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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Divine Connections, Divine Affections, from Jealous to Zealous

All the things we take for granted, standing and sitting here, are by your provision and your design, hearts that are beating, minds that are thinking and loving.

Lord, bless a gift of Christian fellowship, truth, self-awareness, and a day to think about the purpose of life and the greatness of the life giver.

Now I pray, Lord, bless us as we open your word.

So help us to be humble now and to walk with you and to give you complete Lordship.

This morning's topic will be a little challenging for some.

Challenging partially because the metaphor of marriage brings with it a variety of chapters, some of them painful, some of them terminal.

But I want to go on a journey because I believe we have a problem.

And the problem is not unique to the village church, but it is not that we are not without the challenge.

Tomorrow, I will be celebrating with my wife 34 years of marital matrimony, and I am so thankful for those years, and I'm very thankful to you, Colleen, and I wanna praise the Lord for this fantastic gift of closeness, that when we follow God's ways, brings hope in the midst of a dark world.

God is good, and in God's goodness, The Bible says that inheritance may come from a father, but a good wife comes from God It could be said the same of a good husband When All the gifts of life are put together and added up.

None can even come close to touching the blessings of a beautiful, lifelong, married friend.

So, In reflecting on this beautiful reality and the journey that God has put before us as a people, there have been chapters of education and experience that only life could give, journeys that can teach like no classroom could educate.

And I've been thinking about our connection to Jesus, wondering what he wants.

All throughout scripture He calls us His betrothed.

We are the 1 upon whom the affection and attention to the universe have been focused.

He brings His people into a covenant relationship, and it's not as if he comes without expectation.

Would it be possible that the author of love could come to a relationship and not desire to be loved in return?

Is it really possible that this fountain of affection that flows from heaven to man would not be the same place where God himself would love to experience the thrill of being special like the people in our lives are special.

I'd like to suggest this morning that in contradistinction to the dysfunctionality of our society, which treats divine things like they're common and common things like they're something really special, and turns that which is unholy into holy or at least revered and that which is holy it condemns as restrictive and inhibitive and judgmental and condemnational and all these other things.

I'd like to suggest you this morning that when God chose the metaphor of marriage to describe His relationship to us, He picked the best thing He could find, but it falls far short.

And yet, when we examine the relationships around us and we think back to the best phases of our relational journey, there was a point in time in which nothing thrilled us more than the sense that we were noticed.

And as that noticing grew into appreciation and adoration and love.

I mean, there are days in the chapters of many marital relationships in which All that can run through our mind, especially in those early days, is the thought of the next time I can be with that other person.

That person that I hope will become the other part of me.

Take your Bibles this morning and open them up to the book of Revelation.

Revelation chapter 3, we are at the last of the 7 messages to the churches and they begin and they end almost the same way.

Revelation, 7 love letters to God's church.

Revelation chapter 3, it says, to the angel of the church and Laodicea right They are men and the faithful and the true witness the beginning of creation of God say this I Know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot.

How many times in scriptures do you read the words I wish?

There aren't too many places in the Bible where God says, this is what I'd really like, only you can give it to me.

Oh, we read about directives, we read about do's and don'ts, but there are not very many places in the Bible where you read the words from the mouth of God, I wish.

Now, you have to remember that God is love.

Trying to describe love outside of God is an impossibility.

I know your deeds, that you're neither hot nor cold.

I wish That you were cold or hot Have you ever had 1 of those relationships where you know, you like the person a lot more than they like you.

Most of us are fortunate enough to have 1 of those.

Because along the way of growing in love with another person, You need to understand what a precious commodity is and how much pain can be given away, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes carelessly.

But usually everybody has 1 of those relationships where they don't like me like I like them.

And as I watch through the years, it can happen on the gender lines on either side, but oftentimes, since we men mature much more slowly than you women, the men will take and do something that's a little bit, I think, generally typical to their gender, especially young men, but I wouldn't relegate it only to young men.

They fix their eyes on that individual and they notice how kind and thoughtful they are.

And immediate, as if 1 side of them throws the door of their heart open and it's like They are now fully set on giving themselves to this person Young ladies on the other hand are often just a little bit more careful.

But oftentimes, a young woman will look at the situation and before she really gives her heart away, she's gonna do a little thinking.

And if she's a Christian, she's gonna do a little praying, maybe a lot of praying.

But we've probably all been in 1 of those relationships more than once.

You see, the last time I knew that we weren't off to the best start.

And I can remember going for a walk on a Sabbath afternoon here at Andrews University, and we had walked down by the dairy, I don't know, maybe out in some of the trails, and we were, it was actually a Sunday morning, and we were walking our way back up that long grade from down where the sewer plant used to be up to the top of the hill where grounds and maintenance are and transportation.

And I can remember as we were walking along there, the young woman I was with had sensed that I had really kind of put my foot down on the gas pedal all the way.

It was like, I want to see this relationship move along.

And she turned to me and she said, I don't want a relationship with somebody that's ever going to need me.

You're going after this way too aggressively That whole next of that year from about December onward to May I Kind of sensed that nothing really changed.

I'd carry her books I'd take her out to eat.

Not that I had a lot of money to do that, I was a poor college student.

And I can remember waiting for her in the lobby of the girls' dorm, And then finally we made a trip down to her grandparents.

They were having their 50th wedding anniversary.

And in the midst of that trip, she told me that this relationship really wasn't all that special.

And it wasn't like it was a wonderful, it wasn't wonderful at all.

But it wasn't like this was a new revelation to me.

Now, I'm here to tell you today, There's nothing that dies harder than love That's why when you've given yourself away to someone in the proper emotional way, when you've poured out your heart to someone and there's a rejection or a cooling, it's hard to go from, I can't wait to be with them to why do I have to think about them all the time all I'm Feeling is pain Now The good news is is that what happened in that moment was a crisis in the relationship.

And that crisis in the relationship forced a redefinition of the relationship.

And it just so happens that the woman who told me she never wanted me to need her has told her since then she'll retract that, right honey?

Now when it comes to human relationships, they ebb and flow.

About 35 years ago, the preeminent Christian psychologist in our country, James Dobson, whose programs aired on 450 radio stations in the United States and 250 around the rest of the world, whose programming was seen by millions, wrote an interesting book called Love Must Be Tough.

I consider it a relational classic for people whose lives are drifting apart or farther than that are racing apart.

In this book, He describes the typical response to someone whose marital choices have gone the wrong direction and there is an affair that is developing or is it in full force.

He says the typical tendency, especially for a woman, but the typical tendency for the wounded partner is first of all disbelief.

As a matter of fact, most people that are married to somebody who's not being faithful deny it.

And by the way, it's not an expensive book.

He does the anatomy of an affair 11 stages in there If you care to read the book it will be a blessing to you in your own life and a blessing to you as you intersect with people who don't understand the premise of self-respect in a relationship But people in the beginning will deny that it's happening and Then finally after it's evident that it's happening the 1 who's been victimized will take the blame for causing it.

And the 1 who's causing the affair will be glad to blame them too.

These emotional, strange curveballs that come to us in relationships, there is a sense of panic in which a person thinks, oh no, I've made these mistakes, I'm going to be left all alone.

And then there is a sense of smothering, chasing someone who clearly does not want to be with you right now.

And in effect, what lots of people do is actually chase their spouse away by almost forcing themselves into their life when the statement, secret though it has been, the statement that they're making is, I really want to be with someone else Now why would I choose this as a subject matter for us to look at this morning Because if God has chosen marriage as the metaphor for his relationship to the human race When Jim Nibel was up here this morning He was referencing to Psalm 8 when I consider the heavens in the work of your hands What is man that you're mindful of him?

Why would God with a cosmos as vast as ours turn his emotional attention at the sacrifice that would cause great pain.

Why would he turn all of that towards us?

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Divine Connections, Divine Affections, from Jealous to Zealous

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