U.S. Endangered Species List – The Godly Relationship

Which of the following is most imminently facing extinction?
A. The Black Rhino
B. The Giant Panda
C. The Tiger
D. The Godly Relationship

Sadly enough for our generation, the answer to this question is D.
The concept of Christian relationships has been sickly twisted and conformed to Satan’s lies about the purpose of dating, the gift of sex, and harsh consequences for violating the guidelines the Bible lays out for relationships. I hope that this message speaks to you in a way that will cause you to examine your own relationships – past, present, and future – as well as challenge you to “seek first the kingdom of God” in preparation for future marriage.

• Are You “Pouring Out”?
o Love = Service.
 Love is not a thrill or a feeling. It is a sacred choice to be committed until “death do us part”. Literally, when you’re married, barring marital infidelity, one of the two people has to be dead for the marriage to be over.
o 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 - Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
o If you are truly honest with yourself, most people can’t say that they don’t think this way.
 Are you only looking to please yourself?
 Please someone else in order to please yourself?
 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 tells us that love is “not self-seeking”; the verse therefore directly condemns self-gratification in relationships.
o Are you looking to serve your partner, or are you looking for your partner to serve you?
 Instead of looking at how much he or she has to gain from a relationship, a person should seek God’s discernment and wisdom to “serve” his or her partner. “Serve” might not sound like a glamorous word, but true Christian selflessness is service performed without the incentive of reward.
o RATHER THAN “LOOKING FOR THE ONE”, BE “THE ONE”.
 Evaluate yourself. Could God be witholding "the one" from you because you aren't "being the one"? Think about it.
 Are you being the man or woman worthy of experiencing the joy that comes with a Godly relationship?
o The ABC's of Christian Dating...
 A... A Christian - Christians should ALWAYS date other Christians, and they shall be "equally yoked"
 B... Be aware of your emotions
 C... Constant communication with God
 Without the ABC's of Christian dating, as mentioned previously, your relationship will not be in compliance with God's plan for you. No compliance with God or only half-hearted compliance = DOOMED for failure!

o Are you “Filling Up"?
 Is God your number one priority?
 Girls (and guys, too), think about this quote from Maya Angelou.
 "A woman's heart should be so lost in God that a man needs to seek Him in order to find her."
 Although Angelou addresses women in particular, her principle applies to both sexes. Is God your #1 priority? Is God on the throne in your life, or has He taken the back seat to your romantic and even family relationships?
 Matthew 6:33 - But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
• How can you “pour out” with an empty cup?
• When God’s first in your life, He will allow all of your other priorities to fall into place.

o Are you engaged in sin?
SIN MATTERS. For those of you that believe that because you’re saved that you have the “license to sin”, you couldn’t be any further from the truth. If you feel no conviction of your sin, you may need to evaluate the status of your salvation. Are you genuinely saved?
• A true child of God is disciplined like a child of God.
• Sin is multiplied with passing generations.
o Compare of lineage of Cain and the lineage of Seth
 Lineage of Cain produced Lamech, the Bible’s first polygamist and double murderer
 Lineage of Seth produced Enoch, who walked with God and was taken up into heaven by God without even suffering death!
 The sins that you fail to repent and commit to eradicate now will be trapped in an endless cycle of your descendents.
 If you’re a part of a vicious cycle of sin, then you can escape! You don’t have to be victim to the sins of your ancestors. But you must be willing to surrender and trust God.
o To get our attention about our sin, God the Father punishes us.
 Through conviction
 Through the withholding of His wonderful plan
• Dr. Charles Stanley said, “I hope that when I am face to face with God, that He won’t have to say to me, ‘Charles, I had a wonderful plan for your life, but you chose to follow your own plan, your own will, so I’m afraid I can’t reveal to you what I would have had in store for you.’”
• Is God withholding His plan for your life because you choose the route of sin and the road of rebellion?
If you’re scared that your soul mate may pass you by, quit living the life of rebellion from God. If you don’t, I promise, you WILL miss out on your soul mate.
 If this is you, then YOU must
• Examine yourself under the Holy Spirit’s direction (Psalm 26)
• Repent
• Commit to eradicate such sin out of your life

o Do you believe God will deliver on His part?
 A classic statement - "I don't know if I'll ever find someone that amazing ever again."
 How many times do we hear this on a college campus? If you're in college, you need not answer aloud.
 Romans 8:28 promises us that with obedience and surrender to God's plan for our lives, He will NEVER CHEAT US. If you are 100% surrendered to God, HE WILL NOT SHORTCHANGE YOU! Relationship-wise, God will pair you with the person PERFECT for you. Or maybe you will be called to singularity. For now, or maybe for life.
 And yes. God DOES call young men and women to be SINGLE. Our society has made being single "not the cool thing to do" or "the super lame Facebook status of the year." Most certainly God calls singles to give of their time and lovingkindness as He prepares them to be Godly boyfriends or girlfriends or spouses, but even moreso good and faithful servants. Very underrated, and very underappreciated.
 Don’t be mistaken. There is no way you can carry out the wonderful plan that God has for you without God Himself.
• If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
• It is Satan’s lie that you can find your perfect soul mate without the intervention of God.
• Without God, the wonderful plan would never be conceived.
• Isaiah 55:8 – For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.

o Facing Imminent Extinction – Biblical Sexuality (From Rev. Luke Lawson, Redeemer Evangelical Church, Memphis, TN on 10/24)
 Why did God create sex?
• For Reproduction
o Genesis 1:28 - And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
• To Unite a Man and a Woman in God’s Glory
o Genesis 2:24 - Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

• The need for physical intimacy?
Is physical intimacy necessary before you're married?
What do you have to gain from physical intimacy before marriage?
On the contrary, what do you have to lose?
oIf you're a child of God, you will be convicted of sexual sins.
oYou will experience shame when committing sexual sins. A feeling of knowing that despite the fact that no one else can see you, the Holy Spirit is watching.

• Sex outside of marriage has devastating consequences
o The idea that sex is OK as long as you love someone = a bold-faced lie.
o Sex outside of marriage grieves the Holy Spirit. You don’t even need to waste your time praying to God about whether it’s OK to have sex outside of marriage.
o Sex includes any kind of physical intimacy, including heavy kissing all the way to intercourse itself. Nothing you wouldn’t do with your mom and dad.
o Hebrews 13:4 - 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.
o Wrap your mind around this.
 A wedding night is supposed to be a special time for you and your newly-wed spouse.
• If you’ve maintained purity, it will be just you and your spouse in that room. No one else. No one should be there.
• If you’ve participated in sexual activities outside of marriage, you, your spouse, and all other the guys or girls you’ve slept with will be right there with you.
 How many of us would say we wouldn’t want to give our husbands or wives the absolute best?
o Your body is like a gift, wrapped neatly in elaborate paper – if you’ve maintained your purity.
o Every time you participate in a sexual sin, you let someone else other than your spouse tear away at the paper, revealing the gift inside. When you sleep with many others, that gift eventually gets opened and ruined.
o You can no longer say you give your spouse a gift in pristine gift?
 Do you really want to give your spouse a used gift?

• The rewards for abstinence from sex until marriage
o 2 Timothy 2:22 - Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right. Pursue faith and love and peace, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts.

• Gender roles
God created women to be pursued. However our culture has experienced a reversal of gender roles. Women have become too impatient to be pursued and instead, they, in turn, act like men by pursuing a mate.
The man's role is to pursue the woman, as He is the God-ordained leader of His household. More on this topic at a later time.

Namaste or God's Way - Biblical Stress Management

Philippians 4:6-7
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

• Stress. It plays a prominent role in the lives of most everyone above age 13, and believe it or not, it has its proper place in your life, unless you let it get out of hand.
• Are you stressed?
o School
 Worried about grades, classes
o Work
 Worried about money, career aspirations
o Relationships
 Worried about boyfriend/girlfriend, physical intimacy

• Identify the source of your stress
o Are you engaged in sin?
 God HATES repeated sin.
 Just as with other people, how much credibility comes from the man or woman who commits the same offense repeatedly despite apologizing over and over again? How much do you hate to be wronged repeatedly?
 If I cheat on my spouse and then apologize, does that allow me to commit the same offense again? No.
 SIN MATTERS. For those of you that believe that because you’re saved that you have the “license to sin”, you couldn’t be any further from the truth. If you feel no conviction of your sin, you may need to evaluate the status of your salvation. Are you genuinely saved?
• A true child of God is disciplined like a child of God.
• Sin is multiplied with passing generations.
o Compare of lineage of Cain and the lineage of Seth
 Lineage of Cain produced Lamech, the Bible’s first polygamist and double murderer
 Lineage of Seth produced Enoch, who walked with God and was taken up into heaven by God without even suffering death!
 The sins that you fail to repent and commit to eradicate now will be trapped in an endless cycle of your descendents.
 If you’re a part of a vicious cycle of sin, then you can escape! You don’t have to be victim to the sins of your ancestors. But you must be willing to surrender and trust God.
o To get our attention about our sin, God the Father punishes us.
 Through conviction
 Through the withholding of His wonderful plan
• Dr. Charles Stanley said, “I hope that when I am face to face with God, that He won’t have to say to me, ‘Charles, I had a wonderful plan for your life, but you chose to follow your own plan, your own will, so I’m afraid I can’t reveal to you what I would have had in store for you.’”
• Is God withholding His plan for your life because you choose the route of sin and the road of rebellion?
 If this is you, then YOU must
• Examine yourself under the Holy Spirit’s direction (Psalm 26)
• Repent
• Commit to eradicate such sin out of your life
o Are your priorities out of line?
 Is God the highest priority in your life?
 Have you made Christianity a crisis religion in your life? An emergency hotline?
 Is school, relationships, or work becoming idols in your life?

• Realize that God frustrates us in our sin and allows us to be tested and tried for the purpose of sanctification – the process of becoming more holy, or more like Jesus Christ.
o If you’re stressed, realize that God’s in control of your life. He knows the things you need and He is a loving Father that will provide for you as long as you remain obedient.
o Again, God is your highest priority.
 Matthew 6:33 - But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
 When God’s first in your life, He will allow all of your other priorities to fall into place.
 Don’t be mistaken. There is no way you can carry out the wonderful plan that God has for you without God Himself.
• Without God, the wonderful plan would never be conceived.
o Isaiah 55:8 – For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.
• We are insufficient to achieve victory over sin alone! The gifts that this secular world has to offer you cannot compare to the gifts that your Father in Heaven has promised you.
o John 14:27 - I am leaving you with a gift--peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn't like the peace the world gives. So don't be troubled or afraid.
• If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you don’t have to worry about your fate as lost people do. As a matter of fact, lost people have a legitimate reason to worry, because they have not yet accepted the eternal gifts of God that provide the only means for victory. Lost people are HOPELESS until they receive Jesus Christ. God gives you victory if you trust Him. Therefore, don’t act hopeless as a lost person does, because that in itself blasphemes God and His grace and mercy towards you. In other words, a real slap in the face to God.

Another acronym for you to remember.
A serious problem with our culture

Striving
To
Readily
Embrace
Secular
Society

All of our worries and stressors boil down to
•How am I viewed by other people, the world?
•How am I the most pleasing to other people, the world?
Focus on how you are most pleasing to God and forget the rest!

Three ways to address stress - they will completely change your outlook on life!
1. Pray without ceasing - 1 Thessalonians 5:17.
2. Praise the blessings that you have every day
3. Meditate on the Word of God

Remember Lot's Wife! (CBU Midterm Exam Week)

A Pillar of Salt
• In Genesis 19, God sends two angels to warn Lot, the nephew of Abraham, and his family that God will destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
o Genesis 19:24-25,28 - 24Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven 25and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.…28 And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.

• God gives Lot the chance to walk away from the sin and wickedness of Sodom.
o Genesis 19:13-16 - For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it. 14And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law. 15And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying,'Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.' 16And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.
• When God commands us to “walk away from sins”, we can’t do so while looking back on our past sins and dwelling on them.
o Genesis 19:17 - And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.
o 1 Peter 1:13-16 - Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: but as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, 'Be ye holy; for I am holy.’
 “Gird up the loins of your mind”
• Men in Biblical times wore long tunics and robes similar to togas. This garb was cumbersome to wear when a man went to do manual labor, so in order to keep from tripping over his robes, a man had to tie the robes up around his waist using a belt. This is what is meant by “girding up your loins”.
• Similarly, we must tie up our “loose ends” in our minds in order to be “on target” with God.
• If we don’t tie up our loose ends, we will continue to trip and stumble until we do. Tying up your loose ends means repenting of your previous sins and not looking back. If you decide to sit among the wicked... you'll experience God's wrath against the wicked as well. Let's say, "Guilty by association."
o Are you ashamed to be a Christian?
o Are you worried that Christianity is "an uncomfortable place to be"?

• Remember that God can separate your sins from you “as far as the east is from the west” if you ask Him to.
• God HATES repeated sins.


• The Consequences for “Looking Back”
o As Lot’s family was leaving Sodom, his wife looks back at the wicked city and is turned into a pillar of salt.
o Genesis 19:26 - But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
o We can’t move forward while looking back. God doesn’t like stagnant Christians – He wants you to move forward from your sins and seek first His kingdom, but that’s not practical when you’re caught up in yourself.
o Remember that we said that the root of all sin is our selfishness and our self-gratifying nature.
 Ten Commandments - “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
• God is our highest priority.
 Matthew 6:24 - No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
 We are reminded in Luke 17:32 - REMEMBER LOT'S WIFE.
A reminder for us not to "look back" when given the opportunity to walk away from our sins - through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As God gave Lot an opportunity to walk away from the slavery of sin by sending angels, God sent His son Jesus Christ to give you an opportunity to be freed from the slavery of sin.

Applications to College Life
• Whatever mistakes you’ve made in the first eight weeks of school, you need to ask God forgiveness of those “screw-ups”. If you didn't study hard enough, commit to study harder. And always remember - yesterday has come and gone, and tomorrow may never come, so the best time to make resolutions is NOW.
• If you’ve made mistakes in relationships or friendships, realize that we need to reinvest ourselves in something of the spirit rather than the flesh.
o Galatians 5:16 - But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
In our discussion about relationships, we talked about "what if's"? Yes, there is uncertainty when we die to ourselves and submit to the will of God, but we have to KNOW that God's in control.
If you're worried about having your soul mate "pass you by", you're not helping yourself by dwelling in your sins and your past relationships. In fact, dwelling in your past shortcomings is a great way to miss your soul mate as well as God's purpose for your life.
Keep doing it your way and you'll reap the meager results of your actions and intentions. Do it God's way and you'll be both blessed and rewarded through the fulfillment of God's wonderful and perfect plan for your life.
• Commit to eradicate those mistakes from your life – until you do, you will find yourself “enslaved” to those sins and to those mistakes.
• Spend time with God. Institute a daily quiet time. If you make time for God, He’ll make time for the things in your life that you truly need.