Home Wreckers! | Week Two

In this series, we are tackling 6 of the biggest issues in our homes.

We are answering questions like: Does raising kids ever get easier? What happens after divorce? How do we build a family legacy?

These are home wreckers: Selfishness, Addiction, Sexual Sin, Past Mistakes, Generational Cycles, Age differences, Personality differences, Divorce. Home Wreckers!

Today, we are going to answer the question: “Will I ever find my soul mate? What happened to my soul mate?”

RAISE YOUR HAND IF you are married up in here?? Keep your hand raised if you think you married your soul mate? JUST KIDDING! Everyone lower your hands

From the time we are born and can understand words, we hear phrases like: “living happily ever after, my other half, my better half, you complete me, I found my soul mate, I’m looking for my soul mate, I know God has THE ONE out there for me, if I could just find her/him.”

Over time, these phrases and others like them begin to create a false sense of success or security in a spouse and a marriage.

Then, our homes are wrecked because people cannot live up to the position that we have put them in. We have propped up people to be in a place that only belongs to God.

HOME – the place in which your domestic affections are centered. (dictionary.com)

Do you know that trying to find a soul mate in another human might be the worst thing that could happen to your home as a single adult?

You are trying to create a home and don’t realize that you have a home right now.

Listen to one of our modern day poets:

We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain, We jumped never asking why, We kissed, I fell under your spell. A love no one could deny, Don’t you ever say I just walked away, I will always want you, I can’t live a lie, running for my life, I will always want you, I came in like a wrecking ball, I never hit so hard in love, All I wanted was to break your walls, All you ever did was wreck me, Yeah, you, you wreck me

Those are the words of Miley Cyrus. They echo the sentiments of young adults all over the world. It is the same message that her dad, Billy Ray, sang about in 1992

But don’t tell my heart, My achy breaky heart, I just don’t think he’d understand, And if you tell my heart, My achy breaky heart, He might blow up and kill this man

At PromiseLand San Marcos, we want to help you, Miley, and Billy Ray and anyone else that will listen to find the TRUTH from Jesus so that your home will not be wrecked by the lies of this culture.

Matthew 7:24 “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock.  26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand.  27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

What does God’s word teach about finding the man or woman of my dreams?  How should I follow God’s word about finding my soul mate and build my home on a FIRM foundation?

SHOULD I GET MARRIED?  The Bible tells us yes, not to complete you but to help you.  We are looking for a helpmate not a soulmate.

Let’s start at the beginning and go from there. After God created Adam:

Genesis 2:18 Then the lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”

He created animals and they were enough to help Adam. So, God created woman!  To help Adam. Eve was to make life a bit easier for Adam. Adam was to make life a bit more easy for Eve. To help each other.

Genesis 2:23 “At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’” 24 This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. 25 Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.

Let’s look at what Jesus said about finding someone and marrying them.

Mark 10:6 But ‘God made them male and female’ from the beginning of creation. 7 ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife,  8 and the two are united into one. ’Since they are no longer two but one, 9 let no one split apart what God has joined together.”

Paul quotes this passage as well in Ephesians 5:31.  In his Corinthian letter, Paul tells people to get married and fulfill each other, Then says:

I Corinthians 7:6 I say this (getting married part) as a concession, not as a command. 7 But I wish everyone were single, just as I am. Yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another. 8 So I say to those who aren’t married and to widows—it’s better to stay unmarried, just as I am. 9 But if they can’t control themselves, they should go ahead and marry. It’s better to marry than to burn with lust.

There is a fulfilling life of singleness that is not a mistake, or because you are not good enough, or because Mr/Mrs Right hasn’t come along yet. All life: single or married is fulfilling and complete, not because of the person in whom you’ve married. PERIOD

If finding the right person was so important, then why do so many marriages end in divorce? Why are so many married people struggling to find peace and happiness?

What Paul is saying is that contentment and peace comes from something besides being married to a specific person. Once you marry someone, they DO become your one and only! No Doubt.

But you don’t ride off in the sunset together living happily ever after.

Last week, I taught on how our finances wreck us. They wreck us primarily because of our selfishness and lack of discipline. Our desire to please our self.  This week, the wrecking ball crashes into our homes because we look to another human being to be our source of completion.  The idea of another human being your soul mate is NO WHERE IN THE BIBLE. The only soul mate in the scripture is Jesus Christ. He is the OSM. The Original Soul Mate.

Here is a great Vision for your Life: Jesus Christ is so Great, Good, Gracious, and Glorious that he can fulfill me without any other person, place, thing, or activity.

Let’s start trusting in Jesus as our soul mate. Once that is established, you are complete. You are complete in him.

If you are not complete, then you are a fraction. Half, third, quarter… .435, .934, .239  If you are whole, then you are 1.0.  Scripture says that two 1.0’s join together in marriage and become one. The only way you as a fractured person with problems, issues, hang-ups, anger outbursts, pimples, laziness, bad breath and low self confidence will ever become whole is NOT BY FINDING the right MAN or WOMAN. They will not complete YOU.

Jesus is the only one that sets you up to become a 1.0. Ready for marriage where a 1.0 meets another 1.0 and makes a covenant. Marriage is all about a covenant where you agree to walk together as a couple towards Christ. It is not about the cake, or the kids, or the house, or the grandkids. It is about agreeing to live life for better or worse with another person and HELPING THEM become more like Christ.

Timothy Keller wrote a wonderful book on this topic called the Meaning of Marriage. I highly encourage all singles to read this book before you become this person:

You are going to wreck YOUR home if you decide to marry a person because you think they will complete you. You will wreck your home if you think that marriage will fix the problems that you have while dating. Marriage is not a magic wand that fixes your brokenness. Surrender to Jesus and you will find the healing that you are looking for. It is only after this that you will find the contentment and peace you are looking for.

If marriage is not about finding one person that perfectly completes me, does that mean I can marry anyone I want?  Is it possible to marry the wrong person?

YES, It is very possible to marry the wrong person.

2 Corinthians 6:14 Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? 15 What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? 16 And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God…

If you have found Jesus to be the completer of your life and you want begin a life long commitment with someone that has not, then you are unequally yoking or teaming up with someone. Setting yourself up for what my grandmother would say: “a long row to hoe”
If you are standing here saying, “I married the wrong person.”… We are continuing for the next several weeks on this topic. We couldn’t cover it all today. We are going to talk about next steps. Jesus is going to help you.