Rick Warren - Finding The Love of Your Life - Part 1
In your life, two of the most important choices you’re gonna make are, one, «Will I ever get married»? That’s a choice, and the second one is, «If I do, who’s it gonna be»? And the Bible has a lot to say about this. The Bible says in Proverbs 12, verse 26, «The righteous chooses his friends carefully». The problem is nobody teaches us how to do that. You didn’t get a class in school, your parents didn’t teach you how to choose the right person to marry. And as a result, many people end up in the wrong marriage for the wrong reason. And as your pastor who loves you, I don’t want you to do that, I don’t want you to end up that way.
So, we’re gonna look tonight at what the Bible says is God’s checklist for choosing the right person. But before we do that, I need to dispel a couple of myths, and I want you to write these down there on your outline. There’s a couple of myths about marriage that are out there, and we just need to get them out of the way. The first one is this, God doesn’t choose my mate for me, God doesn’t choose my mate for me. It’s your decision, it’s your choice, God isn’t gonna choose your mate for you, God places the responsibility 100% on your shoulder. God is not gonna put a sign in the sky that says, «Marry Harry». Okay, it ain’t gonna happen, you can look all you want, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Now, some people say, well, «I’m not gonna date, I’m just gonna wait». There’s a word for that, bachelor or bachelorette, okay, or never marry, okay? I mean, that’s nonsense to say, «I’m not gonna date, I’m gonna wait». That’s what you get when you cross a crocodile with an abalone, it’s a crock of baloney. I mean, I remember about 10 years ago, a guy wrote a book called «I Kissed Dating Goodbye,» I think he’s a monk today. You know, when God wants to steer you, it’s easier to move a car that’s moving than one that’s parked. God can’t move a parked car, he can’t steer, it’s gotta be moving and then you can go this way or that way, whatever.
So you can go home and sit in your basement and say, «I’m just gonna wait and not date,» and nothing’s gonna happen, nothing’s gonna happen, so you just need to clear that one up. God says it’s your choice, God leads us, God guides us and God gives us guidelines. We’re gonna look at them tonight, but ultimately it’s your choice. The second myth is this, there isn’t only one right person for me. You know, that’s very romantic, «There’s only one person in the entire universe for me». Well, it’s just not true, it’s not only romantic, but it’s not biblical, and it’s not only not biblical, it’s not even logical. There are multiple opportunities that God would say, «Okay, it’s all right, your choice, your preference».
So God doesn’t have a bull’s eye when it comes to marriage. So forget that there’s some Ms. Right or Mr. Right out there, they just aren’t there, okay? It isn’t gonna happen and the Bible doesn’t say that. By the way, let me give you one more myth, it’s not there in your outline, but write this down, one other myth is, love alone is not enough reason to marry, would you write that down? Just write down, love alone is not enough reason to marry. I talk to people all the time and getting married and I look at them and go, «There’s no way». The family background isn’t right, the spiritual background isn’t right, personality background isn’t right, educational background. They don’t have the same amount of energy, they don’t have the same amount of ambition, they don’t even have the same values, goals, or none of these things are, «but we love each other».
Friend, given the right situation, I could get you to fall in love with anybody. Love is a choice, and I could put you in certain circumstances that would make you romantically inclined. Just because you love someone does not mean you should marry them. I would like for us to repeat this together, just because you love someone doesn’t mean you should… I fell in love with multiple women before I married Kay. Any of them, if I had married, would have been a disaster. You can fall in love with all kinds of people, it doesn’t mean you should marry them. Love is not enough, it takes a lot of other things, and that’s what we’re gonna look at tonight. Now, God doesn’t tell you who to marry, but he does give you a description of the kind of person that he desires for you to marry.
And if you want God’s blessing on your marriage, which you do, and you want God’s protection on your marriage, which you do, and you want success in your marriage, which you do, then you better listen to what God has to say about the kind of person you should marry, because the evidence of not following what God says to do is is out there all around us. Given the right situation, as I said, you can fall in love with anybody, doesn’t mean you should marry him, but God gives us a list, and I call these a list of must-haves.
Now I’m gonna give you a list tonight from the Bible of things that must have, you must have in your life and in your mate’s life, boyfriend, girlfriend’s life in order to marry them. Until these are right, you’re not ready to marry them and they’re not ready to marry you and they may not even ever be the right person for you to marry. Now you can add to this list your own experiences. What I’m gonna give you tonight is the bare minimum. These are the minimum requirements for the marriage God blesses. These are, if they don’t meet these qualifications, deal breaker. I don’t care how much I love them, I don’t care how much money they’ve got, how cute they are, how much they make me laugh, doesn’t matter how sweet we get along together, how much we have fun, how much we have in common, doesn’t matter all those things. If we don’t match on these things, deal breaker.
Now this week, I celebrated my 37th anniversary, okay? And I have counseled thousands of married couples in trouble and counseled thousands of single adults who are considering marriage. So I do know a little about what the Bible is talking about, I just want to save you some pain. These are not my opinion, this is what God says are the requirements of the kind of person you should choose to marry. Okay, let’s get into it, number one, the first thing we have to have, my wife and I or my husband and I, we have to, number one, we must have spiritual unity. It’s the first qualification, we must have spiritual unity. That means we believe the same thing about God, we have a relationship to God together.
If you aren’t spiritually unified with your spouse, you are never going to enjoy the depth of physical intimacy, sexual intimacy, or emotional intimacy that God desires for your marriage, you just can’t do it. You cannot have the ultimate physical, emotional, and sexual unity that God wants you to have if you’re not unified in the number one area of your life, which is your relationship to God. Now your relationship to God should be the biggest, most important part of your life. And if I can’t share the biggest, most important part of my life with my wife, we’re living on different wavelengths, we got different world views. We may have all kinds of other things in common, but our marriage will be shallow our entire lives. They will be shallow and there will be problems, and your marriage will never be as deep as it could be, and you will never experience the emotional intimacy or the sexual intimacy that God wants you to have, unless you’re united in spirit.
There’s a spiritual unity that you’re headed in the same direction. If you want God’s protection on your marriage, you want God’s blessing on your marriage, then God’s gotta be at the center, he’s gotta be the glue. Most people have no idea how important God is to marriage. It takes more than a man and woman to make a solid marriage. God, remember marriage was God’s idea, God thought it up, God thought up sex, God thought up intimacy, God thought up family and children and the whole big idea. So he designed it and God designed it that marriage is a three-legged stool: God, a husband and a wife.
And you take out any one of the legs and the stool is gonna fall over. A one-legged stool will fall over, a two-legged stool will fall over, you gotta have the third leg. You’ve gotta have God in the relationship or it’s gonna be unstable, it’s gonna get knocked over in enormous ways, all kinds of different ways. Now, God is absolutely clear about this first one, let’s look at some verses. 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 14 and 15, «Stop forming inappropriate relationships with unbelievers. Can right and wrong be partners? Can light have anything in common with darkness? Can a believer share life with an unbeliever»? In other words, if you don’t have spiritual unity, how in the world can you be unified in any other area?
I can’t tell you how many times people have come to me and introduced me to their fiancé. And they want me to be happy about their fiancé, and they start telling me all their fine qualities of their fiancé and their fiancé does have a lot of fine qualities, great fine qualities. And they tell me how much they love them and they tell me how much they have in common and they tell me how much they’ve got similar plans and they tell me how much they think alike in so many different areas. And then one of them will tell me and say, «There’s only one problem, he’s not a believer, she’s not a believer». It’s the only problem, that every bone in my body wants to say, «It’s no big deal, go right ahead, be happy».
But after watching over a thousand divorces, I’m blunt and I say, «You’re making the biggest mistake of your life». I love you enough to tell you the truth you are making the biggest mistake of your life. If you don’t have spiritual unity, you’re never gonna have sexual unity the way God intended, you’re never gonna have emotional unity the way God intended, you’re never gonna have unity and communication. Because the biggest area of your life, your partner rejects. I don’t care how much else you’ve got in common, they reject that. How can I say, if you have committed your life to Christ, then there’s no way you can give your life away to somebody who rejects your Savior, there is no way you can do that.
Now you can do it and say, «Well God, I don’t want your blessing on my marriage, I don’t want your success on my marriage, and I don’t want your protection on my marriage, and I’m gonna willfully ignore what the Bible says». I used to be really kind of casual about this, «Well, you know, I know you can win him to the Lord later. You can win her,» missionary dating is what we call it, you know? And you know, people tell me this, «I’ll win him to Christ,» or, «He’ll change after we’re married». Would you like to give me five… let me give you 5,000 people to tell you that doesn’t happen. 2 Corinthians 6:14, next verse, «Do not unite yourself with an unbeliever; they’re not fit mates for you».
If you want God’s best, I’m just telling you right up front, don’t even consider somebody who’s not committed to Jesus Christ. Now let me give you the hard cold facts of life, not preference, facts of life. National survey and reported in a marriage magazine, «1 out of every 2.5 marriages in America now ends in divorce». That’s not very good odds, «1 out of every 2.5 marriages in America ends in divorce». But when a couple is spiritually unified, that’s what I’m just talking about, they’re both believers, and they practice three habits together, attend church weekly together, pray together, read the Bible together, the divorce rate drops from 1 out of every 2.5 marriages to 1 out of every 1,105 marriages. Are you willing to gamble, are you willing to gamble?
Please, I’m telling you as your pastor, don’t gamble the second most important decision in your life. Because if you marry without spiritual unity, the odds are in 10 years, you’re gonna be divorced. You’re not gonna beat the odds as a general rule or you’ll stay together and your deepest intimacy will never be there, you’ll live at a shallow level because you’re not sharing the most important thing in your life or there’s gonna be conflict with your kids and all kinds of other problems. So this is the starting one, number one, I must have spiritual unity.
You know, the Bible says this, Romans 1:12, «I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you». And that’s what God wants to do in marriage, he wants the faith of the husband to help the wife and the faith of the wife to help the husband. But how can your faith help each other if one of you has no faith? If I were to stand up here on the edge and you were to come over here, is it easier for me to pull you up or for you to pull me down? It’s always easier to be pulled down in a relationship than to pull somebody up, it is always easier. So I’m not shy about this anymore, if that offends you, I’m sorry, I’m doing what is best for your happiness. You must have spiritual unity in your marriage, all right? Number two, second must have, not only do we have spiritual unity, that’s still not enough.
Number two, oh, by the way, somebody says, «What if I’m already married to an unbeliever»? You love them and you pray that they find Christ, that’s what you do. Now, the second non-negotiable in choosing a life partner, we must have not only spiritual unity, number two, we must have life-purpose compatibility, life-purpose compatibility. In other words, we have to be headed in the same direction, for the same reason, for the same purpose in life. Now, the Bible says this in Amos 3, verse 3, «Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction»? Well, the obvious answer is no, you can’t want to walk that way and I want to walk this way and we walk together.
Now, if two people can’t walk together without the same purpose, how in the world do we think we’re gonna live together in intimacy? It ain’t gonna happen, the marriage is gonna fall apart, the marriage will not last. If you have a purpose for your life that’s that way, and I have a purpose for my life and it’s that way, it’s not gonna last, it’s gonna end in disaster, you’re gonna have a life of conflict. But you need to identify, «What is my mission, what is my purpose, what is my calling, what is my vocation, why did God put me on this earth»? Until you know that question, don’t even think of getting married, because if you don’t know what your purpose is and then you get married and you discover it later and then all of a sudden, well tough luck, you’re married to somebody whose purpose is totally different.
Now God put you here for a purpose and he did three things: he shaped you, he gifted you, and he called you. Let’s look at these three verses, first he shaped you, Ephesians 2:10, «For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,» circle that phrase, «prepared in advance». Did you know that before you were born, God already decided your life purpose? He prepared in advance the things he wanted you to do with your life. One day you’re gonna stand before God and he’s gonna ask you two questions. The nice thing about God is he tells us what’s on the final exam, and there are only two questions on the final exam. And since God wants you to succeed at it, he tells you the questions in advance.
One day you’re gonna die, one day your heart’s gonna stop, that’s gonna be the end of your body, but it’s not gonna be the end of you, because you were made to last forever. You’re gonna live forever, one of two places. We were made for long-term relationship with God, God wants you in heaven, that’s why he sent Jesus to die for you so it’d be possible. One day you’ll stand before God, and he’s gonna ask you first, «What did you do with my Son Jesus»? I hope you know the answer to that, he’s not gonna ask, «Were you Catholic or Baptist or Pentecostal or Calvary Chapel, or», he’s not gonna ask your denomination. He’s gonna say, «What did you do with my Son Jesus»? And then he’s gonna say, second question, «What did you do with what I gave you»?
You’ve been given certain gifts, certain abilities, certain purposes, certain shape that God wired you, spiritual gift, heart ability, personality, experiences that he wants you to use to fulfill your purpose. When you stand before God one day, God’s not gonna say, «By the way, who’d you marry»? He’s gonna say, «Did you fulfill your purpose, did you fulfill your purpose»? «No, sorry Lord, I wasn’t able to do that cause I found a really cute guy». Ah, wrong answer, that’s not the one he wants to hear. God called you, he said, «I designed in advance what I made you to do». He not only shaped you, he gifted you, look at the next verse, 1 Peter 4, «Each of you has received a gift from God for serving others. Now you must be faithful to develop and use that gracious gift from God»!
You gotta be faithful to do it, well, if you got a life partner who doesn’t care two bits about that, or they’re going a different direction, how are you gonna fulfill your purpose? Third, God not only shaped you and gifted you, he’s called you. Did you know that you’re called, every Christian is called by God. The Bible says marriage is a partnership to fulfill your calling. Hebrews 3:1, «Brothers and sisters, you are holy partners in a heavenly calling». And let me just tell you this, if you’ve got a girlfriend and you’re not gonna be more effective fulfilling your purpose married, you better stay unmarried. The purpose of marriage is to make you more effective in fulfilling your purpose.
If marriage keeps you from your purpose then you missed the point of the marriage, to be partners in God’s calling. So here’s what you need to do, you need to picture in your mind your life purpose as a circle and you picture in your mind the life purpose of the person you’re considering marrying over here, and then you ask how much do they overlap? Do they overlap at all, more important, could they become one? Because when you have that oneness, it’s incredible, I married a woman like that who had the same purpose I did. And unbelievable, it made us a powerful team that took us places around the world I never would imagine, that gave us opportunities I never would imagined.
When I fell in love with Kay, I had no idea what God was gonna do in my life. I just knew what his purpose was, but I didn’t know all of the things he was gonna do in my life and all the things he was gonna do in her life. And we had gifts that had not even been discovered yet, but what we did know is we had the same purpose and our purposes matched perfectly, and as a result that gave impact. When you have two different purposes, you have no impact and not only that, you have less joy and not only that, you have more conflict. So you not only have to have spiritual unity, you have to have the same life purpose in life. God gifted you, shaped you and called you.
So, listen, you may both be fine people and you may both love the Lord and you may love each other, but that doesn’t mean you should get married, it does not mean… you gotta ask, «Do we have the same purpose»? The Bible tells us that one of the advantages of being single is you can have a solitary purpose, you have undivided attention. I don’t know if anybody’s ever told you this or not, but I think you’ve already figured it out, a bad marriage is a thousand times worse than staying single the rest of your life.
Let me say it again, a bad marriage is a thousand times worse, a thousand times worse than all the downsides of staying single the rest of your life. So do not settle for just second best. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked with who’ve been married 10 years or 15 years or 20 years, and in the privacy of one on one conversation, they say, «Pastor Rick, I feel guilty». I say, «what do you mean»? «I know what God called me to do, but I can’t do it now because I married a guy, I married a girl who didn’t share that same value and there’s no way it’s gonna get done. And I know I am missing my purpose in life,» do you know what torture that is to know your purpose in life and know you’re missing it?
Don’t make that mistake, don’t make that mistake. On the other hand, as I said, when your purpose is aligned, it is enormous power, it is enormous energy and is enormous fulfillment to be doing the same thing, the same purpose with your husband or your wife and knowing the blessing of God is on your life and I have felt that, and friend, there’s nothing in the world like that feeling. To know that there’s somebody by my side, who’s the exact opposite of me in every DNA cell of her body, she’s female and I’m male, and we don’t understand each other a lot of the time, but we do know this, God’s called us to this, and we’re online together and there’s enormous power when a husband and wife have the same life purpose.