Extreme Life Makeover
Galatians 5:22-25 - Faithfulness
A woman
was sitting at the breakfast table and asked her husband, “What if something
happened to me and I died before you? Would you marry again?” He thought for a
while and said, “Yes, I probably would.” “Well, would you bring your new wife
to live in this house?” “Well, I hadn't thought of that,” he said, “but I guess
I would.” “Would you let her sleep in our bedroom?” “I guess I would,” he said.
Probing further she asked, “Would you let her use my golf clubs?” He said, “Of
course not, she's left handed!” OOPS!
Today we continue to look at the
fruits of the Spirit as a picture of the Extreme Life Makeover God wants to do
in our lives. Galatians 5:22-25 – “But
the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There
is no law against these things! Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed
the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them
there. Since we are living by the
Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.”
Faithfulness
is what we are looking at today. The word describes the trustworthy nature of
God. Revelation 19 says that faithfulness
is a characteristic of Jesus. I can
stake my life on his promises.
He always
remains available, accessible, reliable, dependable. In our lives it denotes dependability,
loyalty, and fidelity. Today I want to address specifically how important it is
to the marriage relationship.
In spite
of the rising rate of divorce, marriage is still a very popular idea in
The
purpose of this message is not to condemn anyone, or dredge up your past. What
we are going to do is look at your future. If you still feel guilty over a sin
that you’ve confessed to God in the past, that guilt is not from God. The Bible
says that when I come to God and admit, “God, I blew it. That was wrong,” and
when I confess it, I'm immediately forgiven. It's forgotten and it's over, a
dead issue with God.
We also
need to remember that God invented sex. He thought it up. Like every gift, it
must be controlled and there are limitations to it. Every gift of God is good.
Sex is not dirty, it's good. But it has its limitations. God invented fire. Fire
can be a wonderful thing to enjoy in a fireplace or a camping trip, but too
much of it out of control like at the Park Theater Mall, and you end up with a
devastating result. So there are perimeters that God has made for sex. He says,
if you disobey these parameters, it causes guilt, shame, anguish, fear, broken
relationships and all kinds of relational problems.
How Can the Holy Spirit Grow Faithfulness in Me?
1. Make
a commitment to God’s standard.
You need
to agree with God about what He says about sex. “God, you're right, I'm going
to do it your way.” God's standard has never changed. God says, “I invented sex
for marriage, not before marriage, not outside of marriage. I invented sex for
marriage.” It's very clear; it's all through Scripture. You first make a commitment
to do what God says, even if you don't understand it.
Psalm
119:9 – “How can a young person stay
pure? By obeying your word.” God's standard is very clear. Adultery, under
no circumstances is ever right. Someone says, “But my mate is not meeting my
needs.” That's not a justification. Two wrongs don't make a right. The human
heart and mind can think and feel its way into believing almost anything is
right. But God says the way to stay pure is not to follow your emotions or to
play mental gymnastics, but to follow God's word. And one way to keep God’s
Word in your mind is to memorize it! And
another way to is to pray about it. In
prayer, talk to God about what the Bible says to you about faithfulness. That can greatly help you deal with
temptation.
The first
step I recommend is that you publicly confirm your commitment to God's
standard. Tell your mate, “Honey, I have decided because I want to live
pleasing to God, that regardless of what you do in this relationship,
regardless of how you treat me, I will always be faithful to you.” Why? Because that is what God wants of me.
Publicly affirm that to your mate.
Second,
you need to affirm it publicly to others, your friends, your relatives, your
family,
people you work with, so there is no doubt in their mind about where you stand
- even when you have marriage problems. “I'm off limits” That's what you need
to say to the people around you.
2.
Magnify the consequences.
Proverbs
6:32 - “The man who commits adultery is
an utter fool, for he destroys himself.” Nothing damages the emotions like sexual sin.
That's why God put parameters on it. The scars are permanent even though the
guilt in God's eyes doesn’t have to be. This is a subject we need to be blunt
about, because there are too many people who say “If I could just turn back the
clock.”
Some of
you may be in marriage problems right now and you say, “You don't know how bad
they are!” Regardless of how severe your marriage problems are, the cost of
saving that marriage is far less than the cost of adultery. The price is not
worth it, spiritually, emotionally, physically, what it does to relationships.
It's not worth it. God says everybody loses.
So you
make a commitment to God’s standard and you magnify the consequences. You consider what you have in your marriage,
even if you have problems in it.
a. I love
my wife and kids. The thought of hurting my wife or the thought of hurting my
children is almost unbearable for me to think of. I can't even imagine doing
that to my kids or to my wife.
b. I love
Jesus Christ. Everything I am and have I owe to Him. He died for me on the
cross. He's my only way to Heaven. He gives me meaning and purpose in life today.
Jesus said, “If you love Me you keep My commands.” His commands in this area
are very clear. To say, “I love Jesus” and to ignore what He says about sex and
it's parameters is hypocrisy and it doesn't work.
c. I honestly
fear the judgment of God. We don't talk about this a lot, but I think it is a
healthy fear. Hebrews 13:4 tells us that “Give
honor to marriage, and remain faithful to one another in marriage. God will
surely judge people who are immoral and those who commit adultery.” This is serious business. If you want to
know how serious sin is, look at the cross. It's that serious. You don't just
pretend the rules aren't there and make your own parameters and get away with
it. God said there will be a day of accountability. I want to be ready for that
day.
Frankly,
I'm worried about
3.
Maintain my marriage
1
Corinthians 7:3 – “The husband should
fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s
needs.”
There's a
book called His Needs- Her Needs, written by Dr. Willard Harley, a psychiatrist
from
The top
five needs of most men:
1. Sexual
fulfillment. No surprise.
2.
Recreational companionship.
3. An
attractive spouse.
4.
Domestic support
5.
Admiration
Criticize
these if you want, but this is the reality.
The top
five need of most women;
1.
Affection. As in non-sexual
touching. That means when you walk up to
your wife and give her a hug, or hold her hand, it stops there. You’re just expressing caring and affection.
2.
Conversation.
3. Honesty
and openness.
4.
Financial support.
5. Family
commitment.
Did you
see any parallels in those lists? Did they meet at any point? It is no wonder
that we have so much conflict in marriage. When a man gets married, typically
he thinks, even though she looks like a woman, he's really marrying someone
like himself. So he sets about with all his earnestness and zeal to try to meet
the needs that he's sure his wife has and ends up often very frustrated and
sometimes very angry.
A woman,
even though she knows he’s a man, really thinks that underneath all that he's
really like her with the same needs and wants she has to talk just as much as
she does. She sets about with all her energy and her skill to try to meet what
she is sure are his needs, only to find herself frustrated and angry.
Dr. Harley
says that about the only way to get around that is that each person in a
marriage decides that they're going to get serious about finding out what the
other needs and meet those needs to the best of my ability. Unselfishness. It's
the only way to get around the fact that we are so different.
One of the
biggest areas of conflict in marriage can be over the physical relationship 1
Corinthians 7:5 -
“Do not deprive each other of sexual relations,
unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you
can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come
together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of
self-control.”
Sex is a spiritual responsibility in a marriage. You decide that you will meet
each other's needs in such a way that you would be absolute fools to be
interested in anybody else. I read a scientific survey the other day that was
to determine what days most husbands desire love making. They discovered that
it was the days that begin with the letters "T": Tuesday, Thursday,
Today, Tomorrow, Taturday, and Tunday.
I read
about a three year survey done by a sexologist (it’s really a career). He did a
study of 2000 married men between the ages of 25 and 55, and they found that
there were four things these men would rather do than make love to their wife:
1. Watch
sports on TV
2. Walk
the dog
3. Have a
barbecue and beer with friends
4. To play
a round of golf
That is a
true study. It made me start to think, “What
was the problem?” Sex is something men
think about often and yet they often avoid it with their wife. Why?
Sex can cause a lot of conflict in marriage and I think a lot of people
just kind of give up. Another reason, I
think, is that in our culture we’re too busy and it’s easy to lose interest. But the point of this is – it shows that
we've got to maintain our marriages. Marriages typically need a lot of work. I
heard a quote from Mary Alda, the wife of the actor Alan Alda from MASH. She
said, “It's easy to leave your spouse. It's not so easy to leave your best friend.”
I want to be Lori's best friend. And I know she wants to be mine. You cannot be
best friends with somebody you never spend time with. You cannot be best
friends with somebody you don't tell what's really going on in your heart and
mind. Just like everybody else, we find it a struggle to find the time we need
to spend with each other and maintain our friendship, but it's important and
worth the effort.
4.
Manage my mind.
People
don't just fall into immorality. They are not moral and upright one day and the
next day have an affair. It doesn't work that way although it looks that way
sometimes. There's always a series of events that preceded that fall.
Step one
of unfaithfulness is usually accepting sinful thoughts in your mind. The battle
in any temptation begins and ends in my mind. James 1:14-15 says, “Temptation comes from our own desires,
which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions.
And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” The problem is
that most Christians don't think it's a big deal to let the mind wander.
If your
mind wasn’t such a big deal, Madison Avenue wouldn't spend billions of dollars
every year to try to influence what you think about! They know what you think
influences what you feel and how you feel is eventually going to influence how
you act. The battle for any temptation, anything you're struggling with, starts
with accepting sinful things into your mind and letting them go round and
round. 2 Timothy 2:22 says “Run from
anything that stimulates youthful lusts. Instead, pursue righteous living,
faithfulness, love, and peace. Enjoy the companionship of those who call on the
Lord with pure hearts.” Romans 16:19
says “I want you to be wise about what is
good, and innocent about what is evil.” That's the exact opposite state of
What if
you're single? The Bible says that we're to use our time and energy in creative
and dynamic ways to serve other people rather than to produce sinful thoughts
that lead to sinful lifestyles.
Maybe
nobody but you and God will know what thoughts go through your head. If people could read minds, we would all wear
hats all the time. You have the responsibility before God to be your own
thought policemen. You know what movies you can see. Other people may be able
to see all kinds of movies and not seem to be affected by it. But you know
which ones affect you. You know what music brings up dangerous emotions in you.
You know which books you can't read. You know which TV shows you can watch and
which ones send you running for the shower. You know and you have to be
responsible before God to guard your own thoughts. If you don't, it can lead to
this next step.
If you
allow step one to happen, then the next steps of unfaithfulness are easier to
cave into
- emotional, non physical attachment to someone other than your spouse
- physical involvement
-
rationalizing it all
We are
great at pulling the wool over our own eyes. We can convince ourselves that
anything is OK. We can talk ourselves into anything if we want to badly enough.
Jeremiah 17:9 – “The human heart is the
most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who
really knows how bad it is?”
Some
excuses we've all heard over the years: “If only my husband/wife met my needs I
wouldn't have done this.” “Just this once more and it won't happen again.” “But we really love each other.”
Video – “It’s Just Sex”
Learn to
manage you mind before your mind begins to manage you!
5.
Maintain proper relationships.
Ephesians
5:3 – “Let there be no sexual immorality,
impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people.”
Studies
have shown that most affairs occur between close personal friends or coworkers.
But we all have to live in the world, and becoming a hermit isn’t practical or
desirable to most, so you’ve got to be able to maintain proper relationships
with people.
Two suggestions:
1. Don't
listen to a member of the opposite sex complain to you about his/her spouse. It
is tempting to try to be a good listener when somebody wants to tell you about
all the marriage trouble they're having and what a bad person their spouse is
being. But that's dangerous. Steer them quickly to a friend of the same sex and
let them get counsel from someone else.
2. Don't
spend inappropriate time alone with someone of the opposite sex other than your
spouse. You may need to at work, but not in a private social setting.
Don't put
yourself in a situation where the wrong impressions could be made or the wrong
thought could be planted in your mind. 1 Corinthians 10:12 says, “If you think you are standing strong, be
careful not to fall.” You may feel strong, but in the wrong situations you
may fall
Some
people know this all too well. If you are one of them, know that there is a
pathway back to purity I'm so glad we can tell anybody that has stumbled and
fallen in this area that there is hope.
If there
has been unfaithfulness in your life, there is hope. There are some steps you
need to take and to take quickly if you're involved right now in a relationship
that is wrong. If you don't need it personally you may need to share it with
someone else you know is in danger.
The
pathway back to purity.
1. Acknowledge
the sin.
David did
this in Psalm 51:1-4 when he committed adultery. You stop rationalizing it,
stop making excuses, call it what it is - sin.
Confess it to God. Agree with
Him. God's standards are very clear about this and He's never changed His
standards. Premarital sex is unacceptable to God. It always has been, and it
always will be. Living together without being married is unacceptable to God.
It always has been, and it always will be. Adultery is unacceptable to God. It
always has been, and it always will be. Homosexuality is unacceptable to God.
It always has been it always will be. Pornography is unacceptable to God. It
always has been, and it always will be. There's no gray area in these matters.
God is very clear about what the parameters are with sex. If you've struggled
with any of these areas you belong at this church, because this is a community of
forgiven sinners. There is no place for the self-righteous here. We're not here
to judge and condemn and criticize each other. We're all in the same boat, just
in different problems. We all need encouragement. But at least the people in
this church are trying to do the right thing. We know ourselves and we're not
pretending. Any of us are capable of anything given the right situation. That's
why we need the fellowship and support of people who are trying to do the right
thing.
2. End the
relationship immediately. Don't delay. Even if it's just an emotional
attachment, or if it is a physical affair, whatever, end it immediately.
You end
the relationship. You have one good-bye meeting, preferably by phone, then
that's it! No calls, no letters, no meetings, no explanations. If they keep
calling you for more explanations, practice hanging up the phone. If you need
to change jobs to get away from a person, do it. That's how serious this is.
3. Take
advantage of being a part of a church that has a lot of honest people and
caring people. Find at least one other
person you can be honest with about your struggles. Become accountable to each other on issues
you struggle with and encourage each other on things you are doing well. Walk together through this Extreme Life
Makeover.
Conclusion:
I want to
challenge you to make two commitments. They will produce great blessings in
your life.
1. The
first is that you make the commitment of your life to Jesus Christ. “Jesus you
gave me this sex drive. I want you to guide it, control it, channel it, and use
it for good, not to destroy me or others, but for good.” Give your life to
Christ, if you haven't done so.
2. Make a
commitment that “I will not have sex outside of marriage for the rest of my
life.”
Step one
needs to come before step two though. Remember that faithfulness is one of the
fruits of the Spirit. It is not a man-made fruit. You need God's help to be
faithful in a fallen world.