GYC 2007: Be

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Alan and Nicole Parker - Happily Ever After: Finding True Love, God's Way

Alan Parker

Nicole Parker

Is This “The One”?

Lord Jesus, I know that everyone here wants to follow your will.

And I just pray, Lord, that you will open our minds, that you will send your Holy Spirit to bless and guide us.

Give me the right words to say that will reach each person here and give them what they need for the tools to help them have the best future possible in your work and in their lives.

Thank you so much Lord for hearing and answering our prayers and for caring so much about us.

Alright this seminar is called Is This The 1?

So some of you may have somebody in mind already, and probably a lot of you don't yet.

We're going to talk about how you can know who is the 1.

First I want to talk a little bit about how not to know.

I have known many people in my short and fruitful life who have made choices based on many different ideas.

I had a friend once who decided to date this guy and I said, ìWhy are you interested in him?

So you know, and he really is interested in spiritual things.

He's asked me to study the Bible with him.

So they start studying the Bible together And before you know it, of course, they're dating.

And when I talked to her about it, I was like, you know, what's going on here?

She says, well, you know, the most amazing thing happened.

I had this sort of, I don't know how I'd describe it, like a picture in my mind as I was praying about our relationship.

And it was like I saw myself in God's hands, standing there, just tiny little me, and Him in the other hand of God.

And then God brought both of us together in His hands.

Then I was talking to him later on and I told him, you know, well, it's just, I guess we're each in the hand of God.

And he got this funny look on his face and he said, you know, that's amazing.

Because when I was praying about us, I had this kind of vision in my mind, it was like I was in the hand of God and you were in the other hand of God.

And so they knew they're right for each other, and so they started dating, and they dated intensely and they messed up their lives for like 2 years before they finally figured out, okay He's not going to change beliefs and in this case become an Adventist and she is not going to not be an Adventist and both Of them, you know, it's been a while trying to persuade the other person and then they gave up Now they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they just followed some basic guidelines.

Now I'm assuming everybody here is a Seventh-day Adventist and believes in the spirit of prophecy.

In this particular seminar, that's kind of what we're going to do.

I realize those who listen to these seminars may or may not be of that persuasion.

I think you can get a lot of good things out of it.

Just know that in my opinion, there are a lot of things that we can save ourselves trouble from by reading some really good books that are from the pen of somebody who is enlightened by wisdom from God.

And the things that she says can save us from a lot of messes.

And 1 of the things that she says is that you should not date somebody who is not a believer in the same beliefs that you are.

If you have 1 set of beliefs, the other person has another set of beliefs, that doesn't mean that God isn't leading them.

That doesn't mean that they have any less of a spiritual relationship with God.

They may be stronger and closer to God than you are, but can 2 walk together unless they be agreed?

The Bible is plain on this and so is the spirit of prophecy.

We don't need to figure out by visions or dreams whether we're the right people for 1 another.

I've had other friends who have had signs that were much stronger than that.

Even so much as 1 girl who prayed and she felt convicted that God was telling her of 2 dates about her interest in this other guy.

So she waited and the first date came and went and then the next date came and on that day he came to her and said, you know I got this poem I wrote for a girl from California, can you want to read it and see what you think?

So she took it and she started reading it and it was really sweet, but you know, her heart sank.

He's interested in somebody else, a girl from California.

And So they started dating and she found out that the first date that she'd been impressed with was the date that he asked her father if it was okay for him to start a relationship with her.

And, you know, whether the Lord was leading there or not, I'm not a prophet.

But I can tell you that maybe she learned some quality things.

Maybe he did too That the thing I want to impress on you is that you don't choose a spouse Based solely on I got a sign from God because that that's that's just not the way that we're told to find somebody.

I also knew somebody, now another way not to find your spouse, somebody brought us a note once, my husband and me, and said, you know, I'm thinking about having you guys give this to a certain young man.

And so she gave us the note and we read it and she said, what do you think?

Well, the note told him, you know, I'm not going to choose a spouse.

I believe that God's going to choose a spouse for me, so I'm letting God lead in this matter.

And the sign that I've asked God to give me is that the young man that he has chosen will show up on my doorstep holding roses for me." That could qualify as orchestrating your signs, and you do want to be careful about that as well.

So that is more of how to confuse yourself, rather than how to choose a spouse.

Don't use signs, don't use visions, don't use dreams, except as confirmations of things that the Lord is showing you already through other ways to choose a spouse.

Because God has given some very solid ways to choose a spouse and we're going to look at those today.

Now some people think I've just got to wait and God will show me exactly the right person.

There's only 1 out there for me and I'm gonna wait and God is gonna show that person to me.

Now that may well be and I know people who God has given them something miraculous that showed them this is the right person.

I know other people who God has just led them through a lot of providential ways and means.

God is a God of a thousand ways to provide for us of which we know nothing, right?

But there are some things that I'm concerned about when I hear people say, well, I'm waiting and God's going to show me exactly the right 1 because there's just 1 for me.

Number 1 is that that philosophy sometimes leads people into getting married too fast.

And maybe some of you know this from experience, from somebody you know, hopefully not yourselves.

But some people get married in the most sincere way.

They pray earnestly for God to show them exactly who is the right person.

And then something comes along and there's a sign.

Or they may pray for something to happen and then it happens.

I once had a guy who I was interested in but I didn't really know him well and I thought well you know circumstances haven't brought us to the same place and if the Lord wants us to get together then the Lord will work out those circumstances so I told the Lord you know if you want me to get to know this young man better, then make it so that I am assigned in a mission project that's right near where he is.

He was in a place that was like 5 hours from me, and only for a brief period of time.

And the next thing I knew, without me doing anything to do it, I was assigned to a ministry position that was right close by him.

And not only that, we found excuses to get together, and they were just all these different things that were seeming to work together and it was miraculous, but I didn't marry him.

We dated for a little while and I realized, you know what, he's not matching up to the ways that God has said to choose a spouse.

So we ended the relationship and he moved on and I moved on and I found the true man of my dreams.

Everybody tell me, are you glad to see that God can lead people together?

I am so glad that God can lead people together and I have no doubt that God led my husband and me together.

But I don't think he's the only person that I could have been happy with.

I think that there are so many people, and here's the second point that I have, besides people getting into marriage prematurely because they get a sign and so they go, that's it, this is the right 1, what are we waiting for?

And they get married in 2 months or 6 months And they don't know this person very well that can at the very least make for a very rocky Relationship particularly in the early years when you just don't know somebody it helps so much more if you get used to 1 another It's kind of like getting into cold water.

But We’re Just Friends

Father, we want to thank you that we have nothing to fear for the future, except we forget the way you've led us in the past.

Now Lord, we're going to deal with this intimate area of our lives, our relationships with the opposite sex.

And Lord, it's challenging to know how do we be friends, how do we develop the kind of relationship that Heaven can approve of.

So We pray that you'll be here this morning, that you will guide and lead in the presentation as Nicole leads out.

May you bless her words, and may there be gems that each person here can take away.

You know, I noticed in the last presentation that people came in at the end and there wasn't space.

Can we just scoot in, those who were kind of sitting on the ends, just Make sure that if there are any chairs in between you kind of scoot together so that the chairs on the ends are available for Those who come in a little bit later Thanks so much.

It's also our way of getting you to be a little closer to each other It's an illustration, but we're just friends.

Okay but don't sit on each other's laps with this presentation we're talking about but we're just friends now this is something I've heard so many times in fact the reason I started making this presentation, I'm actually writing a book and with 3 kids under the age of 5 at this rate, you'll all be married and have kids of your own by the time I finish it, but I am working on it.

So when I finish my book, I'll just try to let you know how you get how's that but we're just friends it's something 1 of my friends wrote to me once in an email she said oh yeah I've got this wonderful friend who's just like a brother in Christ and I was like oh no not that again so I wrote back to her and just told her a few things about her friendship and she wrote back, she's like, wow, even my mom has never told me anything like this.

And I was like, well, if anybody has the experience that could write it, I should be able to.

Because you know, I went through a period of time, like basically until I was 16, I just kind of did things the way the world does things, you know.

I wasn't drinking or smoking or sleeping around or anything like that, but I just thought, you know, you goof off, you find a guy you like, well then you date him, you know, you kiss, you try not to make out too much but you know you're a Christian but things happen you know that was kind of my approach to things and I didn't even date guys that were Adventist let alone Christian they were neither 1 actually but I meant well I wanted to follow God and I couldn't figure out why all my relationships seemed to end up so messy.

Not just the ones in which I dated somebody, but even my guy friends.

I just couldn't seem to stay friends with a guy.

Either we'd become really good friends and then something would happen that would really mess up our friendship or else we just you know I just kind of they go their way I go my way you know what I mean and I learned some great things after I turned 16 that I also want to share with you today 1 of the main things that I learned, when I was 16, I went to a school called Ouachita Hills Academy.

I don't know, how many of you have ever heard of Ouachita Hills Academy?

For the first time in my life, I understood what Jesus was like.

And I was like, you know what, that's a God that I can actually trust.

Even though before I'd gone to church every week and all that, you know, going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than jumping in a pond makes you a fish.

It had to be something that was real in my heart.

And when I went to Ouachita Hills, it made things real in my heart.

And I learned some great principles of relationships that really revolutionized the way that I related to guys.

But I really wanted to do the right thing.

And 1 of the principal things I learned at the age of 16 was that playing with hearts leads to broken relationships when you make friends with guys or you know for girls make friends with guys for guys you make friends with girls what is your motive is it to play with hearts you know as a christian once I gave my life to christ I really I really was determined not to mess with people's hearts I didn't want to mess up all my relationships but I still had a lot to learn about what playing with hearts really is and that's what I'm gonna be talking about today sometimes we tell lies to ourselves are you really just friends all of you had friends tell you oh yeah you know I like jared but he doesn't like me so we talked about it we decided we'd be just friends or or better yet we're just best friends you heard that 1 we're just best friends now he's dating aggie and I'm dating so and so and so we're just best friends we both really like that Of course if you weren't dating Aggie maybe I'd break up with Johnny but you know he's still dating her so we're just best friends.

It's always Johnny yeah poor Johnny John got picked on here anyway.

For some people that question is a loaded question because the Bible says He that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness and speaketh the truth in his heart will be saved.

06.25 Speaking the truth in your heart, that's what I want to talk about first.

Do I think that guys and girls can be just friends and really be nothing but friends?

Do you think that guys and girls can be really just friends and not, you know, not all high on hormones?

I'm not going to tell you you can't ever be friends with anybody opposite sex again.

In fact, some of my closest friends are guys.

And my husband knows that And he's fine with that because he trusts me.

Like he said, we have a relationship where we trust each other.

I don't have the slightest worry about my husband that he will be unfaithful to me.

And I know that if he had a friendship with a girl that he felt uncomfortable with it He would talk to me about it He would say you know so-and-so seems to be wanting to spend more time with me than I think is appropriate Please don't you know let us alone when we go for a walk.

He's like that And that's a great thing to have.

You want to have that with your future spouse.

That's part of why I'm presenting this, because a lot of people, you know, right now I'm assuming most of you guys are single, and what we're talking about here, I'm focusing on what single people have to do to keep their healthy friendships with the opposite sex.

But the same principles are going to apply the day after your wedding as the day before your wedding.

He that speaketh the truth in his heart will be saved.

I was just reading a website the other day that was about adultery and they said 1 of the main things is that people will say, but we're just friends.

We have to speak the truth in our hearts.

This verse can be taken to mean a lot of different things, but I think 1 of the messages that God wants to give to us from it is that we can lie even to ourselves.

And it's crucial that we not tell a lie to ourselves and say, no, no, no, we're just friends.

I had a friend once who, you know, he was into hunting.

And I just think hunting is 1 of the most disgusting things in the world.

And I knew, you know, He was just never totally not my type so and it kind of seemed like he was starting to be interested in me like he'd want to Kind of hang with me when we were going for a walk with a whole group of young people You know we're doing everything in groups It's all good But he kind of walked next to me and kind of walked slow so that we'd end up behind everybody else.

And I started getting those signals, but you know what I did?

I didn't speak the truth to myself in my heart.

He could never be interested in me, and even more, I could never be interested in him.

1 day when he, you know, I just, I was headed out for the summer to go cold quartering and I stopped by their house to say goodbye and his mom and his sister weren't there.

And you know, I was like, oh, well, okay, well, you know, he invited me inside and I didn't realize initially that they weren't there.

When I went in that door, I went in there honestly, I didn't think that he was alone in the house.

When I realized that he was alone in the house, I should have gone out that door right then.

But I didn't speak the truth to myself in my heart.

And so when I, you know, I lingered for another 5 minutes or so and I said well okay I gotta get going bye bye and he reaches over to give me a hug goodbye and all of a sudden he starts kissing my neck and you know what?

I was like, how can I possibly, but all of a sudden all these hormones go surging?

Romance, Courtship, and Marriage

Father, we want to thank you that this is very close to your heart.

Right in the Garden of Eden, you set up marriage as 1 of those divine institutions that you desired for humanity.

And now the devil is aiming to attack that very institution.

He has mixed us up so much that we've forgotten what it means to experience true love.

So be with us this afternoon, help us to understand more of what it takes to have love and what it takes to give love.

All right we're dealing with romance, courtship and marriage.

So we're going to take a look at a number of different things here.

You know the first is what I might call the dating paradigm.

And that's, you know, most people are into the dating paradigm these days, which is how do you go about finding who you're going to marry?

And after 5 or 6 or 25 or 26, you discover 1 that's the 1 for you, unless you happen to get a divorce.

And then you've got to look all over again.

So the dating paradigm actually builds up a serial mentality where you move from 1 relationship to the next.

You're busy, you're connecting with 1 person, but it doesn't really work out, or they irritate you, or they pick their nose.

And so you move on to the next person and then they do something else and when they don't quite match up to your expectations you move on to the next person.

And so this concept of dating, moving from 1 person to the next is prevalent in our society today.

And so you can see in this magazine here, and I really had to look hard for a magazine that I could actually put up on the screen.

It was challenging, but you can see the ultimate thrill for you and your guy.

This is a ladies' magazine, but it's got this idea, you know, what's it about?

It's about the thrill, it's about getting in there, you know, what, how many positions can you get into and how do you connect with your partner?

So the dating paradigm is all about the thrill of the relationships.

You go and watch Hollywood movies, you'll see the same scenario plays out again and again.

2 people, they have a fight, they hate each other, then they get attracted to each other, they make up, there's stars and fireworks that fly, they end up connecting with each other or they marry and that's where the movie ends and you assume it's happily ever after, but generally it's not, at least if you look at the Hollywood's lives, you know the people in Hollywood, So we recognize that this is not God's paradigm.

We actually have a society today that prevents intimacy.

According to Margaret Gibbs, people are increasingly busy.

We've become a society where we expect things instantly and don't want to spend the time it takes to have real intimacy with another person.

Now this even happens in our relationship with God.

We think if we go into a worship service we may not have had a connection with God over the whole week but if we sit there and the music is just right and they can build up our emotions we can have an instantaneous intimacy with God.

I mean we create this feeling of if I can just get the right music and the right mood, I will have this instantaneous intimacy, I'll have this connection with God.

And we use that in our relationships too.

We don't want to have to wait on intimacy.

We want to be able to hold hands tomorrow.

Or hold hands today, I'll ask you out tomorrow.

And so we want to have that instantaneous connection with intimacy because we are a society that's isolated and divided.

Statistics are kind of alarming as to what's happening in 19 50 just over 10 percent of households was 1 person households a single person that has now grown to over 25 percent so less and less people are actually moving into families or getting married or they're divorced the number of close confidence that people have in 19 85 it was 3 in 2006 it was 2 those who have no close confident no 1 that they can connect with.

1985 it was 10%, 2006 it had moved up to 20%.

We are becoming a society that's isolated, a society that's not connected.

This is why we have this desperate desire for intimacy.

You know, you can look around, look at the person next to you, they're lonely.

Now we come to GYC, we don't feel lonely, but what happens after GYC?

You go home and you get with your family and that's all you have, you know, and you go through this loneliness, this depression.

So there is this loneliness that takes place, and in order to get over our loneliness, what do we do?

We try and have an immediate connection with another person.

So the saying today is, you know what, just follow your heart.

You know, you get together, you go to somebody and you say, I'm really thinking about this relationship and I don't know if it's the right thing and they go, just follow your heart.

You know, sounds so great, you know, just, no 1 else can make this decision for you, you've got to just follow your heart.

Well, let me tell you that that's more Hollywood culture than it is biblical culture.

Because this is what the Bible says about the heart.

Jeremiah 17 verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it?

In other words, you don't even know your own heart.

I remember my brother, he was 18 at the time, I was 14, he came home 1 day with a smile all over his face.

He had just asked a girl to go out with him.

So I was curious, you know, I was 14, so I said to him, alright, Roland, can you tell me, how do you know it's true love?

He says, I'll tell you how I know it's true love.

I would go, I would be run over by a train, I still remember that, if I had to for this woman.

See we don't even know our own hearts, so we think, wow if I just, if I have these great feelings and I'm following my heart I'll do right.

And the reality is our hearts are fickle, amen?

What you feel today, you're not going to feel tomorrow.

How many of you, now just be brave, how many of you have felt strong feelings for another person and those feelings changed?

You know, have you ever found you get into a relationship and you just argue with that person and it ends up being a mess it's complicated, there's conflict What's the cause of that conflict, that complication?

Let's turn to James chapter 4 and I'm going to read from verse 1.

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Series

Alan and Nicole Parker - Happily Ever After: Finding True Love, God's Way

Romance, Courtship, and Marriage

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

Is This “The One”?

49m

But We’re Just Friends

56m

Romance, Courtship, and Marriage

1h

Getting Ready for Your Wedding Night

57m

Beauty for Ashes: Healing Past Hurts

1h

Relationships Question and Answer

1h

Sound Doctrine