Quote from Forum Archives on January 23, 2011, 10:21 pm

Posted by: edwrather <edwrather@...>

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The Burning Bush Devotional
Welcome to the 736 new subscribers since January 1, 2011!!
There were 4010 new subscribers during 2010!!
Classic from 2002

01.24.11

Inseparable

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For
Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the
slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him
who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor
principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height
nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:35-39.

Fred and Olive Hodges are both 102 years old, and have been married for
nearly 77 years (In 2002). They are the longest married couple in Great
Britain. They have two children, 11 grandchildren, and 12
great-grandchildren. Olive Hodges says, "It is all about love, give and take
and considering the other person. Love is the main thing. When the Lord came
into our lives it made all the difference." Their long-lived marriage is
even more remarkable in light of the fact that the average marriage in Great
Britain only lasts a little over nine years.

Fred and Olive have been inseparable for almost 77 years, and in their love
we see the modeling of the love of their Lord. Ephesians 5:25 says,
"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave
Himself for her." Paul goes on to say, "So husbands ought to love their own
wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one
ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord
does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His
bones. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined
to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh (Ephesians 5:28-31)."

To have a successful marriage takes both the husband and wife striving to
demonstrate the love of Christ toward each other. This is not just the role
of the husband, and it is not just the role of the wife. Paul ends chapter
five of Ephesians by saying, "let each one of you in particular so love his
own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband
(Ephesians 5:33)." Think of the example of Christ, and in Him we see the
example for how the husband and wife should conduct themselves in marriage.
Jesus so loved the church, that He suffered and died on the cross, so that
we would have a Savior. How far should we go in our self-sacrificing love
for our spouse? Christ went to, and through the cross. If we demonstrate
that kind of love for each other in marriage, our lives too will be
inseparable.

The closeness, and inseparableness of marriage is a small taste, a shadow of
the inseparableness of our relationship to Christ. Once we know Christ as
our Savior, nothing can separate us from the love of God. Paul makes it
clear that when he says nothing, he means nothing, as he lists everything
that he can think of that we might think could separate us. Paul says, "For
I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities
nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor
any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

What can separate us from the love of God? Nothing!! Once we know Christ as
our Savior we are forever inseparable.

(Having just celebrated our wedding anniversary today, Jeanie and I can both
testify that the Lord has made all the difference in our marriage too. - Ed)

Copyright © 2002-2011. Ed Wrather. Permission is given for use of the
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website has been online since January 31, 1998. On June 8, 1998 the email
version of the Burning Bush Devotional was first sent. Ed Wrather began
writing devotionals in the early 1990s. The distribution of these first
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