"Your TRUE LOVE LIVES! And yet you marry another. True love SAVED HER in the fire swamp, and she treated it like garbage. So, bow to her if you want. Bow to her. Bow to the queen of slime, the queen of filth, the queen of putrescence. Boo, boo! Rubbish, slime, filth, muck! Boo! Boo! BOO!"
Alright... name that quote! If you read the title of this post, you probably guessed it's from one of my favorite movies of all time: The Princess Bride. Chances are, you've seen it. If you haven't, the quote basically explains the situation: Buttercup (though she is actually dreaming) has just married Prince Humperdink, even though her true love and savior of her life, Westley, is still alive.
This is a very dramatic scene in the movie (or at least as dramatic as The Princess Bride gets). We are devastated. Buttercup has to marry Westley! Who in their right mind would give up their true love to marry someone else, especially if that love had saved their life?
We do the exact same thing every single day.
Jesus Christ is our true love. He saved us from something far worse than the fire swamp. He saved us from an eternity in hell. So why on earth do we leave him for the world? It doesn't make any sense.
1 John 2:15 says, "Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him." James 4:4 says, "You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." Note the word choice there: ADULTERESSES. When we sin and follow the world, we're cheating on the love of our lives!
So how do we get back in a right relationship with our True Love? To continue with my Princess Bride application, let's return to the beginning of the movie. How does Buttercup realize that Westley truly loves her? "She was amazed to discover that when he was saying 'As you wish', what he meant was, 'I love you.'" If we really love Christ, we're going to do AS HE WISHES!! John 14:15: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." It's as simple as that!
But what if it gets hard? Will Jesus cease to love us if we fall short of his expectations? Of course not!
"Westley and I are joined by the bonds of love, and you cannot track that--not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it--not with a thousand swords."
Romans 8:38-39: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Now here's the critical question? Which will you choose? Humperdink, or Westley? The sinful world, or the Savior, Jesus Christ? If we choose Him, obey His word, we will reach our reward in Heaven, reaching as a church our beautiful wedding as Christ's "Princess Bride."
~green eyes :)
