SWYC 2010: Stand

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GYC Southwest

For Women: Godly Relationships

Nicole Parker

Chasing the Knight in Tarnished Tinfoil

Water Lily White in a Sewer Pond World

Crystal Fountains and Slimy Cisterns - Part 1

Crystal Fountains and Slimy Cisterns - Part 2

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.

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Series

For Women: Godly Relationships

Chasing the Knight in Tarnished Tinfoil

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The God-Arranged and Blessed Marriage

Let Her Be the One

1h 2m

Marriage as a Covenant

51m

Marriage as a Covenant

07 Covenant Marriage and the Mission of the Family

38m

OYC 2012 Plenary Sessions

Parables in Marriage: Wedding Pictures

32m

Love and Life in God's Will

03 God’s Will and the “One” for Me

49m

Bible’s Love Stories- Part 1

49m

Biblical Love, Marriage, and Relationships - Part 2

50m

Restoring the Home

03 Biblical Principles for Marriage

1h 4m

Three Essentials for a Strong Marriage

1h 2m

Til Death Do Us Part

30m

Searching for Mrs. Right

40m

Why Not

49m

Sound Doctrine