SWYC 2010: Stand

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GYC Southwest

For Women: Godly Relationships

Nicole Parker

Chasing the Knight in Tarnished Tinfoil

Lord Jesus, you promised that your strength will be made perfect in our weakness.

Lord, I am weak, and I know that I can't bring your message unless you fill me with your Spirit.

Make me empty of self, Lord, and help me to speak a message that will reach every single heart of every single person here, that they may come away blessed and understanding the gospel better.

All right, chasing the night in tarnished tinfoil.

Why, happily ever after will never be enough.

When I was asked to come and speak here, I realized right away, this was 1 of the topics I wanted to talk about, because it's something that I just see as permeating in our culture, in our society, and it's such a problem that people don't even see it as a problem.

I thought I'd start out by showing you a picture of my youngest son.

Do we need to turn out the lights in here?

If we turn out the lights you can probably see this better.

He is 3 years old and as you can tell from the picture he has a lot of mischief in him.

Skyler likes to wake up early in the morning before everybody else and come padding into our room.

So he came in the other morning about 06:00 in the morning and my husband was still asleep.

And so I jumped out of bed right away and I was hoping maybe he'll go back to sleep, you know.

So I took him back to his bedroom, and I said, OK, mommy will just lie down with you.

So I laid down in his bed with him and played with his little hair and tickled his little arm.

He said, Mommy, someday when I grow up, I will marry you.

I don't know how to explain it to him yet.

I've tried a few times, but you know, it's so sweet.

He's my last 1, so I'll just let him believe he's gonna marry me as long as he wants.

But you know, it's funny, my kids, even at their young ages, when My daughter was, was it 3?

She was about 3 when we went to, Stephanie Yeager isn't here, not Yeager anymore.

McNeilis, there we go, Stephanie isn't here.

And my daughter, who was 2 or 3 at the time, when we left said, mommy, I want to get married.

As we're driving out of the church parking lot and I was like, great.

Of course to her, getting married means dressing up in a beautiful dress and have everybody look at you and eating lots of cake.

But as she's progressed along, she's learned a little bit more about marriage.

But she still thinks marriage is just incredible.

Now, I'm glad that my kids think that marriage sounds really wonderful, because I think it's a testimony of the fact that they like our marriage.

I just went to a bridal shower 2 weeks ago and took my daughter.

She's almost 7 years old, so it was a mommy-daughter night out, you know.

And when we got there, they had these little sheets of stationery where you can write a note of counsel to the bride-to-be.

So I asked my daughter what she wanted to say, what would be her counsel to this girl, and I was writing it out, I was her scribe.

So she tells me, say, when your husband gets home from work, go to the door and give him nuggles and kisses.

Tell him he's the handsomest man in the world and you're so glad you married him.

And it's true, these are the things that she hears from us and the things that she sees in our marriage.

I have never regretted marrying my husband.

I've been married for over 9 years now and there has not been 1 moment that I've gone I wish I had never done it.

But that is not the case for most people I know.

Almost everybody I know, they wish they hadn't gotten married.

For them, unfortunately, the knight in shining armor is a knight in tarnished tinfoil.

And they find out too late it wasn't what they thought it was going to be.

They're disappointed, they're upset, even angry.

And it's very sad, but you know, it reminds me of, you know, when my sister and I were little, there's my beautiful sister right back there in the back.

Everybody see my beautiful sister back there?

Anyway, when Valerie and I were little, we used to make tinfoil jewelry when nobody was looking, of course, because this was forbidden in our house.

So we'd roll tinfoil into these long things and make a ring and then look around and put it on.

With a tinfoil ring on or a tinfoil necklace.

But the reason it looked so beautiful to us was because our eyes were untrained.

We didn't understand what true beauty was.

We didn't understand what a diamond really would look like.

People looking at marriage from the outside often look at it that way.

They think, wow, that looks so beautiful.

You know, and I remember the feeling when I was single and I'd be, you know, at church and then I'd see somebody walking in front of me and he puts his hand in the small of his wife's back, kind of guiding her through the crowd and I'm like, oh, I want that.

And to me, the knight in shining armor just wasn't showing up.

And every time he showed up and seemed like, wow, this guy could be it, He ended up being a knight in tarnished tinfoil.

But fortunately for me, I didn't marry those knights in tarnished tinfoil.

Too many people find out after the wedding that he's a knight in tarnished tinfoil.

But even though we see all around us the terrible disappointment that marriage brings, if 50% of marriages end in divorce, you know a lot of the ones that stay together, they're staying together because they have to, because they feel obligated, because they have kids, because they can't afford to split up, because they, you know, whatever.

The Rules, the lists go on and on of reasons why people stay together.

But most of those people would not like to be married.

If they had the choice, they would go back, get rid of those wedding pictures, and it's just so sad if you think.

Most of the people walking past you in the grocery store that are married are wishing that they weren't.

But nonetheless, our culture remains enamored with marriage.

First comes love, then comes marriage, right?

We are consumed with marriage, more and more so.

In fact, My friend was just telling me the other day about this reality TV show.

We don't have TV, so I don't know what's on, but she said there's this say yes to the dress thing.

Say yes to the dress and people spend insane amounts of money to fly from some other country to New York City or wherever and go to this boutique and pick out the perfect dress at whatever cost it may be because that's so important to them.

The average wedding in America nowadays costs over $19, 000.

Now, there are a lot of people going to the Justice of the Peace and eloping.

And you'd think in Hollywood they would eventually get tired of having these weddings and getting divorced 3 years later.

Because somehow we've gotten into our minds that we will find happiness if we can just marry the right person?

And the answer, the reason why, really lies more deep in us than we realize, I believe, because we try to find solutions on a horizontal level.

As Solomon said, everything under the sun, right?

And we try to find those solutions under the sun, but the reality is the only place we can find the solutions to what our hearts really need are vertical, by looking up to God.

Water Lily White in a Sewer Pond World

Lord Jesus, you have promised to transform us by the renewing of our minds.

We ask that you will do that marvelous process today as we're talking about you and your word and how you change us.

Thank you, Lord, for your great love for us.

All right, Water Lily White in a Sewer Pond World.

Maybe this title is a little more self-explanatory.

I know for me, it was very difficult understanding how to have a pure mind.

And so this is a struggle I really wanted to talk about.

Now as I'm living on the edge of a university campus, I'm astonished at how many girls, not just guys, there have been plenty of guys who come and say, look, I'm really struggling with porn and sexual addiction and sexual thoughts.

But girls come to me and say, you know, I am really battling with masturbation, with lust, with an addiction to pornography.

And I've realized that this is something that is such an isolating problem for girls.

Every girl who talks to me feels like she's the only 1.

Somehow our culture especially emphasizes that for a woman, you've got to have a pure mind.

With a guy, well, guys are guys, but How can you do something so shameful?

So it's not like I'm gonna spend the whole time talking about masturbation, don't get excited here.

But I do feel like we really need to talk about how to be pure, pure women, not just in our bodies, but in our minds.

So I decided to call it Water Lily White in a sewer pond world.

You know, not long ago I was talking to a girl on the phone as she took her pregnancy test.

And for me, I was just going, oh Lord, please, please.

It was so different from when I took pregnancy tests.

And it's positive and I'm squealing with joy and then my husband wraps me in his arms and we pray together and dedicate this baby to the Lord.

She was hiding out in a bathroom in a Rite Aid and calling me and saying, okay, I'm ready to take it.

So we waited and waited for the results, and it was negative.

Praise God that there's not going to be a child who has to suffer from some of these mistakes this time.

There was just a couple of weeks before they had another girl talking to me on the phone saying, I gotta take a pregnancy test, I'm so scared.

I just had somebody email me too, I'm afraid my girlfriend is pregnant.

But somehow, sometimes we think that as long as we didn't get pregnant, well, you know, it was a mistake, but it's over.

But we forget what God is doing in our lives and what the devil is doing to pollute us.

You know, this girl said to me, I was a good girl.

How did this happen to somebody like me, saving myself for my husband and then to end up in this situation with my boyfriend.

Now he's dumped me, now I'm feeling devastated, and I'm struggling with this on top of everything else.

And I just wanted to wrap my arms around her and assure her It doesn't have to be that way.

All I could do is pray with her and encourage her, show her Christ does not see you as defiled when you have come to him and you've surrendered to him.

But we don't want to, in being wrapped up in the beauty of the gospel, get into cheap grace and say, well, God will always cleanse me later on, so it's okay.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the culture, we can't even see what it is.

You know, when I was flying in the airport a few days ago, I looked down, I could see this blanket of yellow smog over the city.

But then when I was on the ground and we're driving away from the airport, I look up, the sky is bright blue.

When you're in the middle of something, you can't see it for what it is.

And that's what we have in our culture today.

It's like smog, this evil influence that's so permeating.

We hear about people like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

They're staying together and they're faithful and they're raising their children.

Better than what it is like in Hollywood for all these other people, right?

No, they're destroying the sanctity of marriage.

They're saying, we're not gonna get married until everybody is free to get married if they want to.

And I'm like, great, so what do you want?

What about women who want to marry multiple men?

They should be free too, isn't that love?

We've got to look at what God's plan was.

We talked about that in the last seminar.

Then I want to talk this time about God's plan for sex.

2 people who have given them up all other relationships as the most important relationships.

They say this relationship will be above all other relationships in my life.

I choose this person till death do us part.

I'm going to cleave to this person and they're gonna cleave to me.

Can you imagine what marriage would be like without sex?

My husband gets down on 1 knee and says, I'd like to ask you to be my roommate till death do us part.

We're gonna live in the same house no matter what.

You decide, till death do us part, I'm gonna be roommates with you.

We'll rent a house together, then we'll buy a house together.

No matter how rotten you treat me, I'm gonna live with you.

My husband and I get married and we promise, okay, I'm gonna do the dishes, you're gonna vacuum.

But no, God had something so much better.

He planned marriage to be an expression of his love to people who become more vulnerable with each other than any other people in the world.

In another seminar I did once, I likened it to a secret room that links your house with the house of your best friend for life.

And there's this secret room that's underground.

And the 2 of you are gonna have this room that you share.

Forever, the 2 of you are the only ones who come in this room.

You decorate it just the way that the 2 of you want it.

This is your secret haven where the 2 of you get away.

Crystal Fountains and Slimy Cisterns - Part 1

Alright, crystal fountains and slimy cisterns.

We're talking today about how God works to deliver us from the root sins that lead to some of the fruit sins we were talking about yesterday.

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer first.

Father in heaven, we ask for your spirit to be here with us.

Lord, you know I cannot do anything on my own, but you promised to flow through any willing soul.

I just surrender myself to you and ask that you will speak to every heart here, every single person.

You know it will set them free from the chains that bind them.

All of us, Lord, we're just on a journey to heaven and there's so many ways that we need to grow.

Please help this message to help each 1 of us understand how the gospel applies to our lives.

All right, today I'm going to be talking about how God's Word works to truly set us free.

I want to start out by telling you about a Bible worker that I knew.

I'd known her for years, the sunny, bright, happy girl who was always on fire for ministry.

And then 1 day she called me and she said, can I talk to you, Mrs?

And I said, well, yes, go ahead, what is it?

And she said, I haven't been able to tell anybody about this.

I don't even know how to talk about it, I'm so ashamed.

But she said, I'm addicted to pornography and to masturbation.

And she was just sobbing by now and just saying, I don't know what to do here.

I'm leading people to Christ, but my own heart isn't right with him.

I'm bringing people to know him, but the gospel isn't working for me.

How can I tell other people it works when it doesn't work for me?

So I prayed with her and we started talking about what were the root issues that were leading to this.

I explained to her that the sins that we commit are often the results of sins that have been committed against us or are sinful ways of relating.

You can't just excuse your sin, but if we just Try to deal with the fruit since it's like having a dandelion out there in the field, you know You go out there and in the morning and wake up and say oh look, they're dandelions.

I better cut them off So you go out with scissors and you cut all the dandelions in your lawn This is not going to be very effective in fighting them fight against the dandelions, right?

How many of you have ever weeded and tried to deal with a dandelion?

They have this deep tap root that can go way down into the ground.

And if you just pull on the leaves, they'll rip right off.

She would fall into sin, sexual sin, and she would feel terrible.

And she would pray and agonize before God and confess.

But when she got up from her knees, She still felt so dirty and defiled, so bad.

And then, as time went on, eventually she'd fall again and pray and just feel so discouraged.

You can imagine the despair that she felt, right?

All of us have struggled against sin in some ways and found ourselves coming up short in the battle once again.

Well, for her, I explained, here's what happens.

In your fight against dandelions, it's not bad to go out there with scissors and cut them off, right?

If I told my daughter, get rid of all the dandelions in our yard, she might go out there with her little kiddy scissors and cut them all off, and she'd have done a good thing, right?

Because it's going to take a little while for the dandelion flower to come back.

If we just leave them there, they'll all go to seed, and then there'll be thousands of dandelions where There were just 5.

Many people in their fight against addictions, they'll say, all right, I'm gonna set up the computer in the living room where everybody can see it, I'm gonna put on filters, I'm gonna have an accountability partner, and those are great things to do.

Great things that stop the spread of evil so that it doesn't consume your whole life.

But it's not enough, because if you don't get out the root, it's gonna keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back.

God is in the business of taking out root sins, not just fruit sins.

As I talked with this girl more, she explained that she had been sexually abused and that now the things she was doing were the same things that had been done to her when she was sexually abused.

And suddenly the lights went on in my mind.

I love it how the Lord just helps us to put the pieces together.

You know, often in counseling, I'll hear this person and it's all over the place.

I'm like, oh God, where do you even start?

And then I'll start seeing, wait, there's a central sin issue that keeps surfacing in all the things they're saying.

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For Women: Godly Relationships

Crystal Fountains and Slimy Cisterns - Part 2

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