Romantic Love Is a Wonderful Gift — and a Terrible God
00:00:00.000 | This week comes to an end and it has been a fruitful one with author and speaker Dr.
00:00:09.360 | Paul David Tripp filling in for John Piper who returns with us on Monday.
00:00:13.760 | Paul is the author of the book "Awe, Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say and
00:00:19.040 | Do" which easily made my top 10 best books of 2015 list.
00:00:24.400 | And this week we talked about awe and how it really does in fact relate to everything
00:00:28.640 | we do including spiritual growth and ministry aims and weight loss attempts, parenting methods
00:00:34.960 | and now we're going to talk about our expectations when it comes to marriage.
00:00:41.280 | Paul in my research into the pastoral letters of 18th century pastor John Newton, I was
00:00:47.960 | surprised how often he wrote to newlyweds to warn them about avoiding making their spouse
00:00:53.560 | into an idol of security.
00:00:57.740 | Over and over in his letters he does this and I think partly because he experienced
00:01:02.620 | it in his own marriage which was an incredible love story in and of itself.
00:01:07.240 | But the same concern lives on today through ministries like that of Tim and Kathy Keller
00:01:13.160 | who see that there's just this consuming fascination with romantic love in our culture and it shapes
00:01:20.080 | much of the popular media that we consume as well.
00:01:24.360 | The lie goes like this, if you find romantic love then your life will be safe and fulfilling.
00:01:33.320 | So much so that marriage becomes almost a type of salvation and romantic love takes
00:01:41.320 | on an almost redemptive expectation.
00:01:45.700 | So what would you say to Christians, either singles or newlyweds who are in danger of
00:01:49.560 | losing all in God by becoming preoccupied with romantic love?
00:01:55.960 | Well the first thing I would say to them is that romance is never the cause of a good
00:02:02.200 | marriage.
00:02:03.200 | Now I am by nature a very romantic man, I like romance.
00:02:08.240 | But romance is actually the result of a good marriage.
00:02:13.320 | And if you look to romance to form for you a good marriage you're going to be freaked
00:02:17.160 | out, discouraged, disappointed, ultimately hopeless human being.
00:02:23.680 | Because here's why, what is a biblical view of marriage?
00:02:28.680 | It's a flawed person married to a flawed person in a fallen world, are you encouraged
00:02:36.120 | yet?
00:02:37.120 | But with a faithful God.
00:02:39.800 | And so I'm never going to have paradise in my marriage, paradise is to come.
00:02:45.920 | I'm never married to a perfect person, that person will never be my Messiah, the person
00:02:52.440 | I'm married to has no capacity whatsoever to change my heart, that person I'm married
00:02:57.000 | to has no capacity whatsoever to bring satisfaction and contentment to my heart, they have no
00:03:05.240 | ability whatsoever to deliver me from my sin, they just have no ability to do any of that.
00:03:11.960 | And so a good marriage is a good marriage because people in that marriage realize they
00:03:20.440 | are not the Messiah to one another.
00:03:23.660 | But they don't panic because they've been given an adequate and sufficient Messiah who
00:03:30.320 | invades marriage by His grace and gives us everything we need to be where we're supposed
00:03:37.760 | to be and to do what we're supposed to do in marriage.
00:03:41.320 | Here's what this means, and sort of a bottom line, you never get your capacity to love
00:03:50.320 | from the person you were called to love.
00:03:52.720 | You never get your capacity to love from your spouse, you get your capacity to love at the
00:03:58.960 | foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have it, it's God's gift of grace to you.
00:04:07.360 | And so you don't need to look to the other person for what you've already been given
00:04:12.320 | in Christ.
00:04:13.320 | Amen.
00:04:14.320 | Specifically, what would you say to a single Christian whose loneliness feels more real
00:04:21.020 | to them than God's presence does?
00:04:24.400 | Well, my response to someone who is just overwhelmed by any human experience, whether it's singleness
00:04:37.120 | or sickness or poverty, is to examine your meditation.
00:04:45.240 | It tends to be that whatever controls my meditation will dominate my thinking and reformulate
00:04:53.960 | my desires.
00:04:55.680 | And so that's why there's a biblical call to meditate on the things of the Lord, to
00:05:02.000 | meditate, actually, on God Himself.
00:05:05.520 | What I would say is biblical faith never calls you to deny reality.
00:05:11.080 | If you have to deny reality to get peace, you're not exercising biblical faith.
00:05:16.400 | But if you allow yourself to meditate on the troubling realities of the fallen world, you're
00:05:23.840 | going down.
00:05:25.680 | And so you face those realities, but you meditate on God's glory.
00:05:31.680 | And in that way, you can be free from being overwhelmed.
00:05:35.480 | Well, we must end the week there.
00:05:38.680 | And I could talk about God's glory forever, which is what we will do forever.
00:05:43.880 | But for now, we must end the week.
00:05:46.280 | And as we do, I'm reminded of what C.S. Lewis once wrote about joy.
00:05:50.040 | Lewis said this, "All joy emphasizes our pilgrim status, always reminds, beckons, awakens,
00:05:58.640 | and desires, our best havings," he wrote, "our wantings."
00:06:04.560 | In a sense, our deepest joys in this life are a sense of our wantings.
00:06:09.760 | And you close the awe book by talking about awe as a longing.
00:06:14.000 | In a real sense, even in our awe, there is something unsatisfied at the end of the day,
00:06:19.760 | a sort of longing that remains.
00:06:22.120 | Maybe we should close here.
00:06:25.080 | Explain this phenomenon.
00:06:26.080 | Well, I think we were all hardwired for eternity.
00:06:31.960 | And I think that means that every moment of sadness, disappointment, hurt, or fear is
00:06:40.120 | a cry for another better world.
00:06:44.420 | Every moment of joy, happiness, and peace is a taste for another world.
00:07:03.340 | And that longing for paradise is at the center a longing for God.
00:07:09.940 | I love saying this.
00:07:13.140 | Paradise will be paradise because God will be in the middle of it forever unchallenged.
00:07:21.100 | That's what we're longing for.
00:07:23.300 | And every day, in some way, as I face the brokenness inside of me and the brokenness
00:07:30.420 | outside of me, whether I know it or not, I cry out for eternity.
00:07:36.540 | The awes of today are drawing us toward that moment when we will live in unbroken awe of
00:07:48.020 | God forever and ever and ever and ever.
00:07:52.700 | And 10 million years into eternity, there will be no lessening of that awe.
00:07:59.020 | Yes.
00:08:00.020 | Amen.
00:08:01.020 | This is a great place to end for now, Paul.
00:08:02.300 | Thank you for your time this week.
00:08:03.980 | Thanks for having me.
00:08:05.180 | Anytime.
00:08:06.180 | Paul Tripp, author of "Awe, Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do," one
00:08:11.020 | of my top 10 books of 2015.
00:08:12.940 | Check it out.
00:08:14.060 | We return on Monday with Pastor John.
00:08:16.180 | Until then, browse all of our episodes at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:08:24.100 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:25.420 | Have a great weekend.
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