I had a call this week from the daughter of a couple that lives near our church. Many of you would recognize her parents name. Seems her parents have been living together the last 20 years or so and never got married. Now they are thinking about making it legal and are looking into having a quaint church wedding. She said that because I was the priest they would want me to do the wedding. I corrected her of course, but I said that as Pastor I take marriage very seriously. For Your Information I have four prerequisites that must be met before I will bless the marriage of a man and woman. 1.The couple must believe that marriage is a Covenant Vow before God 2.They must not be living together 3.They must go through premarital counseling before I agree to marry them. 4.They must have the blessings of both sets of parents. I invited her to have them call me and we could meet and discuss it more fully. Some of you are thinking, Brother Jim, that seems pretty harsh. After all, they have been living together and need to make it official. Plus they are our neighbors, and this is a chance to reach out to them. I understand your thoughts, but consider this: Do we ever have an excuse to take God for granted? NO! God is Holy, He is Righteous. He has standards and He reigns in Heaven whether we acknowledge Him or not. One day everyone will have an appointment with the God who created them and will answer for why they took Him for granted. If we can't ever take God for granted, then we can't take Jesus for granted. And if we can't take Jesus for granted, we can't take His wife for granted. And the church is His wife. Now when it comes to the church, the bride of Christ, we see a Universal application, but we also see a local application. I believe Pleasant Prairie Baptist can be a great church. I believe we are sitting in a mission field. And we need to start taking our church more seriously. We can not take it for granted, just as we wouldn't dare think of taking God for granted. I believe the community ...