Sermon Tone Analysis

Wedding Mandi Hofer, Tom Murphy 9.29.01

Texts: 1 Cor 13.4-8,13    1 John 4.9-12

 

love in the verses, love in the air, anything more romantic and lovely than a wedding on a beautiful day like today?

 

we love to talk about love at a time like this

we see Tom and Mandi standing before us, and we rejoice that they are IN love, in our pre-marriage planning, it was so lovely to hear each say how wonderful it was to see the other walk through the door, to put a smile on each other’s face, to make each other feel so good in a way that no one else can do

yes, TandM IN love, but it wasn’t always this way…

 

TandM used to ride the bus together back in their BenFranklin jr high days

didn’t really know each other, but knew of each other, and, acc to Tom, what he remembers about M is that “she was the loud one that annoyed him”

 

it took a while for that loving feeling to grow betw them!

 

even in marriage, couples realize, however, that people do not always feel like they are IN love

but we are not here today simply to acknowl the feeling that are TandM are in Love

we are here to witness a commitment to action, a promise to actually love one another

 

impt to make distinction between feeling of LUV and practice of LOVE

 

LUV as a feeling is okay, desirable BUT sometimes can lose that luvin feeling when that other seems awfully loud and annoying

LOVE is an action and it is this love that is described in 1 Cor 13:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

A goal of Xn life in general and Xn couple and Xn family in particular is to have this love become natural but it always remains something we practice, choose to do: Love one another!

and now I am quoting from the 1 John passage you chose

hope you realize what an awesome command and challenge this is: love one another!

But know that w~/ every command God gives, God also gives the way to make it possible to keep

 

Look at verse: Beloved, /since God loved us so much/, we also ought to love one another.

it is God’s love for you that makes it poss to love one another

 

in fact, it is God’s love that brings you to this day

and God will continue to be present with you in the midst of sickness and health and better and worse and loud and annoying!

and all that the years may bring

 

today not only celebrate your marriage but also celebrate this love of God which is being manifested in your relationship.

And so throughout your marriage, I~/we pray that you will indeed LUV each other but also LOVE one another just as God loves you.

AMEN.