Romancing The Stone

I. To Know Him is to Love Him

A. Romance = v. 2. To carry on a … love affair with: woo.

B. As the People of God, We Must Learn How to Have a Love Affair With Him!

C. What Does it Mean to Really Know God for Who He Is?

D. God Desires That We Know Him, Not to Just Know About Him!

E. When One Truly Knows Someone Else, it is Easier to Love Them!

F. God Knows Us, Because of Our Love to Him:

“Those who think they know something still have a lot to learn. But if they love God, they are known by God.” ( I Corinthians 8:2,3 )

G. That’s Why Jesus Said: “I am the Good Shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.” (John 10:14 )

H. How Can We Truly Know Him?

II. Intimacy Requires Romance

A. It’s One Thing to Tell Someone You Love Them…It’s Another to Prove It!

B. There is a story of a couple that went for marriage counseling. The wife’s major complaint was that her husband never said, ‘I love you.’ When the counselor asked him about this he replied, ‘When we got married 30 years ago, I told her I loved her. If anything changes, I’ll let her know.’ (Husbands, That’s Not Romance!)

C. It will help you, in your attempt to romancing God the Father, to know just how much He loves you!

1. I John 3:1 “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”

III. Our Level of Love With Determine Our Reality of Romance

A. Text: Song of Solomon 5:2-5 {read}

B. This text gives us 3 levels of response the Shulamite could have chosen. They are:

1. Neglect – (I’m Asleep Leave Me Alone)

(a) Professor H.W. Jurgen, a West German sociologist, claims that married couples chat with one another 70 minutes a day in the first year of their marriage. This drops to 30 minutes a day in the second year and then only to 15 minutes a day in the 4th. His research shows that by the eighth year, a husband and wife, typically, share hardly any small talk and become nearly silent with one another.

(b) How can this be? Complacency. We get too comfortable. Do you remember when you were first saved? How much time you spent in prayer? How excited you were about your relationship with Jesus? That’s why Jesus revealed Himself to John the Revelator in the book of Revelations and said to us: “…I have this (one thing) against you, that you have left your first love.” (Revelation 2:4 ) He told the church of Ephesus that they did all the right things…except they were a loveless generation, simply full of works. Does this sound familiar?

(c) Amos 6:1 says: “Woe to you who are at ease in Zion.” What does it mean to be ‘at ease in Zion?’ Zion is the representation of spirituality. We have become complacent and cold in our love for God.

(d) Matthew 25:5 “But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.”

2. Preoccupation – (Let Me Put My Robe On)

A. We sometimes waste too much of God’s time.

B. Are We Like Martha, distracted with too much serving that we can’t visit with the Master?

C. Martha was distracted from the Best by the good she was doing.

D. That’s why Jesus told us, in Luke 21:34 “…take heed to yourselves (pay attention), lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.”

E. The result of these two responses in found in verses 6 & 7 of our text:

“I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had turned away and was gone. My heart (soul) leaped up when he spoke. I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen who went about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took my veil away from me.”

F. So, the results of our being cold in our love relationship with God is that,

1. When we finally do search for Him, we will no longer find Him. Not because He has left…but because we have, in our ignorance.

2. Secondly, the world will then come and rape us of our God-given blessings. After all, the father of this world, Satan, comes only but to kill, steal and destroy everything that God has blessed you with.

3. Then, we will be exposed for who we really are, someone who has prostituted our relationship with God, to the world. We are nothing more than an adulterer in the eyes of God.