Sermon Info
Summary
Make your commitment to God as “the One” of your life. We try to find our worth and value in our earthly relationships before we turn to God. Ruth committed her life to God. She was faithful each and every day, even through the hard times. God grew her character and prepared her for His ultimate plan for her life. Allow God to be your “One.” Trust Him and He will direct your path (Proverbs 3:5-6). God has a great plan for your life. Draw close to God and stay faithful to Him.
Content
The One: Dating & Relationships in Today’s World - Falling In Love
How God Uses Relational Difficulties for Good
Do you remember the “honeymoon” phase of your relationship? The part where you believed that you would never fight about anything? The time when you thought that your relationship was perfect? For most of us, that’s what we think the relationship will be like when we enter into it. We think ahead to plans and dreams for the future, and, most times, this does not include challenges and hardships. We only imagine the good parts.
So, when difficulties arise, they can cause a major disruption to our lives. The reality is that hard things happen in life – things like death, divorce, and broken hearts. Challenges come and with those challenges come uncertainty, change, and, at times, frustration. These circumstances can be extremely disheartening and discouraging to us, but they also can be opportunities for us to be reminded that, when the world around us seems to give way and be ever-changing, our God is the only One who does not change.
God longs for us to be in relationships with others, but He also longs for us to keep Him as the most important relationship in our lives. When we keep Him at His rightful place in our lives, when relational difficulties do arise we can rely on Him to satisfy, restore, and redeem us and our relationship. This process is part of sanctification, or the process of us becoming more like Christ. We are becoming people of noble character who rest in and trust God to take care of our relationships.
The other side to this process of trusting God in our relationships is having Christ-centered relationships in our lives. We become like the company we keep, so when we choose to be around people who point us towards Jesus, we are making the choice to put ourselves in a position to succeed and to become more like the Christ-followers around us. This also includes having godly mentors in our lives who know us well enough to ask us hard questions, hold us accountable, and point us to the truth.
Relationships matter – both to us and to God. That’s why it is essential for us to keep God as number one in our lives, then to choose to pursue godly friendships and relationships that will set us up to become more like Christ. This is how God designed our lives to be, and this is what will provide us with future success in our relationships and marriages.
What the Bible Says about Falling in Love
The story of Ruth and Boaz is a beautiful example of a relationship between two individuals of noble character who trusted God with their lives, which led them to a God-honoring marriage in the future. At the beginning of the book of Ruth, we read that Ruth and Naomi met some extreme difficulties in life, including the loss of both Ruth and Naomi’s husbands and both of Naomi’s sons. Naomi went so far as to say that she wanted to be called “Mara,” which means bitter, because of the misfortune that was brought upon her in life (Ruth 1:20-21). These two women experienced and knew what it meant to face some very hard challenges in life.
Despite her losses, however, Ruth remained loyal to Naomi and began a relationship with her God. She trusted this God that Naomi trusted, and because of that, she took the initiative to be around the right people. Per Naomi’s suggestion, she went out to Boaz’s field in order to provide food for them, and he noticed her character. Ruth 3:11 describes the interaction between Boaz and Ruth where he tells her that he’s heard about her strong character – and he was attracted to that!
Naomi became Ruth’s mentor, and Ruth trusted her enough to listen to the godly advice that she gave to her. Because of Ruth’s character and wisdom in the people that she allowed to speak into her life and the people that she put herself around, her life was completely changed. God used the hardships that Ruth faced in her relationships to bring her into a marriage that was Christ-centered – and one that later was a part of the lineage of Christ.
Who Are You Listening To?
Who are you listening to in your life? Do you have those godly friends and mentors in your life who you can turn to when the challenges in life arise? When we face difficulties in relationships, God wants us to first look to Him then to look to those in our lives who we can trust to point us to Him and give us wise counsel.
Relationships can be so beautiful and a wonderful blessing to us, but they will not be perfect. However, they can be glorifying to God, even in the face of hard circumstances.
Our job is to remember and trust that God alone is constant and in control. Then, our job is to seek out the people who can help counsel us and walk through those situations. God is sanctifying us and making us more like Him, and He did not intend for us to go through any challenge alone.
Above all, God is always there to be our constant and steadfast rock when life goes awry. We will be let down by relationships because He is the Only One who cannot and will not let us down. Cling to Him, friend, no matter what circumstance you may face.
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