How 'tidy' Is Your Spiritual Bedroom Series

Sermon Brief

Date Written: May 19, 2007

Date Preached: May 20, 2007

Where Preached: OZHBC (AM)

Sermon Details:

Sermon Series: A Spiritual Clean Sweep

Sermon Title: How “Tidy” is your Spiritual Bedroom?

Sermon Text: Hebrews 11:1-2; 23-29

Introduction:

This morning I want to start by asking you a simple question. “What is marriage?” Well the answer I am looking for is that marriage is actually a 2-sided coin, faith on one side and faithfulness on the other. But just what do these words faith and faithfulness mean?

Webster’s dictionary defines faith like this – faith is a belief in the value, truth or trustworthiness of someone or something.

The Bible defines faith like this – faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. (NASB)

Webster’s defines faithfulness like this – faithfulness is being true and trustworthy in the performance of a duty or the fulfillment of a promise or obligation

The Bible defines faithful all throughout its pages. It is faith in action… faith being put to the test!

I once read a quote that I believe describes faithfulness very clearly, it said:

"Nothing in life can take the place of faithfulness and dependability. It is one of the greatest virtues. Brilliance, genius, competence all are subservient to the quality of faithfulness."

Wallace Fridy

When we look at marriage we can see faithfulness expressed in many ways, such as:

A faithful husband stays loyal and true to his wife and is totally trustworthy in the performance of his duties as husband.

A faithful wife is loyal and true to her husband, she can be trusted to perform her duties as wife.

But we can see faithfulness expressed in other situations as well, can we not? Like a faithful employee being loyal to his employer and is trustworthy in fulfilling the tasks and obligations placed before him.

Or how about that faithful Christian who remains loyal and true to Christ and is trustworthy in his or her walk with Christ; they are eager to fulfill their obligations to Christ and all that Christ places in their lives.

Now when we think about faithfulness and fidelity in marriage, it is not a surprise that the bedroom represents the fidelity and faithfulness of each spouse.

Let me give you an example of what I mean… when you hear that some husband or some wife has been ‘unfaithful’ to his or her spouse, what conclusion do you usually jump to? Is it that they have been fooling around and committing adultery?

But even though that is our usual response, did you know that there is more than one way to be unfaithful to your spouse!

There is the obvious way… and that is to have an adulterous affair with someone. But there are some ways that the world does not see as unfaithfulness because they deem them to be too innocent to be unfaithfulness.

• Flirting with others: This can be harmless, and never meant to do any damage to the marriage, however every downfall in a marriage that ends in affair or severely inappropriate behavior begins with supposedly innocent flirting and playful banter. I have seen this happen in church as well as outside of church!

Flirting is NOT being faithful to your spouse! Don’t misunderstand me here… being friendly and flirting are 2 very different things, but the line can easily be crossed if you are not careful… faithfulness in marriage is being careful in what you do in life… that will affect that marriage!

• Having something so important that distracts your focus off your spouse. It doesn’t matter what “IT” is, it doesn’t matter how valuable YOU think IT is, it pales in comparison t the value of your spouse. It could be hunting, fishing, playing softball, golf or even surfing the internet, but for many of us here it is our job!

And that is because we try to rationalize that what we do at work is FOR our spouse and it ultimately is, but what we fail to understand is that the relationship with our spouse MUST come before work, play or any other relationship outside of our walk with Christ because that is our vow to our spouse!

• “Me Time” is something the world tells us that we have to have, and I believe in the right setting it is ok, however when ‘me time’ is forced upon your spouse, you are being unfaithful!

Don’t you remember when you made your vows and pledged to be there for them thru thick and thin… marriage is NOT about you, but you have pledged it to be about them. And when you force ‘me time’ on your spouse, you are being unfaithful to them!

And likewise, when we think about being unfaithful to God we tend to think about those obvious and terrible ethical and moral failures that can be seen by the outside world, but this morning I am here to share with you that unfaithfulness to God is more than just those obvious moral and ethical failures on your part.