Help I Think I Am Falling In Love
Proverbs 4:20-27 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
We are beginning a new series today entitled “Love Is The Answer”. The series is going to deal with relationships and how we can make them stronger , healthier and happier in our daily lives. The first message will be “Help I Think I Am Falling In Love”, the second “What Are The Dating Rules”, the third “What Happened In My Marriage”, the fourth “Can Divorce Ever Be The Answer” and the fifth “Choosing To Be Single.”
Let’s suppose you took a friend to the store and was waiting for them to come out. When the person came out, he said, “I’m sorry it took so long, but that lottery line was off the hook. Here I know you don’t play, but take this ticket for your trouble. Wouldn’t it be funny if you won the 57 million dollar jackpot. So you take the ticket and think nothing of it. You’re at the table when the news comes on. You had just dropped the ticket on the table when you came in and thought nothing of it.
When they say they say the winning numbers they match your ticket. You’re there in shock and disbelief. Now let me ask you this, as you go to bed, how many of you are going to just leave the ticketout on the table. How many of you are going to try to put that ticket in a safe place? How many of you are going to try to hide the ticket? How many of you are going to open the window and shout out, I have the winning power-ball ticket here in my kitchen.” Something inside of you says, “this thing is valuable, you had better do something to guard it.”
Whenever we have something of value, we make sure we protect it. We guard it in some kind of a way. That’s why we lock up certain things. There is a part of us that God has created that is very valuable, but we don’t understand just how valuable it is. So the bible tells us, ‘don’t miss this.” In our Old Testament reading, there is a verse that reads in Proverbs 4:23 that says “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” In the updated version of the NIV it says “Above all elseguard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Now above all else means, this a number one priority. Have you ever told anybody, whatever you do, do not forget to do such and such and such? This is what this verse this saying. Look if you mess this up, you can really cause yourself a lot of grief and pain in life. However if you guard your heart, you can experience life in a much greater way.
The heart is that part of us that is attracted or drawn toward other things. The heart can make us say things like “wow.” Or the heart can cause us to say, “ I really got to get me one of those.” The heart will cause us to turn on our back on many things, so that we can have this one thing. The heart can cause us to make decisions that are not even in our best interests. Have you ever said, “I don’t know why I did that, it just felt right at the time.” The heart can make us see a future prince or princess, when other people only see bad news.
We live in a culture that tells us the exact opposite of what God says about guarding our hearts. Our culture says, follow your heart and go after what you want. Our culture creates desires that appeal to our hearts and is able to convince to get things we think we need only once we have them, we realize we did not need this piece of junk after all. I don’t know how many of you bought the ginzu knife set, but if you did, I want to know how many times you used them to cut a nail in half.
Now the reason the bible tells us to guard our hearts is because, our heart can lead us to make poor choices. Now the choices we make today are going to determine what we are like in the future. We like to think, that once we reached a certain spot, we can just get a fresh start and wipe the slate clean. It does not work that way. Our behavior today, is going to show up in our future down the road.
One area of our lives in which we really need to guard our hearts is in the area of romance. We call it falling in love. Now our society is great at telling people how to fall in love, but not so good at how to stay in love. Falling in love is not a human idea. It was created by God, so that men and women would become interested in each other, get married and produce families to the glory of God. God created us with certain triggers so that we could run into a person and have a chemical reaction take place in our brains.
Unfortunately, this chemical reaction temporarily makes us a little dumber than we usually are. This is part of the reason for the verse, “above all else guard your heart, because everythingyou do flows from it. Now for those who do not have this chemical reaction taking place over the person you have gone crazy over, we will tell you,’ what on earth do you see in this person. He or she is loud, rude obnoxious and have a criminal record five pages long.” You respond, “I know but oh we can talk to each other for hours on the phone. We can just feel each other over the air waves and our hearts beat as one. If only you could see him like I see him.”
We are under the impression, that falling in love will automatically build a great relationship that will lead to a good marriage. Falling in love is actually the result of too people connecting on an emotional level in which a certain type of chemistry is produced. This chemistry allows you to talk on the phone for hours saying nothing. It allows you heart to skip a beat when the person comes into the room. It keeps your mind thinking about this person all day long. You can’t wait for the phone to ring or the text to show up.
Now because we’re not guarding our hearts in our relationship to the Lord, this chemistry leads us to push our relationship in the direction of physical intimacy. Now God created chemistry to give us the opportunity to get to know about each other. However we will often use the chemistry to gooff in the wrong direction.
We believe the lies of the world rather than the word of God, and we say, “well you wouldn’t buy a car without trying it out first, so we start the relationship on a downhill path without knowing it, by traveling outside of God’s will. We are thinking wow the relationship is great.” But it’s not the relationship that’s great, it’s the chemistry that’s wonderful. Chemistry comes naturally. God created it to flow naturally. But chemistry can be deceptive.
Now there is a false myth centered around falling in love. It goes like this. Somewhere out there, is the right person for me. We will know when we find the right person, because there will be this connection, this chemistry between us. If we find the right person, then everything is going to work out fine and our lives will be great. I won’t have to change, because we will be made for each other. The only problem is, out there is someone who is looking for the right person, who when he or she it finds that person thinkseverything is going to be fine. They won’t have to change because this other person is going to be perfect for them.
How will they know they have found the right person. You got it, there will be chemistry between them. The love songs written fit them perfectly. So you have these two people who have fantastic chemistry with each other. They have really fallen in love. Now they have not fully guarded their hearts, so they see the other person through wonderful colored glasses. They don’t believe the bible’s definition of love applies to them when it says love is patient. After all why would they need patience, when this other person is just perfect for him or her. As a matter of fact they believe, nobody has loved each other the way they love each other. If they did, they would never breakup or desire anyone else.
They then get married and very shortly thereafter they start having marital problems. But I want you to know marital problems do not cause people to get divorced. Marital problems can be solved very quickly without a counselor. Here is a marital problem. Which side of the bed do you get to get lay on, because once you start, that’s where you finish? A marital problem is, which way should the paper roll off the toilet roll. Should it be forward or backward. A marital problem is how are we going to celebrate Christmas? Do we open gifts on Christmas eve or do we wait until Christmas morning. Who is going to pay the bills each month? Those are real marital problems caused by getting married.
What we are think are marital problems that lead to divorce, are really single problems that were brought into the marriage that we now see. Remember I told you the choices that you are making today are going to show up in your future. Okay if you are impatient before you run into mr. right or ms.wonderful come into your life, you will still be impatient after meeting that person, but chemistry will give you the ability to hide your impatience from the other person. You will be working hard to keep it from showing, and the other person will be working hard to minimize your behavior. They will think stupid things like, wow this is wonderful, with him in my life, I’ll never have to worry about being late for anything. He’ll get us there on time. After marriage, your desire to hide your lack of patience starts to show, and the first time he tells you, you make us late for everything, you swear you married the most impatient man on earth.
If you are selfish before marriage guess what, you will be selfish after marriage. Why are we dumb enough to believe, marriage allows us a clean slate to completely start fresh. Marriage does not do that. That’s why what you are doing while you are in love, is going to either help or hurt your marriage.
When the single problems that we brought into the marriage start to surface, the first thing that starts to suffer is the chemistry. Now the word of God tells us what is needed in a relationship to make it healthy and alive. But we didn’t work on the relationship building part, we were just enjoying on the chemistry. Now a word of warning, if the chemistry is bad before the marriage, chances are it’s not going to get better unless you both are willing to do a lot of work.
Now guys are thinking, if we have enough sex, it can get the relationship back to where it was. The women are thinking know it doesn’t work like that. Both of them are frustrated with each other. They’re no longer looking in each other’s eyes and staring at each other. They go into their own little worlds, and then one day they happened to meet someone who takes notice of them. All of a sudden there is a chemistry between them and this other person. They start to think, “I must have married the wrong person. It’s obvious, that if I had of waited for that person to have come along, I would have met my soul mate.” There they are in this bad marriage and the right person for them is over there. I remember a song back from the seventies had a lyric in it, “It’s so sad to belong to someone else, when the right one comes along. Yes it’s sad to belong to someone else when the right one comes along.”
Let me be honest with you. Chemistry has little to do with lasting love in a relationship. There are a 10,000 or more people that you can find chemistry with. You can have chemistry with someone who does not even speak your language. You can have chemistry with someone you just met last night. Again, that’s why the bible says, “above all else guard your heart”, because it will go after other people even after you’ve gotten married. People who love Jesus, who do not guard their hearts, will find themselves in relationships they know they should not be involved in. Falling in love causes us to do stupid things.
The bible has almost nothing to say about finding the right person. It does tell us a lot about being the right person. You see, who you are before you get married, is who you will be after you get married. You can promise all you want to promise in your wedding vows, you can even write them yourself, but saying a vow and making a pledge is not the same thing as actually doing it.
Now the chemistry that God created to bring two people together, can be kept alive for a lifetime. But it comes at a price. You see God gives it to us free at first, so that we can taste and see what it is like. But the only way to keep it, is to guard your heart and apply God’s principle of love. Where can we find that. We can find it in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Now if you’re married ask yourself how how your spouse would rate you on this, if you’re dating or engaged, ask how that person would rate you on this, or ask how a friend or parent or child would rate you in each of these categories on a scale of 0 to 10 with 10 being the highest.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV) 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Let me ask you this, in looking for a mate, how many of you would like to have somebody who is willing to be patient with you with all your little flaws and quirks. They will listen when you go and on or listen when you tell the same story over again. They will give you the benefit of the doubt when you can’t do something that you had promised to do. Patient means that they will not put pressure on you to make a decision or to do something you feel uncomfortable with doing. They will give you as much space as you need to make a decision without trying to rush you into something by trying to make you feel guilty.
Love is kind . How many of you would like someone who is kind to everyone. The word kind here actually means considerate. That person always considers how their decision will affect you before making that decision. They consider whether a comment they are about to make will hurt your feelings. They consider whether or not you’d feel comfortable with what they have asked you to do. They consider how you feel about the choices they are making for themselves. They consider how their actions may wreck your future.
Love is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs. How many of you want a person that’s not super defensive when you ask a question or want them to change a behavior. You want a person who isn’t jealous so that they get angry even when there is no cause for it. Would you like to have someone, who does not get upset over the small every day problems of life? Would you like to have someone who does not think each mistake you make is somehow a secret attack on them? How many of you would like someone who once, you have discussed a problem and forgiven each other, it’s over with. You do not have to have that fight all over again.
Being patient, being kind, not being easily angered, not keeping a record of wrongs and all the other things listed in these few verses do not come to us naturally. The sooner you recognize you are a selfish person in need of a savior, the closer you move to becoming the right person. God created us all to be in relationships. Love is something we are to practice in all of our relationships so that it becomes a part of who we are. I find that if my focus is on pleasing Jesus in my relationships, I am a much better lover than I am when I set out to please myself in the relationship.
God gives us family members and friends to practice loving on to help us out in the future. If we are lousy lovers before we fall in love, we are going to be lousy lovers after we fall in love. The chemistry between us will hide our faults for a moment, but it is only going to be for a moment. Living in a relationship requires a willingness to be changed by the spirit of God. God will keep chemistry alive in any relationship, so long as we open our hearts to loving each other in the way he determined it will happen.
Contrary to what you might think, true love does not come naturally. Don’t let the chemistry of the moment fool you. Selfishness comes naturally and it eventually show itself in the relationship. God is able to work patience in us. God is able to show us how to be kind and considerate as part of our nature rather than as random acts. God works in us ways that will enable us to control our anger, ways to help us overcome jealousy, ways to help us become more forgiving.
That is why the bible tells us to die daily to the desires of our sinful nature, and to put our confidence in Christ. When we give our lives to Christ, the bible says, in Galatians 2:20 (NIV) 20I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
I’m not trying to get you to try harder. I want you to see it’s a matter of surrendering to say “here I am God, use me.” It’s in the yielding to Chris that who we are begins to be transformed. The yielding is what helps us to be the right person for those around us, including the one we may someday marry. We guard our hearts the most effectively, when we allow Jesus Christ to be the most important influence in the decisions that we make.Remember even the smallest decisions become life changing events.
It is far more important to work intentionally on becoming the right person than in spending one’s energy trying to find the mythical right person for me. All relationships require work. You’re simply getting a head start on the process. Next week, now that we know we are to guard our hearts, we take a look at the rules of dating.
Help I Think I Am Falling In Love
Proverbs 4:20-27 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
We are beginning a new series today entitled “Love Is The Answer”. The series is going to deal with relationships and how we can make them stronger , healthier and happier in our daily lives. The first message will be “Help I Think I Am Falling In Love”, the second “What Are The Dating Rules”, the third “What Happened In My Marriage”, the fourth “Can Divorce Ever Be The Answer” and the fifth “Choosing To Be Single.”
A. Your Friend & You Go To The Store
1. The Lottery Ticket On The Table
2. The Winning 57 Million Ticket On The News
3. What Will Do With The Ticket
4. How Many Will Guard It
B. We Guard Things That Are Valuable
1. God Created us With Something Valuable.
2. in Proverbs 4:23 that says “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” In the updated version of the NIV it says “Above all else guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
3. Make This A Number One Priority
4. Don’t Mess Up Life Will Be Much Richer
C. The Heart Will Be Attracted to Other Things
1. Wow, I’ve Got to Have It, Turn On Backs
2. Make Decisions Not In Our Best Interest
3. See Princes & Princesses—Other See Bad News
4. Culture- Don’t Guard But Go For It
5. Culture-Convince Us Of Needs We Don’t Have Ginzu Knives
6. Heart Lead to Poor Choices
7. Choices Today Determine Future Tomorrow
8. We Don’t Get A Fresh Clean State To Start Over
D. Guard The Heart In The Area Of Romance
1. Society How to Fall In Love—Not How Stay In Love
2. Falling In Love God’s Idea
3. Attraction, Marriage, Family
4. God Created Trigger of Chemical Reaction
5. Falling In Love Makes Us A Little Dumber
6. Necessity For Guarding Our Hearts
7. Others Can Be More Objective In Our Choice Of person
8. Loud, Rude, Obnoxious, Criminal Record 5 pages
9. Can Talk For Hours, heart Beat As One, If You Could See Him
E. Falling In Love Does Not Automatically Build Good Relationship
1. Does Not Automatically Lead To Good Marriage
2. Connecting On An Emotional Level
3. Chemistry Cause Heart Beat Skips, Rising Pulse, Can’t Wait For Phone
4. Failure To Guard Your Heart Toward God
5. Chemistry Leads To Desire For Intimacy—Physical Intimacy
6. Chemistry Heads In Wrong Direction
7. Reject God’s Word, “Used Car paradigm”
8. Confusing Great Chemistry—Great Relationship
F. The Myth Around Falling In Love
1. Somewhere Out There is The Right Person
2. Chemistry Will Reveal It
3. I Won’t Need To Change, The Person Will Be Perfect For Me
4. Problem—Another Person Thinking The Same
5. Reject Bible’s Definition Of Love Being Patient
6. Noone Has Ever Loved Like They Do
G. People Get Married & Start Having Marital Problems
1. Marital Problems Solved Fairly Easy
2. Side Of Bed, Toilet Paper, Christmas Gift, Write Checks
3. Marital Problems Leading To Divorce Are Really Single Problems We Brought Into The Marriage
4. Remember I Told You, Your Past Catches Up With Your Future
5. Impatient Prior To Falling In Love—Chemistry Hides It & Covers It
6. Other Person Justifies It “I Will Always Be On time Now”
7. Selfish Before Marriage, Selfish After
8. Marriage Will Not Give Us A Clean Slate
9. What You’re Doing Now Is Going To Help Or Hurt Your Marriage
H. When Single Problems Show Up First To Go Is Chemistry
1. Word Of Gad Has A Plan To Keep Chemistry Healthy & Alive
2. Warning Of Bad Chemistry Before Marriage—Requires Double Work
3. Guys Think Sex Is The Key To Intimacy—women Know It Isn’t
4. Both Are Frustrated& Go In Different Ways
5. Then One Day They Run Into Someone Who Takes Notice
6. All Of A Sudden The Chemistry Is There
7. Sad to Belong To Someone Else When The Right One Comes Along
8. Chemistry is Deceptive 10,000 People You Can Have Chemistry With
9. Chemistry Overnight, Chemistry Don’t Speak Your Language
10. People Who Love Jesus, But Don’t Guard Their Heart
11. Chemistry, Falling In Love Causes Us To Do Some Stupid Thing
I. The Bible Little To Say About Finding The Right Person
1. Lot About Being The Right person
2. Who You Are Before And After You Get Married
3. Promises & Vows Do Not Change Us
4. Chemistry Can Stay Alive But Only The First Time Is Free
5. Guarding Your Heart Can Restore The Process
6. Take The Love Challenge On A Scale Of 1-10
7. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV) 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8. How Many Want Someone Who Will Be Patient With You
9. Flaws, Quirks, Listen To Same Story, Give Benefit, On You
10. Patient—No Added Pressure, Not Rush You To A Decision, Not Make You Feel Guilty
11. How Many Want Some one Who Is Kind—Considerate
12. Considers Your Feelings, Before Decisions, Before speaking,
13. Considers Your Future
14. Love Not Easily Angered No Record Of Wrongs
15. Not Defensive, Not Jealous, Not Upset Over Small Things,
16. Let Things Go, Not Bring Up Things Resolved,
J. Love Is Not Automatic
1. Recognize We are Selfish People In Need Of A Savior
2. God Created Us For Relationship
3. Love Is To Be Practice In All Our Relationships
4. Focus On Pleasing Jesus Rather Than Self Makes Better Lovers
5. We Are Here For Us To Practice On Each Other
6. Lousy Lovers Before Falling In Love, Lousy Lovers After Falling In Love
7. Chemistry Hides Faults For Only So Long
8. Living In Relationship Requires A Willingness To Be Changed By God
9. God Keeps Chemistry Alive In We Are Open
10. True Love Does Not Come Automatically
11. Selfishness Is Natural,
12. God Works In Patience, Kind & Considerate, Control Anger, Jealousy
Die Daily To Sinful Nature. in Galatians 2:20 (NIV) 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
13. Not Trying To Get You To Work Harder
14. Just Yield To Christ More & Be Transformed
15. Yielding To Christ Makes Us the Right Person
16. Guard Our hearts Best When Jesus Is Lord.
17. More Important To Be Transformed Into The Right Person Than Waiting For The Right Person To Show Up
18. Next Week, We Look At The Rules Of Dating
Special Thanks To Andy Stanley for some of the ideas contained in this message from his sermon series, “The New Rules For Dating, Part 1)
