Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.
A lifetime is a long time. Second guessing your choice of a mate is no fun, so today we're going to hear more principles to live by in making wise decisions about marriage. These principles come from all over the Bible, so get ready to flip a lot of pages as we spend time in the Word. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, do you encounter people who say they missed God's will when marrying and now have no idea what to do about it?
Well, Dave, yes, of course. I've met many people who wish they had not married the partner whom they married, and they think that because they're out of God's will, they can never be happy. But here's the good news. God can take our messes and he can enable us to see his will in our present situation, whether or not it was ideal or not. I mean, you can think of Adam and Eve. You know, they blew it in the garden, as all of us know, and yet now God had a will for them. So to all those who are struggling today, right where you are, the will of God is that you give your heart to Christ, that you trust him, you believe him right in the middle of your situation. You know, these messages deal with a lot of issues that people are confronted with, and in order to help you, we're making them available in book form. Along with this book, of course, in the book you have questions. You also have links to the messages. For a gift of any amount, these messages can be yours. Here's what you do.
Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. You may think to yourself, you don't need these messages. My friend, you know someone who does. At the end of this broadcast, I'll be giving you that contact info again. For now, let us listen. Third, and this highlights it, the will of God supersedes our personal happiness. Mark that down. Write it in your Bible.
Don't forget it. It supersedes personal happiness. Matthew 26 39, Jesus said, my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Then those memorable words that we all know by memory, nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. Was Jesus in the will of God when he went to the cross?
The answer, of course, thankfully is yes. And what he said was, it is not my will, but yours. You're willing to say that in relationship to marriage? Speak now to you singles. You're willing to say that in relationship to the mate that you're dating? Not my will, Lord, but your will, whatever it is that you want.
That's what I want. Are you willing to say that? You see, whenever there's trouble in our lives, the first thing we ask is, where's the escape hatch? Where's a divorce lawyer?
How can I get out of this pain? Well, there's another question that we should try to ask, and that is how do I bring glory to God in the midst of my predicament? And the answer to those questions might not be the same. How do we bring glory to God in the midst of our need? Because it supersedes personal happiness. God isn't into saying now, you know, I'm committed to your happiness. I remember a woman saying to me, I want out of this marriage because I can't believe God would want me to be unhappy. Lady, what if Jesus had said that in Gethsemane? I can't believe the father wants me to go through this pain.
Let me go back to heaven and leave the world unredeemed. Now the will of God is sometimes very difficult. Rebecca and I know a couple that have worked as missionaries and they had to send their children to a school far away.
And those children missed their mommy and daddy so much. And before they left their daughter who perhaps I don't know, maybe she was eight or 10 years old, she said, mommy, why does Jesus ask us to do such hard things? Sometimes Jesus asks us to do very hard things. So the will of God supersedes our personal happiness. It is God's will and not ours.
That is the big issue. Number four, God's will can be communicated in various ways. You say, well, how does he guide us? There are various ways that he guides us. For example, it says in Proverbs 11, 14, in the multitude of counselors, there is wisdom. One way that God guides us is you're facing an important decision. Get with someone who has some wisdom and ask their opinion or ask the opinion of a group of people whose opinions you can trust. Nowhere is this more important than in the business of finding a mate. Love is blind, but believe me, the neighbors aren't. And if you have a good family, your family isn't.
Take their advice. So one way is the multitude of counselors. The other is Acts 17 where it says, Paul says, we assayed, we wanted to go to this certain place to preach, but he says the Holy Spirit prevented us. How did the spirit prevent him?
I'm not sure, but I know this. The Holy Spirit has prevented me from some terrible, terrible decisions. When I was in seminary, I met a young woman whom I shall call Anna. If you were to look at the way in which we met and all of the circumstances, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was a match made in heaven. I mean, just really, I, I, I won't go into the details except to say that nobody could have put the pieces of this puzzle together except God. So that seemed to indicate that it was God's will.
That's what really threw me off is the circumstances. Furthermore, we really loved each other. That was a second component that was important, but there was something else and that is this business of personal peace. Those who belong to God are led by the spirit of God and something happened within me as we got to know each other that brought me such deep depression and agony. I'm being very vulnerable here today, but it was like two rivers within me, one wanting to go this way and one wanting to go that way.
I could hardly live. And yet all of the signs were, you know, obviously she's for you. My friends were saying, well, look at the way God brought you together and on and on and on and on. But within my soul, there was this anguish. Finally, to make a very long story short, a story that should be short, but turned out to be long. You know, some of us, we, it takes God a long time to get through to us.
It's like the farmer that says the way to get a mule's attention is first of all, the first thing you do is hit him over the head with a two by four. I said to God one evening, if you're not in this, throw a brick at me in the morning. I was so depressed.
I couldn't get out of bed and I got the message folks. If I had married that woman subsequently, knowing the way things turned out for her, I probably would not be in the ministry today. A couple of lessons to you young people.
It's possible to be madly in love with someone whom you should not marry. Remember that. Another lesson, the peace of God should rule in your heart. There was a check in my spirit, a huge check. And I look back at that time with deep gratitude to God saying, God, how could you be this good to me to have spared me? I don't know why God doesn't spare other people. He had another woman in mind for me, whose name was Rebecca, the right one. Folks, God communicates his will in various ways. Don't tell me that just because you happen to meet at an airport in Seattle and you get along so well and you fall madly in love.
Don't come and tell me that that's a basis for finding the right one unless there's some other things in place. Number five, doing the will of God is not doubt free. It's not doubt free. It's not as if to say, well, all of our decisions can be made with 100% certainty.
I wish that that were true, but that's not been my experience. I don't know about you. Paul in second Corinthians chapter one, the church in Corinth is criticizing him because he planned to come and then he changed his mind. And they say, well, you know, does this mean that, you know, you're vacillating, you know, first of all, it's yes, then it's no and so forth. And Paul is defending himself and saying, when it comes to Jesus, it's not yes and no, it's only yes. What he's saying is, is that the important thing is the gospel is to be preached. But here's the mighty apostle Paul changing his mind because he's not sure exactly what the mind of God is. Oftentimes we walk with God and we have to make decisions. I mean, you know, you can't endlessly sit on an opportunity to leave Chicago and go to Atlanta. They give you two weeks to decide.
You can't do that forever. You have to decide. And sometimes we make decisions with trepidation and misgivings, but as we submit it to God, we do that trusting God. And my experience has been after we make a decision like that, then God begins to confirm it in this way and this way and this way.
And you look back and say, I wonder why I agonized so much over this because it's so clear that this is what I should have done. Several years ago, I was walking through the forest preserve near our condo with little Samuel, our grandson. We actually have three grandsons and I was walking with him when he was about five. And we took a trail and then we were coming back and I said, Samuel, we have to go on this trail.
And my grandchildren call me Papa. He said, no, Papa, no, Papa we have to take this trail. And he was out by about what, 85, 90 degrees.
He'd have gone to a river actually. I knew that forest preserve. I walked in it a hundred times.
I could even see the tops of our condo above the trees. No, Papa, no. I said, Samuel, you have to trust. And he said, yeah, Papa, he says, but it is so hard to trust.
And then he walked behind me kicking leaves as he went. Was he confident that this was going to end up? No, he had some misgivings, but after we turned the corner and saw the condo, I'm sure he thought, well, Papa's right. Listen, my friend, God knows all the trails and the forest preserves. He can see around condos.
Yes. He could see around corners is what I meant to say. He sees around condos too, but he can see around corners.
You know what? It's hard to trust, but that is the best policy. I'd rather trust somebody who can see the future should always trust him. Number six, the will of God is often found not by walking so quickly, but rather by waiting. Now this one needs explanation because it says they who wait for the Lord, my soul expectation is from you. I wait before the Lord. The Psalmist says over and over and over again. Now don't misunderstand. When I say that we should wait before God, I do not mean passivity.
J.I. Packer tells the story of a woman he knew who never got out of bed until she felt led of the Holy Spirit to do so. And then after she got out of bed, she needed to feel led before she put her socks and shoes on. That's just silliness. That's not what it means to wait on God. Some of you are maybe looking for employment and you've, you've got no resumes out there. You've got nothing going on. All that you're doing is you're saying I'm waiting on God, which is another way of saying I'm doing nothing. That's not what the Psalmist means. What the Psalmist means is you're waiting on God with a sense of expectation, a willing obedience. You're not manipulating. You're not panicking, but you're waiting, but you're working while you're waiting and you're investigating while you're waiting. Because what you want to do is to walk with God and you're trusting him to guide you.
Eager dependence on God. Number seven. Oh, this is such good news. Could you handle a little good news today? You know, you'll watch television. It's all bad news. Well, here's the good news. The will of God encompasses our mistakes and our regrets.
It encompasses it. God's adequate for it. You look past and you say, well, you know, I got off the trail. Like the old saying goes, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.
So you say, well, you know, I made these wrong decisions and one wrong decision led to another and that led to another and that took me to a part of my life where I didn't want to go, but I was in a box and I made that. Listen, God is bigger than all that. Joshua does not ask the counsel of the Lord. He doesn't pray about his decision with the Gibeonites and believes their story. And then they're stuck with the Gibeonites because blessed is he who swears to his own hurt but doesn't change. So Joshua is stuck with the Gibeonites. Does God say, well, you know, that's it. You know, I'm pretty well through with you.
You didn't ask my counsel and so go ahead and live with it. Yeah, God says that maybe, but then he says something else. I'll make the Gibeonites a blessing to you. And they were hewers of wood and carriers of water and then they ended up going back and helping build the temple. You know, Adam and Eve in the garden, is there any chance that Adam married the wrong one?
Notice this, he did blame her even though he didn't have that chance. You know, the Lord, Adam says, the woman whom Val gave us to me. If you had led me a little better, God, I wouldn't be in this mess. So, you know, they mess up, right? In paradise.
They mess up. What does God say in chapter three verse 15? He says these words, he says to the serpent, I'll put enmity between you and the woman between your seed and her seed and her seed will crush you on the head. And all that you'll be able to do is to nip his heel. It's a contrast of wounds.
First prediction in the Bible that Jesus was coming and Jesus was going to come in the middle of a world broken with sin, broken with stupid decisions, foolishness, and Jesus was going to come and straighten that out. And he still straightens it out because God is a redeeming God. True story. Nice Christian girl meets boy in Christian school. They get it along very well. They take a long trip so that she can introduce him to her family. They're on the way back and it's getting late and they decide to spend the night and of course they don't have much money. And so his intention is that they stay in the same room and there's a check in her spirit that says this isn't right. What she should have done is to holler and say, no, you go ahead and use the room.
I'll spend the night in the car. But many women do not have the power. We need to empower them to make those right decisions for reasons that will become clearer in a future message. So they spend the night together. Later on, he confesses that the reason he did it is he said that I knew that if you slept with me, you wouldn't say no to me when I asked you to marry you. That's right. You have a relationship like that. The person that you have a relationship with has power over you. It's called a soul tie.
It's huge. We'll either end in anger or end badly in other ways. It's inevitable. Well, anyway, she now feels an obligation to get married. So she wrote me a long letter telling me this story and then later on I met the couple and she is planning her wedding with shame and regret.
Isn't that awful? Day that's supposed to be a day of happiness. She's just, she said she was like a robot just doing what needed to be done, putting all of her emotions on hold. Well, they have a few rough years of marriage for various reasons, but I'm telling you this story because it has a happy ending. They're in Christian work today and they're serving the Lord in a very responsible position. And after she gave me the letter and I read it, I contacted her and said, I'd like to meet your husband.
I'd like to see this guy that you married back then with your marriage having begun so badly. I was great to see them and great to see that they're happy. They have children and God is using them mightily.
Why? Because God is a redeeming God. Aren't you glad that he is? He's a redeeming God. I think you ought to clap there if you're awake. If he weren't, where would we be?
You're here today and I don't know what your need is. You're listening by whatever means. The fact is that God is a redeeming God. Would you come to him? Would you finally get dead honest? Would you say not my will, but yours be done?
And would you trust him? Not when the mess gets better, but in the middle of your mess and your decision making and trust him all the way home. Let's pray. Father, guide us in all of our decision making. We ask guide those who are unmarried.
Guide those who are married. Help us to seek your will alone. And may we say from the bottom of our hearts, all for Jesus. We want to give it all to you today. Help us to give it up and to trust you alone. In Jesus' name. Amen.
And right now I'm thinking of the many people who are listening. You may be lonely. You may be shut up. You may be rejected by your children.
Recently, I was talking to a woman who said that her daughter said she could hardly wait until her mother died so that she would get the inheritance. There's so much grief out there. Would you let God bring some healing to your soul?
Would you find comfort in him because he is after all a God who gives us comfort? Meanwhile, we here at Running to Win are doing all that we possibly can to help you. As a matter of fact, these messages that you've been listening to are available in book form. The book has also questions, links to messages.
Our ministry is committed to helping you run the race successfully, despite the obstacles. For a gift of any amount, you can receive this info. Hope that you have a pen or pencil handy, because what you do is go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com, or you pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-7200. That's RTWOffer.com, or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. I want to convey to you the deep appreciation that I have for the many people who support this ministry.
Remember the title of the book, The Marriage Puzzle. We hope that you receive it for yourself and pass it along to others. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Next time, getting realistic about your needs, your partner's needs, and the conflicts that arise when expectations are not met. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
