From His Heart

Speaker 1

We want to talk about how do you find the right person to marry? Proverbs 18:22 says this: "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord." You know, marriage is designed by God to be a good thing.

And see, there are a lot of people in marriage today, both in the church and outside of it, who are not enjoying marriage. But here's our question: How can you find the right person to marry?

There are three critical factors I want to share with you today.

Speaker 2

Thank you for joining us today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve as he continues through his series Foundations. And as we know, when it comes to marriage and family, God didn't leave us in the dark as to how to have a godly home. Not only did God provide instructions in His Word so that a marriage could blossom and flourish, but the scripture provides wisdom for those who are looking to be married.

And that's what our lesson focuses on today. If you're looking or just considering looking, today is your day. If you missed part one today and part two tomorrow of the lesson on how to find a good thing, you can download a free MP3 of any broadcast once it's aired at fromhisheart.org.

Just click the Listen link right now, though, and open your Bible to Proverbs 18 as we begin this foundational message on marriage about how to find a good thing.

Speaker 1

I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on the woman that was going to be my wife, Debbie K. Cannon. It was on a Sunday night after church. We had a get together, a singles get together at this guy's house. I was just starting to get involved in the singles group at Champion Forest Baptist Church.

At this gathering, I saw a girl sitting on a chair across the room and thought, wow, that girl is really good looking. I said to myself, I'd like to get to know her. I found out a little bit about her and learned that she was dating this guy, Brad. That wasn't very good, so I was kind of like, okay, well she's dating Brad; she's kind of off the market.

Then, a few months later, Brad told me, "Well, Debbie and I broke up. I'm really broken up about it." I said, "Me too, Brad. Can I have her number?" So I asked her out on May 10, 1985. I was all excited. We were going to go to dinner and then go shopping. I was working in sales and had sold a big item, so I had gotten a good commission check. I said, "Hey, will you help me spend some of this money?" And she said, "Yes."

Speaker 2

And.

Speaker 1

And it's a foreshadowing of things to come. And what I didn't know. I was all excited about the date. She wasn't excited about the date, see, because I was very shy and especially in a group. And she only knew me in a big group, in the singles group at Champion Forest Baptist Church. I was very shy, and so I didn't talk a whole lot. She told her roommate Donna, she said, "I'm going on a date with this guy Jeff. And he's just so quiet. He's just so shy. He's just so boring." That's so mean. And she said, "I'm thinking about standing him up." I'm glad she didn't tell me that. But then in Debbie's mind, she said, "But I kind of like Jeff's friend Stan. And maybe if I get to know Jeff better, I could get to know Stan better." So I just said, "Well, at least I'm in there somewhere." You know, I figure in.

We went out on our date Friday night, May 10, 1985, and we had the best time. See, I was really good one on one. I wasn't so good in a group. And so we were just one on one. She's like, "Man, this guy just opens up, and he's fun, and he's fun to talk to." We just had a great time. I took her home that night. Donna had gone out on a date. Debbie's friend, she was all excited about it, her roommate. They came home and compared notes, and Donna said, "Oh, I had a terrible date." And Debbie said, "Well, let me tell you about my date." And then she said this: "I think that might be the guy I'm gonna marry." She told me that later on, and I was like, "Hold on, cowgirl. I'm not that easy. I barely know you." So it wasn't until March 15, 1986, that we actually got married.

We're in a series called the Divine Design: God's Plan for Marriage and Family. Today, we want to look at how that starts. You know, we used to have a little poem when I was in elementary school, especially if they thought you liked somebody. You know how that is when you're in third, fourth, fifth grade, you like this person. It would be, "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage," or something like that. You know, we have that little thing, "so and so and so and so, sitting in a tree K I S S I N G." You remember that? Don't look at me like I'm crazy. I didn't make that up.

So we want to talk in our series about how to find the right person to marry. Proverbs 18:22 says this: "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord." You know, marriage is designed by God to be a good thing. The Hebrew word for good means to be acceptable, pleasing, beneficial, delightful. He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and he obtains favor from the Lord. He obtains goodwill and delight from the Lord.

Here's the sad reality when it comes to marriage. People in our world today don't see marriage as a good thing. They don't see Proverbs 18:22, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord." I had a Sunday school teacher who used to kind of tease about this verse. It was a singles class, and he said, "Yeah, he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. Because he who finds a wife needs all the favor he can get." That was kind of his take on Proverbs 18:22.

See, there are lots of bad marriages. There are a lot of people in marriage today, in the church, outside of the church, and they're not enjoying marriage. If you look at a scale of marriage from 1 to 10, on the low side is terrible, on the high side is terrific, and in between is tolerable. The sad reality is so many marriages are in the terrible, tolerable range. Not very many marriages are terrific on a 9 or a 10. And it's just like, wow.

Now, I tell couples this all the time. On a scale of 1 to 10, God wants your marriage to be a 12. He wants it to be off the charts great. But so many marriages aren't. I remember my pastor, Damon Shook, said to me one day as I was working underneath him at Champion Forest and he was mentoring me. He said, "Jeff, I've done enough counseling of couples that are in crisis in marriage to know this. It seems to me that the number one problem in marriage is people make a bad choice. They make a short-sighted choice. They make a snap choice in something so important in marriage."

When Debbie and I got married, she made a little cross stitch that we had hanging right at our entryway inside the house. It says, "Choose your love, love your choice." Now, we knew that when we got married, divorce is not an option. We took that word out of our vocabulary. Whatever we are going to face as a couple, we are going to face it together, and we're not going to get divorced. We burned the ship of divorce that so many have in the harbor. If this doesn't work out, I'll just bail out. Debbie and I said, "We're not going to do that. We're never going to use that word. I don't care how mad we might get at one another, how frustrated, how hurt our feelings are, we're never going to use that word." Because that word, that's like the nuclear option. You just throw that out. "Well, we can just get divorced." You don't want to ever do that. So we're going to love our choice.

But here's the thing. For those of you who are not married but want to be married one day, this message is really geared to help you make a good choice. For those of you who are married and say, "Yeah, that's my problem. I made a bad choice." Choose your love. You've already done that. Now, love your choice. Love your choice. What we tell people at family life and marriage conferences that we've done over the years is, "Listen, we don't know, this might be your first marriage, your second marriage, your third marriage, your fourth marriage, your fifth marriage. We want it to be your last marriage. We want you to love your choice." You can't unscramble eggs. You can't go back in time and say, "Oh, I wish I had known this stuff 30 years ago." Well, it's today, and this is all you have. So love your choice, and God will give you the grace to do that.

But here's our question: How can you find the right person to marry? He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor. Three critical factors I want to share with you today. Factor number one: To find the right person, be the right person. To find the right person, be the right person. It starts with you. It starts with you. Work on you.

Now, we've all seen people who have gotten divorced, and then they're back on the market, so to speak, and they don't want to be single. They want to be married. So they're back on the market. I've seen this time and time again. What do you see? Here's a guy, and he kind of let himself go in his marriage, and then he gets divorced. What does he do? He immediately joins the gym. "I'm gonna join the gym, and I'm gonna get on a diet. I'm gonna lose weight, and I'm going to the tanning booth place, and I'm going to the doctor and getting some hair weave." You know, and I'm not making this up. I had a customer like that. He's just like, "Hey, you look different." "Yeah, I got divorced." It's like, "Well, I wish you. I think your wife wished you had done that before you got divorced."

But we work so much on the outside. That's not what I'm talking about. Be the right person. There's nothing wrong with looking your best on the outside. That's a plus. But work on the inside, on the inner person.

Speaker 2

Wise advice to evaluate about ourselves and contemplate how we can each be honest about what is on the inside. And seek to give God our hearts more deeply. You're listening to part one of the lesson "How to Find a Good Thing" from Pastor Jeff's five-message series, Foundations. He'll be back in just a moment to continue today's message.

Now, there is one foundational truth we need to understand in order to serve God the way He created us to serve Him. People are searching for something solid, something they can build their lives on. But the messages they hear each day pull them in every direction except toward God. This confusion is not accidental; it's absolutely intentional. By the devil. Behind the disorder stands the master deceiver, the father of lies. He is none other than the devil himself, and he is the very first purveyor of fake news.

That's why Pastor Jeff has written a new book called "The Devil's Newsroom." Pastor Jeff would like you to get one into your hands and into your heart to help you discern the enemy's lies and counter them with the real truth of God's word. This book is our special gift of thanks to you for your support this month of any amount to From His Heart. Learn how to silence the devil's fake news as you tune your heart to hear the voice of God.

Call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) or go to fromhishheart.org and make that gift. When you do, we'll send you the book "The Devil's Newsroom." Again, call 866-40-BIBLE or go to fromhishheart.org. Thank you for praying about what you can do to help us expand this From His Heart ministry around the world.

Now, back to our lesson today, "How to Find a Good Thing," Part One.

Speaker 1

An excellent wife who can find? For her worth is far above jewels. Proverbs 31:10. If you want to find an excellent wife whose worth is far above jewels, then work on you so that you'd be an excellent husband, an excellent man, a man of honor and a man of integrity. A woman of honor and a woman of integrity wholeheartedly pursue the Lord. Matthew 6:33 says, "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things." What things? The things we worry about. All these things will be added. Psalm 84:11 says, "For the Lord your God is a sun and his shield. The LORD gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly."

Hey, you have a promise from God. In Psalm 84:11, if you will walk uprightly, he won't withhold any good thing from you. Now it's his timing, not your timing, but he promises that he who finds a wife finds a good thing. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly. So wholeheartedly pursue the Lord. God has given us a promise. Jeremiah 29:13 states, "If you seek me, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart." So put your whole heart into growing in the Lord, seeking the Lord, walking with the Lord, and then, as you are becoming the right person, honestly deal with your emotional baggage.

Listen, everyone has emotional baggage. Everybody has been hurt in life. Everybody has faced difficulties in life. Everybody's been battered and beaten, so to speak, in life. What do we tend to do with our issues? We kind of push them over into a closet somewhere in some corner of our heart and we're like, "Oh, I got this hurt over here." Well, I don't want to deal with it, so I just push it over here and I push it over there. I've told you before about growing up; my parents, we didn't have a garage that was used for cars. It was used for junk. It was just the place where you just put everything that ended up in the garage. You didn't want to mess with it anymore; you just put it in the garage.

Every now and then, my parents would say, "Hey, this Saturday, don't make plans because we're cleaning the garage." Oh, we didn't want to do that. That place is a disaster area. We're going to clean the garage. That would be awful. Why are we going to clean the garage? Because we thought maybe we could put a car in there. There's no room for a car in here; it's just filled with junk. That's the picture of so many people's lives; they hide things away and they have all this emotional baggage, and they close the garage door, so to speak, and they just say, "Don't ever go in there. We don't ever go in there."

You have to go in there emotionally. If you're going to be the right person, you have to deal with your emotional baggage. We all have it. Now, here's the thing we used to say at Champion Forest in the singles group: you're either single for a season or single for a reason. So if it's a season, you just wait on the Lord. If it's a reason, you got to work on the reason. Now, some of the reason might be external, and there's nothing wrong with going to the gym and that kind of thing and eating well; those things make you look better. But you want to work on the hidden person of the heart, the inner man. That man is important. That part of you is critically important.

And that's going to require looking in the mirror emotionally and spiritually. Where am I and what do I need to do? Psalm 139, where David says, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." I have to deal with the baggage. The girl that led me to the Lord had tons of emotional baggage. She didn't just have an 18-wheeler full of emotional baggage; it was a boatload. It was several 18-wheelers just going down the road of emotional baggage. She hadn't unpacked any of that stuff.

And so I didn't understand. Man, you have so many issues: trust issues, jealousy, and insecurity, all this stuff. It was just overwhelming. She was single for a reason. I learned pretty quickly in our relationship—now, this was high school senior year—but I learned, hey, you don't want to get hooked up with a girl who has emotional baggage that she hasn't dealt with. We all have emotional baggage, but you have to deal with it. And this is why that is so important. Everybody has hurts in life. Hurts make you sad. Hurts make you sad. How do you deal with that hurt?

Because this is what I've found: every hurt always will turn to anger. It always does. The flip side of the coin of hurt is anger. So sad will always go to mad. How do you deal with the mad? What are you going to do with the mad? Because if you don't handle the mad correctly, you're going to turn bad. You're going to have a bad response and a bad reaction. It's going to create a chain reaction of bad in your life. Ephesians 4:26 says, "Be angry and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. And do not give the devil an opportunity."

Don't give him—literally, the word for opportunity is "topos," which means a place, topography. Don't give him a place in your life. If you don't deal with the anger correctly, bring it before the Lord. Cast your burden on the Lord. Forgive those who hurt you. If you don't do that, you will create a bitter heart within yourself and you're going to have trouble. You give the devil a place. Now, here is a little meter to check on. It's called an anger meter. It asks the question, how stressed or angry are you?

So somebody hurts you, and the meter goes up. You get somebody says something to you that cuts you down, that hurts your feelings, the meter goes up. Maybe it goes up two points, three points, four points, whatever it is. All of a sudden, you were doing great—smiley face, little sun on the bottom—and now you're at a five. And then something else happens, and you're at a seven. And something else happens, and you're at a nine. And then you lose it. You go ballistic. And so from 10, you gotta get back down to 1. How do you do that? You have to deal correctly with the sad and the mad. You have to bring that before the Lord. You have to get that out of your life.

You can't hold on to the hurts and hold onto the anger. "Be angry and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger." Get it out of your life. If you don't, what happens? Well, then you go from 10 exploding down to an 8, and you just hang at an 8. You're on the 8 on the anger meter. That doesn't mean you're going ballistic. That means that ballistic is right around the corner, and you become an angry person. If somebody cuts you off in traffic, boom, you're flipping out. Well, that should have only caused you to go up two points on the anger meter. Yeah, it did, but I'm at 8. And if you hang out at 8, it doesn't take much to get to 10.

You got to get that back down to 1 so you're right with God and right with people, and there's not this war going on inside. Proverbs 29:22 says, "An angry man stirs up strife, and a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression." Honestly deal with your emotional baggage. Get help for that. So to find the right person, first of all, be the right person. Wholeheartedly pursue the Lord and honestly deal with your emotional baggage.

The second factor to find the right person is to look up and not around. Look up and not around. Many of you remember the song from Mickey Gilly, "Looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many places." But that was his song. We're looking for love in all the wrong places. To find the right person, look up and not around. What does that mean? Look to the Lord.

Now, this is interesting. Proverbs 18:22 says, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing." The word for "finds" is the Hebrew word "matzah." M-A-T-S-A-W, matzah. Now, matzah can mean like, find, like you're searching for that. Or it can also mean to happen upon. To happen upon. It's kind of like this: you know, if you lose your wallet, you're looking all through the house for your wallet, right? But if you're just walking down the street and all of a sudden down on the sidewalk is a wallet, you didn't look. You weren't searching for a wallet. What are you doing today? Well, I'm going and walking down the street trying to find a wallet. No, you're not doing that. You just happened upon a wallet.

Hey, that's a good thing. Look what I found. It's a wallet with just money in it and nobody's name. That would be great, right? So you just find this. That's the emphasis here. That's the thing that the Lord is trying to communicate. He who finds a wife, it's not that he's searching high and low for a wife; he just happens upon a wife because God blesses him with a wife as he's looking up and not looking all around.

1 Peter 5:6 says, "Humble yourself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time." You keep looking to the Lord. You fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith. You keep working on you, and God is faithful to lead you in the path that he wants you to go. Now, to that end, you will need to be patient.

Speaker 2

Well, our time is just about gone for today, but next time, Pastor Jeff Shreve will continue this lesson about how to have a good thing. And it'll touch on the foundation of what makes a great family and a great home. And that is the woman, the wife, who is the glue that holds a family together. A perfect lesson for Valentine's Day.

Remember, for your gift of any amount from his heart this month, we'd like to say thank you by sending you Pastor Jeff's new book, *The Devil's Newsroom: Muting Satan's Fake News and Tuning in to God's Truth*. And it's our gift to you this month. Call 866-40-BIBLE to get your copy or go online to fromhisheart.org. When you're there, we hope that you'll also visit our prayer link and leave a prayer concern for people around the world to see and pray for. Just click the prayer link.

We hope you'll also take the time to listen to Pastor Jeff's radio broadcasts, TV broadcasts, and visit the *Why Jesus?* link for answers to questions so many people ask about how to have a sincere and permanent relationship with the King. It's right there on our homepage.

Well, even though we are out of time today, we trust that you'll be here next time for part two of the lesson *How to Have a Good Thing*. That's on Friday when Pastor Jeff Shreve will speak real truth, real love, and real hope to a lost and a hurting world. Don't forget, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more at promisheart.org.