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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Phil Mills: Dating and Courtship for a Happy Marriage

Phil Mills

Preparing for Courtship

All You Need is Love

Courtship Question and Answer

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be an angel sitting on a committee in heaven?

Here's God maybe chairing it or maybe another angel chairing it, but God shows up.

God knows before you say what you're going to say, so why say it?

Or before you say, you say, well, maybe, I don't know, what do you think about this guy?

But he is so unobtrusive that actually he's a joy to be at at a committee.

In fact, it's like he attends our committees.

When we get together 2 or 3, he's there in the midst, He's there in the midst and working with us and helping us.

The angel of the Lord encamps around all those who fear him.

I was listening to this last night as I was going off to sleep.

I have some things on CD, and I put them on MP3 so I can listen to various books in the Bible.

I went to sleep and I said, I've got to start with this this morning.

We all need to understand better than we do the mission of the angel visitants.

It would be well to consider that in all our work we have the cooperation and care of heavenly beings.

Invisible armies of light and power attend the meek and lowly ones who believe and claim the promises of God." Can you imagine the excitement of the angels as they saw Mary and they saw Joseph and the 2 of them hadn't yet met, and in the counsels of heaven they said, you know, I think that would be a really lovely couple.

The angels look over this congregation, those who are single, I wonder who they would match you up with.

We need to understand better than we do the mission of the Angel Visitants.

Excited, happy, bringing the right people together.

I'm thankful they were excited about bringing my wife and myself together here at Loma Linda years ago.

You see, families, it's not just you and a perspective, it's families that get together.

Here in Christmas 2000, you can see Sherry, my wife's parents, my parents, my father's since deceased, her sister and husband, our 3 children, Rachel and Eric, I mean Rachel and Philip and Ruthie.

He has happy plans in mind, if we only would know it.

And work with God, work with the angels in these things.

My son now, 19, and still determined to be asleep socially until the proper time.

He has a little insomnia from time to time.

We give him a little sleeper and then our 15 year old.

I can sense the joy of the angels as they see us develop and grow up.

It must be exciting to work with people, if they're angels, that want to follow the Lord.

How frustrating it must be for those that are assigned to some of us who are a little more difficult.

In every gathering for worship there are more listeners than can be seen with the natural sight.

Sometimes the heavenly intelligences draw aside the curtain which hides the unseen world, that our thoughts may be withdrawn from the hurry and rush of life, to consider that there are unseen witnesses to all we do or say.

A visible world, the curtain that hides it, may be pulled aside and we can see and have the presence of Jesus today.

I wanted to add these 3 slides because as I was walking over these thoughts were in my mind.

And so I looked around for a plug early this morning when we got here.

I saw there was a plug right back up there in the balcony where I could be out of the way not disturbing anybody.

And so I went up there and I plugged in my computer and then realized that that is a plug but there's no power to it.

And you know, today we're here at church, and we would expect to receive power.

We need to be plugged into power, not just form, real power of godliness, don't we?

Would you be willing to just bow your heads and ask the Lord to plug us into his power, not just a form, we're going to church, checking off our duties, but we have the power of the Holy Spirit here.

Father in heaven, we're thankful for this opportunity to be together as a church family.

Pull aside the curtains that hide us from the unseen realities of heaven.

May the heavens be open and we, like the martyr Stephen, see Jesus standing there, looking down, watching us, smiling as we listen to you.

Lord may this change us this morning, we pray in Christ's name, Amen.

Just by a quick way of review, and those of you who are here this afternoon will have a handout that is about 20 pages long and encompasses what we covered last night and we cover this morning.

This afternoon we'll be talking about the actual practice of courtship itself.

We want to last night remember Proverbs 19 verse 2, the 1 who acts hastily makes poor choices.

Marry in haste, you'll have plenty of leisure time to repent.

We looked at first in preparation for dating, we don't despise the opportunities of unmarried ministry.

When we're unmarried, there are many, many opportunities for learning that we have and for ministry.

And we want to take advantage of those as long as we have them.

Then we also looked last night that there is a timing for courtship and God has made everything beautiful in its time.

Sufficient age, as a general rule, starts at approximately 20 years old.

This was the biblical age, as we saw, when a person has sufficient financial resources, sufficient mental development, sufficient physical development to begin to consider dating.

It's a good idea also to date somebody who's at least 20.

By the age of 20 a good direction in life can be be determined.

Before you, before they allow me to buy things on credit, you know what they checked?

By the time of 20 you have sufficient experience to have a history.

And You want to be able to check the history of the people that you're considering for potential life's partners.

You can have a better feel by the time they're 20 what they'll be like at 40.

And after all, it's not just the person you marry at whatever age, you want to know who you're marrying for a long period of time.

The best predictor of the future is the past.

In fact, Ecclesiastes 1.9 says, that which has been is what will be.

So that's why we want to have, we want to date somebody that's old enough, we want to be old enough so that we have the same history.

Before we seek a life's partner, we must evaluate what type of life's partner we will be.

Do I understand the responsibilities involved in marriage and in possible parenting?

I meet singles and they always have their list.

I'll ask them, what is it that you want in a married partner?

And they always give me their list of what they want.

Have you made up a list of the requirements for yourself?

Our first concern ought to be Not what am I going to get, but what am I able to give.

When I was a teen, the Beatles had a song, All you need is love.

You couldn't go through teenage years and not hear that blaring from some place or other while the Beatles were telling a lie by telling the truth.

But what is love and have we learned to love?

Luke 16, 12 says, If you have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?" So we have some questions here as we thoughtfully review how we've been as a family member in our own home, because it is our home that prepares us for a home of our own.

If you want to do well in college, the best thing to do is flunk out of high school because you know, they don't know what they're doing anyway, so you get on to college.

Now, the best preparation for college is what?

And the best preparation for graduate school is studying hard in college.

Series

Phil Mills: Dating and Courtship for a Happy Marriage

All You Need is Love

Transcript

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