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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

Alan Parker

Waiting On God

Can You Hear Me Now? Communication That Connects

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.

Series

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

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

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Letters From My African Lover

How to Win a Loser

45m

The Ultimate Match - Knowing God’s Will in Choosing a Medical Specialty and Residency

1h 8m

Tablets of Our Hearts

51m

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 1

40m

The Power of Perspective

Two Altars

53m

Absolute Surrender

45m

Wise Examples

27m

Soul Thirst: Going Deeper with God

The Secret to Vibrant Spirituality

42m

The Three Angels' Message for the Millennial Generation

2. Fear God and Give Glory

1h 23m

Relationships

Fit to be Tied

57m

Plenary

Giving Up All

44m

Delighting in the Almighty

3. Enjoying God to the Fullest

28m

Sound Doctrine