I have learned when we are young we are soooo rigid and expect everything to be just so.... Older I have learned things are never written in stone and we need to learn to be adaptable. Very true that wisdom comes with age.Great to see you, @JesusLives!
I love that you said you shortened your list down to "a heartbeat"... Lol!!!
We're thankful you and @tourist still hang out with us.
"Just not for you"? So why do you carry on as if marriage was some kind of disease? Do you not remember that the first miracle of Jesus was at a wedding? Do you not know that marriage symbolises union between Christ and those He has saved?
Then go for it. Vanity. Vanity of vanities.
I choose what God wishes, through his servant Paul.
Yes, the union between Him and the church; from our prospective, us and Him. If you have a savior complex, you feel like you're a messiah and there's some poor wretched soul in desparate need of your salvation, go for it, that's not my conviction. Don't you know that there's no marriage in eternal life, Matt. 22:30? Precisely due to the reason you named, that it'd be an eternal union with Christ? When death does you part, you ultimately belong to Christ, right? If that's truly an "eternal" union, how about experiencing it now, instead of a poor reflection and imitation of it in an earthly union, which could be hell? Why go for a knockoff when the original is right in front of you?
Bible doesn't, modern wedding, marriage counselling, couples therapy industries do, most churches are a part of it.
One passage, that applied in a particular set of circumstances and you call marriage vanity? Why did Jesus perform His first miracle at a wedding? Paul said that the other apostles were married - "This is my defense to those who scrutinize me: Have we no right to food and to drink? Have we no right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas? Or are Barnabas and I the only apostles who must work for a living?"
You've got the wrong translation, in KJV it reads, "lead about a sister, a wife as well as other apostles," the original Greek word for "wife" means woman in general, not Peter's or any apostle's wife in partifuclar. By no means can htat be taken as a proof of any apostle's marital status.
And as I said, marriage itself is a neutral institution, it is the couple who makes it heaven or hell. Lord Jesus condemned the Pharisees' and the Sadduccees' erroneous views on marraige, and he commended singlehood as a gift, are you gonna lash at him for that?
He who can be trusted with little can be trusted with much; he who's dishonest with little will be dishonest with much. If a person can'a adequately govern themselves, can't orderly run their own lives, can't financially sustain themselves, and that I believe is "most" or "many:, how can they govern a spouse and kids? How can they orderly run a family? How can they sustain others?
Married couples are joined by God. "What God joined together, let no man separate." The opposite of that is also true - what God does NOT join together, let no man force together either. Perhaps God granted you the opportunity to meet your spouse, grow mutual feelings, share experience, spend quality time together, and eventually get married, all of that sounds awfully tempting, but it's all fictional to me, I've never met anybody in the first place, even if I had, and I were attracted to them, they wouldn't be attracted to me, in some cases my Christian values are precisely repulsive to them, if I tell them any spiritual stuff, they'd think I'm nuts, so it's just not for me.
Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law. Peter was married.
But was he still married, after his three denials of Jesus, the Pentecost, his imprisonment and his missionary journey? Jesus demanded that his disciples must love him more than their family, they must take up their cross and follow him, Peter himself confessed that he had left all to follow Jesus, a wife in particular could be the excuse that keeps one from heeding the call, so forgive me for reasonably concluding that Peter was no longer married.
According to what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:5, I think we can safely conclude that Peter was still married.
You've got the wrong translation, in KJV it reads, "lead about A sister, A wife as well as other apostles," the original Greek word for "wife" means woman in general, not Peter's or any apostle's wife in partifuclar. Besides, the context is about Paul's defense of his apostleship, which has nothing to do with marriage. By no means can that be taken as a proof of any apostle's marital status.
