter into the relationship very objectively, desperate only for God’s guiding and his opinion on our interaction with each other. It was his spirit that opened our eyes to each other and drew us together, and only after we were sure of that, we proceeded.

Secondly, we remained committed primarily to Jesus and his kingdom throughout the duration of our courtship. It would have been easy to allow our growing obsession with each other to justify a premature termination to Naomi’s time in Thailand, but we waited instead. It was only after our paths of commitment to God’s kingdom intersected that we felt at peace to move on into marriage.

Thirdly, we continued to pursue Jesus even as we became enveloped by fascination with each other. It’s hard to keep priorities straight in the face of something as fresh and thrilling as romantic involvement, yet we both recognized the deeper significance of our relationship with Jesus, and pressed each other towards a deeper romance with him, not just each other.

Finally, we availed ourselves to God’s power to overcome the allurements of premature pleasure and pursued purity beyond our own fulfillment in each other. We have discovered in a very intimate way how enticing a man an woman can be to each other, yet confined ourselves to the spectrum of involvement that was legitimate in each phase of our relationship.

In exchange for walking in faith, we’ve experienced the “substance” described in Hebrews 11. Instead of wallowing in uncertainty and the sting of loneliness and separation, we experienced a much greater fulfillment in a deeper intimacy with God, an intensity of commitment to each other, and security and peace that what we we doing was the best possible route we could take.  We didn’t have the physical presence of each other, but we did have the spiritual presence of knowing that God was working everything out for our good.

In the end, we’ve experienced the beauty of God’s love. We are sad that God is perceived as a damper and inhibitor who ultimately works to deprive our pleasure, and only sanctions love when expressed in a way that is clean and… boring. Instead, God, as the creator and source of love and excitement, delights in lavishing pleasure on his creation, as illustrated by our love story.

God demands for purity and self restraint are not unwarranted. They only serve to protect us from vanity, a unsatisfying superficial pleasure that fades with time, and worse, morphs into serpents that punctuate the death our sin condemns us to. Following Jesus has led us to a satisfying and intensifying ecstasy that has made all other paths resemble “chasing after the wind”. This experience has been so fulfilling to us that we’ve developed a passion to inspire others to take the same route in their lives, especially the friends who will be present at our wedding day.