Finding the Love of Your Life - Part 1

0:40 In your life, two of the most important choices you're going to make are, one, will I ever get married? That's a choice. And the second one is, if I do, who's it going to be? And the Bible has a lot to say about this. And if you'll take out your message notes inside your program, finding the love of your life. The Bible says in Proverbs 12 verse 26, the righteous chooses his friends carefully. Now if you're supposed to choose your friends carefully, you should be even more careful about who's going to be your life partner. Notice it is a choice. God doesn't do this for you. God says you make a choice. The righteous chooses his friends carefully. The problem is nobody teaches us how to do that. You didn't get a class in school. Your parents didn't teach you how to choose the right person to marry.

1:36 And as a result, many people end up in the wrong marriage for the wrong reason. And as your pastor who loves you, I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to end up that way. So we're going to look tonight at what the Bible says is God's checklist for choosing the right person. But before we do that, I need to dispel a couple myths. And I want you to write these down there on your outline. There's a couple of myths about marriage that are out there, and we just need to get them out of the way. The first one is this. God doesn't choose my mate for me. God doesn't choose my mate for me. It's your decision. It's your choice. God isn't going to choose your mate for you. God places the responsibility 100% on your shoulder. God is not going to put a sign in the sky that says, Mary Harry. Okay, it isn't going to happen.

2:30 You can look all you want, but it isn't going to happen. Now, some people say, well, I'm not going to date. I'm just going to wait. There's a word for that. Bachelor or bachelorette. Okay, or never marry. Okay. I mean, that's nonsense to say, I'm not going to date, I'm going to wait. That's what you get when you cross a crocodile with an abalone. It's a crocabaloney.

2:56 You know, when God wants to steer you, it's easier to move a car that's moving than one that's parked. God can't move a parked car. He can't steer. It's got to be moving, and then he can go this way or that way, whatever. So you can go home and sit in your basement and say, I'm just going to wait and not date. And nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to happen. So you just need to clear that one up. God says it's your choice. God leads us. God guides us. And God gives us guidelines. We're going to look at them tonight. But ultimately, it's your choice. The second myth is this. There isn't only one right person for me. that's very romantic there's only one person in the entire universe for me it's just not true it's not only romantic but it's not biblical and it's not only not biblical it's not even logical because if there was only one right person for everybody in the world it would only take one person to make a wrong decision to break the chain for everybody else and all the dominoes.

4:12 Let me show you. I'm going to give you a little demonstration. Would you welcome my participants today? Okay, welcome them out here. Come on out here, you guys. Let's put the girls over here and the guys over here. All right, now, let's just say these are eight eligible bachelors and bachelorettes. Okay, and let's say God loves you and has a wonderful man for your life. His name is Johnny, all right? All right, so Johnny here is in orange. So obviously Johnny is over here. He's supposed to hook up with Margo and marry Margo. But let's say Margo says, no way, Johnny.

4:54 I like Daniel. So Margo comes over here and Margo marries Daniel. Okay, that leaves Johnny out of luck. so Johnny is not going to be able to marry the woman God planned for him and so all of a sudden he goes well says Kelly she looks studly I mean she's wonderful all right so we're going to go over here with Kelly all right all right but Kelly Kelly was supposed to marry Jim oh no oh no so now that Kelly's married Jim who are you going to marry well come on over here he's going to marry Lauren all right Lauren now here we go okay now which means you two guys you're the leftovers. All right. Here you go. Okay. Okay. Brett, Brett and Amy, you actually get together. All right. So one couple actually got together out of, see how this, how silly this is. It doesn't work. Let's give it to these guys a hands. Okay.

5:53 Let's say I was supposed to marry a woman named Susan. You guys can leave now. Thank you. And instead I marry Kay. Well, then all of a sudden it upsets the apple cart for everybody else on the entire planet.

6:14 It is a total myth. It's romantic, but it's a myth. In your life, there are multiple people, God would say, that's okay for you to marry. So God doesn't have a bullseye when it comes to marriage. So forget that there's some Miss Right or Mr. Right out there. They just aren't there. It isn't going to happen. And the Bible doesn't say that. By the way, let me give you one more myth. It's not there on your outline, but write this down. One other myth is love alone is not enough reason to marry. Would you write that down? Just write it down. Love alone is not enough reason to marry. I talk to people all the time of getting married, and I look at them and go, there's no way. The family background isn't right. The spiritual background isn't right. The personality background isn't right. Educational background, they don't have the same amount of energy. They don't have the same amount of ambition.

7:07 They don't even have the same values, goals. None of these things are, but we love each other. Friend, given the right situation, I could get you to fall in love with anybody. Love is a choice. And I could put you in circumstances that would make you romantically inclined. Just because you love someone does not mean you should marry them. I would like for us to repeat this together. Just because you love someone doesn't mean you should marry them. I fell in love with multiple women before I married Kay. any of them, if I had married, would have been a disaster.

7:49 You can fall in love with all kinds of people. It doesn't mean you should marry them. Love is not enough. It takes a lot of other things. And that's what we're going to look at tonight. Now, God doesn't tell you who to marry. But he does give you a description of the kind of person that he desires for you to marry. and if you want God's blessing on your marriage, which you do, and you want God's protection on your marriage, which you do, and you want success in your marriage, which you do, then you better listen to what God has to say about the kind of person you should marry.

8:30 Because the evidence of not following what God says to do is out there all around us. Given the right situation, as I said, You can fall in love with anybody. It doesn't mean you should marry them. But God gives us a list. And I call these a list of must-haves. Now, I'm going to give you a list tonight from the Bible of things that you must have in your life and in your mate's life, boyfriend and girlfriend's life, in order to marry them. Until these are right, you're not ready to marry them. And they're not ready to marry you. And they may not even ever be the right person for you to marry. Now you can add to this list your own experiences. This, what I'm gonna give you tonight is the bare minimum. These are the minimum requirements for the marriage God blesses. These are, if they don't meet these qualifications, deal breaker.

9:24 I don't care how much I love them. I don't care how much money they've got, how cute they are, how much they make me laugh. Doesn't matter how sweet we get along together, how much we have fun, how much we have in common. Doesn't matter all those things. if we don't match on these things, deal breaker. Now, this week, I celebrated my 37th anniversary.

9:48 Okay? And I have counseled thousands of married couples in trouble, and counseled thousands of single adults who were considering marriage. So I do know a little about what the Bible is talking about. I just wanna save you some pain. These are not my opinion. this is what God says are the requirements of the kind of person you should choose to marry. Okay, let's get into it. Number one, the first thing we have to have, my wife and I, or my husband and I, we have to have, number one, we must have spiritual unity. It's the first qualification. We must have spiritual unity. That means we believe the same thing about God. We have a relationship to God together. If you aren't spiritually unified with your spouse, you are never going to enjoy the depth of physical intimacy, sexual intimacy, or emotional intimacy that God desires for your marriage.

10:56 You just can't do it. You cannot have the ultimate physical, emotional, and sexual unity that God wants you to have if you're not unified in the number one area of your life, which is your relationship to God. Now, your relationship to God should be the biggest, most important part of your life. And if I can't share the biggest, most important part of my life with my wife, we're living on different wavelengths. We've got different worldviews. We may have all kinds of other things in common, but our marriage will be shallow our entire lives. it will be shallow and there will be problems and your marriage will never be as deep as it could be and you will never experience the emotional intimacy or the sexual intimacy that God wants you to have unless you're united in spirit there's a spiritual unity that you're headed in the same direction if you want God's protection on your marriage you want God's blessing on your marriage then God's got to be at the center he's got to be the glue Most people have no idea how important God is to marriage.

12:08 It takes more than a man and woman to make a solid marriage. Remember, marriage was God's idea. God thought it up. God thought up sex. God thought up intimacy. God thought up family and children and the whole big idea. So he designed it. And God designed it that marriage is a three-legged stool. God, a husband, and a wife. Now you take out any one of the legs and the stool is going to fall over. A one-legged stool will fall over. A two-legged stool will fall over. You've got to have the third leg. You've got to have God in the relationship or it's going to be unstable. It's going to get knocked over in enormous ways, all kinds of different ways. Now God is absolutely clear about this first one. Let's look at some verses. 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 14 and 15. Stop forming inappropriate relationships with unbelievers.

13:05 Can right and wrong be partners? Can light have anything in common with darkness? Can a believer share life with an unbeliever? In other words, if you don't have spiritual unity, how in the world can you be unified in any other area? Now, let me just be honest with you. Let me have true confession right now. As a pastor, I don't like to disappoint people. As a pastor, I don't like to hurt people's feelings. I want them to like me. I want them to be happy. And honestly, I can't tell you how many times people have come to me and introduced me to their fiance. And they want me to be happy about their fiance. And they start telling me all their fine qualities of their fiance. and their fiance does have a lot of fine qualities, great, fine qualities.

13:59 And they tell me how much they love them. And they tell me how much they have in common. And they tell me how much they've got similar plans. And they tell me how much they think alike in so many different areas. And then one of them will take me and say, there's only one problem. He's not a believer. She's not a believer. It's the only problem. that every bone in my body wants to say, it's no big deal, go right ahead, be happy. But after watching over a thousand divorces, I'm blunt and I say, you're making the biggest mistake of your life. I love you enough to tell you the truth. You are making the biggest mistake of your life. If you don't have spiritual unity, You're never going to have sexual unity the way God intended. You're never going to have emotional unity the way God intended.

14:55 You're never going to have unity in communication because the biggest area of your life, your partner rejects. I don't care how much else you've got in common. They reject that. How can I say, if you have committed your life to Christ, then there's no way you can give your life away to somebody who rejects your Savior. There's just no way you can do that. Now you can do it and say, well, God, I don't want your blessing on my marriage. I don't want your success on my marriage. And I don't want your protection on my marriage. And I'm gonna willfully ignore what the Bible says.

15:34 I used to be really kind of casual about this. Well, you know, I know you can win him to the Lord later. You can win her, missionary dating is what we call it. You know? You know? And people tell me this, I'll win him to Christ, or he'll change after we're married. Would you like to give me five, let me give you 5,000 people who tell you that doesn't happen? The change, if it doesn't happen before the marriage, that's when the leverage is on.

16:05 You see, a lot of girls in particular, when they plan their wedding, there's a standard. I've done so many thousands of weddings. There's a standard, you know. You walk down the aisle. you stand at the altar and then they do the hymn. And it's I'll alter him. And people think that's how it's going to be. I'll alter him. But it doesn't work that way. 2 Corinthians 6, 14, next verse. Do not unite yourself with an unbeliever. They're not fit mates for you. If you want God's best, I'm just telling you right up front, don't even consider somebody who's not committed to Jesus Christ. Now let me give you the hard, cold facts of life. Not preference, facts of life. national survey reported in Marriage Magazine one out of every two and a half marriages in America now ends in divorce that's not very good odds one out of every two and a half marriages in America ends in divorce but when a couple is spiritually unified they're both believers and they practice three habits together attend church weekly together, pray together read the Bible together, the divorce rate drops from one out of every two and a half marriages to one out of every 1,105 marriages.

17:35 Are you willing to gamble? Are you willing to gamble? Please, I'm telling you as your pastor, don't gamble the second most important decision in your life. Because if you marry without spiritual unity, the odds are in 10 years, you're going to be divorced.

17:58 You're not going to beat the odds as a general rule. Or you'll stay together and your deepest intimacy will never be there. You'll live at a shallow level because you're not sharing the most important thing in your life. Or there's going to be conflict with your kids and all kinds of other problems. So this is the starting one. Number one, I must have spiritual unity. You know, the Bible says this, Romans 1, 12. I want us to help each other with the faith we have your faith will help me and my faith will help you and that's what God wants to do in marriage he wants the faith of the husband to help the wife and the faith of the wife to help the husband but how can your faith help each other if one of you has no faith if I were to stand up here on the edge and you were to come over here is it easier for me to pull you up or for you to pull me down it's always easier to be pulled down in a relationship than to pull somebody up it is always easier so i'm not shy about this anymore if that offends you i'm sorry i'm doing what is best for your happiness you must have spiritual unity in your marriage Hey, thanks for listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope.

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