Finding The Love of Your Life
Adapted From Saddleback Church
Proverbs 3:6
Intro.- Gloria
Estavan used to sing a song that says, "We seal our fate by the choices we
make." She's right. Your decisions determine your destiny. No where is that more true than your
relationship to Christ. What you decide
about Christ determines your eternity. But
the second most important decision in your life will be whether you
chose to marry or not and if you chose to marry, who you're going to marry.
The evidence for poor decisions is all around us. Broken hearts, broken homes, broken lives. One out of every 2½ marriages ends in divorce. The divorce rate has risen 240% since the 1940's. One of the problems is that nobody teaches us how to chose a mate. Nobody. Many of us end up in marriages for the wrong reason. Nobody ever says, "Here are the Biblical principles on how you find God's best for your life."
Today, as we start this marriage series, I am
speaking on “How to Find the Love of Your Life” Many of you are thinking you chose the wrong week to come to
church. But hang in there with me. Regardless of your status in life, I think
you'll get something out of this message.
If you're married, it may help you understand
the root of some of the conflicts you have in your marriage. If you're divorced, it may help you
understand a little better some of the things that went wrong -- what
happened. If you're a single adult
who has chosen to remain single, you still need to be a mature believer able to
give wise counsel to others. If you're a parent or a grandparent,
you need to take serious notes, buy the tape, save it for those teen age years
of your child or grandchild.
I want to say something that will probably shock you
right up front: God does not chose your
mate for you. The Bible does not teach
that. The Bible does not teach that God
chooses your mate for you.
In the final analysis, it's your decision, it's your
choice. God puts the responsibility on
you. God will guide you. He will lead
you. He will direct you. He will give you guidelines and
principles. But in the final analysis
ultimately, it's your choice. As the
wedding vows say so brutally honest, you make that choice, "For better or
for worse."
I heard about a woman who went to a judge and said, "I want a divorce." He say, "Why?" She said, "I don't like him." He said, "You promised to take him for better or worse." She said, "Yeah, but he's a lot worse than I took him for."
God wants us to build our lives on great
principles, not petty rules. Today I want to give you some general
principles that relate to God's overall will for your life. How do you find God's will? How do I know what God wants me to do? How do I know when God's speaking to
me? This applies to your business or
any other area, to all of us in every area of life. These are general principles of how to know God's will. Then I want to give you some specific
principles related to how do you find a mate that is God's best for
you.
In knowing God's will, it's
always easier to see God's will in hindsight. Looking back on your life it's far easier to
say, "Oh, that's what God was doing.
That's how God was guiding. I
can see how God was working." It's
far easier to look back in retrospect and see what He was doing. It's much more difficult to get God's will
in the future, so I can make wise decisions. But one of the blessed
benefits of being a believer is that God has promised to guide us.
Proverbs 3:6 "Seek God's will in all you do and He will direct your
paths."
How do I know what God wants me to do? God uses a number of different ways to speak to you.
He uses a number of different
channels. He speaks in a number of different voices.
Today I want
to give you five that you can count on. When you
listen to God, He will speak to you often in more than one way and will confirm
what He said. Just in case you didn't
get it in one channel He'll say it in another channel too.
1. God
Guides Us Through The Bible
First and foremost, He speaks through His
word. The Bible says, “Your word is a lamp to my
feet and a light for my path” (Psalm
119:105).
This is God's guideline book. The more you understand this book, the more
you're going to
understand what God wants to do in your life.
When I talk about using the Bible as a guide, I'm
not talking about the mystical Dip And Skip method where you open the Bible,
put your finger down: "God, who am
I supposed to marry? ....
Jezebel?" The problem with that,
names like Jennifer, Ashley, Robert aren't in the Bible.
You can get into problems taking any verse out of
context. A lot of people have done a lot of harm by
taking one verse out of the Bible and making it mean what they want it to mean
to validate what they want to do anyway.
You can take a verse out of the Bible, out of its context and make it
mean almost anything. A lot of cults do that. I'm talking about you have to know the whole
Bible and the better you get to know this book, the better you're going to
understand God's will.
God will never contradict His word.
2. God speaks to us through the Holy Sprit.
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now
bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all
truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he
will tell you what is yet to come.He will bring glory to me by taking from what
is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine….
That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make
it known to you” (John 16:12-15).
3. God
Speaks To Us Through Impressions
The Holy Spirit puts ideas in your mind. He says, "I
will instruct you and I will guide you along the best pathway for your life,
I'll advise you and I will watch your progress."
God gives you ideas all the time. You just don't realize they're from God. When the devil gives you an idea we call
that temptation. You're very familiar
with that one. When God gives you an
idea, we call that inspiration. A lot
of your bright ideas came from God. So
God speaks to us through impressions all the time.
You have to be careful because not every impression
is from God. Just because you get an idea is not necessary God told you. You could get impressions from a movie you
watched. You could get impressions from
an emotional environment. You could get
impressions from your hormones. You
could get impressions from a bad pizza.
There are all kinds of things that could give you impressions. Just because you heard something in your
mind doesn't mean it's God. You should
always check out an impression in light of these other channels.
A verse we're all familiar with "God causes everything to work together for the good of those who
love God." He providentially
prepares situations for us, chance encounters, serendipities,
situations where you just say, "That was a God thing. Only
God could have put that together!" You happen to end up in the right place at the right time in the
right situation and God just did it. He does it all the time! God often guides us through
circumstances.
But again, I have to warn you, not every circumstance is from God. The devil can create circumstances, too. Given the right situation, circumstances can be moved in all kinds of different ways. You always use circumstances to confirm what God has said to you through one of the other areas. You don't use it as the sole basis for a decision: "This is the circumstance, therefore it must be God's will." That's not necessarily true.
5. God
Speaks To Us Through Research Or Reason
God uses your mental capabilities. He uses your intelligence. Why would God
give you intelligence and then not use it?
He does use it. A lot of times
people are praying, "God, what do You want me to do?" and He's
saying, "Use your brain!"
God solved a lot of your problems when He gave you a brain. Some things you just need to do the
logical thing. You
don't have to pray about it.
You just do the normal, logical thing.
What's best in this situation?
If a train is coming toward you and you're on the
tracks, you don't say, "I'm going to pray about getting out of the
way." No, use your reason and jump
off the track. Get out of the way!
Use reason in the way God wants you to use it. The Bible often tells us, check it out. Get the facts. Do
diligence. Don't get into a business
that you haven't checked out. Don't
get into a marriage that you haven't checked out. If you haven't found out the person's
background and their family and seen them in all kinds of situations.
Sometimes I'll meet some people who are starting a new business. I'll say, "What have you found out about the business?" They say, "We haven't found out a whole lot in this area. We're just doing it on faith." Or I'll meet a couple who'll say, "We just met last week. We're getting married next week." Do they know each other? No. Have they spent time together? No. Have they checked out each other's background? No.
"We're doing this on faith." No, they're not doing it on faith. They're doing it on stupidity. It's not faith, it's presumption.
Proverbs 18 "It's
stupid to decide before knowing the facts." Don't get into a marriage,
any relationship, any business, any kind of commitment without knowing the
facts up front. God uses research and
reason.
6. God
Speaks To Us Through The Advice Of Mature Christians
If you're an immature Christian, or you're a young
Christian, or you really haven't studied the Bible much, the fact is you don't know much
in this book. You don't really
know what the book says so you don't know
what God has to say about a lot of situations. It may take you a few years
or several years to start mastering this book.
It's really good to get an older Christian who's walked a long
time with the Lord and has studied this book and assimilated it and get them to
be your mentor or friend. Then when
you're wondering what to do, you can go and get wise counsel from somebody who
does know this book. You'll save
yourself a whole lot of heartache and pain.
The Bible says it's stupid to go get advice from
people who don't know God. It's
foolish! On the other hand, it's foolish to not get advice from people who have
spent time in His word and know it. The
Bible says in Proverbs 11 "The
wisdom of the righteous can save you." That means we all have blind spots. We all need to grow up. A
mature person can help point out error.
That is one of the values of a church family. In a church family you start making friends with Christians who
may have been Christians for a longer time than you. They know this book.
They can give you wise counsel on a business
situation. They can give you wise
counsel in a marriage crisis or in the decision to marry.
Any time you make a major decision, it should be
based on the cumulative evidence of God's guidance. That means, not just one of these channels but
all five of them. Whenever
you're going to make a major decision you don't just say, "What's the
impression I get?" or "What advice do I get?" or "What are
the circumstances?" or "What does God's word say?" Look at these five things all together. I call this The Law of Unity. The Law of Unity or Harmony says, When God
speaks, He never contradicts Himself.
God's not going to say one thing in His word and give you an impression
that's the exact opposite. He's not
going to say one thing in an impression and give you a different circumstance
or give you different advice. When you
start lining up these five areas about what does God want me to do in this
situation? If any of them are out of
disagreement, it means one or more of those things isn't God. When God speaks He's not going to contradict
Himself. If He's talking to you and
trying to help you out, then you will get it loud and clear and you'll get it
unified. If you have any conflicting
message, what do you do? You
wait for more guidance.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14 "God is not the author of
confusion." If you're trying
to make a decision and you're confused, you know one thing. God hasn't spoken yet. Because God is not the author of
confusion. You need to sit back and
wait. One of the most important lessons you have to learn in
your whole life is this: God
is never in a hurry. Sometimes
we're in a hurry. Particularly we get
in a hurry because out of loneliness or sexual attraction or all kinds of stuff
we get in a hurry to get married. God
says, "Don't get in a hurry, because I'm not in a hurry. If you'll wait, you can't miss My best for
you. But if you get in a hurry there's
a likelihood that you will."
When you expect God to speak to you, to give you guidance in any situation, you need to realize it's usually not going to be some bolt of lighting in the sky.
You're not going to get a telegram from God. He's not going to call you on the phone and say "Buy high, sell low" -- whatever. What God is going to do is God's guidance is usually cumulative and progressive. It's not like instantaneous. It's like over a period of time it becomes clearer and clearer.
Have you ever seen a polaroid photograph? You take a picture with a Polaroid camera,
pull it out, and as you hold it, it gets clearer the longer you look at
it.
That's kind of the way God works in our lives most
of the time. There have been times in my life when God has spoken directly to me,
kind of thunderbolt impressions in my mind -- not audibly but in my mind I know
That's God! But that's only happened
maybe three or four times in my thirty something years as a believer. Most of
the time when God guides it is progressive and cumulative and it
gets clearer as time goes on.
That's the general principles of understanding God's
will.
Now, specific application and principles that God
says about choosing a spiritual mate or choosing a life partner.
It is true that God will not choose your mate for
you, but God does describe the kind of mate that is His will for you. The kind of mate that He desires for your
life. It's also true that God is very
specific about the kind of person He does not want you to marry, that it would
be absolutely wrong for you to marry.
Two non-negotiables and one recommendation:
1. If You
Want God’s Best For Your Life In A Marriage Partner You Must Have Spiritual
Compatibility
God is absolutely clear about this. You must be on the same wave length spiritually in order to have
oneness in Christ. 2 Corinthians 6:14 "Do not unite yourself with an
unbeliever; they are not fit mates for you." 2 Corinthians 6:15 "Can
a believer share life with an unbeliever?" The answer is obviously "No."
I don't know how to say this any clearer if you have
committed your life to Christ and He really is number one in your life, and you
want to live for His plan that He put you on this earth for, you are not
free to choose an unbeliever as your mate. You are not free to do that.
If God is really number one in your life, and you are a committed
believer, you are not free to choose an unbeliever. You cannot commit your life to someone who rejects the savior who
died for you and His blood was shed for you on the cross. It's impossible. You cannot have spiritual oneness with a person who rejects the
most important thing in your life. It's impossible. You can't do it. If you
don't have spiritual oneness with the person who is most important to you on
this earth, and you're not unified spiritually headed in the same commitment,
equally committed to Christ, you will never attain the spiritual,
the emotional, or even the sexual intimacy that God has created for you to enjoy. It's not going to happen.
If you're already married, I've got some good news for
you. We're going to talk about that next week.
Hang on! I'm talking if you are
unmarried right now and you are a believer, you mustn't do what God says not to
do, blatantly choosing a person over God.
God says this for our own benefit. If you want God's best in a life partner -- a husband/wife -- you should not even consider anybody who isn't equally committed to Christ like you are. If you're moving toward Christ and they're moving toward Christ it naturally brings you together. But otherwise it doesn't.
I know some of you are thinking, "My
fiancé/boyfriend/girlfriend is not a Christian so I'm going to try to win them
to Christ." Missionary dating. I
have seen may one or two times that happens, where somebody was won to Christ
through a dating relationship. But the
odds are stacked against you and you're playing with fire. If you
think they're going to change after you get married, it's like this. In the wedding ceremony first you walk down
the aisle, then you stand before the altar, then you sing the hymn. After the
marriage, it's the same thing -- aisle, altar, hymn. [I'll alter him.] But we don't want to be altered after we get
married. We resist it and we resent
it.
I don't like to make people unhappy. I like people to like me. When I was a young pastor, I used to go real easy on this. A couple would come to me, "I've found just the right person." They would tell me about their fiancé, what a fine person he was. They would talk about how he/she met all their needs, how they had similar backgrounds, how it was a dream come true, how much they loved each other. Then they'd say, "There's just one little problem. S/He's not a believer." I used to go light on this. But you have not been in all the counseling sessions I've been in over the years. You've not seen the literally hundreds of marriages that fell apart because Christ was not at the center of them.
So today I'm very blunt about this. I say it for people's own good.
When they are a Christian and the other isn't, I say, "You're
making a big mistake. I don't care how
fine a person he/she is, you're making a big mistake. You cannot have emotional, sexual, and all these other onenesses if you
don't have spiritual oneness."
Statistics: Marriage and Divorce magazine's
national survey, 1 out of every 2½ marriages ends in divorce but when a couple actively attends church
together, commits their life to Christ and they pray and read the Bible together
the divorce rate drops to 1 out of every 1105. That's the difference Jesus Christ makes.
The statistics speak for themselves.
If you choose to go against what God has said in His
word, and you marry a spiritual incompatible person who's not on the same
commitment level as you are, the odds are you are going to be divorced within
ten years. I didn't make that up.
That's just the odds -- you're going to be divorced within ten years. Or you will live the rest of your life with
an empty aching in your heart because you can't share the very most important
thing in your life with the person you love the most. And you'll have conflict over how the children are raised and all
other kinds of things.
I've talked to people who say, "I know the
Bible says don't marry an unbeliever if you are a believer. I'm praying about it." I say, Stop praying. You're wasting your time. Are you asking God to change His mind? Are you asking God to contradict what He has
already said very clearly in His word and said for your benefit? You don't need
to pray about it. You just need to do
it.
Even if you're both Christians that's not
enough. There's another factor. If you're already married, wait until next
week.
2. If Your Want God’s Best For Your Life, You Must
Have Purpose Compatibility
That's the second non-negotiable. You must have life purpose compatibility. Amos 3:3 says "Can
two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?" No.
Of course not.
Let's say you and I get married and we're walking
along together. I want to go north to North Carolina and you want to go west to
California, can we walk together?
No. You cannot walk together
unless you're headed in the same direction.
If you can't walk together, you certainly can't live together intimately
for 40 or 50 years if you're headed different directions. It won't work. You're bound to have conflict.
You're not ready to get married until first you have
clarified and identified your life purpose.
The Bible teaches that you're not on this earth by accident. God put you here on this earth for a
purpose. He has a life mission for your
life that only you can fulfill. You're
not here by accident. He has a
purpose. He has a calling. He has a vocation unique for you. He has a ministry. He has a mission, a reason for your being. It's unique. One day you'll give an account to God about did you ever fulfill
it or not? The tragedy is most people
never discover their life purpose.
If God calls you to be a teacher to inner city children
in Atlanta and God calls your fiance/boyfriend/girlfriend to be a doctor in
China and that's their life purpose, you may both be very fine people and you
both may be Christians and you both may be in love and like each other and have
a lot in common, but you shouldn't marry.
Think of it like this: If your life purpose is a circle here -- this is what God wants you to do with your life, you're going to feel most fulfilled when you do your life purpose -- Your boyfriend/girlfriend has their life purpose. You have to be honest and ask, "Can these purposes overlap? Can these purposes actually become one?" If not, you ought to seriously doubt whether you ought to get married or not to that person.
This is why the Bible is very clear in 1
Corinthians 7:32-33 "One of
the advantages of staying a single adult is you can have undistracted
service." Nobody is trying to
pull you in another area.
In these two areas -- spiritual compatibility and life purpose compatibility -- God is very adamant and very clear. He says these are the parameters from which you must choose a mate from ‑- same spiritual commitment, same life purpose.
Then He says, "Inside that sphere of My freedom, you're free to choose anybody you like." There could be a number of people that could appropriately be God's will for your life in that situation.
Even if these two areas line up, there's a
third one that is very helpful you need to consider.
3. It Helps
To Have Personal Compatibility
Notice I said, "It helps". The other two said, "You must have".
This one is not commanded by God.
Notice there is no verse under this point. There is no verse in the Bible that says, You have to marry
somebody who is just like you. It's
just smart! The more you have in
common, the smoother sailing your marriage is going to be. The more you have not in common, the more
rough seas and strife and chaos you're going to go through in order to
grow. It's just good common sense.
If you check out your fiance and you find out a
bunch of things about them, if you've got a lot of major differences, then
you're going to have to have a lot of major adjustments and that causes
pain. If you have minor differences
between the two of you, then you've just got minor adjustments.
There are hundreds of factors that you need to
consider.
Background
of their family -- If you want to know what your mate is really going to be
like in marriage, look at their family situation. In their family, that's where they learn their style of
communicating. That's where they learn
their style of conflict resolution.
That's where they learn their impressions about roles. That's where they learn all kinds of things
that are going to determine the shape of your marriage. To marry someone without knowing their
family background is foolish. You
haven't done your due diligence.
You need to say, "Do we have a common education
level? Do we have common
intelligence? Verbal skills.
What are the expected rolls for both people in the
family? Conflict and how to resolve
it? The level of ambition -- If you get
a real ambitious person with somebody who has no ambition you're going to have
problems.
Child
rearing views
The
amount of involvement with in-laws
Desire
for verbal intimacy
The
way to handle anger
Hobby
and leisure activities
Energy
level for physical activities
You need to talk frankly about these things, in depth and in detail before you make that decision.
Should we live together first? Some say, "You wouldn't go buy a car
without taking it for a test drive and kicking the tires a little bit. I'm not marrying anybody that I haven't
lived with first. They think that in
order to find out compatibility you have to go to bed with somebody before you
marry them. I've got a spiritual Greek
word for that -- Baloney! Every
statistic in America shows that people who live together have a
greater chance of divorcing than those who don't. I didn't make that up.
There's at least 50 surveys that have
proven, people who live together get divorced more often than people who don't
before they get married. God
says sex is reserved for marriage.
You don't have to go to bed with somebody to find out about their
sexuality. You've just got to watch and talk and listen and over months it's
real obvious that some people love to be touched and cuddled and kissed and
hugged and other people don't. You can
look at their family situation and see how open they are about sex and how
freely can they talk about it. You
don't have to go to be with somebody to find out about that.
In spite of that, these are areas that you can work
on in marriage, that you can change in marriage, that you can grow in
marriage.
As a pastor, the thing I've discovered is the
absolute best marriages and the absolute worst marriages are those where the
people are the most different. It can
either make you or break you. It all
depends on how much you're willing to grow, how much you're willing to change,
how unselfish you're willing to be and whether you're willing to get help or
not in that marriage. Some people let
their differences destroy them. Other
people take their differences and through that actually grow and become a
stronger person by being willing to change themselves.
There are two errors that people fall into when
it comes to marriage: the Hollywood
error and the Heavenly error. Both of them will get you in trouble.
The Hollywood error is, All I need to have is a
quiver in my liver as a justification to get married. If I am sexually attracted to you or I fall head over heals in
infatuation or I think you're the most delicious babe I've ever seen, then
that's good enough reason to get married.
But it's not. It takes more than
love and it takes more than sexual attraction to mean that's the right person
for you.
On the other hand there's another error which I call the Heavenly error which a lot of Christians fall into. They are sitting, waiting for God to make the decision for them. If you're waiting for God to write it in the sky, if you are so afraid you'll miss that one right person, (who by the way isn't there) that I'm going to wait for God to write it in the sky "Marry Harry!" -- it's not going to happen. I know a lot of well meaning adult believers who are sitting at home in their room at night waiting for God to deliver them the perfect mate on a platter through the window. It's not going to happen.
If you want to
get married and if you want God's best in a marriage partner, you need to do five things.
1. You need
to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ.
That's foundational. If you
haven't already said, "Jesus Christ, come into my life. Give me Your forgiveness. Give me Your power. Give me Your love and
You plan for my life. Jesus Christ, I
want to have a relationship with You."
That's the starting point. Get God in your life.
2. Make a
commitment to God's standard in a marriage partner. Don't get in a hurry. Don't get impatient. Say, I'm only going to marry somebody who's
on equal spiritual plain with me, we're both headed toward Christ and we both
have a similar life message, life plan, life purpose. I'm not going to get
impatient. I'm not going to sell our soon
just for a warm body because I'm lonely.
I will wait."
What if I don't wait. What if I take matters into my own hands? Isaiah 50 "Some of you want to light your own
fires and make your own life. So go,
walk, and trust in your own light to guide you. But this is what you'll
receive: A place of pain." You're walking right into a big mistake if
you ignore what God has said.
On the other hand, God says in Jeremiah, "I have good plans for you, not to hurt
you. I will give you a hope and a good
future." Make a commitment to God's standard in a partner.
3. Discover
and clarify your life purpose. What does
God want me to do with my life? Know
what direction you're headed.
4. Get involved in a church family or attend a Christian college where there will be a lot of other people who fit the parameters that God has laid out for you.
If you don't get involved in a church like ours and
get involved in ministry, I'm not just talking about coming to church and then
leaving, but get involved in ministry, get to know people, start developing
relationships or in a Christian college, if you don't have that your circle of options
is going to be pretty small. You're
going to have a small fishing pond to choose from. 5. Go slow. Find out all you
can about the person, their family background before you commit to marriage.
6.
Get premarital counseling
Then a book I recommend, Finding the Love of Your
Life, by Neil Clark Warren. I would
highly recommend this book to any of you who are considering marriage.
In
closing, I realize as your pastor that for many of you this message was
difficult to take. For many of you it
was painful. I'm sorry. I feel for your
pain. Some of you, many of you, made
foolish decisions in your marriage. You
jumped into a marriage solely on the basis of physical attraction, or desire to
get rid of loneliness or some other less than full meaning. But I want to say to you -- there's hope for
your marriage. I've got some good news
for you. Next week we're going to talk
about that. God has a plan for you and that marriage and it's a good great
plan.