John Kelly endured a rocky marriage for eight years until the relationship ended in a divorce. Yet, this disappointment caused him to grow closer to God, and as a father of two, he eventually started praying for a wife. After much prayer, he was providentially led to meet a woman with a similar experience who would eventually become his wife and partner in ministry.

<p>John Kelly endured a rocky marriage for eight years until the relationship ended in a divorce. Yet, this disappointment caused him to grow closer to God, and as a father of two, he eventually started praying for a wife. After much prayer, he was providentially led to meet a woman with a similar experience who would eventually become his wife and partner in ministry.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">BY-NC-ND 2.0</a>, a.k.a. Music Sharing, license.</p>

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

John Kelly

Broken Marriage, Mended Heart!

What we've chosen to do is to talk about courtship and marriage.

And, you know, ever since God created mankind, male and female, there's been this marvelous and mysterious attraction between the sexes.

And of course the devil is no fool and he has made great capital out of this wonderful blessing and it's become in many cases, In many ways, the curse of the world is the fact that there's male and female.

But on the other hand, it's the greatest thing, and it was part of God's original design.

We think this topic is pertinent for married as well as unmarried.

I know this is a mixed audience, if you will.

And you know, Ellen White counsels us, and I apologize, by the way, I can look up references later, but all of our books are in Virginia, and so I was limited a little bit in some of the references, but you'll recognize.

But Ellen White counsels us to continue the courtship and early affections throughout married life, if you've seen that.

And we believe that's good advice indeed, and we wish we took it more generously, but nonetheless, it is good advice.

You know, Sally and I are gonna celebrate 26 years of marriage this coming December, But our children are in their mid-30s.

So it doesn't take a lot of arithmetic, and that's because we both were not raised Christians, and our first marriage was formed after the ideas of man.

And while we were not Christians, and rather than on God's counsel.

And our real, really our sincere prayer this evening is that and always is that each of us each of you will let God direct your life in this most important area of courtship and marriage.

You probably know that the divorce rate is reported, I don't know this from personal knowledge, but it's reported that the divorce rate among Adventists is really about the same as in the world.

And this tells me that something very, is drastically wrong.

Something is greatly filed up in the way we're doing marriage in the Seventh Heavens Church.

And we think that a lot of it has to do with the way we're doing courtship.

And you know, I promise that we won't be any more radical than David Gates, by the way.

We won't be any more radical than David Gates, by the way.

We won't be any more radical than David Gates.

But you know, I think that as God's people, We're just not listening and obeying.

You know, I work in lifestyle medicine, and Sally and I have been working ever since we were, got acquainted, which you're gonna hear the story of that tonight.

And do you know, there's few areas in a person's life that they seem to be more protective of than their way they eat and the way they go about courtship and marriage.

This is a very personal, intensely personal thing and people are very defensive about it, we people.

But God has given us instruction and he's given us instruction in both of these areas that is very detailed in some ways.

You know, Sally and I want to be in the center of God's will for us, and I believe that's where you want to be.

And you know, really, That's the only place of true happiness, and really the only place that's truly safe, is in the center of God's will.

As a friend of mine once said, on the center line in the narrow road.

This is supposedly what Adam said when he saw Eve.

I doubt that he was acquainted with these type of expletives, but nonetheless, it is clear that Adam was taken with Eve, and I'd like to add as a man that Eve was quite taken with Adam.

And so from the beginning, God created us male and female.

He could have made Adam so that he could have procreated by himself.

There are beings, there are organisms that are asexual, they are capable of having offspring all by themselves.

And so If you haven't thought about that, that 1 point alone, you could spend some time this next week thinking about, why, why did he do that?

And didn't he know all the problems that that was gonna cause, or all the blessings?

You know, there's a marvelous attraction.

But there is a real marvelous, that was a joke.

There's an attraction that we don't, it's almost instinctive.

I realize I'm not going to talk tonight and address homosexuality, that's another topic.

But for the vast majority, what I'm saying is a reality.

Let me ask you, have you noticed that boys are not like girls?

I know I'm talking to a well-educated group, medical backgrounds, but let me tell you something.

Education and knowledge does not keep us from, from like being blind to some of the obvious things.

For example, males and females are different physiologically, they're different anatomically, they're different psychologically, they view reality differently.

And we go through much of our life, especially after marriage, ignoring that.

It's crazy, and I'm speaking from experience, because I had to learn some of these things, you might say the hard way, but there is a difference and it's fundamental.

And it's really interesting, as I took my medical training and learned so many interesting things, it's interesting how the process, the embryonic process that actually produces this difference.

We don't fully understand it, but there's a number of things that we know, and the corpus callosum, that connection between the right and left hemisphere in females is larger than in males, for example, and other interesting things.

In God's plan, man leaves father and mother.

We're going to try and tell you about 2 and a half years of our life in a few minutes.

The main thing we tried to do today was to figure out how to do this quickly, and I'm sure we're gonna run out of time.

And when we do, you just leave or tell us time is up and we'll stop.

But anyway, in Genesis, we read that a man leaves father and mother and he cleaves to his wife, right?

And in a sense, we can say, well, that can't be literal.

And I want to talk about that some and look at that a little later.

You know, this marriage thing is much more than a physical union.

I know you know that intellectually, but it deserves some real careful thought.

Because before the union occurs, the thing that seems to easily overshadow everything is the physical and it's interesting you just talk to people who've been married for a number of years and you will find that at that point the physical what's you know the danger is that that the physical becomes little or nothing.

And it becomes a battle over the will, who's in charge.

I'm not talking about a godly home right now, I'm just talking about a normal, average relationship between man and woman.

It starts off with the physical being everything, which is largely infatuation, then after the marriage, the infatuation, by definition infatuation dies.

Infatuation, If it lasts, it's not infatuation.

Infatuation is a short-term emotional thing.

We wish we could have had a relationship that didn't involve infatuation, but it did.

And so it will for you too, or it has for you too.

And so you just have to kind of like wait for that to pass or enjoy it, if whatever you want to say.

And then you get to the real relationship, which is based on hopefully on love.

Well, my point is that a marriage and a male-female relationship is much more than physical although it includes the physical Now God has given lots of instruction And in Matthew 19, which again, I won't turn to but I will call your mind to and it's worth reading verses 3 to 12 it says that the Pharisees came in and tested him about Moses' law and asked him if it was lawful for a man to get a divorce and he basically said no.

And they really pushed him hard on that and instead of softening up, he actually got a little harder.

And he actually ended up saying in verse 12 that some men are made eunuchs by men and some for the cause of God let him who was able to receive it receive it he did not say well you know there I guess there's some situations that maybe...

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Broken Marriage, Mended Heart!

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