Great to Be Home II, 5 Principles For Building Intimacy

Thanks, David. It's going to be an awesome journey together. It's great to be able to grow and continue to deepen our love for the Lord. You know, David alluded to this, and those of you who are newer, there are many of you in this service that are newer, can't tell you how excited I am about this journey. We as a church, years ago, established a priority of learning to worship God, because we believe that's what heaven's about. And it's going to be an awesome thing as we grow together. We're at this stage in our growth, in that process. I invite you to take your outline out of your notes. We're going to be talking about, as David said, intimacy today. Intimacy, particularly in marriage. And I picked today to do that because Carol's gone. It's true. She's with her mom out in Lancaster, and she called me today. We talked this morning, and she said, I'm getting the tape, so, you know, no funny business. But Jesus was constantly being dogged by the Pharisees. They were the religious leaders of His day. They came up to Him and said, Master, is it okay for a man to divorce a wife for any and every reason? Here's what Jesus replied. Let's read it together. Top of your outline. Haven't you read, He replied, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate. You've heard it said in weddings, let man not put asunder. I want to talk about intimacy today. Last week we talked about the home and establishing God's presence and priorities in the home. And I just used a little acronym last week, H-O-M-E. I talked about, first of all, honor, and then openness, creating memories that your kids will carry for a lifetime, and investing the energy in the home to make that happen. You might get the tape if you missed last week. I think it was, many folks said, a helpful sort of foundation for a strong home going forward. And I ended the message by putting out a challenge that couples affirm, that means each spouse affirm the priority of that relationship, the spouse relationship, as the primary relationship in the home, and not the kids. And what tends to happen so often in families is that kids require so much energy and focus that they soon unconsciously become the primary focus of the home. And that, inevitably, in my experience, leads to problems later on in the relationship. Now, a few folks didn't like that. Single parents, I want you to know that there's a different look at that, and we're going to come to that in a couple of weeks, and we're going to talk to you about your situation. But in order for there to be intimacy in the home, each parent has to make that other spouse the priority. Why? Because that's what God designed. So let's start there. You see, who designed marriage? It wasn't a legislature somewhere. It wasn't an attorney, thank God. It was God who designed marriage, and when he created Adam and Eve, he put them in the Garden of Eden, which means the place of pleasure and delight. You can write this down in your outline. It means the place of pleasure and delight. Now, some people think God should have made Adam and Eve and put them in the Garden of Kaab in the Greek, which means the place of misery, pain, and suffering. But he didn't. He put them in the Garden of Eden, because marriage was meant to be a place soft and pleasant, pleasurable, full of delights. That's what God has always wanted. He wanted it to be a place of intimacy. Let me define intimacy for you. Intimacy on your outline is inner closeness and depth of relationship. If you look in the dictionary, that's what you'll find. Inner closeness and depth of relationship. Let me take it a little step further. It also has to do with complete mutual awareness and access to one another. Complete mutual awareness and access to one another. And so the beginning of experiencing intimacy is understanding that this is what God has created us for. Number one, it's been created by God. You know, when we say we're made in God's image, when you say someone's a spittin' image, what do you mean by that? You say you're a spittin' image of your dad or your mom. What does that mean by that? They mean looks exactly like them on the outside, right? Well, when the Bible says we're created in God's image, that does not mean that we look like him physically. God is not a physical body. He is a spirit. But that means that we are made like him on the inside. Our inner desires, the moral imperative that we feel, the need to be in relationship, that's part of the design of God. That's what it means to be created like him. You see, God wants us to share in the glory that he has known. You see, he has been existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a perfect trinity. And folks, there is no way to define that. We don't have a human sort of metaphor that works. It's not like someone said steam, water, and ice. I mean, that's not even, that doesn't, that's one substance in three forms. You know, God is, he's one substance. And that nature of God is love. And yet he's expressed in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that community that God shares, he says, I want to invite you into that. And he wants us so passionately to be in that relationship that he said, I'm going to send my son in a physical form so you can see what God is like. So Jesus came, full of the Holy Spirit, and he demonstrated what the Father was like. See, the danger of religion, in my view, is that it's skewed. And many of you, by the way, are here today, and you've had a religious upbringing. You grew up in a church. But what religion tends to do is to skew our view of what God is like. Some of us have grown up seeing God as distant, cold, ready to just drop the hammer of judgment on us when we make a mistake. Like some president of some nation that we wouldn't even want to meet if we could. Unapproachable. God is not presenting himself that way. Rather, he came to us and said, look at Jesus, and you'll see what I'm like. What was Jesus like? Was he loving? Oh, man. He hugged little kids. He said, let the kids come. And folks, I've learned something. When kids want to be around an adult, they perceive some things about authenticity. And they wanted to be with Jesus. And he was caring and loving and giving of himself. The Bible says, Jesus spoke where he said, when you've seen me, you have seen the Father. I say to people, when you want to know what God's like, read the Gospels and read what Jesus was like, and you'll discover what the Father is like. I have conversations with people about their religion. I say to people, do you go to church? And 40% or so, the statistics tell us here in the North Hills and our greater community, Pittsburgh area, 40% of the people go to church most weekends. Did you know that? 40%. That's pretty high. 22% go occasionally. There's about a third or so, maybe 38% or so, that don't go much at all. But did you know if I asked those same people, do you have a close, intimate relationship with God? They would say, what? Huh? Because you see, they're not equating a relationship with God with going to church. Because many of them have gone to church and never had a relationship with God. And if you're here today, I'm so thrilled for you if you're here today, and you're going to hear this message, and you've been one of those people who've been trying real hard to get to God, and it's not working. Today, I'm going to give you an opportunity to discover that relationship in a personal way. I discovered that 30-some years ago, and my life just keeps growing in its passion. And I'm just longing for every person hearing my voice today to have that relationship. Because I know one thing, I know you were created with a vacuum in your heart that says, I need something. And no matter what else you put in there, it won't satisfy you until you know God. You can put every drug imaginable, you can sleep with everybody, you can dream or imagine, you can do whatever you want to do, but until you put God in that vacuum, you're going to have a hole in your heart. He created you for relationship with Him, intimacy with Him, and so I'm going to encourage you in every way possible. And it's important that you understand this, because once you're intimate with God, then you have the capacity to really be intimate with your spouse. Some of you entered into a relationship apart from Christ, and you didn't have any horsepower or any octane to put into the relationship with marriage, and therefore your marriage got all messed up. And this is important for some of you who maybe feel like, well, you know, I have a decent marriage, but it's a big deal. Well, here's the big deal. You were designed to have an intimate relationship. And everywhere I look around, you know, in our city even, people are falling. Pastors fall and have a moral failure and sleep with somebody and mess up their marriage. It doesn't just, by the way, happen to pastors and leaders. It happens to your neighbors and friends. I bet every one of you, if I sat down with you, you could tell me someone at work or someone in your neighborhood who's had an affair. And you look at their family and you say, how could they do that to those great kids? How could they just blow up something so valuable? Let me just tell you how they do it. They do it because inside of them there's this craving for intimacy. They were born with it. And if they don't find it, they just, they go out to lesser things looking for the answer. And the evil one makes you believe that by getting involved somewhere else that you'll find it, and you don't find it. And then you've destroyed the essence of what was designed to be the answer all along. Make no mistake. Every one of us is vulnerable. I'm vulnerable. You're vulnerable. Any one of us could fall. But we need to know that God wants us to be intimate with Him and one another. He created us to know that intimacy. So how do we do that? Well, once we know that that's His design, then second, we've come to see, as Jesus said, that it requires a leaving of your father and mother. This, again, as I said last week, you've got to express value, and you express value by what you leave. It's very important that that gets established early on. Intimacy requires that you demonstrate that this person's the most important person in your life. I remember about, it's been about five years ago that my daughter Amy's husband, his name is J.D., he came to ask me to marry Amy. It was after a Wednesday night service. And I went upstairs, and he was up there waiting outside my office, and he said, Pastor, I need to talk to you for a little bit. And I said, fine. I thought maybe it was something to do with work. I knew that they were serious, but I wasn't quite ready. I mean, I'll tell you what. When the Bible talks about leaving your father and mother, there's something that just gets kind of ripped out of your heart. How many dads have given away a daughter? You know what I'm talking about. It's just not a great joy necessarily to know that this little girl that you've loved and cherished and tried to protect is going to be going away, especially into some great big guy like that, you know? And so J.D. comes in, and he was such a gentleman, and he just did it so right. And he told me all the things that he felt for Amy and all the things he was hoping to do, and I'm just sitting there like, and he said, so I'd like to ask your permission to marry your daughter. I said, I'll think about it. That's honestly exactly what I said. So he left, and he was quite shaken. I got home, and I said to Carol, well, gee, J.D. dropped a bomb on me tonight. He said, I want to marry Amy. And she said, well, what did you say? I said, well, I said, I didn't think about it. She said, you pick up that phone right now and call him. And I did, and poor guy. I guess he had a couple hours of agony there, but I mean, I just, you have to understand it. For a dad, you realize that it's never going to be the same. Because you see, what happens then, once that marriage takes place, listen now, in the eyes of God, that relationship becomes closer than the father-daughter, mother-daughter bond. That relationship now has a higher place in the eyes of God. That's why God says, I hate divorce. Because now you've broken apart what God put together. That's not to lay any guilt on you. I know the pain that some of you have been through in divorce, and we're going to encourage you with a message in a couple of weeks on that. But God wants us to stay together because he's created something new and precious. But it requires a leaving. It requires a reprioritization of what you value the most in your life. Remember, Jesus demonstrated how much he loved us by what he left. He left the glory of that intimate relationship beside the father, and he came down to earth and put on skin like we have. And then he loved us enough to go all the way through the journey to the cross, and then to die on the cross, and to stretch out his arms and say, I love you this much. That's the measure of what I've left. And when you hear that, I hope it just makes your heart jump and say, I don't deserve that love. And you're right. But you can receive it, and you can grow in it, and you can live in it. And so if you're in a marriage today, I want to say to parents whose kids are married, don't mess in that marriage too much, moms and dads. Let the kids learn how to make it on their own. And I want to say to the kids, hey, don't go running to mom and dad every time you've got a problem. Intimacy only comes when you learn to leave, and then to cleave. Number three, you've got to build oneness. You've got to build unity together. God creates something new. The two are no longer two separate, but they're now one. And I can't explain. This is kind of like the Trinity. I can't explain this, but God takes two complete separate individuals, and in his eyes, the Bible says, they are meshed into one. So that when he looks down, he doesn't see Scott and Missy as two separate people. He sees Scott and Missy as one. Now, that's a mystery. But the Bible says that marriage is a mystery, Ephesians 5. God's created a new thing, and he wants us to share in oneness with himself, and oneness with one another. And this can only happen as you learn to trust. Trust is earned by being, as we sang earlier, in a safe place, in the safety of a relationship. You see, back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve were first placed in the Garden, it was interesting. The Bible says they were naked and what? Not ashamed. Naked in every sense of the word. Naked physically, but naked and transparent in terms of their soul and emotions. And the reason why they weren't ashamed was because there was no sarcasm, there was no criticism, there was no making fun, there was no belittling. But then interestingly, in Genesis 3, after they fell into sin, what was the first thing that Adam and Eve did? They hid from God, they covered up, and secondly, they put on some things and they hid from one another, didn't they? Why? Because you see, sin damaged their transparency. It was no longer a safe place where there is sin in a relationship, or sin in the individuals. You cannot have intimacy. Sin creates a violation. Let me just say this, if there's sin in your life, you can't have intimacy with God either. If you're harboring some secret sin and you think, well, nobody's really known about it, God knows about it and you can't be intimate with Him either. It says there in your outline, Ephesians 4.31, that you can grieve the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit wants to get near to you and He can't even draw near because you're grieving Him with your anger and temper and rage and bitterness or pride or whatever it is. Oneness only comes as we allow God by His blood to forgive our sin and then we are in trust as we obey Him. And the same in a marriage. Oneness grows as we experience... You see, God wants us to be so one with Him that we have the mind of Christ, right? Have this mind among you, Philippians 2.5, that we know the will of God on a daily basis, that we feel the passion of God and compassion of God for the... God wants total oneness with Him just as He wants oneness with each other. And that's why spouses who are growing in love with each other and growing intimacy, they sometimes begin to sense the same thing. They sometimes think the same kind of way. I'd like to go here and do this. Yeah, I was thinking that too. We even joke about it but spouses are really close. Partners are really close. They even, when they get older, look like each other. They literally become one. But it's not always easy. And make no mistake, this is a journey that requires you to be in it for the long haul. I want you to hear a little story this morning, a little testimony of a couple that made a decision along the way that they didn't want to live a lie. They didn't want to pretend to be getting along. They wanted to deal with how they were really feeling. And I want to thank them for coming. Would you give a warm welcome to Bill Parton and Kimberly Harness as they come to share their testimony? Come on, give them a good welcome. This is tough to do. Hey, Kimberly. Bill, thanks so much for sharing. Appreciate you guys opening your hearts to us. Good morning. We are the couple some look at and say, wow, they have it all. Cute-looking couple, nice family, beautiful daughter, great jobs. Hey, they even have a nice house, cars, lots of friends. They go to North Way and they volunteer their time. Some even tell us that we act like newlyweds and are surprised to learn that we have been married for 12 years. What they do not see is the struggle and the pain going on, on the inside. We have fooled a lot of people for a very long time, and we even fooled ourselves into believing that we were happy. Early in our relationship, we bought into the lies that society puts upon us. Marital bliss just happens. Marriage is about finding the right person to meet your needs, or that marital problems can be solved by some book, cassette tape, or videotape. Believe me, we bought into a lot of that. This is before we came to know Jesus Christ. We have a three-step forward, two-step backwards marriage. It feels as though we may be making progress, and then, wham, something comes up that tears us apart. Some days are good and some days are awful. There are times when things are going along smoothly, no arguments or fights. Sometimes this may last several days to weeks, and then there are days when we cannot get through a couple of hours without arguing. Hurtful words are said that cannot be taken back. Feelings are hurt. Pride steps in. Our hearts close down, and we build walls. We may resolve quickly in five minutes. Sometimes it takes longer, maybe hours. It used to take days. We have often slept in separate beds. On more than one occasion, I have left the house and spent the evening in a hotel. Some days I wonder, did I make the right choice? Did I marry the right person? What did I see in him anyway? Bill and I are quite different. Bill is emotional, sensitive, and passionate about life. He likes to paint a slow picture when he speaks. I am logical, organized, and a problem solver. When speaking, I like to go from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Yet as different as we are, these are actually the qualities that attracted us to one another. Since accepting the Lord into our lives, we are able to see each other differently. We are able to look at our marriage differently with the help of prayer and reading God's Word. I know now that Bill is God's choice for me and I for him. God has put us together for a reason, to grow one another, stretch us to places that are uncomfortable, and out of our boxes so that we may become more like him. In this growth process, we step on each other's toes a lot. We touch each other's weaknesses and soft spots, mostly unintentionally, just by being who we are. So actually, we are a perfect match in God's eyes. But sometimes this isn't always easy to see. There are times that we want to strangle one another and just give up and consider that option of divorce. But as Billy Graham's wife, Ruth, says, divorce is not an option, but murder is. Bill and I, however, have made the choice to commit to the promise that we made before God on November 25, 1989. We are thankful to our Lord God, who has worked and continues to work in our lives. He has brought many people into our lives to help us see the way, a different way, God's way. We have been involved with the Marriage Menders Fellowship here at North Way for several years. This has been a true blessing for us. It has served as a lifeline for our marriage. We are learning to appreciate and accept our differences rather than fight them. Now we are able to actually laugh at each other when we do that thing that used to drive each of us crazy. We can say, yep, that's just the way God made you. Instead of pointing the finger at each other and saying, you're the problem, you need to change, which is very, very easy to do, but doesn't get us anywhere but around the same mountain again and again. We are challenged to look at ourselves in the mirror in times of distress and ask, what is my role in this? What do I need to do to change me? We must accept 100% responsibility for who we are. And yes, this is very hard work. It is a choice, and we don't always make the right choice, but we are learning. It is a process, and it doesn't come easily. We are also thankful for the fellowship of Christians who come alongside us in our times of need and have been there to love and comfort us and speak the hard truths that we need to hear. We realize that when we start focusing on our relationship with our Lord and answering to him, it takes the focus off of each other and puts God right where he should be, at the center of our marriage. As we grow closer to him, we grow closer to each other. When our spiritual and prayer life is working, our marital life follows right along. The love and support of the kids' ministry at North Way has helped us as parents teach our daughter about Jesus. Sadly, she has been witness to some of our arguments and asked questions like, why is Daddy so angry? However, although she is only four, she absolutely knows that Jesus is in her heart and our home. She has witnessed the healing power of the Lord and what it means to give grace and forgive. The good days and good times are starting to outnumber the bad. We are learning to celebrate the victories, however big or small. When we fall, and we still do, we are learning to get up, go to God, look in the mirror, and ask, what am I to do here, Lord, and ask for forgiveness. We have affirmation that God is at work in our lives. Even though it's not always an easy road, it gives us hope and faith each day to know that he is with us and he cares. So if you're one of those couples out there, please know that you are not alone. God is with you, God loves you, and God has a plan for you too. Thank you. Thank you very much. Why don't you give each other a hug? Thanks, Bill. We're going to pray that that never happens again, that you had that argument on the way home from North Way. That would be awful. I would confess I've had the same thing. I always wondered why I saw you at the hotel out there, Bill, but now I know. Maybe we can have dinner together sometime. For a relationship to work, it takes, as I think Bill and Kim clearly said, it takes sacrifice. Write that down, it takes sacrifice. The only way you can have oneness is by giving of yourself. There's a huge difference in this nation. By the way, in this nation, we are obsessed with contractual agreements. I want to talk for just a second about the difference between a contract and a covenant, because they are very different. A contract is something that you enter into for the sake of protecting your rights, correct? You sign and say, this is what I'm going to do, and this is what you're going to do, and that protects you. A covenant, on the other hand, is something that you enter into, listen now, that demonstrates the giving away of your rights. Marriage is not a contract, it is a covenant. And yet today in America, we have made it into a contract. And you have people who are signing contractual, what we call prenuptial agreements, and they say, I'll stay with you if, if, if, and by the way, if it doesn't work out, I get this, this, and this. America is the only place that you can go just about in the whole world and break your agreement and have no fault for it. It's the only contract in America that you can do that with. If you have the concept that marriage is a contract, you can't be happy. And if you have the idea in your mind that somehow marriage is something you do for you, you'll never get to the place of enjoying intimacy. God created marriage to be a covenant where the two shall become one and they give totally of one another. How totally? Well, you know, I read this part, and I know, and I'm going to use the S word here, so be careful, but that got everyone's attention. Even the kids will go, oh boy, not talking about sin, I'm talking about sex for just a second. See, when you read the part a little bit earlier, it talked about the two will become one flesh, and that's always been in the minds of people, you know, sort of the image of the physical act of intimacy. But just, just what does that mean in terms of what you get out of it? Well, let me show you what 1 Corinthians 7, 4 says is the attitude that you need to have when you go into marriage, even about your physical body. Look at this. You want to talk about something un-American? Talk about something politically incorrect? Look at this. The wife's body does not belong to her alone, but also to her husband. And in the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone, but also to his wife. Couldn't be any clearer than that, could it? It's literally saying, and it's not a license to kind of impose your physical desire on somebody else, but it is saying that the authority you had just strictly to control your body for your pleasure and purposes is now given over and shared with that spouse. That's a pretty radical statement, friends. God is saying as an expression of just how one, I want you to be, you need to sacrifice your right to design and control your own body for the things that you want it for. That's something only God could really ask of us, isn't it? Selfish people cannot succeed in a marriage. It can't happen. And by the way, if you're kind of getting attracted to someone and you discover that they're kind of on the selfish side, if I were you, I'd get out in a hurry. If a selfish person asked you on a date, I'd say, you know what, I'm really busy that night and that night and that night. I wouldn't do it. A selfish person in a marriage is a nightmare. For intimacy to happen, you have to have two people giving of themselves. Two people united together. How do we become one with Jesus? Well, it's by sacrifice. And listen, we say to become a believer, we have to sacrifice. We have to lay down our gifts. We lay down our abilities. We lay down our time and priorities and talents and resources. And we say, Lord, we give you all that we are. And in return, God says this. He said, Behold, little flock, it's the Father's heart to give you the kingdom. I give you everything I am. How many believe, who got the better deal there, you or God? If you're giving God everything and God says, hey, I'm going to give you everything back, how many believe you came out just a little bit ahead? Absolutely. And it's the same way in a marriage. You don't come and say, these are my rights and this is what I get. You come and say, here's what I'm willing to give. And when two selfless people enter into a covenant, then you got the potential for an awesome marriage. When two selfish people enter into a contract, you have a prescription for a life of frustration and pain. Jesus came and he gave us everything. And many times when he asks us for something, we find ourselves kind of retreating and say, well, I don't know, Lord. I don't know if I can give you any more of my time. I don't know if I can give you any more of my money. I don't know if I can give you any more of my relationships. And he said, I've given you everything and I'm just asking you to give this part of who you are. And we should come openheartedly knowing that we'll never outgive God in our lives. Any sacrifice we made, we can't come close because look what he did. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. In other words, God said, he'll be the ultimate sacrifice if you receive him. And so, what this means, ladies and gentlemen, is this. If your wife has a need and she asks you to give her a hug and pull yourself away from the tube, then you just need to give her a hug and even if you miss sports center, give her a hug and keep hugging her until she says, okay, no funny business. Just do it. And women, if your husband has a need and he says, this is just a need that I'm in right now, then you just give yourself to that. No matter what that costs you in terms of inconvenience or feeling, you just have to just say, I want to make this all it can be. And that requires number five, energy. Energy. Every intimate relationship on your island requires an investment of energy. It takes some work to make this happen. As Bill and Kim said, marriage just doesn't happen. It just doesn't sort of unfold beautifully before you. Most people believe if you marry the right person, there's this interesting little bubble. Now, this is sort of a preview of next week's message about picking the right person because let me just say this, it's amazing to me how we've been sold the lie that if we pick the right person, chemistry will just happen. And I'll wake up every morning and I'll say, oh man, I can't believe I'm married to you. How many wake up every morning and say, I can't believe I'm married to you? Marriage, you know, if chemistry was what it took to make a marriage keep on working, then where would you look to see the best marriages? Who has the best chemistry in all the world? Hollywood. That's right. Hollywood. Don't they? I mean, they got the most beautiful people and talented and all the rest. But if it's chemistry, then why do people like the most beautiful, I mean like Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan or Bruce Willis and Demi Moore or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, why do they get divorced if it's just chemistry? Because they bought the lie too, you see. The chemistry just makes things work. Sadly, the richest and most beautiful people often suffer the most in marriage because they haven't been able to understand that it takes energy and sacrifice to make things work. Don't buy that lie. The Hebrew word for cleaving to your spouse, cleaving means to give energy, sustained effort. That's what it takes. And by the way, here's the interesting thing. There's great hope for those of you who married someone really different because the experts will tell you in the long run, the best marriages are the ones that require the most work. And if you married someone really different, over time, you have to invest so much to keep it going that soon, some great rewards start to happen. So if you married someone really different, I want you to turn to me right now and say, God, this is wonderful. What a great opportunity to grow in love. Because that's what it is. And by the way, here's what I've discovered after 25 years or so of being in the pastoral ministry. Most times, opposites do attract and they make the best marriages. Because why? Because you're working, investing the energy to make it work. Some of you are still squirming. Let me just describe this in a little different way as I close here. Let me talk about Jesus for just a moment in this. In the book of Revelation, Jesus, in his final kind of words that he's speaking as he ends his revelation to the churches, he says to the church at Ephesus, You've lost your first love. And then he turns to the church at Laodicea and says, You've become lukewarm. And he said, I'm going to pull my lampstand away and I'm going to remove my blessing if you don't correct this situation. Be