From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Hey, listen. Every one of us, as we wait on the Lord for whatever we're praying about—now we're talking about waiting for the spouse that God has for you, but whatever it might be—you're praying about something and it's not happening yet, you need to just wait with hopeful expectation.

"Yet" is an important word for us to put into our theology. Yet. Hey, just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it's not going to happen; it just hasn't happened yet.

Guest (Male): God really does want you and me to have great marriages and families. But for those to whom it hasn't happened yet, how can we do life God's way in order to receive the blessings He has waiting for us? This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. Thank you for joining us today as we begin to move through Pastor Jeff's new four-lesson series, Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way.

Today we'll be in part two of the first message, Looking for Love. Now, the series Love and Marriage, along with the booklet I Still Do from Pastor Jeff and his wife Debbie, are our two gifts of thanks to you for your support this month of any amount. This is an important month as it is the last in our fiscal year, and we want to thank you for your support as you pray about what God would have you do. Just go to fromhisheart.org to find out more. Now, though, turn in your Bible to Psalm 37. Here again is Pastor Jeff Schreve.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: This is what the Lord says in Psalm 37, and it's a word for all of us today: "Do not fret because of evildoers. Do not be envious toward wrongdoers, for they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret; it leads only to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land."

I want to share with you three encouragements from Psalm 37. These are encouragements for all of us regardless of what we're facing. But listen, let's just be honest. When you're a person who wants to be married—I'm not talking about when you're in junior high or high school; I'm talking about when you're an adult and you want to be married—and you don't see anybody on the horizon, especially for a woman who knows that if I want to be married and I want to have kids, there's a window in there for me. It can be a really tense time. It can be a really worry-filled time for a woman like that.

I'm going to share a little bit in this message, so here are three encouragements. Number one, you can trust in the Lord and practice faithfulness. You can do that. I can do that. We can do that. Nobody's preventing you from trusting in the Lord. Nobody's preventing you from practicing faithfulness. Look at verse three again: "Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness."

The key word in the Bible is trust. That's a key theme throughout all the Bible. I mean, if you boil it down to two words—what is God's word to us, what does He say to us, what does He want us to do—it would be two words: trust Him. That's what God wants you to do: to trust Him, to believe Him.

The Lord is the source of every good gift. Okay, so here you are, we're talking about finding the right person, right? And we're talking about being the right person, and we're talking about this desire in your heart to be married. Well, who has everything that you need? God. He has everything that you need.

As you get your heart right with Him, as you get your life right with Him, He is the source of every good gift and the Lord rewards faith and faithfulness. The Bible makes that clear. God is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Hebrews chapter 11, verse six: "Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him."

Second encouragement: not only can you trust in the Lord and practice faithfulness, but you can delight yourself in the Lord. Delight yourself in the Lord. Now, this is connected to trusting in the Lord and practicing faithfulness, but I like the way the scripture says it in verse four: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."

I think that's a verse that every single person who wants to be married should memorize because that is a promise from God. Now, what does it mean to delight yourself in the Lord? That word "delight" is an interesting word in Hebrew. It means to make yourself soft or pliable. When you delight yourself in the Lord, you're soft in the hands of the Lord. Be soft clay and say with Jesus, "Not my will, but Yours be done."

Delighting in the Lord comes with a great promise: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." That's a wonderful promise. So, that is not a promise that says, "Hey, if you'll just butter God up like He's the rich uncle, then you can get what you want." It's not. That's not what it says.

It says if you make yourself soft and pliable in the hands of the Lord, you let Him form you however He wants to form you, then He will give you the desires of your heart because the desires of your heart and the desires of His heart will be the same. You're going to be conformed to His image. You're going to have a heart that's so much in love with Jesus you just want what He wants for you, and He gives you the desires of your heart.

Now, listen, to be married is not a bad desire. Most of us have a desire to be married and have kids. That's a normal, natural thing; God kind of made us like that. It's a special gift from God, the gift of celibacy, to live your life and not be married. I remember when I was in college, we talked a lot about that. You know, "Do you think God's called me to be a celibate?" I said, "I hope not." I didn't want to do that.

But see, if God did call you to be celibate, you'd be okay with being celibate. How do you know that God hadn't called you to be celibate? Because you have a desire in your heart to be married. That's how. And so you bring that desire before the Lord. Who gave you that desire? It's not a sinful desire to want to be married; it's a godly desire.

So you bring that desire before the Lord, and Psalm 37, verse four is something that you can bring before the Lord and say, "Lord, this is what You said. You said if I would delight myself in You—and Lord, I want to do that; I want to be soft clay in Your hands—You said if I did that, that You would give me the desires of my heart. And so, Lord, I'm bringing the desires of my heart before You."

Ruth didn't know Psalm 37; it hadn't been written yet. But that's what Ruth did. She was trusting the Lord. She was cultivating faithfulness in her life, and she no doubt shared with the Lord what the desires of her heart were.

Now, when I was in college, there was a teaching going around that people talked about a lot. They called it "name it and claim it." Name it and claim it. You don't hear that much anymore; it was part of the prosperity gospel. "Hey, what do you want? What can you imagine? Just name it and then claim it in Jesus' name."

People say, "Oh, that sounds pretty good. Well, I'd like to have a car, but not just any car; I want to have a Bentley. I want to have a BMW." Well, just name it and claim it because God is the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. You can never ask God for too much.

But then they start putting greed in there; they start putting their will in there. "What do you want?" The Bible doesn't teach name it and claim it. The Bible says you look to see what God has named. You let God name it, and then you claim what God has named. Psalm 37, verse four is what God has named: "Delight yourself in the Lord," and God says, "and I'll give you the desires of your heart." You can claim that because God named it, and you can bring that up in prayer to the Lord.

God loves it when we pray His word back to Him. Some people really struggle with prayer; they don't know what to pray. Pray God's word back to Him. Find promises in the Bible and pray them back to the Lord and say, "Lord, this is what You said, and I'm trusting in Your word." This comes with a great promise.

Now, Debbie, my wonderful wife—we're getting ready to celebrate 39 years of marriage in March, March 15th; you can get us a gift—but her story is different from mine. I grew up in a religious family but not a Christian home. I was the fifth of six kids. We were Catholic and I knew about God in here; I didn't know the Lord in my heart.

So here I am, I'm living like all my buddies. We're playing basketball, chasing girls, getting drunk on the weekends, that kind of stuff. I was just living that kind of life. Well, Debbie grew up as a pastor's kid. Debbie gave her heart to Christ when she was 12 years old, and it was real. But she did like so many others: she got away from the Lord as she got older. I didn't come to Christ until I was 17, and so I'm all in at 17, and the Lord is changing my life.

I go off to college, and I don't go off the rails in college; that's when I really grew in my relationship with the Lord. And so I'm praying in college, "Lord, do You want me in the ministry?" I always sensed that God was calling me in the ministry. I went home to Houston, got a job, and got involved at Champion Forest Baptist Church. I just dug in. "Man, I'm going to grow, and I'm going to get involved here."

Well, Debbie got away from the Lord and then had two failed engagements, two lugnuts that would have been terrible if she had married those guys. She would agree with that. But she wasn't walking with the Lord. She wasn't living for the Lord. And finally, she came to a breaking point in her life, kind of like the prodigal son where she came to her senses, and she said, "Why am I living this way?"

She got her heart right with the Lord, and she talked to her dad. She was living on the other side of Houston from where her dad pastored, and her dad said, "Debbie, you need to go to Champion Forest Baptist Church. That's a good church. Damon Shook is a great pastor." And so she started going, and she started getting involved in singles. She didn't know anybody; she just went into the singles group.

Well, it was about six months to the day of her getting her heart right with God and making a commitment to God. She said, "God, I'm not going to date anybody who's not a Christian. And I'm not going to date anybody who's not a growing Christian. And I'm not going to date anybody that goes to another church; I want them to be a Southern Baptist of my like faith, so we're not having to go back and forth on what you believe this or whatever."

She said, "I want somebody that's like-minded in my faith." And she said, "Lord, I'm committed to that." And she did; she went forward like Ruth out in the field. And in six months' time, God gave her me. She didn't know that I was Boaz when we started. She thought I was boring. She really did. But as I told you just a few months ago, after that first date, she told her roommate Donna, she said, "I'm going to marry that guy one day." That was Boaz. That's what God had for her because she started to be soft clay in the hands of the Potter. Debbie had a desire to be married and have a family, and God brought us together.

Guest (Male): How wonderful to know that God gives you and me the desires of our hearts when we delight ourselves in Him. Pastor Jeff Schreve will return on From His Heart in just a moment to close out today's message, Looking for Love.

Have you ever been driving down the highway, flipping through radio stations, and aching for a word that speaks to your soul? In a world filled with noise and confusion and brokenness, people are still hungry for truth, hope, and the saving message of Jesus Christ. And that is why radio remains such a powerful tool in God's hands.

We look to the future for what we're about to do, and this month we come to the end of our fiscal year, and we'd be deeply grateful for a generous and extremely timely gift this month. For your support, we'll say thank you by sending you Pastor Jeff's new series that we're in now, Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way. We'll also send you Pastor Jeff's companion booklet, I Still Do, written by Pastor Jeff and his wife Debbie, both for your gift today. Call 866-40-BIBLE, 866-402-4253, or make your gift online at fromhisheart.org. Now let's conclude today's message, Looking for Love. Here again is Dr. Jeff Schreve.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Listen, you can trust the Lord and practice faithfulness. You can delight yourself in the Lord. And thirdly, you can patiently and confidently wait for the Lord to act. Psalm 37, verses five through eight in the Good News Bible says this: "Give yourself to the Lord, trust in Him, and He will help you. He will make your righteousness shine like the noonday sun. Be patient and wait for the Lord to act. Don't be worried about those who prosper or those who succeed in their evil plans. Don't give in to worry or anger; it only leads to trouble."

Now, it's hard to patiently wait and confidently wait, especially when we're talking about wanting to be married. As a woman, you have this time window for having kids, and you're saying, "Lord, I'm patiently waiting, but I'm impatiently waiting. And Lord, I really need You to bring Mr. Right by." You have all these ideas of what Mr. Right should be, and then he doesn't come by. Then it's, "Lord, I'm looking for Mr. Okay." And Mr. Okay, you don't see Mr. Okay. "Lord, I'm looking for Mr. So-so, just a guy with a heartbeat and a job." You can just start sinking in that. Don't.

Wait patiently for the Lord and confidently for the Lord. Now, waiting is active; it's not passive. I think that's where we get ourselves in trouble. We think about waiting like going to the doctor; you go into the waiting room, and what are you doing in the waiting room? You're just waiting.

I remember when I broke my leg as a 10th grader in high school. Houssam Barani was my orthopedic surgeon, and we'd go there to wait and wait and wait because he saw like 70 people in the afternoon. We would just wait for hours. You're a kid in 10th grade, and there is no internet, nothing like that, so you go through the few magazines he's got there and then you're just sitting there. And it's tough.

Well, sometimes we think waiting on God is like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. Waiting is active; it's not passive. So, let me give you an example. I'm waiting on God to give me a job. Maybe you don't have a job and you want God to give you a job, and you're waiting on the Lord patiently to give you a job. Well, that doesn't mean you sit at home just waiting for somebody to find you. You get out there, you get your resume out there, and you start talking to people. You're trusting God to provide the job, but you are working while you're waiting. You're active, not passive.

Now, you're single and you want to be married, and you want to find the right person. How do you do that? Well, you wait actively, you don't wait passively. As my sister-in-law Jerel told my daughter Amy when she was single, "They're not coming into your house. You've got to get out there." And you've got to get to dating, and you've got to get to social circles where you see people, and you put yourself out there in the stream of things.

You know, it's hard to steer a ship that's not moving. And so when you start moving, then God can steer you and direct you where you need to be. With Ruth, she got out there, and God directed her to Boaz's field. If she had stayed home with Naomi and just said, "I'm just going to pray that Boaz comes to the door," he's not coming to the door because he's not coming to your house. You've got to get out there. And so that is waiting actively and patiently, but not passively.

Waiting is hard, but it is necessary. And waiting is hopeful, not fretful. So three times in the first nine verses of Psalm 37, he says, "Do not fret, do not fret, do not fret." What does it mean to fret? Well, that word means to be angry and agitated and bothered. Hey, waiting is hopeful; it's not fretful.

I love that song from Snow White, "Someday My Prince Will Come." Remember that song? Barbra Streisand sang it; she's got a pretty good voice. Anyway, "Someday," the lyrics say, "my prince will come. Someday I'll find my love, and how thrilling that moment will be when the prince of my dreams comes to me. He'll whisper 'I love you' and steal a kiss or two. Though he's far away, I'll find my love someday, someday when my dreams come true."

Hey, listen. Every one of us, as we wait on the Lord for whatever we're praying about—now we're talking about waiting for the spouse that God has for you, but whatever it might be—you're praying about something and it's not happening yet, you need to just wait with hopeful expectation.

"Yet" is an important word for us to put into our theology. Yet. Hey, just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it's not going to happen; it just hasn't happened yet. God promised Abraham and Sarah a son, but he didn't come for years and years and years. Well, Abraham could have said, "I guess the promise is not going to come to fruition." No, the promise is still there; it just hasn't come to fruition yet because God doesn't work on your timetable or my timetable; He works on His timetable.

And so just because something hasn't happened doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Listen, it is better to die in faith than to live in doubt. You just have that word "yet" over all the things that you're praying for that haven't happened. You say, "God, I've been talking to You about this and bringing this prayer request to You year after year after year, and it hasn't happened yet. And so I'm still going to trust You."

Because You're the God of hope. Romans 15:13: "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." God is the God who can do anything. As we trust Him, we trust Him with all our heart, we delight ourselves in Him. He is the God who comes through. And God—it's so interesting—because God seems to move so slowly in our estimation, but then when He moves, it is rapid. And that's just how God does it.

Now, this topic is near and dear to my heart because with three daughters, my oldest daughter, Jill, she found Jay Budzilowski as soon as we moved here. Jay's a wonderful guy; he was her Boaz. And then Sarah's always been a guy magnet, our youngest.

But then we have Amy in the middle. For whatever reason, things didn't work out with Amy and boys, not in high school. Then we said, "Well, Amy, when you get to college, there are going to be a lot of guys, and you're so sweet and beautiful and everything, they're just going to be coming out of the woodwork." They didn't come out of the woodwork. She blamed me. She said, "Dad, you said they'd be coming out of the woodwork." I said, "Yet. Let's talk about yet."

Amy was worried, bothered, agitated. She didn't know why things weren't going as fast as she wanted them to go. "God, what are You doing?" And Debbie and I just kept encouraging her, "Amy, you just be like Ruth. You just be faithful to the field. God will lead somebody to you as you're just trusting Him, as you're faithful, as you delight yourself in the Lord."

And God did do that. And listen, is that everybody's story? Does everybody's story end with a husband and a bunch of kids? No. But I'd rather die in faith than live in doubt. I'd rather trust God all the way to the grave and say, "Well, okay God, well You were enough for me and You had a different plan maybe than I had, but I'm going to trust You. And You are the God of hope, and I'm going to keep bringing these requests to You."

Because You're the God who always keeps His word. And I promise you, if you will live that way, especially in this realm of finding Mr. Right, you will become the person God wants you to be, and you will attract somebody to you that is like-minded, that also wants to grow, and God will bless.

Guest (Male): Well, we hope that these have been encouraging and hopeful insights for you today. If you'd like a copy of this message to listen to again or to share with a friend who's struggling with waiting on the Lord, go to fromhisheart.org and click the "listen" link. There too you can download a free MP3 of any broadcast and the sermon notes and outlines from Pastor Jeff, all for free.

There's an old Christian song by a popular singer from a couple of decades ago named Steve Green. He has some remarkable truth in there to hear. Here's the first part of that wonderful song: "Every day they pass me by, I can see it in their eyes. Empty people filled with care, headed who knows where. On they go through private pain, living fear to fear. Laughter hides their silent cries, only Jesus hears. People need the Lord. People need the Lord. At the end of broken dreams, He's the open door."

Will you help us open doors for people around the world this month? Thank you if you do. And with that gift, we'll send you Pastor Jeff's new series that we're in now, Love and Marriage: Doing Family Life God's Way, and the companion booklet, I Still Do, written by Pastor Jeff and his wife Debbie. Call 866-40-BIBLE or go online to fromhisheart.org. God bless you. Thank you for joining us today on From His Heart. We trust that you'll be here next time for the next lesson in Pastor Jeff's series, Love and Marriage. Join us on Wednesday for the lesson about marriage called "And It Was Very Good." That's next time, here on From His Heart.