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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Alan and Nicole Parker - Desires Of the Heart: God's Plan for Your Life

Nicole Parker

Crawling in Love: Finding The Love Of Your Life, God’s Way

I am Nicole for those of you who don't know and my wonderful husband Alan and my 3 children are getting an early night in because we just flew in from Houston and they were all very tired.

So you'll meet them all tomorrow but I just wanted to let you know for those of you who don't know us My husband works at Southern.

He's teaching at the University there, and we've been married for 7 years now 7 wonderful years And for those of you who aren't married yet, don't think that it's the key to all happiness, but it's definitely wonderful when the Lord blesses.

The presentation tonight is called Crawling in Love.

And I thought, you know, some of my dear friends here may think that that means that you need to go very slowly.

That's not the point with the crawling thing, but I do remember thinking when Alan and I were dating, I had this distinct feeling that I wasn't falling in love with this guy, I was really crawling in love.

I was making the decisions to marry him, little by little, on the basis of intellectual choice and realizing, you know, these are all the things that I've been looking for in a husband, and not just, wow, I can't stop myself, I'm falling for this guy.

And so that's why we chose this title, Crawling in Love.

Not because you need to go slowly, and I should maybe clarify, Allen and I, when we met, and I'll tell a little bit more of our story along the way here, but when we met in June of 2000, he had lived in Africa all his life, I had lived in America, and we had never seen each other's faces.

And a year and 2 days later, we were married.

So sometimes the Lord leads you to crawl kind of fast, But that wasn't like a recommendation for this is how you should do it.

I just want to emphasize what I'm talking about tonight is about principles, but it's not about rules.

It's not, you know, you've got to do it exactly this way, and if you do it the way I'm telling you, then it's going to go fine.

There are principles that the Lord has given to us and the Bible is filled with them.

And when we follow God's plan, you know, God is an artist and every story is unique.

Every person you meet, when you hear their love story, it's going to be amazing to see how the Lord led specifically in their lives.

But these are principles that I've seen in numerous relationships.

I'm working on my Master's in Biblical Counseling right now.

And somehow I get swamped with so many cases of counseling that I hardly get any school work done.

But there are all kinds of examples out there, and my life is just crammed with examples, and trying to distill down what to say in this presentation was quite a task.

But what I'm going to share with you tonight is 5 principles on how God leads people in relationships and how you can make the progress from single to happily ever after.

So when I say finding the love of your life God's way, I'm not saying that I think that my way is the only way, but I'm saying God's way is the only way, and he'll show you as you lean on him.

Now, I titled this, There's Something in the Era.

My husband loves to pun, so I know other people who do too.

There is more talk about love and expression of love than ever in history.

Right now, you know, everywhere you look, people are just swamped in love.

Movies have to be dripping with romance or else blood to, you know, interest for different audiences.

And there are more resources on how to love than ever before.

You know, can you imagine a hundred years ago, what did people look to when they wanted to learn how to fall in love?

They talked to their parents or, you know, their friends or something like that.

And now we have the internet, we have Barnes and Noble, which is crammed with all kinds of books on how not to find a spouse.

And there are more people to choose from and more weddings than ever before.

We're gathered here, a lot of us this weekend, just because of 1 wonderful such occasion.

And we're all very happy about that, Tim.

And Sunny, wherever she may be, somewhere out there.

And yet, this is the loneliest time in all of history.

And the majority of those that stay together are not really happy and fulfilling, and I don't believe that that's God's plan.

Many people think, well, it's just because of you know, everybody thinks that they can get divorced so easily, and that's part of it, but part of it is also the way that people choose spouses.

You know, when I was single, I remember going through the phases.

Somebody would, you know, be interested in me or I'd be interested in him and then things wouldn't work out 1 way or another and I'd say, that's it.

I'm never gonna have anything to do with men again.

God has given us the desire for love, and it's beautiful.

And Genesis 2.18 says, I know we're pressed for time tonight So I'm just going to read things off the screen.

It is not good that the man should be alone.

God has designed us to love and to be loved.

His great relationship with Adam wasn't sufficient to make Adam happy.

Now, it's interesting that God gave Adam life before Eve, so Adam could see what it was like to be alone, then he could appreciate marriage.

And I had somebody use this text recently to explain to me that, you know, he didn't have the gift of singleness and he knew that.

Therefore, if things didn't work out in his present marriage, he'd have to get married again sometime soon.

Please do not misapply things that the Bible says.

He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.

The 10 Commandments, his rules for life, are rules all about love.

The first 4 love God, the last 6 love your neighbor as yourself.

When we love God and we love 1 another, we're fulfilling the law.

And love, last but not least here, as Robert Frost said, love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

You know, I took that from more modern culture, but I just thought, you know, that's actually true.

God has put into us that irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

The problem is, we try to fill that God-shaped hole with people when that desire to be irresistibly desired is 1 that God wants to fill.

He is the 1 who loves us no matter what we are like.

People, we tend to expect somebody else to love us unconditionally.

But as people, we sometimes have to put conditions on our relationships with other people, don't we?

And as we relate more and more wholly with God, it makes it much easier to get along with other people as well.

Now, there is, of course, love's evil twin, and I think most of you would recognize right away what I'm talking about here is lust.

That's what most of our modern culture terms love.

When we say love, you know, he's in love, We mean he can't get his eyes off this woman, or his hands off this woman.

Here I found a little cartoon, sorry I have a terrible weakness for cartoons.

The other side, here is love at first sight.

And you can see the woman has found the man of her dreams and in her dream, he is going to be bringing her flowers and ministering to her every whim in short.

And with him, he has also found the love of his life, and in his dreams, she is ministering to his every whim and every need.

He sits in front of the TV, and you can be sure that's not exactly what her dream of happily ever after is.

And we have this culture, I'm just appalled when I see t-shirts, it's all about me.

I'm like, how can you be so brazen in something that's so self-obsessed, so miserable?

But when we come to choosing a life partner, It's kind of like we have to hit the Y on the road and choose.

Because the 2 ways of finding a partner are very different.

I'm not going to get really deeply into what's wrong with the world's way, because I think Most of us have a fairly good idea of it.

But the thrills and chills are when you feel the chemistry, the tingles.

Alan Parker

Waiting On God

I just like to have the right atmosphere here.

I want you to find somebody seated next to you and just wish them a happy Sabbath and thank them for being here today.

Now, some of you are wishing a little more enthusiastically than we should.

Why don't, before we begin, let's pray together and pray that God will be with us.

Father God, we want to thank You for being here.

We want to thank You for this group of people who've gathered for great music, for the opportunity we've had to just spend time in your presence.

And we pray now that as we open your word, that your Holy Spirit will be present and that we will experience a blessing.

Now you're going to hear a strange accent while I'm up here.

All right, and I spent some time in South Africa.

So if at any time you don't understand what I'm saying, you just lift up your hands and you just say, help him, Jesus, and I'll know what to do.

You know, when the light turns red, I have to control myself.

You know, just kind of take a deep breath.

When I get into the fast lane and somebody decides they're on a Sunday afternoon drive, and I'm just about to lay my hand on, you know, and honk my horn, I have to remember that on the back of my car it says bibleuniverse.com.

I do not like waiting, and I'm sure there's times when each of us have been a little frustrated with delays.

I just, 1 time I went to an urgent care facility.

A waiting room, a chance to catch up on a 1983 Reader's Digest.

And so, you know, when I look at the Bible, I have discovered certain things.

And 1 thing that's very clear as you go through the Bible is that the Bible says that God likes waiting.

And I'm just going to throw out a couple of texts here at the beginning before we go into today's story.

Now of course, you've got to find Lamentations first, and the easiest way to find that is Jeremiah.

And right after Jeremiah, you're going to find Lamentations.

And looking at verse 25 to begin before we get to verse 26, Lamentations 3 and verse 25, the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him to the soul that seeketh Him.

Lamentations 3 verse 26, it is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.

As I've gone through the Bible, I've discovered time after time the Bible says that we have to wait.

You're going to have to wait 4, 000 years.

And it comes down to the end of time and it says we have to wait again.

Another text, Psalm 27 verse 14, a few books back, Psalm 27, verse 14, and again it tells us that we have to wait, Psalm 27 and verse 14.

It says this, "'Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He will do what?

Wait, ' He repeats, I say, ''on the Lord.'" And so here throughout the Bible there is this command to wait.

And I know some of us are challenged with waiting.

There are some who've been waiting for the right person to come along, and they've been waiting and waiting.

They've had a few false starts, and they're still finding that that person isn't there.

And then there are others who've been waiting for the right missionary opportunity, been waiting and waiting, and it just never seems to come.

There have been some who've been waiting for their studies to be finished.

1 day, I'm not going to have to work and study.

I can just work." You just work a lot longer.

There's some here who are about to get married, and they've been waiting for months, for this day that's going to come tomorrow.

And this weekend, my wife spoke to Tim and Sonny just a little while ago, and when we were on our way here, she says, they sound really excited.

And so when we go through the Bible, we find that God does ask us to wait.

So we're going to turn to a story in Genesis chapter 12.

And we're going to find some principles for waiting.

Genesis chapter 12 and reading in verse 1.

Genesis 12, verse 1, now The Lord said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee.

Verse 2, And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.

I have found that the reason why we wait is because God has given us a promise.

Because we have a promise that we hang on to.

Why do we wait to open our Christmas or our birthday presents.

Because we believe that that wrapping is a promise that something good is waiting for us.

Because we believe that God has something better waiting for us.

You see, waiting is based on the promise of something better.

So here we have Abraham at this stage being promised that he will be a great nation.

His prosperity will be known throughout the world.

He will have a name, a nation named after Him.

He has these incredible promises that are given to Him by God.

He can go through anything because He has this promise.

And so when we have the promise of something better, why would we trade it for anything less?

This becomes the core of Abraham's existence.

Now keep Genesis open and we're going to go over to Hebrews chapter 12, the other end of the Bible, Hebrews chapter 12, sorry, Hebrews chapter 11, Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 8.

By faith Abraham, when he was called, ' Hebrews 11, verse 8, "'By faith Abraham, when he was called to God into a place which he should afterward receive for an inheritance, He did what?

Obeyed, and he went out not knowing whether he went.

Can You Hear Me Now? Communication That Connects

How many of you are going to the wedding tomorrow?

Anyone who didn't raise their hand, we have somebody watching at the back.

We're dealing with communication this afternoon and what a great topic.

I'm going to do the first section because men came before women.

All right, I just failed my first communication class.

And then the second section my wife is going to do, so we're going to split it up that way.

We're also going to hand out now, if you would have a question, We're going to hand out some cards, and you can just raise your hand, and we will hand you a card, and you can just fill that out before the end of the session.

And then right at the end, we're going to have a smaller group probably and just answer some of the questions.

So if anybody would like to ask a question, you can raise a card.

Honey, is it alright for me to tell another man that I love him?

So if you have a question, just raise your hand.

If you don't have a pen, you can beg, borrow, don't steal 1.

Just borrow on a non-returnable basis and you'll be fine.

We're dealing with communication that connects.

And so our first part here, we're going to look at understanding conflict.

How many of you have never had any conflict?

Alright, first problem you have is dishonesty and we can chat about that.

So, yeah, we all have conflict, right, at 1 stage or another.

What do you think is the primary reason for conflict?

If I was to say to you, if you look through the Bible and it talked about people fighting with each other, what do you think would be the primary reason for that conflict?

Pride is good, but it's rooted in something else.

It says, why do we have so much conflict?

James 4, verses 1 through 3, it says, what is the cause of all of our conflict?

Somebody with a nice loud voice, go ahead and read that.

And then I'll just repeat some of it for the microphone.

From whence come wars and fighting among you, but may not hence even of your lust of war in your members?

You lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have, and cannot obtain.

When we ask for something, what are we asking for?

The number 1 reason for conflict, why there are wars among us, is because we really want things for ourselves.

And so as we go through conflict, you'll see that the number 1 reason for conflict is that we are consumed with our own personal desires.

Now I really appreciated Mike's reading and good King James English, and Mike, just nice to have you in this relationship and communication seminar.

Alright, so let's take a look at some causes of conflict.

And the first 1 we're going to take a look at is miscommunication.

Sometimes we really just don't hear what the other person has to say.

For instance, there was a man during the days before fax machines and phone machines, they had guess what?

And this man was fairly wealthy and he let his wife go over to Europe on a shopping trip.

And so as she was on the shopping trip, she ended up going into this expensive store and seeing a $5, 000 mink coat that was available.

And so she said, I just want this mink coat.

But her husband had said to her, Before you buy anything expensive, you better let me know so I can tell you whether we can afford it or not." And so she got the store owner to send back a telegram to her husband saying, mink coat, absolutely beautiful, price 5, 000 pounds.

Her husband sends back a message that simply says, no price too high.

And the store owner says, ma'am, your husband must love you very much.

She goes back home and he sees her in the mink coat and he goes, honey, I told you not to buy that.

She said, I got the message, it said no price too high.

He said, oh no, they meant to put a period.

And so when you find that there's conflict, you have to step back and say, have we simply not heard each other correctly?

Second cause of conflict is unmet expectations.

Sometimes when we get married, we believe that the other person knows exactly what we expect.

And so we go into the marriage thinking, you know what, they're going to understand just perfectly what I need.

Now, I told my wife that I love doing the dishes.

All right, I didn't expect to, you know, I was 1 of those modern men, you know, honey, we're going to split the household duties.

But the reality was it was programmed into my head that somehow she would do the dishes.

And so when the dishes weren't done, I was kind of like, you know, what kind of woman is this?

She doesn't even wash the dishes, you know.

And so I went, I would go into the sink, and you know how it is?

You start banging the dishes to get attention.

Series

Alan and Nicole Parker - Desires Of the Heart: God's Plan for Your Life

Can You Hear Me Now? Communication That Connects

Transcript

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