Does God Tell You Who and If to Marry? | Gary Thomas | West Campus

well good morning welcome to the reconstituted 9 30 service it's good to see you all here i'm especially glad to see you young people here i know in a series on marriage and relationships sometimes you have to put up with stuff this week is especially for you it's relevant for marriage all but especially for you i want to begin with an email that's just typical of a lot of emails i've received goes like this it's been miserable gary we've only been married for three years but has been the worst three years of my life my husband has just been awful and what frustrates me so much is that god confirmed that i was supposed to marry him ten times over or any number of conversations i think of one in particular woman who had been married not just three years but three decades and it turned out her husband was pathological might be the best description and her real concern is she was bitter at god she goes but gary god confirmed to me ten times over i was supposed to marry him why would he do that to all those people who email me that question and talk to me my first response is no he didn't tell you to marry him or her now before i freak the singles out i'm talking about difficulty of marriage i've talked to plenty of people who have told me marrying their spouse was the best decision they made next to becoming a christian because a good marriage can really feel like heaven on earth almost as close to any other experience you can get but a bad marriage can sometimes feel like hell on earth which means we want to make a wise decision it's one of the most important decisions you will make and to make a wise decision you have to be able to answer the question does god tell you who to marry and if to get married now what's our authority as believers when we deal with these questions let's just go back to that question our authority doesn't come from what we want to be true it's not what we want to be it's so hard when you want to believe something is true it's easy to believe it's true and it's this romantic notion i don't have to do the work i don't have to apply wisdom i don't have to seek out counsel i don't have to try to meet people god will just bring the right person at the right time they'll sit right next to me hey let's get married we get married we live happily ever after it sounds like a romantic notion but just because you want it to be true doesn't make it true the second thing where we don't find our authority is what you've always thought was true it's possible to believe for a long time that something is true and it's a lie so just because you've always believed it's true doesn't make it true for christians our authority comes from scripture that's where we look to find out what issue not what we want not what we've always believed what scripture tells us right now and when we look at scripture it's clear that there is nothing in scripture that suggests there's just one person we're supposed to marry and i'll back that up in just a moment this notion of a soulmate that there's one person created just for us and our job is to find this person who will complete us as jerry maguire says you complete me it actually comes not from the bible but from plato in his book symposium there's a character named aristophanes who surmises the reason that romance is such an intense experience and a desperate experience is because at one time he said we were round people by that he meant male and female together and as round people joined together we became too powerful and began to threaten the gods so zeus came up with a plan i'm gonna split them in two and so they'll spend the rest of their life desperately trying to find their missing half and and they won't have time to concern themselves with the god's power and once they find each other they'll be so worried about losing each other that again they won't even think about challenging us and so zeus did that to everybody and lo and behold the gods were saved nobody today i can't imagine believes that world view but we've almost christianized it some people have well god is sovereign god is providential it must be that he's created one person just for me but here's why that's a problem with the christian worldview a christian worldview doesn't suggest that you are incomplete if you don't get married it says the opposite in a biblical world view your chance for fulfillment and happiness doesn't mean you have to be reconciled to some long lost cosmic half that you were cut apart from christian fulfillment and happiness comes from being reconciled to a god you've been distanced from because of your sin through the work of jesus christ we can be reconciled to god that's what brings us fulfillment so we don't have to be desperate in finding a mate second corinthians 5 20 couldn't be clear we implore you on christ's behalf be reconciled to god you see this notion of having to find someone makes us desperate and i just want to tell you singles in particular nothing is more dangerous than dating when you're desperate all right you're not supposed to let your friends drive drunk don't let your friends date desperate it leads you to some foolish choices and you find your fulfillment in the lord so that then you can make a wise choice not because you're desperate but you know it's what god is calling you because for a christian this is so key for a christian god not your marital status defines your life that's how we operate and and we've been going through first corinthians seven and i think paul makes it very clear in this chapter as he's telling them how to make a marriage whether you should get married even who to marry it's clear i believe he leaves it up to us let's look at verses eight through nine now to the unmarried and the widows i say it is good for them to stay unmarried as i do but if they cannot control themselves they should marry for it is better to marry than to burn with passion so what paul says here what is the reason to get married because god told you to get married he said no do you think you can live a sexually responsible life and i would say an emotionally responsible and emotionally focused life as a single person if you think you can you should consider singles but if not it's better to get married than be driven with lust or emotional distraction there's no sense here that paul is saying do one or the other he's asking you to evaluate yourself and be honest about what you think the life is that you're called to in verse 25 he says this now about virgins now i have this in parentheses that's not in the scripture but it's so key this is about determining whether they should marry if you look at it in context now about virgins he says this i have no command from the lord what part of no command do we not understand he said i'm not going to give you a command i can give you wisdom but i can't tell you you must get married or that you can't get married and he says instead of trying to guess god's will this is so key singles please hear this instead of trying to guess god's will spend your time balancing the competing interests of singleness and celibacy can i serve the lord more as a single person or as a married person what will help me live the life that most glorifies god and in first century corinth it might not be the same today but in first century corinth he believed that actually the singles might end up happier verse 40 in my judgment she is happier if she stays as she is i.e single he's talking about singles there but all of this is said this is so key in a total spirit of freedom verse 35 i am saying this for your own good not to restrict you i don't want you to feel guilty if you want to get married i don't want you to feel guilty if you want to stay single this is not to restrict you but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the lord so what matters most for you to live the best life not whether you are married or not but whether you're living in undivided devotion to the lord are you living a life that glorifies god be more concerned about whether you are reconciled to god than find a human half be more concerned that you are reconciled to god living a life of obedience to god then whether you are married to an intimate romantic partner now i think this is all pretty compelling but the absolute in my view argument stopper in this is verse 39 when paul's talking to widows and he talks to them about freedom and here's what he says in verse 39 a woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives but if her husband dies she is free to marry would you please read the next three words with me any one she wishes but he must belong to the lord paul couldn't be clear here if you want to get remarried i think you should consider singles you want to get remade go ahead it's your call and he makes it clear and you get to choose so you get to choose if you should get married or remarried or who you want to marry says you you want to marry an introvert or an extrovert knock yourself out you prefer to be married to a tigger or an eeyore it's your choice women you want to marry a businessman or a poet as long as you're willing to support the poet for the rest of your life you can go ahead and marry the poet god isn't telling you to marry one or the other he's saying make your choice but the one restriction make sure he and by extension she if you're a guy is in the lord now when i go through this in seminars i always hear three biblical challenges i always hear but what about adam and eve isaac and rebecca joseph and mary so let's deal with this fair questions going back to biblical interpretation you all know this but let's remind ourselves narratives aren't normative narratives aren't normative what does that mean the bible often describes things that happen in the old testament or in the new testament frankie but that doesn't mean they're normative for us that they're prescriptive that we should do what they say gideon's fleece is a great case in point god is being gracious to get in not telling us how to make a decision when jesus needs to pay taxes and he tells peter look go out and go fishing catch a fish cut it open you're going to find two coins one you give for your taxes one you give for mine nobody reads that today and thinks if you're way behind in your taxes to the irs you should go fishing and cut open a fish and hope that you're going to find some coins it's a narrative it's not normative but but maybe it should matter for marriage okay let's let's deal with this look at another marriage proposal narrative let's say your name is ruth and your mother-in-law is naomi and your husband has died and you want to get remarried and there's a man named boaz wealthy jewish everything seems to fit and you kind of need to let him know you're interested and so here's what naomi says all right ruth here's what you do you go in in the middle night you sneak into his bedroom i want you to uncover his feet and i want you to lay down at his feet so that when he wakes up you can say hey let's get married nobody thinks today that if women if you're interested in a guy an older guy who's wealthy you should sneak into his bedroom at night take the sheets off his feet and lay down now that's a biblical narrative it is not normative and so let's look at these examples though okay then what about adam and eve so i'll grant this if you are literally the only man in the world and god puts you to sleep and you wake up and there's just one woman in the world who doesn't have a belly button think about it and god says i want you to be fruitful and multiply and she's your only chance to be fruitful and multiply yeah you should marry her i think god told adam to marry eve and eve to marry adam it's not relevant for us when there are almost eight billion people in the world and everybody has belly buttons all right it was the first couple it's not how we should determine whether we should get married what about isaac and rebecca okay let's look at what's happening there isaac was an important part of what's called salvation history the line of descendants that go down to the messiah and they had to keep a pure bloodline because the jewish people to keep it pure you had to have the blood of abraham running through your veins that's not true for christians we're not saved because we have abraham's blood in our veins we are saved because the blood of christ covers us from his work on the cross and let's be honest if you want to make that normative this prescription isn't that god tells you who to marry here's what it's telling you to do you should ask your dad all right young people ask your dad would you please hire a matchmaker let them choose someone for me to marry and i will marry them sight unseen that's the real narrative so if you think that's what is the bible's teaching fine go to your dad have them hire a matchmaker i'll i'll take that up from my daughters all right and then ask them to marry sight unseen that's what the bible would be teaching okay joseph and mary again it seems like an exception and again i'll give you that one so guys if you wake up in a dream and an angel is at your bed and says this woman that you're engaged to is pregnant but i want you to freak out because the holy spirit got her pregnant i still want you to marry her because you got to protect the messiah guys you should go marry her and women if you wake up and god says i'm going to make you pregnant because you're going to give birth to the messiah i still want you to marry joseph by all means mary joseph but these narratives don't even come close to undercutting the clear biblical teaching of paul on how we make a wise marital choice now look i'm not going to limit god i'm not going to say he can't lead two people to get married i'm not going to say and i've seen some people in their second marriage had an awful time and somebody is presented as a gift and god kind of opens up their eyes this could be a really good match you've been really hurt here's my gift for this half of your life do i believe god will do that yeah sure but here's the thing you get to choose whether you open that gift i think you go beyond scripture if you think you have to marry this person or you can't marry this person no i do believe that god has told many people don't marry this person and they did and regretted it so i think we should pursue the lord but this notion that you have to marry someone because of an internal impression it's just not a wise way to make the most important decision in your life in addition to first corinthians 7 there aren't very many passages in the bible that deal with this but there is one proverbs 31 proverbs is written to young men in israel telling you how to live a great life what is wisdom and at the end of that book in chapter 31 it tells men what to do to make a wise marital choice and here's what he says in verse 10 a wife of noble character who can find in that sense of trying to divine some cosmic destiny there's this sense of pursuit it's saying look a wife of noble care is worth looking for so put in the work you should find her but not that god necessarily brings her and what it emphasizes is character please young people hear this the three laws of real estate ask any real estate agent what do they say location location location the three laws of a wise marital choice character character character that's what the bible says to focus on and it's significant that it's talking to young men because 3 000 years ago the bible understood young men that we can be overwhelmed by a woman's beauty and we don't see anything else we don't see her flaws we don't see real faults in her care we're just so overwhelmed by beauty and so it warns us charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting it's difficult for young men to believe that it just is but guys let me be honest with you marriage isn't about being young together it's about growing old together so if this marriage works out sooner than you can believe this young woman that has swept you off your feet is kind of going to look like her mom does right now and if you guys don't die the day will come when she pretty much looks like her grandma looks now now if you choose her base on character and faith she will be more beautiful to you on that day than she ever was before but her physical appearance right now is the first thing that will change physical appearance doesn't remain when my wife and i started dating i had almost as much hair as she does not true anymore hopefully she didn't marry me for the hair and they said so charm is deceptive beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the lord is to be praised saying guys go for the godly ones that doesn't fade that grows the fruit of the spirit makes faith grow if you marry a woman because of your faith you will be more excited about it you'll be more in love with her it's the best thing you can do for your life and for your kids to marry a woman of deep and abiding faith so instead of asking is he the one or is she the one ask these questions is she kind is he compassionate is she unselfish does he zealously serve god or his own interest is she a woman of worship is he a man who loves scripture and i'll say women though it says to men you should choose someone of faith you should to a man who loves the word and a man who prays i've told so many young women 90 of the changes i have made in my marriage have not been 90 have not been because my wife has come to me and said gary would you please stop doing this or start doing that she's welcome to do that but far more often it's been i go into prayer with my heavenly father and he convicts me gary lisa isn't just your wife she's my daughter and i expect you to treat her accordingly and god is my wife's biggest defender in marriage if you don't have a husband who prays you're going to be dependent on your nagging ask any wife how well that works not very well if your guy you're dating doesn't pray the guy you marry won't pray because the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior god wants you women to be cherished he wants you to be loved and adored and served so let the spirit convict him if he doesn't treat you that way don't depend on being able to persuade him so these questions will lead you to an excellent marriage much better than trying to guess if he or she is the one so just step back how do we make this decision scripture says very clearly you make the decision not trying to guess as this one but make a decision about their character and their faith do they have strong character are they a person of faith second bible says seek counsel when you're making an important decision proverbs 1 5 says this a wise man will hear in learning and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel if i've got to make an important decision the bible says don't rely on yourself alone this is especially true if you're choosing to get married because if you're choosing to get married and you're infatuated you're playing russian roulette with your future you know more you can know more about making a wise marital choice in any generation before you because neuroscience sciences advance to where we now understand the neural chemicals behind infatuation infatuation is a neurochemical response has a shelf life somewhere between 12 and 18 months and it begins to fade immediately if you look under a scope if you see a brain under scope an infatuation at 13 months is demonstrably different than an infatuation at six months and the danger of infatuation neuroscientists say is that it leads you to a state that they call idealization idealization what that means is it leads you to create somebody who actually doesn't exist you want them to exist but they really don't you create strengths that aren't really strengths because you interpret everything positively and you miss the negatives that everybody else can see that's why you need counsel because you can't be objective it's a classic example let's say you're infatuated on a college campus young women you're walking behind your boyfriend he's got his tray in the cafeteria a napkin flies off his tray he bends down and picks it up and you were so overwhelmed at this act of character you wanted to get a nobel peace prize you run to your friend can you see what he did i mean he obviously he cares about the wait staff he's so humble certainly he's concerned about the environment next to jesus christ i don't know if a man of his character has ever walked this earth and they're like he picked up a napkin so they try to push back well okay fine but he seems kind of angry to us and you'll no he's passionate that's what i love about he's just passionate are you sure it sounded to me like he was cussing that guy out no actually i think he was speaking in tongues you know he's got he's got this spiritual side that people just miss and so you go ahead and marry him here's what every parent and counselor and friend has heard when that happens he's not who i thought he was and it's a true statement when you marry somebody you're infatuated with you can't know who you're marrying so you must get objective counsel from someone who's not infatuated look you can be infatuated with somebody who's a wonderful marriage choice that shouldn't stop you but if you are infatuated you need somebody to affirm yes we think this is wise and then apply wisdom in my book the sacred search i go through questions marriage is a relationship can this person resolve conflict if they can't resolve conflict if they get into stonewalling because they're afraid of conflict if they get physical or violent at all they're not ready to be married they don't have the relational skills conflict will pull you apart or it will draw you together it will help you understand each other or will make you not want to be in the same room so if they're not healthy and apply in resolving conflict they're not ready to get married if you're going to have kids are they going to be great parents you will love your kids more than you can imagine if you've never had kids before you have no idea how you wrap yourselves around our hearts and you're going to want to give them the best mom or dad you can are they humble do they pray are they givers or takers there's a lot of other questions to ask is the bible would say it's just not wise to enter a relationship with somebody who has lacking in relational skills it's not wise to raise kids with somebody who isn't going to be a good parent it's not wise to be married somebody who's not humble because they'll always think the problem is with you not with them it's not wise to marry somebody who doesn't pray because then they're never going to be convicted by god and you lose one of the best advocates for your marriage and that's the holy spirit and then finally pray i'm not taking out the subjective entirely yes go through scripture get wise counsel apply wisdom and then pray god may say not on your life do not do this he might say this is a really wise choice he might give you light well you need to know but you're going to face this or this is what you have to weigh god should and will help you make a wise decision don't shut them out it doesn't have to be either or it's just recognizing there there are many ways we hear from god not just inner impressions it's an immature thing as christians that we think god only speaks to us through inner impressions i think in my own marriage with my wife lisa we communicate so many different ways most often we talk face-to-face we talk on the phone we text we email sometimes she uses facebook messenger i don't know why she doesn't text instead of facebook messenger but sometimes she uses facebook messenger on on anniversaries and birthdays will often write something on a card imagine if i said to lisa you know what i'm only going to communicate to you by letter and and we're going to have to post it and we'll read these letters why that's just so ineffective it takes so long it would be so stupid but sometimes we say god if you're going to speak to me i don't want to hear scripture i don't want to hear counsel i don't want to apply wisdom just give me that inner impression that's how silly it is to make a decision based on inner impressions why does this matter for singles we have to own up to our choices more than i'm concerned about where you are in your marriage i am concerned even more i'm concerned if you're bitter toward god and rather than saying why did god lead me into this decision i think scripture would say maybe you thought he was telling you that but that doesn't mean he did just because you thought he did so instead of saying god why did you lead me into this mess you can start praying god would you please help lead me out of the mess that i've made you see the difference god is your ally not your persecutor and just because this is some of you might be blowing your mind i'm more concerned that you find refuge and bomb and comfort and counseling god i don't want you to be bitter toward god i think from scripture i think i've made the case you may have been mistaken you may have been misled but i think scripture is pretty clear but for singles this decision matters so much base it on the wisdom of scripture not what you want to be true here's an email another email i receive sadly i was one of those people who believed with all my heart that god has only one person for me to marry i also believe that god would do the choosing i believed it was god's will for me to marry my husband this has had disastrous consequences based on all the things you outlined in the sacred search my husband and i should not have gotten married she didn't think through how she makes this choice she was misled by what she always thought was true maybe what she wanted to be true and in her words it was a disastrous choice and i don't want any single person here divorced or widowed to make a disastrous choice because the consequences of a foolish marital choice are so severe and can be so long-lasting i deal with it all the time as a pastor i don't want a single one of you to face it but even more let me end on a positive note the blessings of a good and holy marriage people of character and faith are so rich and so wonderful i don't want you to miss out on that i want you to have a marriage that makes you cry tears of happiness i was with the one one time where she did that her life was filled with more medical challenges by the age of 35 than you would want to see anybody face in a lifetime and she's talking to me and she's weeping tears of joy saying gary i never thought i would have this much pain but i thank god every day i married a man who's next to me and helping me through it i can't imagine that i could have gotten through this without him life was disappointing her marriage not at all some of you know a few years ago my wife had a fast-growing tumor out of her lung and they went in we went in to get it done and she was all dressed up and ready to go i mean they had the hat on and and things in her everything that hospital gown and then some other search and she had an infection they said man we can't do it today until the infection clears up because we don't know what's happening we're like you can't be serious the surgeon was it took him three weeks we didn't know what the tumor was it was just this fog i mean it was just brutal we go back to the hospital three weeks later i asked lisa how do i support you what do you need he said i just i just want two things when i'm going down in anesthesia i want you to be praying over me and when i wake up i want you to be the one holding my hand and telling me whether it's cancer or not by god's grace he allowed that to happen i was praying for her when she went down under the drugs when she woke up i was holding her hand and thank god i got to say honey it's not cancer you're okay when i was 22 and she was 19 i didn't think that's what marriage was facing sickness facing fear together but there is what it is and there can be those times that bond you like nothing else and i don't want you to miss it i want you to make a wise choice it's your choice use scripture marry a person of character and faith more than anything else seek wise counsel apply wisdom and yes pray but don't just listen to your impressions let's pray lord i thank you that your word i believe is so clear and so encouraging that every person can look at these scriptures and and know what to do lord for those that feel like they have made a poor choice i thank you that your spirit is our comforter and our counselor and that you not our marital status defines our life our greatest fulfillment and happiness is being connected and reconciled to you that's our hope but father i pray for the singles father they would know to make a wise decision i pray father that some might break up a foolish relationship right now it's been based on inner impressions and they recognize the kind of person i'm describing is not the person they're dating but others man they might have their eyes closed to a great future husband a great future wife but maybe they don't come in the package they think and they're not using character and faith they're just looking at superficial things that don't matter or superficial feelings that will pass lord open their eyes maybe even now you could get them to consider someone they might not even have looked at more than anything lord i pray that no one here would be bitter if we don't understand your scripture apply your scripture let it not turn us from you you are our hope you're our ally you're our help we don't want to be angry at you we want to fall surrendered before you and ask for your help we pray in jesus name

Channel: Second Baptist Church, Houston

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Keywords: second baptist church houston, gary thomas, west

Id: 2yVmA06b7rs

Length: 33min 43sec (2023 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021