Preparing for the Ultimate Marriage

Welcome Summit Church at our campuses in Raleigh-Durham.

We've got, what, Cary and Chapel Hill and Blue Ridge and North Raleigh and North Durham and Downtown Durham and Briar Creek Campus, as well as our Summit in Espanol. Welcome to all of you. We have had an absolute incredible couple of weekends. Over the last couple of weekends, on Easter weekend, we had more than 11,500 people who came to our services. And over those last two weeks, we baptized 199. 199.

Seriously, who was supposed to be number 200 and just didn't do it? I just know that one of you college students out there, you slept in and you were planning on getting baptized. So you identify yourself and we will take you out back and we will hose you down and we'll just call it 200.

You've got to understand what it was created for. And that's what we're doing. I am calling this week, preparing for the ultimate marriage. And it is about singleness and dating. I want to deal today with a couple of myths that our society accepts about singleness and romance. We accept these things as a society without qualification or question. And we even believe and promote these two myths in the church. They are both false and both of them cause wrongness. The first myth is what I call the marriage equals completion myth. This myth assumes that marriage and a nuclear family is some kind of ultimate state for mankind. And thus, if you do not get married, or at least you do not find that special someone to spend your life with, then you have missed out on the essential part of a full and abundant life.

Sadly, as I noted, the church promotes this myth as much, if not more than regular society does. You can hear it in how we try to encourage or maybe I should say console single people in the church. Don't worry.

Don't worry. You'll get married someday. Or we tell them, God just has to do a little bit of work on you before he brings you that special someone. Before God can bring you someone special, he has to make you someone special. And the single person thinks, am I not special?

Am I not lovable the way that I am? That is not to mention, by the way, all the psychotic people that I see get married on a somewhat regular basis. And I think if marriage was a reward for people that had become special and lovable, then God definitely got the wrong address on a lot of marriages that I have observed. A lot of churches treat their single ministries as little more than sanctified substitutes for singles bars. I know of one church in particular that called its adult social group pairs and spares. So the single people are the spares.

Is that really what we're saying? The assumption behind all of this is that marriage is the ideal state and singleness is an inferior or an incomplete state. Tied closely to this myth is myth number two, what I have heard called the right person myth. This myth states that life's primary quest is to find the right person and when and if you do find the right person, then your life will be perfect. And until you find that right person, you're going to be unhappy. Yes, many of you just thought of the heart touching, nausea inducing scene in Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise looks at Renee Zellweger and says, you complete me. And she says back to him, you're a Scientologist and you're a freak. I don't want anything to do with you, but that's how we see it. I'm incomplete until you love me.

And I'm everything I am because you love me. Or maybe that's Celine Dion or whatever, but you picture yourself on the top of the Titanic and you know, the wind's blowing in your face and you found that person. And so in the dating stage, your top priority is to find that person.

That's really what it's all about because that's the key to an abundant life, finding him or her. Both of those myths are false and both of them lead to confusion and to pain. Jesus, who was single himself, rejected them both. He rejected them so strongly, in fact, that if he didn't know better, you'd be tempted to think that he was dissing on marriage. So let's deal with these myths one at a time.

Myth number one, the marriage equals completion myth. If you've got a Bible, Mark chapter three is where we're going to be. We're actually going to be in several places.

If you're super fast, like you won the sword drill award when you were a kid, then you can probably keep up with me. But otherwise, just find Mark, the Gospel Mark. We'll be there a lot. So 70% of it you'll be there for.

The other parts you'll just put on the screen for you. Mark chapter three verse 31, and Jesus' mother and his brothers came to him. And they were standing outside of where he was teaching and they called to him. And a crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, hey, Jesus, your mother and your brothers are outside.

They're seeking you. And he answered them, who are my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and my mother.

Now what is going on here? Did Jesus not love and respect his mother and brothers? Well, of course he did. But he was using this opportunity to teach something very important and that is that he had a greater family than even his biological one. The family that he was creating in the church would trump even the bonds of biology. Listen, this is a radical statement for some of you, but you need to get your mind around it whether you're married or single. Listen, the nuclear family is not the center of God's kingdom.

It is not the center of God's kingdom. Luke chapter 11 verse 27, in a different place at a different time, as Jesus was saying these things, a woman who's teaching something else, a woman in the crowd called out, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breast at which you nursed. Now listen, I'm into people talking back to me while I preach. I love the preach it, preach it or whatever you want to say, but that's got to be the weirdest thing anybody ever said to somebody else while preaching.

Blessed are the breast at which you nursed. If you yell that back at me, I'm not going to acknowledge it. So Jesus looks back at this woman and he says, creepy, no, no, he says, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

Take a minute to let that really sink in. Those who obey the word of God are more blessed and more precious to Jesus than even his own biological mother. Now, how awesome would it be, just think about it, for you to be blood related to Jesus, to have him in your ancestry. That'd be something to brag about, right? Anybody that knows me well at all knows that you give me half a chance and I will tell you that my great, great, great, great uncle was Davy Crockett.

You bring up Texas, you bring up Tennessee, you bring up the 19th century or America in general, and I will find a way to slip that into conversation. But how awesome would it be to have been blood related to Jesus? But Jesus says, being my brother, being my mom, not a big deal.

Be united to me by baptism and have my spirit dwelling in you, that's a huge deal. Mark chapter 12 verse 18, back in Mark, a few chapters later. Mark 12 verse 18, and the Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, which is why they are Sadducee, it never gets old, asked him a question. Teacher Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. It was a Levitical law that said that if your brother married and he, you know, he died before he had a baby, then it was your responsibility to take his wife.

I mean, you're supposed to have a kid with her to give him offspring. Verse 20, there were seven brothers. The first took a wife and when he died, he left no offspring. So the second took her and died, leaving no offspring and the third likewise.

And then all seven did it. And last of all, the woman also died in the resurrection. When they rise again, whose wife will she be?

For all seven had her as wife. This is why people get so annoyed with seminary students because they ask dumb questions like this. Now I know you're like, well, this sounds like the prologue to a Mormon joke, but they are trying to set Jesus up for something. Jesus answers them.

Listen, very important is answer. You are wrong. I'm not answering this question because you're just wrong in the very basis of it, knowing neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven who evidently are not married and are not ever going to get married.

Jesus answered very simply, in heaven, marriage and the nuclear family do not exist. Now I will admit to you, part of me finds that a little bit sad. In heaven, when I see Veronica, there's not going to be anything.

Well, you know, I kind of wink at her and, you know, give her a suggestive nod or something. I don't know. You say, well, that makes me sad too.

There's no sadness here because in heaven, you see, our joys are not diminished at all. They are heightened. And sometimes it's hard for us to really get our minds around that, but it's just something we don't know yet. C.S.

Lewis had a great example of this in his book, Miracles. He said, say you were trying to explain to your adolescent that the greatest bodily pleasure that you can experience is sex. And your adolescent is processing this and he thinks, no, no, the greatest bodily pleasure that you can experience is to eat candy. So he asks you, back to you while you're explaining this to him, he says, well, can you eat candy while you do it? You have a hard time explaining to him that sexual pleasure is so much better than eating candy that you won't even think about the candy when you're in the midst of that pleasure.

C.S. Lewis said that we're in the same position as that child. When we think about what God has for us in eternity, we know the pleasures of earthly things, he says, like sex and married life and nuclear family. We do not know, he says, except in glimpses, that other thing which in heaven will leave no more room for it.

Whatever God has for us up there will be even better than what we have here. That means that whatever it's like up there, I'll be even closer to my wife and my kids than I am here. The bigger point for you to see is that marriage, listen, is not eternal and it's not ultimate because we don't take it with us in the resurrection. You do not take your marriage with you into the resurrection. These relationships, mothers and brothers and wife and father and husband, they're only temporary. John Piper says it this way, Jesus was here calling out a new family where single people in Christ, or at least people not in traditional families, are full-fledged family members on a par with all the others.

Bearing fruit for God and becoming mothers and fathers of the eternal kind. Marriage is temporary and marriage will finally give way to that relationship to which it was always pointing all along, Christ and the church. And when we are there with Christ and the church, we no longer need marriage as the symbol that it was, the way we no longer need a picture when you finally see that person face to face. Let's move on to what the Apostle Paul, another single man, says in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 29 is where I'll start reading here.

1 Corinthians 7, the appointed time of Christ's return, he's talking about, the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none. Now, I love that verse.

What does that mean? Let those with wives live like they had none? That sounds like the mantra of people going to Vegas. But that's not, of course, what Paul means that would contradict everything he said everywhere else. Verse 30, he explains, for the present form of this world is passing away. This world is passing away, Paul says, and along with it, marriage and biological family. So for a married man to live as though he had no wife means he should reflect on the fact that his marriage is neither ultimate nor permanent. And you single people, he is saying, should reflect on the fact that your situation is not permanent or ultimate either. Both situations, marriage and singleness, are light and momentary, and soon they will give way to what is permanent and ultimate, which is Christ and the church. And at that point, you put it away, marriage away, like a picture you put it away when you finally see the person face to face. Marriage and singleness, Paul says, are temporary gifts that God bestows on different people for the fulfillment of his purposes on earth.

Marriage and singleness are both temporary gifts that God gives to individual people for the fulfillment of his purposes on earth. Go back to verse 7 in 1 Corinthians 7, and Paul goes deeper into this. Regarding marriage, he said, I wish that all were as I myself am. Now what was Paul? Well, Paul was single.

He said, I wish you all were like me. But each has his own charisma. Charisma is the Greek word for spiritual gift. His own charisma from God.

His own spiritual empowerment. One of one kind, singleness, and one of another, marriage. Both marriage and singleness are charismatic.

They're both spiritual empowerments. You're going to need spiritual empowerment to do either singleness or marriage well. You say, well, I get how marriage can be a gift. I mean, in marriage you get a companion, you get a sexual partner. A girl sometimes feels like she gets a provider, a protector, somebody to dote on her.

A guy gets somebody to tell him not to wear black socks with shorts and tennis shoes. Somebody that will change his sheets more than once every six months and make some brushes to eat twice a day. I get how marriage can be a gift, but how can singleness be a gift? Well, Paul explains that in verse 33. The married man, you see, is anxious about worldly things. He's always got to be thinking about how to please his wife.

His interests are divided. Me, Paul says, as a single man, I only think how to please God. I've got a special assignment that I can accomplish much better as a single man than I could as a married one. And I will tell you guys, my wife is a wonderful gift to me, but when I got married, my interest got divided. My money got divided. I mean, I had to start spending a lot of money blessing my wife and my kids. I think I've told you this before. Before I got married, if I wanted to move, I could do it with one buddy, a Ford Mustang, a few bungee cords in 15 minutes.

That was all it would take. Now it takes one car just to take the pillows off the top of my bed. It takes one carload. It takes another carload just to take the different kinds of soaps and cleanser that Veronica has in our shower. I look around sometimes in there, I'm like, I don't even know what half this stuff is.

There's these little rock looking thingies. But when I was single, I had one bar of soap. One. I washed everything with it. My face, my body, my hair, the floors.

Everything was clean with that bar of soap. Now it's just much more complex and my budget is divided. My time, on a much more serious note, my time is divided, even for ministry. I'm just not able to go on all the mission trips I want to go on anymore. There's a lot of places in the world that I would like to be, places I think that I could be used very strategically, but I just don't do that anymore right now because God has given me another assignment. I can't work every night until 8 o'clock and then go home and watch a movie to unwind and then golf every Saturday.

Not going to be home by 6 p.m. to eat dinner and help give baths and greet the Berenstain Bears. There are times I will drink five hour energy drinks on the way home from work because I know that's when the real sprint begins. And all the hard stuff that I go through at work is nothing compared to what I enjoy when I get home. Singleness is a gift that allows you to be more devoted to God's kingdom. Or maybe it's a gift that God gives you temporarily so that you can complete some assignment, like your education or a military assignment or a ministry assignment. Singleness can be a gifting that is temporary. It can be a gifting that lasts your entire life.

But it's divine empowerment. You say, but I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be alone.

You're not supposed to be alone. It's just that marriage is not the only way to not be alone. Listen, a lot of times I hear people say, well, you know, all you need is God.

And that sounds so spiritual. The problem is God never said that, and it's not true. In fact, what God said is it's not good that man should be alone.

It's just that marriage is not the only way He takes care of that. Here's how Jesus, who again was single, not married, here's how He said it. Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake or for the gospel's sake who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time. And what He means is in this time the ultimate community in God's kingdom is the church. You say, well, I really want to have kids, Jesus said. Spiritual offspring are much more important and more eternal and more significant than biological offspring. If you are single, you need to get involved in the discipleship ministries of the church. We've got many single people here in the church who act as surrogate big brothers or big sisters or surrogate parents to those children in the church who have been deprived of fathers and mothers and families.

And we need many, many more because that's what the church is. The only part of your life that is unfulfilled if you are single is sexual. God says He will give you a special charisma, a spiritual empowerment for that.

And in eternity He's going to give you something that makes sexual pleasure seem insignificant because of how much better what He gives you up there is than anything you experience down here. But all the other things that we feel like we need marriage for, companionship and offspring, God gives you now in ultimate form in the church. Singleness is a gift that God gives to some for His purposes. And it comes with divine enablement, which you need to deal with the struggles of being single. By the way, marriage is a gift that you need divine enablement for. I know a lot more unhappy married people than I do unhappy single people.

And either one is nearly impossible to go through successfully. So if you're going to be happy as single or you're going to be happy married, it's going to take divine empowerment. The point is, whatever stage God has you in, you can be happy and fulfilled because happiness and fulfillment do not come from your marital status.

Happiness and fulfillment come from the God who gifts and empowers you and walks with you every step of the way. Now listen, I know for some of you this just sounds absolutely crazy. You're like, what?

Be happy without being married? I don't even know what you're talking about. Listen, this requires a level of commitment that some of you are nowhere near. Christianity is not for the half committed. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work as a religious garnish to your life. When Jesus called disciples, the only way that it works is for you to go completely sold out to Him.

It doesn't work any other possible way. And my prayer in all this is that for some of you, your singleness would work something like, sometimes tragedy works in people's lives where it takes them out of this superficial faith and drives them deep into godliness because that's what God is doing. He's saying, you need my power.

You need my help for this. We need to get rid of the myth that real life and the only complete life is the married one and we need to quit giving off this vibe in the church. I had a friend who was single until he was a good bit older and he said, I got so sick of the sweet little old ladies. He said, I knew they meant well but the sweet little old ladies that every time I was at a wedding, they'd always come up to me like, don't worry Bruce, you're next. You're gonna be next. He said, I got so sick of it, I finally said to them when we were at funerals, don't worry, you're next.

You're next. You have my permission now to use that line whenever it's helpful for you. But listen, we need to be a church where if you're single, you're involved because that's the only way all this works. It's not you coming to be a spectator, it's you deeply involved. And if you're married, we need to have a community that is an open community that has different people at different stages of life all in one family together because that's what we are. But at family dinner, you don't sit around as a group of people the same age.

At family dinner, you sit around the table with a bunch of people at different stages of life and that's what the church is. Tied closely to that is myth number two, what I've heard called the right person myth. There are two parts to this myth. The first part of the myth is that there's a right person out there for you and that good marriage or happy marriage is determined by you finding that person and if you don't find that person, you're never gonna be happy. And if you're unhappy now, then it's because you're just not with that right person. And if you're married and you're unhappy, it's because they're not the right person.

I'm gonna explain this more in a later sermon, but this is one of the most widespread and most destructive myths in our culture that absolutely is destroying some of your marriages. Andy Stanley says it works like this, when you believe this myth, the right person myth in the dating stage, you're always on the prowl. You gotta find that right person. You obsess about it.

You're always worried about it. You start to wonder things like, what if I don't find them? What if the right person for me gets married to somebody else because they're out of the will of God? What if I'm being too picky?

What if they don't like me? Oh, if I don't get this right, I'm going to be unhappily married or even worse, I'm going to be single. Finally, for many of you, you find that someone who just sweeps you off your feet, you fall in love, your heart is all aflutter and you think, there I've now found them.

He or she is it. They're perfect. Our relationship is special and we never fight. We're just perfect together. It always makes me laugh when somebody that is dating says, we never fight.

I'm like, just wait, just wait. You think you're going to ride off into the sunset and it's just going to be awesome, but then you get married and you figure out they're not nearly as special as you thought. The guy smells bad all the time and he seems totally oblivious to your needs. Or you figure out that she's selfish and she expects you to be able to read her mind and sometimes she acts like she's lost her mind. And then those little habits they have start to drive you crazy. In the dating stage, you thought they were quirky and you thought they were cute, almost entertaining.

Now you think, I think something is seriously wrong with you. And then their selfishness or their bad temper or their thoughtlessness really starts to hurt you. Then your sexual desires are all out of sync.

You just can't seem to get on the same page. Looking at them no longer intoxicates you. And by the way, psychologists say that the intoxication stage cannot last longer than 18 months.

Now, you no longer are not intoxicated by them. You can barely stand to look at each other. So you come to a crisis point in your marriage and you say, I know what will fix this. Let's have a baby. Oh yes, that's brilliant. That is brilliant. Let's bring another life into this dysfunctional relationship. But did you know of the top three times that a married man is most likely to have an affair, one of the top two is when his wife is first pregnant. Why?

Because it doesn't fix anything. After having the baby and losing sleep, one of them is at work and guess who they finally see? Oh, the right person. And then they say to themselves, I get it now.

I get it. It's that I married the wrong person. But I just met the right person.

And so you think I'm going to correct the problem because I made when I was younger. Because when I was younger, I didn't really know what the right person was. But now I'm older and now I do know what the right person is. So I'm going to get rid of the wrong person. There's no sense persisting in an error.

Might as well just cut bait and start over again. And let's get married to the right person and then I'm going to be happily married. So you get rid of the wrong person. You get married to the right person.

But that doesn't work either. Let me tell you why, okay? It's because you always marry the wrong person.

Here's why. It's because you're a sinner and they're a sinner too. And if you try to correct the problem in your marriage by changing partners, you're correcting the wrong problem. It's like I've told you, lonely, insecure, single people become lonely, insecure, married people. In fact, the problem of loneliness and insecurity gets worse. Because problems like loneliness and insecurity are not cured by another human being.

Here's how Gary Thomas says it. Marriage does not solve emptiness. Marriage only exposes emptiness. If somebody can't live without you, he or she will never be happy living with you either. I know that's totally deflating on that romantic line. I can't live without you.

Be like, that's red flag. Because that means you're not going to be able to live with me either. Marriage to a new person won't fix your personal problems. A lot of people blame their issues on their marriage.

Oh, this person makes me like such and such and this person brings this out of me. News flash, marriage does not create problems. Marriage reveals problems. There are no married people issues. There are just individual people issues that get revealed in marriage.

I love how Tim Keller says it. The best that you can hope for in marriage is less of a bad match for you. Since everybody ends up being a bad match. So what if you, here's the question. What if you gave up the idea that there is a perfect person? And what if you understood that that's not what marriage was about anyway? And what if you understood that God's main purpose in life was preparing you for Himself and His kingdom and that marriage was a way that He can do that and it was a way that He can supply some of your needs but it is not the only way that He can prepare you and not the only way that He can supply your needs. Think about it. This is radical but would that not change how you approach singleness? Rather than being on a rabid, obsessive search for the right person who was the key to a happy life and without whom you're doomed to misery you could put your eyes on God and focus on becoming what God wants you to be for Him and let Him choose what ways He will supply those needs. Listen to this. We're talking about all the needs that we obsess about.

Food, clothing, relationships would definitely be in the list. Here's what Jesus said. After all, talking about all these needs, He said in Matthew 6-33 Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Man, I love that verse. That is a life verse for me.

Focus on preparing yourself for the kingdom of God and what He wants and trust God to supply whatever you need. Jesus is not disconnected as if we had no needs. He made us. He knows what we need. He knows that we need food. He knows we need clothes. His answer is not trust me and sit around naked and hungry.

That's not like a person who's trusting God sitting by the road who's naked and starving. I know what you need. I created you. I know you need food.

I know you need clothes. I'm the one who said it's not good that you should be alone. So why don't you trust me to provide that for you and in the meantime, why don't you put your focus on me and my kingdom and become what you're supposed to be for me and then trust me to supply that need? That means when I'm single, my focus should be on becoming the right person, be on becoming the right person, not on finding the right person. And becoming the right person for Him and not for somebody else. You see, a lot of times we talk about the single stage but all it is is for you to get prepared for marriage. Our preparation in life is mainly for our ultimate marriage to Him, not for our temporary marriage to somebody else. Our most important identity is never as the spouse of somebody else. Our most important identity is as the bride of Christ.

Or you could think of it this way. All of us, married or single, we're all preparing for marriage. Except for many of us, it's just not marriage on this earth. Some of us are going to get to skip the JV version of marriage and we're going to go straight to the varsity version. Some of us are going to skip the JV version of marriage, which is marriage down here, and we're going to go straight for the varsity version in heaven. Let me tell you the ironic benefit for you that are single if you begin to think this way.

Here's the ironic benefit. When and if God does bring that person to you, ironically, you will be ready for them. Most single people, you see, are not ready for marriage and that's why marriage is so difficult for them and that's why so many of them end up so bad and why they end up in divorce. Because they obsess about finding the right person rather than becoming the right person.

We tend to think that when you get married, you're just going to be able to stand at an altar and promise to be an awesome spouse, and as long as you found the right person and as long as you were sincere in your promise, then that's going to give you the ability to make it in marriage and have a happy marriage. Does that work in any other dimension of life? Do you succeed at anything based on the strength of your promise?

No. Those of you that have ever run a long distance run know that. How many of you run a marathon? Put your hand up. I know you're proud about it because you put 26.2 in the back of your car.

You want to brag, so put it up right now. 26.2 or 13.1, you run a half marathon. You don't just sign up and do it. You sign up and then you train and you prepare. Because if you sign up for a 26-mile marathon and you're very sincere and you don't train, then you're going to do what I would do, and that is make it about a mile and a half, and be like, I'm done.

Where's the Krispy Kreme, right? Because preparation is more important than a promise. If Pastor Rodel from our summit in Espanol came to me and he said, hey, I want you to preach next week at Summit in Espanol, and I was like, sure. I want you to do it in Spanish.

Can you do that? And I said, I really want to make Rodel happy. And I'm like, si, you know? And then so next week, I go down there. I don't speak Spanish, and I'm very sincere.

I stand up there. It's going to be awkward for them and for me. Why? Because my promise is not going to do anything. It's preparation, not promise. So again, I'm quoting Andy Stanley here, that it's preparation, not promise, that ends up being more significance.

Now is the time for you to prepare. Again, not for marriage, but for the kingdom of God. You see, when you open up the scriptures with the question, how do I find the person that I'm looking for, you're not going to find that much help. In fact, pretty much all it's going to tell you is, why don't you trust God?

He knows what you need. But if you open up the scriptures with the question, how do I become the right person, well, all of a sudden, they start to light up on every page. You see, be honest with yourself. For many of you that are single, if you met the right person today, right after church, you probably wouldn't be the right person for them. Right? You're all obsessed about finding the right person, but you're not the right person.

Here's what I've heard it said. Are you the person that the person you're looking for is looking for? Let me say that again. Are you the person that the person you're looking for is looking for? Many of you have in your mind who the perfect person is, but you're not the right person for them. And if you ever found that person you're looking for, you're not the person they're looking for.

So why don't you instead focus on what Jesus said in Matthew 633, and that is becoming who you're supposed to be in the kingdom of God, and let God supply that when you need, because that's His way of doing things. I've heard Mary described before as two people that are running the same rig. You've got a guy.

Well, I'll use a guy. You've got a guy that is running like in a marathon. Here he goes, right? And he's headed toward the kingdom of God and the goal.

He's becoming what God wants him to be. And basically what you do is you look to your left, and there's a girl who is running the same speed as you. And you're like, I like her stride. And you say, would you like to run together? And that's essentially courtship and marriage. That's, by the way, not a pickup line. Do not try that at Umstead Park, okay?

That's creepy. But metaphorically speaking, that's essentially what you're doing, is that two of you are headed the same direction, and then you decide that you can do it better together than you could alone. So what should you do now if you're single? Let me break this down and do a few really concrete action steps for you.

What does that mean? What does it mean to get prepared? And again, all these things are for God, not just for another spouse or a spouse. Number one, break bad habits and start good ones. You ought to use a single stage to break bad habits and start good ones. Get out of debt. That's a bad habit that you need to get out of so that if God does give you a marriage and a family, it can be in a stable foundation. Get rid of all pornography.

We talked about that last week. Put that behind you. Your good qualities or good habits to start. Figure out where you serve in the kingdom of God. Create generosity in your house. Establish a daily time with God. Discover what your ministry is and start going on a mission so that when you are united to somebody, you've already got those things in place. Here's number two, get into real community. There's nothing that is as good for the people that are dating or the people that are married like just being involved in a healthy church. It's good for the dating stage because a lot of times that community can help see things you don't see and identify patterns or sometimes say this is not right altogether. Our counseling pastor says that more people are saved from his office by simply being in a healthy small group than just end up in his office.

He says by the time they get to my office, if they're not in healthy community, he said usually the handwriting is written on the wall. There are so many marriages, not all of them, but so many marriages that all they need is good community in order to be able to grow. Here's number three, establish your career and your ministry. Establish your career and your ministry. I read this verse when I was in the 11th grade doing my quiet time.

Proverbs 24, 27. Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready. After that, build your house.

I went to my dad and I said, Dad, what does that verse mean? He said it means get a job. You get a job first and you get established and then you build your house. Then you invite a wife into that. Guys, you get a job and you will become much more attractive, I promise you. Number four, decide now the kind of person you're going to date. Decide now the kind of person you're going to date. If marriage is a gift, then decide in advance that you're going to wait for the one that's a gift from God. If you are a Christian listening to me right now, listen, do not date a non-Christian unless your faith is just not that important to you. Or maybe even more, don't date a non-Christian unless your children's faith is not important to you.

Why? Because you're going to unite yourself to somebody spiritually who's going to have the most significant impact on you and your kids more than any other person. And if that person does not love and follow God, then you are basically saying, I don't care about my children's faith. If you are a non-Christian, listen, do not date a Christian unless you plan to become one.

When you think about it, if you're not a Christian and you're dating one, understand, if you're not a Christian and you're dating one, understand that their hope is that you become a Christian. Can I prove it to you? They brought you here today. It wasn't your idea to come here, it was their idea. And they're hoping I say something that converts you. See, they do not accept who you are, they want you to change. Their mom and dad do not like you. Their family is praying for your salvation. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just trying to tell you, the whole family is praying for you and nobody in the family is ever going to be really happy until you become a Christian. I'm just being honest with you.

I've observed this for many years. So you don't plan to become a Christian, save yourself from heartache and some awkward family table discussions and just decide you're going to date somebody that's going the same direction you are. You say, well, he or she is a Christian, they've just fallen out of church. Listen, I see that so many people will come back into church during the dating stage and when they get married, it goes right back to what they were.

I would tell you it is better for you to date an honest pagan than it is a hypocritical Christian. Here's the last thing, number five, cultivate gospel character. Cultivate gospel character.

I'll give you a little roadmap for doing this. 1 Corinthians 13. I'll tell you the irony of 1 Corinthians 13 as a preparatory passage for you. This is the number one passage read at Christian weddings. The irony is, it's the love chapter.

It's got nothing to do with romantic love. It's sandwiched right between 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, which is why it's called chapter 13. But 12 and 14 are about the church. And in between that, Paul puts 1 Corinthians 13, which is an explanation of what love in the church looks like. Here's the irony. The love that you need for marriage, there's nothing wrong with reading 1 Corinthians 13 in a marriage.

I'm fully in support of that. The irony is that the love that you need for marriage is cultivated in the church. I'll show you what I mean.

We'll do this quickly. Love is patient. Well, patience means that you're okay with other people not being perfect and you're okay with them disappointing you and you don't lash out in vengeance at them when they hurt you. That's a great quality to have in marriage. Love is kind. Love is considerate. It thinks of other people's needs instinctively.

You anticipate what they need and you serve them. And that makes for a great spouse. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Somebody with love, this kind of love, they forgive other people quickly when they hurt them. You don't keep it in your heart and nurse it and turn it over and over and over again until you explode and hurt. Love does not envy.

This is huge. Love does not envy means I'm happy that you're happy even if I don't feel good. That's crucial in marriage so that you're not the kind of person who says I'm not happy in life right now so I'm not going to let you be happy either.

You know how many bad marriages I see that that's the issue? It's like, well, I don't feel good so I'm just going to make you not feel good so that you feel like me because I feel better when you feel crappy like I feel crappy. Love does not boast, is not proud. Love doesn't think that life is all about them and that they deserve good things and that everybody else is obligated to give those good things to them. Love does not dishonor. It means it never uses people for its needs. I'm not going to exploit you as a commodity for my sexual needs.

I'm not going to use you emotionally or to prop myself up. Love does not dishonor. Love never gives up.

Paul says love doesn't give up on people after they've failed you after you've screwed up and made a mess. Those are awesome qualities to have in a spouse. They're cultivated in the church. And when you get involved in those kinds of relationships in the church if God does bring marriage into your life you'll be an awesome spouse, I promise. The church is the laboratory in which good spouses are made.

I'll tell you why. It's because ultimate marriage love is demonstrated in the church by the groom to the bride. You go back to 1 Corinthians 13 what you'll see is that Jesus is the epitome of every one of those things. And it's as you come to know his love that you become that kind of love. Your experience of vertical love between you and God becomes the overflow of horizontal love to other people.

I mean, think about it. The cross is the ultimate example of suffering patiently. We should consider him who endured such hostility from sinners. We esteemed him smitten by God and afflicted but he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. The cross is the ultimate example of being considerate though he was rich yet for our sake he became poor so that we could become rich through his poverty. The cross is the ultimate example of keeping no records of wrongs.

As far as the east is from the west that's how far he removed our transgressions from us. The cross is the ultimate example of love never giving up who for the joy set before him endured the cross despising the shame and has now sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. When you've experienced that relationship of love then this kind of love to your spouse becomes second nature.

It's just part of who you are. The quality of a horizontal relationship of any kind is solely dependent on the vertical relationship that you have with your Heavenly Father the great bridegroom Jesus Christ. Listen there are many of you that for you this is the idol the idol in your life.

If you're not familiar with church an idol is simply something that you put so much weight on you couldn't be happy without it you've given it the place of God in your life. Listen you're not created for marriage you're not created for power you're not created money you're created for the Heavenly Father. Power, money, marriage they're all fine they're all good they're all blessings but only after God is in the right place in your life.

And the problem that you have the reason you're unhappy is because you've taken a good thing like marriage and you've made it an ultimate thing but God is the only ultimate thing so why don't you put him in the right place. Why don't you bow your heads if you would all of our campuses bow your heads together. In just a minute our teams are going to come we're going to take the Lord's table together. It's kind of like the Lord's table is kind of like the engagement ring where you celebrate the love and I want you just to get your heart prepared at all of our campuses get your heart prepared. As we think about the price that he paid how he suffered patiently how he keeps no record of wrongs. And why don't you rejoice in his love and let that make you more happy and more content in whatever state that God has you in today. Father open our eyes and our hearts to the great love by which we learn to love. We love you because you first loved us.