Dating can be fun and perilous! How do you know if this is “the one?” How can you keep your relationship healthy? Learn how to balance the thrill of a relationship with practical steps that will protect it and keep it in God’s will.

GYCSE 2017: Rooted

<p>Dating can be fun and perilous! How do you know if this is “the one?” How can you keep your relationship healthy? Learn how to balance the thrill of a relationship with practical steps that will protect it and keep it in God’s will.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GYC Southeast

Relationships

Nicole Parker

The Lifetime Laptop Shop

Father in Heaven, thank you so much for your love for us.

We ask that your Holy Spirit will be here with us.

Lord, you know the future for every person here.

And I know you have a plan for them to find the right person to get married or to however they serve you, to glorify you and to live a joyful and rich and fulfilling life.

So I pray that you will guide each person here and help us to love you more and to love others too.

Some of you probably heard that title and said, what is she going to talk about?

What I'm talking about today is about principles of how to choose a life partner.

So, when I talk about principles, that's not the same thing as a recipe, right?

When you follow a recipe, now I'm bad at following recipes anyway.

So I read the recipe and I go, ooh, I could add this.

And so, recipes don't always work that great in my kitchen, but that's okay because my family is a captive audience.

However, you really don't want to be a captive when it comes to getting married.

And it's kind of difficult sometimes because people really want a recipe.

They want to be sure they're not going to end up with a bad marriage.

And unfortunately, recipes just don't happen.

I don't find anywhere in the Bible or Spirit of Prophecy or anything where you kind of get a recipe that if you just follow this then God will give you what you want.

Nowhere does God promise if you put in the right amount of change and push the right buttons Your future partner will pop out of the vending machine and be perfect for you, just what you ordered, right?

That's not anywhere in the promises of God.

However, I do believe there are principles that God wants to use to guide us.

So I'm going to start out with an allegory here about dating, something that I thought through 1 day as I was watching the way that people date.

This story is about a Christmas tree, right?

In his dream he found himself in this huge department store, but the store was empty except for this magnificent Christmas tree.

Now, I'm sure you guys are all paranoid of the thought of starting out with Christmas decorations right now because it's only October.

So here he is looking at this massive tree and he says, what am I doing here?

He goes over to this brilliant gold sign beside the tree and it says, Lifetime Laptop Shop.

And he says, oh wow, Lifetime Laptop Shop.

In flaming letters it says, in this store you will choose your lifetime laptop.

Barring extraordinary circumstances, this laptop will be your only laptop for the rest of your life.

Don't worry, these are not traditional laptops.

While it may accumulate somewhere over time, your laptop will automatically download new applications and software to update itself.

But remember, every laptop has limited capabilities in some areas and will likely only download software compatible with its design.

This laptop will be an intimate part of every area of the rest of your life.

Above all, you must choose your original model carefully.

To a significant degree, this choice will determine your entire future happiness and your accomplishments from this day forward.

For additional vital information on the process of selection, please consult a manual below." So the man looked right below this and sure enough there was a stack of free manuals.

So he picked 1 up and said, this looks good.

Started opening it, would you like some assistance?

He had on his name tag, guide, and he's wearing a white robe.

For starters, I'm wondering what's going on here.

He looked over at the Christmas tree and under the Christmas tree a bunch of people had arrived and they were all pawing through the packages underneath the tree.

So the guide said to them, well they're choosing their lifetime laptops.

And Just then a guy jumped out of the stack and said, I found it, and raced off toward the checkout.

The guy said, well, he just chose his lifetime laptop.

He said, well, wait, how did he choose it?

And the guide said, he liked the wrapping paper.

The guide said, well, he saw the sign, if that's what you're asking.

I tried to hand him 1, but he just threw it aside and took off toward the pile.

He said, well, so what's going to happen?

He said, well, unfortunately, the guide said, this is going to be the death of many of his dreams and the death of my dreams for him.

Another man waded out of the mess right then.

Excuse me, the guide said, but that 1 is happiness driven.

He said, no, that happiness driven sounds great to me, the man said and stormed off toward the checkout.

So now the man said to the clerk, well, so what's happening with that?

He said, well, there are 2 different kinds of laptops, happiness driven and holiness driven.

If you have a happiness driven 1, the happiness driven 1 is going to do primarily whatever it wants to do.

Holiness-driven ones are ones that do what they are designed to do.

They're designed so that your goal in life and in computer shopping should be to glorify God and fulfill his purpose.

So you can't just do whatever you want with a holiness-driven computer.

You have to choose what to do based on what it's designed to do and what you're called to do.

You have to agree to live your life and use your laptop to please its designer, not just yourself.

Okay, the guy said, so either It will never satisfy me or I can't please myself.

Just then, a guy waited out with another laptop and said, I want to take this 1 and date it.

Alan Parker

Fit to be Tied

Father God, I pray that you will bless us this afternoon as we look at the second session.

And Lord, we are asking for your Holy Spirit to be present to give us wisdom as we consider our futures, the many single people here.

And they are people who are dedicated to finding your will.

And Lord, we pray that as they dedicate themselves to that, that you in turn will lead this process, for we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

I'm a professor here at Southern in the School of Religion.

And we are talking about this afternoon fit to be tied.

Are you fit to be tied with someone for the rest of your life?

So we're gonna take a look at a couple of aspects.

How do you know if this person is the 1 that God intends for you to marry?

Well, you know, I'm a person who does not generally get impressions.

But I was at Andrews University promoting my program and I was attending a conference that was called Seeds.

And I happened to see this woman walk past and I felt this strong impression, I need to go up to her and encourage her.

It wasn't necessarily romantic, It was just this feeling, I have to go up and encourage her.

I thought, how am I even going to find her?

And then we went to a seminar in the afternoon.

And in that seminar in the afternoon, who should be there but the same woman.

It was on youth ministry by somebody who was like 150 years old.

And I found the courage by the end of the seminar to just walk up to her.

And she looked at me and she said, hi, and walked off.

And as she told me later, she thought I was some hick from Texas looking for a wife and kids.

All I said was hi, and I don't even have a Texan accent.

That's why you Don't follow impressions, I thought.

But that evening, 1 of my South African friends called me over and said, hey, come have a picnic supper with us and who should us be but this woman who turned out to be Nicole.

And She fortunately did not remember meeting me earlier in the day.

I said, do you remember a guy who came up and said hi?

And so we started getting to know each other.

And the more I found out, I began to say, hey, Lord, you might have something going on here.

She was clueless, because I knew how to hide these things.

So what I want to share with you, I want to pick up from that question that Nicole kind of left us with.

And I want to give you my perspective on this, especially looking at ministry.

And I love this quote from Adventist Home.

And it says, I would warn the young who are of marriageable age.

Those who are marriageable age to make haste slowly in the choice of a companion.

The path of married life may appear beautiful and full of happiness, but why may not you be disappointed as thousands of others have been?

So just because like, this is great, I can't wait.

You know, my wife talked about how women have been dreaming of their wedding since, you know, they were about 5 years old.

And With guys, we kind of only figure out after we ask you to marry us that this involves a wedding.

We're ready to jump straight to other exciting things, but there is a wedding in between.

And then it's like, oh my, you know how much work a wedding is And how much you know they expect you to do I thought my job was to stand there and just make it official But it turns out there's a little bit more that men have to do So make haste slowly This was the phrase that went through my mind.

And as I was thinking about this, I realized it's a little bit like a fire.

Any of you had a fire that was difficult to start?

You go inside the house and you find some newspapers and you grab those newspapers and you throw it on the fire and for about 3 minutes it looks like you have an amazing fire.

And it's just like whoosh, especially if you get a little excited and you put gas on the newspaper before you throw it on the fire.

But it only lasts for about 3 to 5 minutes, and then it dies down.

And unfortunately, when we're looking for a partner, Many of us are making decisions in the middle of the big whoosh.

So when Ellen White says, make haste slowly, I recognize the power of building that fire up slowly.

So unfortunately it took some learning along the way.

I was in South Africa and there was a girl in Zimbabwe.

And I liked her for a couple of years, just at a distance.

And then, you know, unfortunately, she kept having boyfriends.

And so I found out and I got a ride up to Zimbabwe.

A friend of mine was going there and he dropped me off in this little town and I got on a bus that looked a little bit like this bus here.

And it was a bus that was just towering high with people's luggage.

And the lady sitting next to me actually had a chicken in a basket.

And we were traveling along and I thought, what sacrifices I'm making for this woman.

And then another bus came and somehow this full bus managed to cram all of us into the other bus.

So now not only did I have the lady with the chicken, but I actually had somebody who felt like they were sitting on my lap.

And then there were various people standing and we were crammed in and I finally made it to her city.

And her dad was so excited to greet me, pick me up.

He took me back to their house and I told my journey.

She was very impressed, the sacrifices I had made.

And then the next day, the dad said, hey, why don't you guys go and do something?

And I think he was trying to marry us off already.

And he sent us with, it had a canopy on the back.

And I was so desperate to go I went off to the movies.

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Series

Relationships

Fit to be Tied

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

The Lifetime Laptop Shop

54m

Fit to be Tied

57m

Sound Doctrine