Chassidy Smith, who many of you know, joined our staff May 13, 2009 and is coordinating the TX Super Summer Global Xtreme trip. This Saturday she will become Mrs. John Rogers! (Check back for highlights from the wedding.) Below is an article she has written on engagement:

I have always tried to imagine what being engaged would feel like: the ring, the butterflies, the expectation, the excitement of it all. Since August 1, 2009, I have not been disappointed. Engagement has been all of those things. Sometimes it all feels so surreal I have to sit down, look at my left hand, and think “Wow. This is actually happening.” It is beautiful. It is everything that I hoped and prayed for as a young girl. And it is more, much, much more. I see traces of Ephesians 4:20-21 when I think about the beauty of engagement and marriage; God is “able to do far more abundantly than we can imagine, according to his power at work within us.” It has been far more than I could ever imagine or pray for. I am constantly grateful at the provision of Father.

Throughout the last five months, however, there has consistently been something that I have not expected. The more I prepare for marriage individually, the more John and I prepare together, and the more God gives me his eyes for the purpose of marriage, the less and less I can run away from this thing. It’s not excitement, or anxiety, or stress. It’s refining. The closer I get to January 9, the hotter the heat gets, “for he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap.” (Mal 3:3).

In his newest book, This Momentary Marriage, John Piper says “the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display….it is about showing in real life the glory of the Gospel.” Through scripture, Father is revealing to me the gravity and weight of marriage….and it is huge. In a short time when John and I come together in the covenant of marriage, we are given the incredible responsibility and blessing of showing the world a tangible picture of the Gospel. We are to show to one another, and those around us, grace, mercy, love, sacrifice, selflessness….we are to portray Jesus and his bride, the church.

Needless to say, the last 5 months of preparation, and the rest of my life, have been and will be a deep time of refining. God is bringing to light things about myself that don’t bring glory to Him (and probably make me really hard to be joined together with J). The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword (Heb 4:12), and God is using His word to challenge, convict, refine, and restore me. I continue to learn Bottom Line as I realize how much marriage is not about myself, or John, or our family. Marriage is solely about the glory of God. It is to glorify him by being an accurate depiction of the Gospel. “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (Eph 5:32)

Though I will continue to learn and be challenged and floored by this truth for the rest of my life, it has already greatly impacted me. Thinking of engagement in Bottom Line terms means I’m not so controlling or nit-picky, it means I don’t hold something over my future spouse’s head, it means that we actively seek the guidance and will of the Father, because He is what it is about. Bottom Line, His glory and the truth and freedom of the Gospel. It is not about my comfort, preference, or feelings; it is about something and someone much greater than myself. Something much greater than us. Though engagement and marriage is beautiful and wonderful, I am learning the depth of its beauty. Not because of a ring, or a ceremony, or even getting to spend the rest of your life with your best friend.

“Marriage is a magnificent thing because it is modeled on something magnificent and points to something magnificent. And the love that binds this man and woman in marriage is a magnificent love because it portrays something magnificent- “as Christ loved the church” and “as the church submits to Christ.” The greatness of marriage is not in itself. The greatness of marriage is that it displays something unspeakably great, namely, Christ and the church.” John Piper, This Momentary Marriage.