Well we’ve taken quite the journey together over these last several weeks at The Love Shack. If you’ve missed a week of this series, you can pick it up online or on iTunes, but we’ve been learning what it takes to move on up from the love shack relationally to the love palace or the love castle. And we’ve said all along that this series has something for everybody, because we all care about relationships. So whether you’re single or married, dating or engaged, young or old, it really doesn’t matter, I think God wants to say something to you today about relationships and romance.
I was thinking about this, years ago I was teaching on this subject and I had a single guy come up to me and whine and complain because I was preaching on relationships. He didn’t like the fact that I was preaching a whole sermon on relationships because he wasn’t in one and I remember thinking, with this attitude you never will be because no woman wants to be a big old whiny face baby. What he didn’t understand is that this is a series that is helping your relationships get better if you’re in one, but if you’re not in one, this is a series that’s going to help you make better choices for the next time you are in one, and it’s going to get you ready for one. In fact, I expect in about 6 months from now to be getting a lot a phone calls to our office asking us to perform wedding ceremonies as a direct result of God using this series in the lives of a lot of single people. I’m telling you – God’s getting you ready, and he’s getting some hunka hunka burning love ready for you! And I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to save you some money and I’m going to save the love shack and when you’re ready, you can just get married at the love shack. How does that sound? It will be awesome!
Today I want you help fix up your love shack because some of our relationships are in disarray. I heard about this husband who wanted to try to teach his wife a little lesson so one Saturday morning while she was frying some eggs for breakfast he burst into the kitchen yelling, “careful, CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh my gosh! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK! CAREFUL! I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never! Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the salt. USE THE SALT!” Finally the wife threw her hands up and said, “What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?” The husband calmly replied, “I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving.”
Hey there’s no way around it, relationships are full of challenges and today if your relationship is looking a little bit like this rusting, old, dilapidated, falling apart love shack, I want you to know there are some things you can do to fix it up. Some things you can do to fix it up. Just like the house you live in, the relationship you live in might need some TLC, some fixing up and today I want to tell you three things you need to do to fix up your love shack. Grab that notes page out of the seat pocket in front you because we’re getting into the nitty gritty of relational health with three home improvement tips that will take your love shack and transform it into a love castle.
Number 1, it all begins with Pull The Weeds And Plant The Seeds. Everybody say it with me…pull the weeds and plant the seeds! We bought our house about 2 years ago from a retired couple and the lady was a horticulturalist. A horticulturalist. You know what means? It means that plants were her hobby! That’s it means! Working in the yard was pleasurable for her…so when I bought that house the yard was pristine. Flowers and plants and shrubs and green grass. But here’s what I’ve found. If you’re not constantly pulling weeds and planting the seeds, and I am not, the weeds will overtake the yard and the flowers won’t come back up and what was once supposed to be beautiful and enjoyable and exciting and rewarding, will become overgrown and ugly and exhausting and draining.
Here’s my hunch. Some of you got into a relationship, maybe you started dating or maybe you got engaged and then married and the landscape was beautiful. It was fun and exciting and the way you dreamed it would be, but it’s not like that anymore and perhaps the reason is…you haven’t been pulling the weeds and planting the seeds. You going to fix up your love shack? It takes work and lots of it!
I want to teach you a principle about this from the Bible and it’s one of those that can be applied to just about every aspect of our life, but I think it’s especially applicable to our relationships. There is a law that the Bible teaches us that is true every time. There are no exceptions. In fact, let’s do this. We’re going to put this verse on the screen and I want you to just read this first sentence out loud with me because this is the law. It says, say it with me, Gal. 6:7b-8 NIV: “A man reaps what he sows. (There’s the law. Applied to every situation this is always true. A man reaps what he sows. If you sow corn, you’re not going to reap sweet potatoes. You’re going to reap corn. You reap what you sow. What you put into the ground is what determines what comes up out of the ground. Now think about this. If you sow kindness, what does that mean? You’re going to reap kindness in return, that’s what it means. It means that if someone smiles at you, you’re likely to smile back at them. Right? They’re reaping what they sow. It also means that if someone flips you off, you’re likely to do what back to them? You’re more likely to…say God bless you! NO! You reap what you sow. The Bible goes on to say) The one who sows to please his sinful nature, (in other words a person who just kind of lives for himself) from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, (that’s God’s spirit) from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
Now that’s a spiritual application but you can make the same application relationally. Your relationships will destruct if all you do is try to please yourself and live for yourself relationally. But if you try to please God in your relationships, then your relationships will bring life! Here’s the point, here’s the point…watch this! You don’t drift into good relationships. Time doesn’t just make relationships better. Good relationships don’t come easily. People who are happily married 30 and 40 and 50 years will tell you, it has taken some work! You’ve got to pull the weeds, cultivate the ground, and plant only the seeds that you want to grow because you’re going to reap what you sow!
You see, some of you have been neglecting the weeds. And some of you have been planting the wrong seeds. You’ve been sowing critical words and you’ve been sowing selfish attitudes. You’ve been sowing un-forgiveness, you’ve been sowing seeds of distrust. You’ve been sowing the wrong stuff and now it’s growing and you haven’t done anything to pull the weeds. You reap what you sow but you also reap where you sow. I’m teaching you good stuff today. Some of you don’t look like this is as good as it really is. You reap what you sow and you reap where you sow.
Let me tell you something, if you’re investing loads of time and energy and passion into your work, you’re likely going to succeed at work. That’s where you’re sowing so that we’re you’re going to reap. If you’re investing loads of time and energy and passion into a friendship, that friendship is likely to succeed and grow. If you’re sowing loads of time and energy and passion into a hobby, you’re going to get really good at golf. Some of you sow a lot of time into gaming or into facebooking or into parenting and you’re really good in those areas because you reap where you sow. But perhaps the reason you’re stuck at the love shack is simply because you’re sowing in the wrong place. Are you sowing time and energy and passion into anything that makes your relationship better because your relationships will only every get better when you pull the weeds and plant the seeds in your relationship.
I heard one of my favorite Pastors, Craig Groeschel teaching on marriage say this once about his marriage. He said, “Our marriage is only as good as we decide for it to be.” Some of you just need to decide, for this season of my life, I’m going to sow into my relationship and everything else that I’ve been sowing into that does not have a positive impact on my relationship is on hold indefinitely. When your marriage is great, you can play golf, but when your marriage is in trouble, you better stay home and wash the dishes bro! Come on, you got to get to work on this relationship and pull the weeds and plant the seeds.
Number two, if you’re going to fix up the love shack, you’ve got to Keep It Clean. I’m a little bit of a clean freak. Now you wouldn’t necessarily know that by looking at my office or looking at my car because I don’t always have the discipline to keep it clean, but I love, love driving a clean car. If there are vacuum lines in the carpet, I’m on cloud 9. I know it’s weird, but it’s the little things. I love it when things are clean. Now let’s just take a survey. How many of you are like me, you lean toward the clean side? Raise your hands. Ok, ok. Now that doesn’t mean that the rest of you big old slobs. It just probably means that it’s not that big of a deal to you. But here’s what I really want to know. How many of you are currently in a relationship with someone who doesn’t share your same way of thinking about cleanliness? So you’re clean and they’re a slob, or you don’t really care about it and they’re like out of control about it? Raise your hands. Yes – opposites attract right. So one of you is a saver and one of you is the spender. Right? One of you is always early and the other is little more creative with their arrival time. One of you loves Jesus and eats only Krispy Kreme doughnuts and the other one worships Satan and prefers Dunkin Doughnuts.
Opposites attract and here’s the problem if you’re in a relationship with an opposite, it’s leads to arguments and disagreements and ultimately fights, which happen in any relationship, but the problem is you fight in such different ways that your fights turn dirty and I’m saying today that if you want to fix up that love shack that you must keep it clean when you fight. The Bible says this, it says, I Peter 3:8 NKJV abbr: “Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another…be tenderhearted, be courteous.”
I love that concept of one mind. You see conflict, if dealt with correctly, can be the way that relationships get on the same page. When you conflict with a person you love, your goal should be that we’re learning to be of one mind. Learning to be in agreement, and the one mind here doesn’t mean your mind! You got that right? Somebody once said, marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right, and the other is a husband. That’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying that you come together with one mind and the way to do that is in the midst of conflict to have compassion, to be tender hearted, to be courteous. That word courteous makes me think of the word court. When you conflict, you’ve got to remember you’re actually on the same court! Treat each other like you’re on the same team! Be courteous, even in conflict. Listen to this: healthy couples fight for resolution but unhealthy couples fight for victory. If you’re fighting to win, if you’re fighting to make your point or get your way or to be the stronger, louder, better person, you’re aren’t keeping it clean! You’re on the same team…you’re in the same court, you’re going for the same goal – and sometimes getting through the conflict cleanly is how you get there. Healthy conflict is the doorway to intimacy.
I want just give you some help here and if you’ll go to our website and download or subscribe to our web notes this week, I’ve dedicated a whole entire day to helping you conflict cleanly. I’m telling you, some of you need to work on this area. The Bible says this, this is a good starting place for some of you. The Bible says Ephesians 4:26-27 NIV: In your anger (so when you get angry in a fight and you will, the Bible says) do not sin. (What a lot of people don't realize is that you can get angry and being angry is not a sin, it's what you do with your anger. In your anger do not sin the Bible says. And then it says this and let me stop right here and say, for some of you, if you just get this one point, this can be a life-changing principle for your marriage, it says) Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. Did you catch that? Don’t go to bed mad. Don’t go to bed with an unresolved conflict. Don’t huff off to the bedroom and slam the door or get in the car and race away with tires spinning and leave it unresolved. Fight for resolution, because the Bible says, when you go to bed with an unresolved issue, you just gave the devil a foothold into your marriage, every time. And it's that dramatic, anytime you didn't work it out, you didn't forgive, you didn't talk about it; you go to bed and guess what happens the next day? You wake up and the little problem is a little bigger and it may not seem a little bigger right then and there, but I’m telling it, it will grow and fester and become a cancer. Just make the decision, we’re staying up, we’re staying awake until this thing is resolved, until we’ve kissed and said we love each other and we’re on the same team, we’re staying up. And let me tell you something, when you make that determination, we’re not going to bed until we’ve made up, it makes you think twice about what you fight about late at night! This conflict better be mighty important if we’re staying up all night for it!
Keep it clean! Pull the weeds and plant the seeds, and finally, number 3. If you’re going to fix up the love shack, you’ve got to Protect The House. I don’t know if I’m just paranoid or if I’m a light sleeper or if my house just makes more noises than other people’s house, but I would say that once every two or three weeks, I don’t know, I’ll wake up, startled by a sound from another room and so I’ll get up like a ninja to go and check things out. And man when I do, I’m ready to go all Chuck Norris on somebody! But the other night, I wasn’t feeling well, and I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I as so wore out and tired, I woke up to a sound, and it startled me, and I wasn’t sure what it was, but I’m just going to be honest with you, I was too tired to go check it out. If somebody is breaking in they’re going to have to come on in. I’m tired. I’m going back to sleep.
And that’s the way some of us have gotten about our relationships isn’t it? You used to work at it, you used to put in time and energy, you used to make it a priority, you used to care, but now because of time and hurt and disappointment and unmet expectations and broken promises, you’re just too tired to care anymore and I’m telling you today, it’s time to protect the house. Don’t you give up, especially you married people. You protect the house.
In the Old Testament, a man by the name of Nehemiah led his people to rebuild the walls that surrounded Jerusalem. The walls had been torn down years previously and the city was left unprotected. It was constantly under attack and threat of invasion and one time things got so bad in the midst of rebuilding, Nehemiah told the men working to work with a hammer in one hand and a sword in the other and then he said this, Neh. 4:14b NLT: “Fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes!” I think another way to say that would be fight for your relationships! Do your part, work on it, invest something, fight for it. Protect it. It’s the most valuable thing you have. Stop treating him like he’s disposable. Stop treating her like she’s a commodity. No! You protect your house. And then Nehemiah made this promise, he said Neh. 4:20b NLT: “Then our God will fight for us!” I’m telling you today on the authority of God’s word. You do your part, and he or she does her part and I believe that God will do His part to give us great relationships. Single people, you fight for purity, you fight for Godliness, you fight for high standards, and God will fight for you. All week long, all week long I’ve just had this feeling like today I was going to be pleading with somebody to fight. Not to give up. Don’t quit. And don’t just let your relationships continue as status quo. You fight for it! Protect the house and God will fight for you. Bow your heads and close your eyes.
