Let God be your everything – Wedding of Estelle Girondel & Etienne Theron

May the Lord bless this day, bless our gathering, that blessings can flow from our lives from today and into the future.

Estelle and Etienne, you are getting married today but we do not know what difficulties and trials lie before you, we don’t know for how long the Lord will spare each of you. But how wonderful it will be when we reach our goal and the enemy of our souls is defeated, when sin has been overcome forever, where there will be no more crying or fighting, and we will rest with our Lord. What a wedding celebration that will be.

We praise God that you found this Saviour and He changed your lives and freed you from the bondage of sin. That is why we all have a song in our hearts, praising the Lord.

Today I will do things a bit differently. Etienne, in Proverbs 31:10-12 we read: Who can find a virtuous wife, for her worth is far above rubies. Are these not amazing words? Estelle, your husband believes that you will be such a wife. That is why this is a great day for you, for your families, and for the church of Jesus Christ.

I want to thank the Lord, and you can thank the Lord with us too when I see how the Lord has been speaking to us lately, during the week and on Sundays. I would like to remind you about some points which you can take along into your future, like David took along 5 stones in his shepherd’s pouch and with one of them he could slay that giant Goliath, the one Israel feared when they just heard his voice.

One day the Lord instructed Moses to go up to the Promised Land. The Lord promised to send His angel with them. But see what a man Moses was. He could have said that this is the final victory! We are reaching the end of our years of travail and now we will leave Egypt and will finally reach the Promised Land. However, he prayed and said Lord, if you will only send an angel and You won’t go with us, don’t ask me to go. I need Your presence, You Yourself with us. I responded in my heart that this was a man who was like the people who sought revival, nothing less than this, God with us.

You heard of the cornerstone. That cornerstone was the one by which every wall was put up in the building. It was the guiding stone. Poor you, if you stumble on this cornerstone.

We heard of travelling on the road and then suddenly insects splatter onto the windscreen. You can become irritated, being focused on the windscreen and how many insects there are and how you are suffering because of the insects impeding your sight, yet we were cautioned to keep our eyes on the road, not on the insects. It can be a fire of testing, a trial of your faith, where the cost is too high for some, so they stop their journey because of these insects.

And then – seeking the blessing of God, the owner of all blessings: not your Christianity, not your faith, not your accepting Christ, then sitting down because you are satisfied that you have accepted Christ. That is the beginning, that is the “a”, don’t disappoint the One who called you, don’t remain at ABC, get to XYZ, so that when you get to the end of your life you can hear, ‘Well done good and faithful servant’. Some don’t want to be servants, they want to be bosses – remember that if you want to be great, be the servant of all. That is your degree. You will pass if you put on the garment of servanthood.

Now to the word that our bridegroom shared with me which the Lord laid on his heart, a word which was a special blessing to him.

Proverbs 3:5 – 6  Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.

Trust in the Lord. Trust in the One into whose hands you have given your life. The One who is God, Creator of heaven and earth. He, the One who entrusts us with marriage. How wonderful to accept an unspoiled bride from the hand of God.

The man of God, Paul, likens the church to the heavenly bride – and how he longs to present this bride to Christ without spot or wrinkle.

If you accept the bride out of God’s hand, you will cherish her because she is not given to you by man. Etienne, did someone choose her for you? He says no, but he believes God chose this bride for him. He tried to keep his eyes, tongue and ears pure. Going to the fountain of cleansing and saying, Lord Jesus, your blood cleanses me from every sinful stain.

Sometimes we need to attend weddings to remind ourselves of the promises we made to God when we were children or when we repented or when we got married. They are written in Heaven’s books. Have we been faithful to them? We dare not get to heaven and be in debt because we have not fulfilled our promises.

We must submit to Him fully, which becomes sweeter as we go on, and not lean on our own understanding or knowledge, as this is like a broken reed which cannot support you and which also leads to pride. In all your ways acknowledge Him. This acknowledging Him implies knowing Him. To be acquainted with, to recognise, experience and understand Him. We can only find true insight with God and in the fear of God.

Jehovah has power and authority over human intelligence and wisdom. He can remove the wisdom of the wise, and entrust it to those who are babes, the innocent. If you stop fearing God you are in great danger that He will take away your wisdom. What you had, you lose and the terrible thing is that you are not aware of the fact that you have lost it. Samson was entrusted with power from on high. God gave him that power, but when he became careless, he thought he still had his strength, when he laid his head where he should not have laid it. They cut off his hair, that which God had commanded, do not cut off. And so he lost his power.

We heard in the service last night of Jacob who was on his way to the place he had been sent to, at night there was no shelter, so he took a stone and rested his head on it and he slept. He didn’t rest his head on the lap of a gentile woman, one who didn’t know God. Suddenly he dreamed that the heavens opened with the angels descending and ascending the heavenly ladder. He woke up in fear, he said, ‘I didn’t know this was the place of God, God was here and I didn’t even know it’. Keep your heart open so that heaven can send angels to you. Trust the Lord even in the night, when it is dark, and you don’t see the way and are all alone so that you are comforted and rest on Him.

Leaning has the sense of putting your whole weight on something. Resting on, and trusting in that person or thing. God knows what is best for us. He is a better judge of what we need than even we are. We must trust Him completely in every choice we make. Let us not be wise in our own eyes.

We should always be willing to listen to and be corrected by God’s word and wise counsellors. Bring all decisions to God in prayer. Use the Bible as your guide and then follow God’s leading.

He will make your paths straight by both guiding and protecting you.

Exchanging of rings

Rely on the One who has called you to a life to glorify His name.

Bruno Hlongwane

We thank the Lord that you can enter marriage in this way. Recently when I spoke to Estelle’s parents, they said that they are so thankful that their daughter is getting married in the same way they got married. It brings so much joy to God and the parents, to the church, if you build on this foundation of obeying God’s will and walking in purity.