Sermon Tone Analysis

*Relationships part-II*

The other day I walked into ford auto and bought a cherry red ford mustang with black strips.

It was a convertible with 300 horsepower and high performance McPherson struts.

This car was sweet!

When I signed the papers I thought to myself, “I am going to change some things in the driving world with this car!”

I decided I am now independent.

I can go where I want; I can do what I want.

No one can stop me I am free!

Immediately I drove the car off the lot and I decided I am going to do things my way, I am out from under everyone’s authority I am my own person.

So I went to the grocery and I bought a five pound bag sugar and I began to put into the gas tank until it was all gone.

You see I was going to do things my way!

When I started the car it didn’t quit run like it did when I first got it, but I knew I was right for doing what I did because it felt so good.

As I left the grocery store I decided to go down the highway and I began to bang my car into everyone else’s.

In my heart I knew that was sorta wrong, but as the opportunity arose my heart started beating really fast, and I really wanted to, so when I banged into my first car it was sorta exhilarating and it felt really good.

After I banged into the first car it made it a lot easier to bang into others.

So I as another car I liked came around I banged into it also.

As time went by I began to bang all the cars that came my way.

I have this theory, if I give there cars a little piece of my car the owners of their cars will love me more knowing how much I gave.

When I banged into the last few cars It was really cool because I didn’t feel as bad and I didn’t get in any trouble, so I just kept going until about ten cars later I heard one of my tires blow up.

So I pulled over on the side of the highway and I put some more sugar in my car and I began to change the tire that blew up.

I wanted to be a little different so I decided to put on my car a cinder block instead of a wheel.

When I got up from changing my tire I noticed that my car’s body was just completely beat up and mangled.

It looked nothing like when I had when I bought earlier.

I became furious and decided to look immediately into the book the Maker of my car gave me.

When I turned open the book I found nothing about driving into other cars, I found nothing about using sugar for gas, and I found absolutely nothing about using cinder blocks for tires.

So I decided to take my case to the Maker.

When I drove up, the Maker of my car was just astonished, he was sad, he felt violated, and couldn’t believe what I have done.

I immediately screamed at him and told my Maker that the book he gave me sucked, and all it did was tell me what to do and not completely what not to do.

I pleaded my case but it was to no avail.

My maker after hearing me out finally said to me,”inherent within this car are the laws of its nature.

If you go against these laws, you break the law and suffer the outcome.

Logic and reason will keep you from the absurd, but rather then reading what the manual said you choose to make your own set of rules, rather than putting on the right tires you chose to go your own way, rather, then fueling your car with the correct fuel you decided to make your own, and rather than taking care of your body you have violated not only your body, but the others you crashed into!”

This upset me greatly!

Who is the Maker to tell me how to treat my care, to tell me which lane of the highway to drive on, to tell me to obey all the signs, and how my car should look?

So, I have an announcement I would like to make!  Everyone want to here it!

I am announcing that Ford no longer exists, that the laws of free will are relative to my condition and environment and those who align themselves up with the laws of Ford Company are intolerant, and I believe that people of Ford are psychotic and have some type of mental deficiency.

*Absurd?*

Now I know that this story and the so called conclusion seems to be ridicules, but it does  paint a rather real picture on how we base our relationship with God on our knowledge or lack there of, and how our knowledge God, or lack there of, effects our relationships in the world.

So many times we want things that are bigger, that are ahead of us, that we aren’t ready for.

In the scenario I spoke of I used a new mustang.

However, it was obvious from my emotional and mental state that I wasn’t ready for a car let alone a mustang!

It was clear that my heart may have wanted to drive, but I just wasn’t ready yet!

How many times in our lives are there significant or maybe even insignificant desires in our heart, things we want, things we think we need, that we, if we admit, aren’t ready for yet.

*1 Corinthians 6:12*

12 “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial.

“Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.

When we look at this passage we see a “slogan” that the pagan world held.

Not only do we see a slogan that people in Corinth held but we see what Paul answers their slogan with.

In our culture we equate freedom with fulfilling our own desires.

This is not unlike the issues Paul had to deal with during the time when he wrote the book of Corinthians.

In our own lives we are bombarded with slogans from every form of media possible.

Some of them we pay no attention to, others we absolutely love.

You see songs have slogans, there called chorus’, movies have slogans, there called categories, food have slogans; football teams have slogans, and so on.

Now in our lives we here these slogans and we immediately identify that slogan to the maker of that product.

In the same way we align our identities with these slogans and either say, “yes” that’s me or, “no” that’s not me!

For example if you own an ipod, your stating to everyone around you that you think ipods are cool and its OK to own one.

So by now you might be asking, “What do slogans have to do with anything we are talking about?”

Here is my point.

In our relationships we align what we believe with our friends and the people we date beliefs.

We all use slogans align our relationships with what they advertise about themselves.

For example, on a date we go out to eat and we have conversation.

During that conversation we are both stating little motto’s of belief and goals.

When we hear these slogans it determines whether we will continue dating.

The reason is many times these slogans or mottos are things we truly believe or don’t believe, and that belief system will most likely not only determine that person’s goals, in the short term, but your goals in the long term if marriage is the reason for dating.

Now inevitably there will be things we will not agree on completely, however, there are things as God Children’s or as his walking slogans, we must absolutely agree on.

Here in lies the problem.

When searching for a serious relationship the world will state that “Everything is permissible.”

However, when trying to understand that type of thinking we find that this type of thinking is absolutely not true.

That in fact consequences themselves make this statement point to what Paul’s truth is.

That being, “everything is not beneficial.”

When we as God’s walking slogans align ourselves with a person who is making up his own slogans or only partially believes God’s slogans then we, like the person who bought the mustang, are saying that our rules are the only rules that matter despite the wreck it leaves behind.

Despite the wreck it causes in our own lives.

There is a lot of talk about addictions and a lot of fear placed in church about having an addiction, but while I believe that addictions are horrible and should be addressed it is not in my experience in ministry the number one reason why people don’t fulfill Gods will in there lives.

The number one reason is because we go align ourselves with people and relationships that carry around there own slogans or slogans contrary to the word of God and we allow it to become permissible in our lives.

We see a hot guy or a hot girl we know that we that they sleep around, we know that they like to party, but we think we can change there slogan and instead of standing on the word of God, we choose to go by our passion rather than *by the Spirit*.

Inevitably, in every case I have ever been associated with, what ends up happening is we end up trading our believes for our passion, we rewrite Gods word to fit there slogan, and ultimately we become addicted to these unhealthy relationships.

In every case I have been associated with these Christian people never end up with what God has for them, but rather *what they want God to have for them*.

In every case the person who is not a Christian affects the person who is twice as much and that persons so called “morality” has twice the effect on the Christian rather then the other way around.

If your friends boyfriend or girlfriend are sexually immoral, or drunkards from the outset of your first conversation then it is not your job to understand there situation, get involved in the situation, or even allow there thinking or slogan into your life.

When considering relationships of any kind your job is based on two things, first the word of God and second the call of God in your life.

A coward is someone ashamed to stand on the word of God for the sake of Jesus’ name.

Two examples:

A girl I know, who is a nice girl, is currently having a relationship with someone.

They have been dating for about two or three years.

She is not a Christian and neither is he.

The only time she brings her relationship up to me is when of course she is having problems.

Well, during the years she has been dating she and her boyfriend were going to school.

After they would get done with class they would go to each others apartment and talk about school.

She would ask him about classes and he would go into great detail about his day and he would ask her about her classes and she would tell him about hers.

Well as the years went on she realized that his stories would start to contradict one another until she finally found out one day that he never was going to school at all, that for 3 years he sat and made up stories about his day and classes.

These two fought and separated for a couple of weeks and then got back together if you can believe it.

Several weeks later she decided to go over to his apartment and surprise him.

When she walked in she found him having sex with some one.

In this conversation she asked me what I thought she should do.

I of course retorted back to her before she could finish her sentence, “Get rid of him.”

So what do you think she did?

To this day she is still with him.

When I confronted her on it she actually justified her action by stating, “That although she knows he is wrong that dating is a process of sorta weeding out the worst from the worst!”

Imagine if you can what you think there first conversation was.

What are some of the slogans he through around at her.  I’ll bet he through out a bunch of slogans until he found one that she liked.