Needle in a Haystack
The Search for True Love
I. Introduction
Since I was a little shy when I was in high school, I didn’t ask many girls out on dates. So my friend came up to me one day and said, “Hey, I’ve lined you up with a great date for Saturday night. It’s all set.”
“Who is it?” I asked. It turned out to be his cousin Doris. I had never met her. In fact, I had never met any girl named Doris. “Oh, no,” I said, “I’m not going on a blind date.”
“Hey, don’t worry about this one,” my friend said. “Doris is a terrific girl. And trust me—she’s a babe. But if you don’t believe me, I’ll tell you how to get out of the date if you don’t like the way she looks. This is what I do: I go to a girl’s front door to pick her up, and when she opens the door, I check her out. If I like what I see, then great, we’re all set. But if she’s ugly, I fake an asthma attack. I go ‘Aaahhhhgggggg!’ (Hold your throat like you’re having trouble breathing.) The girl asks, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I say, ‘It’s my asthma.’ And so we have to call off the date. Just like that. No problemo.”
“Well, I don’t know...but okay, it sounds easy enough. I’ll do it,” I said.
So I went to pick up Doris. I knocked on the door, and within seconds, she was standing right in front of me. I took a look at her, and to my surprise, my friend was right. She was beautiful! I stood there not knowing exactly what to say.
She took one look at me and went, “Aaahhhhgggggg!”
Hopefully, you haven’t had any dates like the ones that end before they begin. Tonight, we’re going to talk about the search for true love. Last week, we talked about the essence of true love, so tonight we’ll talk about how to find it in the right person.
You must know one thing before you look for something. What is it? What is the one thing you must know before you look for something? What are you looking for? You have to ask yourself this question before you go off looking for true love. That way, when you think you’ve found it, you can compare it to what you already know it’s supposed to look like.
II. What Am I Looking For?
Psalm 37:3, 4 “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”
What do you desire in a mate? Do you want a hottie? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you could care less about how a person looks because the truth is that beauty is only skin deep. The real beauty is that which comes from within. Remember that. You can be attracted to someone because of his or her personality, you know. I had several friends like that in high school, girls, of course. These friends of mine weren’t exactly Miss Teen USA or anything, but they had incredible qualities that made them attractive. Those qualities are things you want to consider when asking yourself, “What am I looking for?”
Somebody tell me what you look for in a guy or girl.
After I got burned in a few relationships, somebody encouraged me to make a list of what my wife would be like. So, I did. After I made that list, I compared every girl I knew to the list. At this point, I was in college and I wasn’t interested in pursuing meaningless relationships. So I maintained friendships with girls rather than “playing the field.” The friends I had, I compared them to the list. If they didn’t meet the standard, they weren’t up to par and I knew that I’d never pursue anything more than a friendship with them. So, I encourage you to do the same thing. Make a list and check it twice. Only then will you find out who is naughty and who is nice.
What is something else you have to know before you can find something? Where to look. Kristen has lost her keys more than once. We know what she’s looking for--her keys. Where do we look? If she lost them in the house, we look in the house. One morning not too long ago, Kristen lost her keys and she was looking all over the house for them. She woke me up and after a frantic search for her keys, I finally asked her if they were in the car. We could have looked all over that house and never found those keys, because we were looking in the wrong place.
III. Where Do I Look?
If you’re looking for milk, where do you look? In the bathroom? In the bedroom? On top of the TV? No. You look in the fridge.
If you’re looking for toothpaste, where do you look?
If you’re looking for a pillow, where do you look?
If you’re looking for a mate, where do you look?
That’s a tough one. There is no right place. Milk is in the fridge, but people are everywhere.
The key here is to keep your eyes open. Always be on the lookout. You could find her at school, I did. You could find him at church. You might meet her at the gas station. He could carry your groceries out at Publix. You never know where he could be.
You can, however, have a clue about where she won’t be. She won’t be at the club getting jiggy with every guy she sees. He won’t be at the bar boozing it up with his buddies. So don’t even go looking there, because what you’ll find will definitely not be on your list.
Ok, so all I have to do is know what I’m looking for and keep my eyes open? That’s a start, but you might want a little help from the Maker. Certainly the one who designed you ought to know who’s the most compatible with you, and who is going to be the best for you.
IV. Get Help from the Maker
God knew what was best for Adam, so what did he do?
He made Eve.
Genesis 2:18 “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him.’”
God knew that man was gonna need some help, so he made woman. And God knows that some of you boys, uh men, need some help. So he’s got a woman for you.
Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”
Do you know who you’re going to marry right now? Nope. God does. Ask him and he’ll help you.
God knows you need help, men, or need someone to help, women. He knows who is best suited for you. He knows what you want. He knows what you need. If you put the matter in his hands, He will bring the right person into your life. Mind you, he’s not up in heaven playing house with his Cosmic Barbie Doll set and suddenly decides to pick up two of his “toys” and have a wedding ceremony. No, if God did that, then Solomon probably wouldn’t have had 700 wives and 300 concubines, unless God had only one Ken doll and 1000 Barbie dolls. I guess he needed a little extra help. Buy one, get 999 free.
It’s not like in these different kingdoms where the parents pick the husband or wife for their children. It’s not even like that show, “Meet my Folks,” where the parents pick the right person for you.
They may know what’s best for you, but you have the choice. You can choose to ask God for help and rely on the Holy Spirit to guide your decision, or you can go your own way and try to find true love on your own.
V. The Choice is Yours
Two brothers were arguing about the wisdom of their parents. “Father is very wise,” said the first brother. “We should listen to him and do what he says.”
The second brother disagreed. “Father is not so wise! Why, we are just as smart as he is. I’ll prove it to you!”
The next day the second brother went into the woods near his home and captured a small bird. He brought the bird home and said to his brother, “Let’s go find our father. I will show you that he isn’t so smart!”
The two brothers went into their father’s study, the second one holding the small bird between his cupped hands. “Father, I have a question for you,” he said. “I hold a small bird in my hands. Tell me, is this bird dead or alive?”
The boy was confident that his father would not answer correctly because if he said that the bird was dead, the boy would simply open his hands and show that the bird was alive. If his father answered that the bird was alive, he would crush the bird between his hands and reveal that the bird was dead. Then he would prove to his brother that his father was not so wise after all.
The boys’ father considered the question for a moment and said, “My son...the answer is in your hands.”
The choice is yours, but that doesn’t mean you can just up and marry Carmen Electra. You can’t say, “The Bible says that I get the desires of my heart, and I desire that Carmen Electra be my wife.” God wasn’t talking about overriding another person’s will. You may want to marry Carmen Electra, but she may not want to marry you. But, I have faith, you say. No, that’s not faith, that’s foolishness.
The choice is yours. You have the ultimate say in how your life is going to turn out. You have authority as a believer and the power in your words to make your life heaven on earth or hell on earth. And if you choose the wrong mate, you may truly experience hell on earth.
Watch clip of Never Been Kissed. Josie tells her friends that she’s not going to kiss a bunch of losers to find the right guy. She’s going to save herself for that one special guy who’ll sweep her off her feet and kiss her like none other.
Why do people end up kissing a lot of losers instead of waiting for that one special person?
How can you weed out the losers in your life and be more patient?
If you trust God to bring the right person into your life, and you rely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance to lead you step by step into a relationship with that person, then you can’t go wrong. God has just the right person for you, don’t waste your time with all the wrong ones. Let’s pray.
