Waller Debrief

The Wallers have left, but not without leaving us feeling extremely blessed to have met them.  I'm only sad that more people didn't get a chance to hear their message.  As I sat there listening to their beautiful music and hearing their heart for marriage, I thought of all the sad, hopeless people out there who don't truly understand God's intention for marriage - to be a model of His love for us.  Our model for marriage so often comes out of Hollywood.  We should know by now, Hollywood doesn't have the answer.

The evening began with both of them singing original songs they had written.  Brayden sat at the piano, while she either played on the drum or guitar.  They had also brought along a young lady who accompanied them on violin.  I was entranced.  Their music was so incredible.  Their voices were amazing.  He reminded me of Keith Green mixed with a little Michael Card.  I honestly could have listened to them for hours.  Most of their songs were simply Scripture put to music.

They began by talking about John the Baptist.  He was used by God to prepare the way for the coming of Christ.  They described how different he looked in that he wore clothes out of camel's hair and he ate locusts and honey.  He stood out.  He was different.  The challenge was - are we ready to be used by God to prepare the way for Christ's second coming?  Are we willing to stand out?  To be different?  Are we ready to live our lives in a way that is perhaps different from the rest of the world, particularly with respect to marriage?  We all know the statistics.  Half of the marriages, Christian and non, are simply not making it.  We are doing something wrong.

It hasn't always been this way.  Marriages used to last a long time, but then we took a more casual approach in the last 50 or 60 years and with that came casual dating where you "try out" different people and the pattern for divorce was set.

Brayden and Tali were encouraging all the single people there that there is a better way.  We don't have to do things the way the world is doing them with respect to preparing for marriage.

It wasn't your typical "stay pure" talk.  You can get to the altar "pure" and still not give your heart fully to your spouse-to-be.  If we engage in the dating phenomenon, each person that we date gets a piece of our heart, big or small.  We want our children to truly give their whole hearts to their spouses.  They encouraged all the single people there to picture their future spouse existing right then and there.  Would that future spouse be happy if they were going around hugging and kissing other people?  Of course not.  They would hope and pray that they would be saving themselves for their future marriage.

There was so much more to the talk, but suffice it to say, it was very inspiring and we all left filled up with hope for the future and for our children's future spouses.

God brings people like this into our lives at just the right time.  We really did nothing to coordinate the whole event.  God brought them to us.  This often happens at times in our life where we are really needing encouragement.  We see it as God stepping down from heaven and putting His arms around us.  It's His way of saying, "Stay on the path.  Keep going. There are others on this same path.  You are not alone.  I'm going to show you.  I'm going to bring people into your life to encourage you."  It is amazing!  If you had told me 10 years ago when we first watched their film, "These people will be in your house visiting you one day," I never would have believed it.   It is just another reminder to me that God loves us.  But He doesn't just say it in the Bible, He uses real people, with skin!  He sends them to me out of the blue, to my little house.  We somehow slept 20 people in our tiny farmhouse the night they were here and everyone had a bed!  Funny.  Well, I'm grateful to God for these big doses of His love.  He sees us.  He knows us.  How can I ever doubt?