Decisions (Part 3)
Decisions in Relationships
Text: John 4:17–18 NKJV
“The woman answered and said, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You have well said, “I have no husband,” for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.’ ”
This lesson is the third in a series of messages called “Decisions.” Everybody needs to make good decisions because decisions determine destiny. If you’ve made bad decisions, all you need is one good decision to start you out of the confusion that your bad decisions have put you in. So there is always hope. In this message, we are going to look at the decisions you make in your relationships, particularly as it applies to marriage.
Look with me in John 4:17–18. At the beginning of the chapter, we see that Jesus was waiting for His disciples to return with some food when He encountered a Samaritan woman drawing water at a well. Much to the woman’s surprise, Jesus engaged her in conversation. When the Lord asked her to call her husband, she replied that she had no husband. Jesus answered, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that, you spoke truly.”
The woman answered, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet” (v. 19). This man had just told her everything that she had ever done in the area of relationships, and she knew there was no way He could have known about her. But Jesus did know, just like He knows about every relationship that you’ve ever had. He knows them all.
We don’t know the particulars of the Samaritan woman’s life, but she’d lost five relationships. She’d been married five times. Maybe she gave up on marriage; we don’t know that, but when Jesus met her, she was not married but was living with a man. So when He spoke to her about her relationships, He was pointing out to her the fact that no relationship can ever truly satisfy. We, like the Samaritan woman, often think that just one more relationship will really make us happy. But like the Samaritan woman, until we learn where the living water comes from, we will never be satisfied.
If you are in a horrible marriage right now, it can become a beautiful marriage if you will allow Jesus to become the center of it. If you are living with somebody, the best thing you can do is to tell them today that you are moving out. If you are in a relationship that you have doubts about, you might have to face the fact that that person is not the one. You may have to make hard decisions in your relationships, but sometimes those are the best decisions.
Listed below is some very practical advice on how to make good relationship decisions. There are four main principles.
1. Relax.
Often people are far too intense and desperate for relationships. They become panicky and fearful that they will never find anybody. And even when someone does show interest, they become so obsessive and possessive with the person that they ruin the relationship. People need to relax. This is point number one about making good decisions in relationships.
Let relationships come to you. I like the story in Genesis 24 where Isaac was forty years old and still not married. He realized he was lonely and told his father he wanted a wife. So Abraham sent Eliezer, his steward, to travel a thousand miles over the desert to get a wife for Isaac. When Eliezer arrived at his destination, he prayed to know what to do: “Now let it be that the young woman to whom I say, ‘Please let down your pitcher that I may drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I will also give your camels a drink’—let her be the one You have appointed for Your servant Isaac. And by this I will know that You have shown kindness to my master” (v. 14 NKJV).
I love that verse because that tells me that God has a woman for every man and a man for every woman. I know some believe there are hundreds out there and if you look hard enough, you’ll find somebody. But I believe that God has someone for you. If the Lord can make you in your mother’s womb and know everything about you before you were even born, then surely He knows who is best for you.
Here is my point: never get desperate. A woman might say, “I’m getting older; maybe it’s too late.” That is not true; God has an appointment for you. A man might say, “I’m losing my hair. I have to get married before I lose all my hair, because nobody will marry me then.” That’s a lie of the devil, just like the other.
People think all kinds of things when they get desperate: “I’m fat, so I’d better take what I can get.” “Nobody has ever showed me attention until he came along. If I don’t take him, I’m missing the boat.” “But he’s rich. If I marry this guy, I can quit work.” And here is a “spiritual” one: “Somebody prophesied to me that my Boaz was here, and I think it’s him.”
The Lord knows who “the one” is, and He is the one who confirms things. You don’t have to get desperate, and you don’t have to latch on to something someone told you. So relax, because God will send your partner to you. There is something so sovereign about how God loves you and cares for you; just relax in that.
2. Take it slow.
Once you think you’ve spotted the one, you’re ready to develop the relationship. There is a big difference between a microwave and a conventional oven. Microwaves are good for popping popcorn and heating coffee, but not for cooking Christmas dinner. For a meal of that caliber, you’re going to need the stove with all its settings.
That’s how it is in relationships. If you want a long-term relationship, you’re going to have to forget about the microwave and gradually watch it heat up. On a stove, you’ve got low, medium, medium-high, and high settings. Those are the same settings you need to go through in any relationship.
At the low setting, you have group interaction. Your group gets together with her group or his group and you interact in fun, relaxed group activities. Do that for at least three months.
At the next setting, the medium setting, you have a little bit of private interaction. Maybe you end up sitting at the table across from her in a group activity. Now you have some brief times of private conversation and some face-to-face fun time.
A point to remember is that text messaging and e-mail do not build a strong relationship and cannot take the place of face-to-face interaction. People who rely on those things as their primary form of communication sometimes think a relationship is growing when really it is just an electronic contact. Contact alone, however, does not build commitment.
Now you move to the medium-high setting. Perhaps six months have gone by, and you are really starting to pair off a little bit. Now you begin to talk about subjects that are more intimate and that require deeper interaction. These deal with probing issues and where the other person stands. At this point, you are really starting to think this may be the one. You stay in this stage about three months.
Then you come to the last three months and move to the high setting. I’m giving a year as a reference point because I think every relationship ought to take at least a year. This business of meeting on Monday and getting married on Saturday is not good. But if you have been seeing each other for a while now, in these last three months you are ready to become romantically involved. You are now discussing love and marriage and your future together.
A healthy relationship heats up slowly, so be wary of someone who comes along and wants to immediately turn the thermostat to high. It is easier and wiser to turn the thermostat down than to live with the wrong person for life. Be careful in using the words “I love you.” Don’t run around and tell twenty different people you love them. Move progressively through these stages; otherwise, you’ll be giving a piece of your heart to everybody you get to stage three with.
3. Look it over.
The third principle in developing a healthy relationship is to look it over. Before you buy a car, you look it over. Before you buy a house, you will probably get an expert to look it over for you. So why is it that we don’t carefully examine a relationship that we are getting ready to make a lifetime commitment in?
There are nine areas you ought to look at in any relationship you are pursuing. (1) First is physical attraction. I believe you ought to be physically attracted to the one you marry. Of course, physical attraction is not everything, but it’s important. The person should demonstrate self-respect in their neatness, cleanliness, and poise. But physical beauty will not last for a lifetime, so the beauty should be both inner and outer.
(2) Second is mental compatibility. Are the two of you on the same wavelength when you talk? Are you able to communicate about deeper subjects? Do you have similar intellectual interests that you can pursue together? Or does your love interest not even know what you are talking about and have no interest in learning?
(3) You also need to think about the person’s spiritual commitment. Maybe they say they love the Lord, but how would they react if you told them, “We’re going to break up for a season”? Would they leave the Lord, or would they say, “Whether you marry me or not, I love Jesus and I’m going to serve Him.” See what their spiritual commitment is when things get tough.
(4) Strength of character is very important. Character is what you are through and through. If a person has character, their convictions will stop them from lying, lusting, being greedy, harboring bitterness, and other such things. Notice the person’s reactions under pressure. What is their character in the tough times? That’s what you have to observe.
(5) What kind of family history do they bring to the relationship? Do they have unresolved wounds in their spirit? Do they struggle with rejection from their parents? What is their relationship like with their family members? That will tell you a lot about their stability and their sense of acceptance. Ask yourself, “Is this really what I want to intersect with for life?” People don’t even think about that most of the time.
(6) Compare your personality styles. There are four major personality styles, and you need to be compatible with your mate’s. If you are too much alike, you may clash often because you have the same weaknesses. Sometime personality is very critical to long-term success.
(7) How about their emotional stability? What happens when they are driving and someone cuts them off or pulls in front of them? What name do they yell out in that moment? When they are frustrated or disappointed, how do they react? What happens when they don’t get their way? That is a huge issue. Do they aggressively push for their way or get sullen, depressed, and manipulative? Do you want to live with that the rest of your life?
(8) How about the person’s ability to make wise decisions? Look at their track record. Have they been stable in career decisions, or do they constantly change jobs? Do they spend money like crazy, or are they frugal and careful in spending? What about their former relationships? What were they like? The ability to make wise decisions brings long-term happiness.
(9) The last thing to consider is probably the most important, and that is, what does the authority in your life say about this relationship? What do your parents, pastor, and close friends think about it? They know you inside and out, and they can see things that you cannot. You need authority in your life.
Even if you are married, you can use these nine areas to help you see where maybe you need to work on your marriage. They are applicable to all of us in our relationships.
4. Seal the deal.
After moving through the first three stages, you come to the final stage: seal the deal. At some point, you’ve got to stop dating and commit to the relationship. Something is wrong with the picture of people who go on dating year after year without either breaking up or moving on to marriage. The Bible says, “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.” We call it “leave and cleave.” You’ve got to finally make the decision and jump off the high dive.
When you arrive at this point in the relationship, you need to keep a few things in mind. The first is, don’t require perfection. You will never find a perfect person, and keep in mind that you are not perfect either! A friend of mine once defined marriage to me as a commitment to an imperfect person. I think that’s a good definition; it’s a commitment to someone who is and never will be perfect.
I know we are living in a no-commitment generation. But you can never build a legacy without commitment. My wife Melanie and I have six children. They are our legacy that we share because of our lifetime commitment to each other. When you are gone, the only people that are going to remain for you are your kids and those that you’ve developed. You cannot accomplish that by shacking up with this one and shacking up with that one; it comes only through commitment. So at some point, you are going to have to take the plunge and commit to an imperfect person to share the rest of your life with.
The second thing is, don’t wait forever. I like 1 Corinthians 7:9: “If they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (NKJV). Sometimes people go way too long in a relationship. After about six months or so, you’ve had time to determine if a relationship is right or not. If it is not, the best thing you can do is to dissolve it. But if you keep dating indefinitely, physical temptation will only get worse and worse.
The third thing, after you’ve sealed the deal and actually gotten married, is to enjoy life. There is nothing greater than a godly ordained relationship from heaven. Enjoy your life together. As Ecclesiastes 9:9 says, “Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given you under the sun” (NASB).
I have taken you from the woman at the well to how to find the right match. Let me finish the woman’s story. She sat there at the well, empty and unfulfilled. She had had six men in her life and had made six bad decisions. But Jesus was sitting there by her. He offered her Himself, and when she accepted it, she found the relationship she had been looking for her entire life.
Relationships will leave you empty. But Jesus offers you a relationship with Him that will quench your thirst. He died for you because He loves you. Others will leave, forsake, neglect, or betray you. Only the Lord will not. Why not start your relationship with Him today? You are but one decision away.
