The Secret to Lasting Relationships

How many times have you heard someone say they have found the right person? How many times have you said that?

I want to share some information from Chip Ingram's book again, Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships.

Chip says that there are two questions you should ask yourself but fail to do so about relationships:

1. Am I going about finding love in a way that works?
2. Am I going about developing this relationship in a way that builds intimacy, depth, endurance, and joy?

Hollywood's Match Making Secret

Hollywood or our culture's way of seeking out relationships is a four step process:

• Find the right person
• Fall in love
• Fix your hopes and dreams on this person for your future fulfillment
• If failure occurs, repeat steps 1, 2, and 3.

The key to this method is finding the right person, and many people cycle through multitudes of right persons.

The problem with this method is that it assumes you are not a fulfilled or whole person. Unfortunately Christians buy into this method thinking that the two shall become one, and they forget that God is saying that two whole people come together to form one bond. They get lost in the idea that they are not complete without the other person.

But who really does complete us?

God's Relationship Secret

God has one thing to say about relationship - He is the only one that can complete us. The emptiness many people feel is not loneliness for another person but the separation they have from God.

I am not saying we cannot get lonely when we are single. We are relationally designed. I am saying that there are people who believe completion comes through some magical fairy spell that is seen as falling in love, and that is not how God created us.

God's design for lasting relationships is also four steps:

• Become the right person (Become a follower of Christ)
• Walk in Love - love is a choice and requires work
• Fix your hopes on God and seek to please Him through this relationship
• If failure occurs, repeat steps 1, 2, and 3.

Notice that in this model you do not have to look for the right person anymore.

If you haven't read Chip's book, Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships, then I highly recommend it. In fact, get a group together and study it together.

Don't forget that FIREPROOF comes to the theater on September 26th.