He who findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favor with the Lord.

Today I give thanks for the exceptional marriage of Josh Wean to Miss Sarah Back which took place earlier this evening before many families and friends that make up the community of saints here in San Antonio. This was the marriage of a pure woman to a pure man. Both were home schooled. Both have committed themselves to obeying the Fifth Commandment. Both have proven themselves to be people of deep, abiding honor and integrity. Both have a passion for service to Jesus Christ. Josh is one of the leaders here at Vision Forum and is a standard bearer for our ministry. He met his bride on the 2002 Vision Forum Ministries Faith & Freedom Tour.

Today the angels rejoice. And we rejoice with them. One man and one woman, both proven covenant keepers, have entered marriage with the purpose of serving God on a joint dominion mission for His glory. He is the leader and she is the follower, but both draw strength from the other. Together they are one.

In such a marriage, we have great hope — hope for the new couple; hope for the future of our community which rests on covenant keeping marriages; hope that our children will see living examples that marriage is a beautiful covenantal affair which must be approached with holiness. We have hope that the Lord will make those godly examples of marriage preparation attractive to our youth. And we desperately need such examples to stem the rising tide of dishonor and rebellion which is promoted through the dating culture and embraced by so many evangelical youth.

Josh and Sarah honored me with an opportunity to share a message during their wedding. One of the stories I told related to Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers. It was on this very day, August 2, 149 years ago, that Charles Spurgeon married his beloved bride Susannah. Their marriage became legendary as a sweet smelling aroma of Jesus Christ and an example of Christian love between a man and woman. The story of their meeting is especially interesting.

One day in church, Charles Spurgeon found himself sitting next to Susannah. She was reading a few lines from a book: “Seek a good wife of thy God, for she is the best gift of His Providence. If thou art to have a wife of thy youth, she is now living on the earth, therefore think of her and pray for her well.”

Spurgeon turned to Susannah and asked, “Do you pray for him who is to be your husband?” Susannah’s heart raced. Her eyes fell, she blushed at the young pastor’s words, and she answered, “I do pray for that.”

They declared their love for each other on August 2, 1854. Susannah later wrote the following words: “I left my beloved, and hastening to the house to an upper room, I knelt before God. I praised and thanked Him with happy tears, for His great mercy in giving me the love of so good a man. If I had known then how good he was, how great he would become, I would have been overwhelmed, not so much with the happiness of being his, as with the responsibility which such a position would entail.”

Spurgeon would describe the marriage that God had given him by writing: “I’ve been trying in these pages to leave the love out of letters as much as possible, lest my precious things should appear but platitudes to my readers” (speaking of his wife) “but it is a difficult task, for little rills of tenderness run between all the sentences, like the singing, dancing waters among the boulders of a brook, and I cannot still the music altogether. To the end of this beautiful life, it is the same, my letters will always be those of devotion and love, as well of appreciation.” He also wrote: “Happy woman, happy man, if heaven be found on earth, they have it.... At last, two are so blended, so engrafted in one stem, that their old age presents a lovely attachment, a common sympathy, by which its infirmities are greatly eliminated and its burdens are transformed into fresh bonds of love. So happy a union of will, sentiment, thought, and heart exists between husband and wife that the two streams of their life here wash away the divided bank and run on as one broad current of united existence till their common joy falls into the ocean of eternal felicity.”