What do you do when you’re not sure the person you are married to is actually your soulmate?  Or even better, how do you choose?  The answer might surprise you? Tune in to find out!

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OPENING ILLUSTRATION:

I remember asking one of my parents how I knew I’d be in love and they said, “You’ll just know”. That felt problematic because it took me 25 years to figure out that every time I drank milk I got sick cause I was lactose intolerant. If I couldn’t diagnose that, how would I ever have any luck with falling in love?

I mean seriously!

Today we are going to delve into some waters and talk about “love” as we do, I want you to be aware, that I’m going to poke at some ideas like “you’ll just know” that might make you want to say, “Kent you’re a dummy,” but stick with me…  Because…

When it comes to “Love,” our world is saturated with ideas that make for great Rom-Coms, but make for terrible relationship guidance.

Let me explain what I mean…

Tell me if any of these ideas about love/relationships sound familiar to you:

-You’ll “just know”

-Finding the “one”

-Finding your “soulmate”

-Finding the “perfect” person for you

-That we can find our “happily ever after”

-We were “meant to be”

-it was “Love at first sight”

Can I ask you a question?

Why do Americans tend to believe these ideas to be true? 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard these pop up in marriage counseling either in a positive – He was my soul mate, or I just knew or in a negative way, I’m not sure we are really meant for each other

You may have your own answers to why we believe these things, maybe you were like me, your parents told you that – but where did they get those ideas?

But I will tell you one sure fireplace that has been peddling these ideas for decades has been Hollywood and now social media.

A lot of these ideas come from ancient religions, myths, folklore, fairy tales, and more – Hollywood capitalizes on them to make great stories and we ingest them as if they were our own ideologies…

Are these ideas really what love is?  What does the scripture say about love?

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Does it say there is a perfect person for you that “you’ll just know”?

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Maybe you’re thinking

“Kent, I don’t know why it matters if I believe these ideas or not?”

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It matters because your deeply held beliefs will dictate your behavior…

ILLUSTRATION:

What I mean is if you deep down have bit on these ideas there is a good chance that at some point when your marriage has gotten difficult, when the lust has worn off – because most of the time what we call love was actually lust – that you end up in my office going, “he looked good in the lighting of the club, but now that I’ve seen him in the daylight for years, I don’t want this joker anymore.  

I cannot tell you how many people I’ve sat with who will say, “I just don’t love them anymore” and are ready to get a divorce or have already participated in an affair looking for the excitement Hollywood has painted for them.  

Have you ever noticed that Hollywood very rarely makes a movie or show about relationships after the rom-com?  They always end with the marriage or the relationship starting because all the things they’ve fed us about love don’t work to make a marriage work and they don’t know how to do it either.  

Hebrews 13:4

⁴ Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

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I want us to learn how to honor marriage today as we talk about what love should really look like…

The apostle Paul wrote these words to the church in Corinth to describe what it should look like for Christians to love – what our marching orders are when it comes to love.  Now, he’s not describing romantic love, but there is no difference – this is what it looks like to love another human being…

As I read this passage, I want you to think about how well this reflects the ideology of the world’s version of love…

As we read this description of love I want you to think about what sticks out to you compared to the way our world views love:

1 Corinthians 13:4-13

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

ILLUSTRATION:

Jenni will be the first to tell you she’s not perfect, but I believe Jenni tries to live this list out.  I can’t think of a time Jenni has dishonored me, I can’t think of a time she threw something in my face I’ve done before.

Do you see? Biblically, Love is not a feeling, it’s an action.

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Love is a choice…

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 

Paul is making the argument that even the most spiritual of things you could think of will end, but love never does.  

Love goes further, gives more, and endures longer. Love NEVER fails.

The caveat: Now listen this is not for those who are in an abusive relationship or for someone who has been abandoned by a spouse or whose spouse has had an affair.  

• This is for the couple who get in arguments
• This is for the couple who struggles to remember why they got married in the first place
• This is for the people who have been thinking there has to be someone better out there for you

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“Kent, how do I love someone who has hurt me?  How do I love someone who seems to no longer care about me?”

I never said Love, true biblical love was easy. The only thing I know to tell you is that the author of love, the one who loves Himself gets it.  He still chose to love us even when we were at our worst…

Romans 5:8

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

CLOSING:

God demonstrates His love…

It was while we all turned our backs on Him that He chose us.  

Recently I was thinking of Barabbas, if you don’t know the story.  It is the day of the crucifixion of Christ.  He has been beaten to within an inch of His life, He has been brutalized all day.  Pilate, the Roman governor brought Jesus out and put him up against Barabbas, this guy was a criminal, who was slated for execution.  Pilate is certain the people will want to release Jesus over Barabbas, but when he asks the people, the chief priests stir up the crowd to cry for Jesus’ crucifixion.  This is the moment where you expect all the bad to come to an end, people should have chosen Jesus to be freed, but instead, they crucified Him.  A criminal is set free and God is crucified…  And Barabbas becomes the first person in history to have the sacrifice of Jesus take His place. This is what love looks like.  Jesus could have gotten out of there, He could have just walked off.  But instead, He chose the worst so He could bring the best to us.  Listen, when Paul is telling you what love is?  He’s just telling you what God is like, “love is patient, it’s kind, it doesn’t envy (because it already has everything it could want), it doesn’t boast, or is proud… etc.” 

Listen, you can’t have this kind of love in a real way without submitting your life completely to the one who is love – He’s where we find it.  He’s where we start over and find new life.  what would it look like for you to give your life to love – not the Hollywood – done at the end of the romcom kind of love, but the deeper, richer, goes further kind of love?  Some of you need to accept Jesus today!

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