Rick Warren - Finding the Love of Your Life—Part One

You know, everyone really longs for deep, lasting love. But

great relationships, they don't happen by accident. Welcome to Pastor

Rick's Daily Hope. And today, we begin a new series

called Finding and Keeping the Love of Your Life. Rick

Warren will share wisdom from God's Word that's practical and

will help you build a healthier, stronger, Christ-centered relationship. Whether

you're single, dating, engaged, or married, this series will surely

help you grow in love, communication, and lasting commitment. So

let's get started. This will be part one of a

message called Finding the Love of Your Life.

In your life, two of the most important choices you're

gonna make are, one, will I ever get married? That's

a choice. And the second one is if I do,

who's it gonna be? And the Bible has a lot

to say about this. And if you'll take out your

message notes inside your program, finding the love of your life.

The Bible says in Proverbs 12 verse 26, the righteous

Proverbs 12:26

chooses his friends carefully. Now if you're supposed to choose

your friends carefully, you should be even more careful about

who's gonna be your life partner. Notice it is a choice.

God doesn't do this for you. God says you make

the choice. The righteous chooses his friends carefully. The problem

is nobody teaches us how to do that. You didn't

get a class in school. Your parents didn't teach you

how to choose the right person to marry. And as

a result, many people end up in the wrong marriage

for the wrong reason. And as your pastor who loves you,

I don't want you to do that. I don't want

you to end up that way. So we're going to

look tonight at what the Bible says is God's checklist

for choosing the right person. But before we do that,

I need to dispel a couple myths. And I want

you to write these down there on your outline. There's

a couple of myths about marriage that are out there,

and we just need to get them out of the way.

The first one is this. God doesn't choose my mate

for me. God doesn't choose my mate for me. It's

your decision, it's your choice. God isn't gonna choose your

mate for you. God places the responsibility 100% on your shoulder.

God is not gonna put a sign in the sky

that says, Mary Harry. Okay, it isn't gonna happen. You

can look all you want, but it isn't gonna happen. Now,

some people say, well, I'm not gonna date, I'm just

gonna wait. There's a word for that, bachelor or bachelorette.

Or never marry, okay? I mean, that's nonsense to say

I'm not gonna date, I'm gonna wait. That's what you

get when you cross a crocodile with an abalone, it's

a crocabalone. You know, when God wants to steer you,

it's easier to move a car that's moving than one

that's parked. God can't move a parked car. He can't steer.

It's gotta be moving, and then he can go this

way or that way, whatever. So you can go home

and sit in your basement and say, I'm just gonna

wait and not date. And nothing's gonna happen. Nothing's gonna happen.

So you just need to clear that one up. God

says it's your choice. God leads us, God guides us,

and God gives us guidelines. We're gonna look at them tonight.

But ultimately, it's your choice. The second myth is this.

There isn't only one right person for me. That's very romantic.

There's only one person in the entire universe for me. Well,

it's just not true. It's not only romantic, but it's

not biblical. And it's not only not biblical, it's not

even logical. Because if there was only one right person

for everybody in the world, It would only take one

person to make a wrong decision to break the chain

for everybody else. And all the dominoes, let me show you.

I'm gonna give you a little demonstration. Would you welcome

my participants today, okay? Welcome them out here. Come on

out here, you guys. Let's put the girls over here

and the guys over here. All right, now, let's just

say these are eight eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, okay? And

let's say... God loves you and has a wonderful man

for your life. His name is Johnny, all right? All right,

so Johnny here is in orange, so obviously Johnny is

over here. He's supposed to hook up with Margo and

marry Margo. But let's say Margo says, no way, Johnny.

I like Daniel. So Margo comes over here and Margo

marries Daniel. Okay, that leaves Johnny Out of luck. So

Johnny is not gonna be able to marry the woman

God planned for him, and so all of a sudden,

he goes, well, Kelly, she looks studly. I mean, she's wonderful,

all right? So we're gonna go over here with Kelly,

all right? All right, but Kelly, Kelly was supposed to

marry Jim. Oh no, oh no. So now that Kelly's married, Jim,

who are you gonna marry? Well, come on over here.

He's gonna marry Lauren, all right? Lauren, here we go. Okay,

which means you two guys, you're the leftovers, all right? Okay,

Brett and Amy, you actually get together, all right? So

one couple actually got together. See how silly this is?

It doesn't work. Let's give these guys a hand, okay? Okay.

Let's say I was supposed to marry a woman named Susan,

you guys can leave now, thank you. And instead I

marry Kay, well then all of a sudden it upsets

the apple cart for everybody else on the entire planet.

It is a total myth, it's romantic, but it's a myth.

In your life, there are multiple people God would say,

that's okay for you to marry. So God doesn't have

a bullseye when it comes to marriage. So forget that

there's some Ms. Right or Mr. Right out there. They

just aren't there. It isn't gonna happen. And the Bible

doesn't say that. By the way, let me give you

one more myth. It's not there on your outline, but

write this down. One other myth is love alone is

not enough reason to marry. Would you write that down?

Just write it down. Love alone is not enough reason

to marry. I talk to people all the time who

are getting married, and I look at them and go,

there's no way. The family background isn't right, the spiritual

background isn't right, personality background isn't right, educational background, they

don't have the same amount of energy, they don't have

the same amount of ambition, they don't even have the

same values, goals, none of these things, but we love

each other. Friend, given the right situation, I could get

you to fall in love with anybody. Love is a choice.

And I could put you in certain circumstances that would

make you romantically inclined. Just because you love someone does

not mean you should marry them. I would like for

us to repeat this together. Just because you love someone

doesn't mean you should marry them. I fell in love

with multiple women before I married Kay. Any of them,

if I had married, would have been a disaster. You

can fall in love with all kinds of people. It

doesn't mean you should marry them. Love is not enough.

It takes a lot of other things. And that's what

we're gonna look at tonight. Now, God doesn't tell you

who to marry, but he does give you a description

of the kind of person that he desires for you

to marry. And if you want God's blessing on your marriage,

which you do, and you want God's protection on your marriage,

which you do, and you want success in your marriage,

which you do, then you better listen to what God

has to say about the kind of person you should marry.

Because the evidence of not following what God says to

do is out there all around us. Given the right situation,

as I said, you can fall in love with anybody,

doesn't mean you should marry them, but God gives us

a list, and I call these a list of must haves.

Now I'm gonna give you a list tonight from the

Bible of things that must have, you must have in

your life and in your mate's life, boyfriend, girlfriend's life,

in order to marry them. Until these are right, you're

not ready to marry them, and they're not ready to

marry you, and they may not even ever be the

right person for you to marry. Now you can add

to this list your own experiences. What I'm gonna give

you tonight is the bare minimum. These are the minimum

requirements for the marriage God blesses. If they don't meet

these qualifications, deal breaker. I don't care how much I

love them, I don't care how much money they've got,

how cute they are, how much they make me laugh,

doesn't matter how sweet we get along together, how much

we have fun, how much we have in common, doesn't matter,

all those things. If we don't match on these things,

deal breaker. Now, this week, I celebrated my 37th anniversary. Okay?

And I have counseled thousands of married couples in trouble

and counseled thousands of single adults who are considering marriage.

So I do know a little about what the Bible

is talking about. I just wanna save you some pain.

These are not my opinion. This is what God says

are the requirements of the kind of person you should

choose to marry. Okay, let's get into it. Number one,

the first thing We have to have, my wife and I,

or my husband and I, we have to have, number one,

we must have spiritual unity. First qualification. We must have

spiritual unity. That means we believe the same thing about God.

We have a relationship to God together. If you aren't

spiritually unified with your spouse, You are never going to

enjoy the depth of physical intimacy, sexual intimacy, or emotional

intimacy that God desires for your marriage. You just can't

do it. You cannot have the ultimate physical, emotional, and

sexual unity that God wants you to have if you're

not unified in the number one area of your life,

which is your relationship to God. Now your relationship to

God should be the biggest most important part of your life.

And if I can't share the biggest, most important part

of my life with my wife, we're living on different wavelengths.

We got different world views. We may have all kinds

of other things in common, but our marriage will be

shallow our entire lives. It will be shallow and there

will be problems. And your marriage will never be as

deep as it could be and you will never experience

the emotional intimacy or the sexual intimacy that God wants

you to have unless you're united in spirit. There's a

spiritual unity that you're headed in the same direction. If

you want God's protection on your marriage, you want God's

blessing on your marriage, then God's gotta be at the center.

He's gotta be the glue. Most people have no idea

how important God is to marriage. It takes more than

a man and woman to make a solid marriage. Remember,

marriage was God's idea. God thought it up. God thought

up sex. God thought up intimacy. God thought up family

and children and the whole big idea. So he designed it.

And God designed it that marriage is a three-legged stool. God,

a husband, and a wife. Now you take out any

one of the legs and the stool's gonna fall over.

A one-legged stool will fall over. A two-legged stool will

fall over. You gotta have the third leg. You've gotta

have God in the relationship or it's gonna be unstable.

It's gonna get knocked over in enormous ways, all kinds

of different ways. Now God is absolutely clear about this

first one. Let's look at some verses. Second Corinthians chapter six,

verses 14 and 15. Stop forming inappropriate relationships with unbelievers?

Can right and wrong be partners? Can light have anything

in common with darkness? Can a believer share life with

an unbeliever? In other words, if you don't have spiritual unity,

how in the world can you be unified in any

other area? Now let me just be honest with you.

Let me have true confession right now. As a pastor,

I don't like to disappoint people. As a pastor, I

don't like to hurt people's feelings. I want them to

like me. I want them to be happy. And honestly,

I can't tell you how many times people have come

to me and introduced me to their fiance. And they

want me to be happy about their fiance. And they

start telling me all their fine qualities of their fiance.

And their fiance does have a lot of fine qualities. Great.

Define qualities. And they tell me how much they love them.

And they tell me how much they have in common.

And they tell me how much they've got similar plans.

And they tell me how much they think alike in

so many different areas. And then one of them will

take me and say, there's only one problem. He's not

a believer. She's not a believer. It's the only problem.

Every bone in my body wants to say, it's no

big deal. Go right ahead. Be happy. Be happy. But

after watching over a thousand divorces, I'm blunt and I say,

you're making the biggest mistake of your life. I love

you enough to tell you the truth. You are making

the biggest mistake of your life. If you don't have

spiritual unity, you're never gonna have sexual unity the way

God intended. You're never gonna have emotional unity the way

God intended. You're never gonna have unity in communication because

the biggest area of your life, your partner rejects. I

don't care how much else you've got in common, they

reject that. How can I say, if you have committed

your life to Christ, then there's no way you can

give your life away to somebody who rejects your Savior.

There's just no way you can do that. Now, you

can do it and say, well, God, I don't want

your blessing on my marriage. I don't want your success

on my marriage. And I don't want your protection on

my marriage. And I'm going to willfully ignore what the

Bible says. I used to be really kind of casual

about this. Well, you know, I know you can win

him to the Lord later. You can win her. Missionary

dating is what we call it. You know? You know?

And people tell me this, I'll win him to Christ,

or he'll change after we're married. Would you like to

give me five, let me give you 5,000 people who

tell you that doesn't happen? The change, if it doesn't

happen before the marriage, that's when the leverage is on.

You see, a lot of girls in particular, when they

plan their wedding, there's a standard. I've done so many

thousands of weddings. There's a standard, you know. You walk

down the aisle, you stand at the altar, and then

they do the hymn. And it's, I'll alter him. And

people think that's how it's gonna be. I'll alter him.

But it doesn't work that way. 2 Corinthians 6, 14,

next verse. Do not unite yourself with an unbeliever. They're

not fit mates for you. If you want God's best,

I'm just telling you right up front, don't even consider

somebody who's not committed to Jesus Christ. Now let me

give you the hard, cold facts of life. Not preference,

facts of life. National Survey reported in Marriage Magazine, one

out of every two and a half marriages in America

now ends in divorce. That's not very good odds. One

out of every two and a half marriages in America

ends in divorce. But when a couple is spiritually unified,

that's what I'm just talking about, they're both believers, and

they practice three habits together, attend church weekly together, pray together,

read the Bible together, the divorce rate drops from one

out of every two and a half marriages to one

out of every 1,105 marriages. Are you willing to gamble?

Are you willing to gamble? Please, I'm telling you as

your pastor, don't gamble the second most important decision in

your life. Because if you marry without spiritual unity, the

odds are in 10 years, you're gonna be divorced. You're

not gonna beat the odds as a general rule. Or,

You'll stay together and your deepest intimacy will never be there.

You'll live at a shallow level because you're not sharing

the most important thing in your life. Or there's gonna

be conflict with your kids and all kinds of other problems.

So this is the starting one. Number one, I must

have spiritual unity. You know, the Bible says this, Romans 1, 12.

I want us to help each other with the faith

we have. Your faith will help me And my faith

will help you. And that's what God wants to do

in marriage. He wants the faith of the husband to

help the wife and the faith of the wife to

help the husband. But how can your faith help each

other if one of you has no faith? If I

were to stand up here on the edge and you

were to come over here, is it easier for me

to pull you up or for you to pull me down?

It's always easier to be pulled down in a relationship

than to pull somebody up. It is always easier. So

I'm not shy about this anymore. If that offends you,

I'm sorry. I'm doing what is best for your happiness.

You must have spiritual unity in your marriage.

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