I am currently in the midst of a wedding revival.\u00c2\u00a0 I have the privilege of officiating 4 weddings in the next 4 months and if you know me at all, you know that is a bunch of weddings.\u00c2\u00a0 I am not the pastor who seeks out weddings to officiate.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get me wrong, I love to officiate weddings, it is just that currently, the season I am in, in life and ministry, I only want to officiate weddings of friends or family members, therefore, I usually don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do more than 3, or so, weddings a year.<\/p>\n
This year has been different and the more my friends are getting married, the more weddings I will officiate.\u00c2\u00a0 With the honor of seeing so many people getting married lately, it has made me reflect on my relationship with Sara.<\/p>\n
Sara and I have been married for 8 years and 263 days, but who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s counting?\u00c2\u00a0 We have been through our ups and our downs, mainly ups, and have been able to say that we love each other more today, than we did yesterday.<\/p>\n
As I look back at our journey, I have seen the many mistakes that I have made and the many successes we have achieved, by the grace of God.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to take a few days and just explore how we have made our relationship work for 8 years.<\/p>\n
Now, I know that we have not been married for 50 years and so in the eyes of many, we are still babies with this whole marriage thing.\u00c2\u00a0 This is true; however, we have learned a ton and can share some insights with the next generation who is in the process of getting married or looking for someone who might be a potential prospect.<\/p>\n
Tip #1 to a Successful Marriage: Seek Jesus More Than the Opposite Sex<\/strong><\/p>\n If you want to have a marriage that thrives and is built on love, grace and forgiveness, then both individuals must be seeking Jesus more than the other person.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus must be the center of all of our relationships or else we will find those relationships unfulfilling and will seek something more.<\/p>\n I told Sara, many times, throughout our dating relationship, that she was number 3 on my priorities list.\u00c2\u00a0 There was God, then ministry, then her.\u00c2\u00a0 I always told her that when we got married that she would move to number two, only behind God.\u00c2\u00a0 No girl wants to hear this, but it was true and so I said it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Sara will never make it above God.\u00c2\u00a0 She is not God; She is not my savior and it would be unfair to her, to God and to\u00c2\u00a0myself, if I placed her above God.\u00c2\u00a0 God is God and He deserves to be first in my life.\u00c2\u00a0 When I take Him out of that top position, I find that my relationship with Sara suffers, as well as every other area of my life.<\/p>\n If you are married, or you are dating, make sure that you are seeking Jesus more than anyone or anything else.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone else, and everything else, depends on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am currently in the midst of a wedding revival.\u00c2\u00a0 I have the privilege of officiating 4 weddings in the next 4 months and if you know me at all, you know that is a bunch of weddings.\u00c2\u00a0 I am not the pastor who seeks out weddings to officiate.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get me wrong, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ernestsmith.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}