Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Romancing On The Rock

AuthorHouse

Contents

Forward 9 yrs later..........................................ixChapter 1 True Love..........................................1Chapter 2 The Four Precious Presents.........................13Chapter 3 Being Romantic.....................................33Chapter 4 Respect............................................38Chapter 5 Thanksgiving or The Bedroom........................41Chapter 6 What Do You Mean "You Forgot?".....................45Chapter 7 So you want to get Romantic........................51Chapter 8 Being a Godly Father...............................58Chapter 9 Why Jesus?.........................................62Chapter 10 Showing Her You C.A.R.E...........................67Chapter 11 130 Ways to Please Your Lady......................72Chapter 12 The Bottom Line...................................87To the Ladies: Crown or Cancer?..............................89

Chapter One

Since the dawn of time man has asked the ever eluding question; what is the true meaning of love"?

No matter where one may look, all that is seen are differing views and meanings of this mysterious question handed down through the generations.

Sadly the answer to this ever-eluding question has mistakenly been the beginning of many relationships and the start of many marriages. The reason I say sadly is because once the happily married newlyweds realized that what they thought it was, which like us all, was anything but the true meaning, they inevitably call it quits, only to move on to the next relationship with the same question at hand. Nowhere is this scenario played out more than within Christ's own earthly body, the Church! There are more divorces today within the Body of Christ than there are reported within the secular world. The reasons are numerous, some even downright ignorant.

How many Pastor's do we hear talk about how God wants us to be happy which, without the proper clarification and teaching of exactly what that means, is translated into, "well my husband (or wife) just doesn't satisfy me anymore, or just doesn't understand me; surely God wants me to be happy so He won't mind if I get a divorce". It's amazing how we can twist God's words so that they suit what it is we need and not Him! Did you ever stop to think that perhaps God is not so much concerned with your happiness as He is with your soul? Do you think that perhaps that was what Paul was referring to when he was left in prison?

What is just as sad, especially within the body of Christ, is the ignorance to the fact that this very question has been answered since the dawn of time; we've just never paid any attention to it. It was more because of our own disbelief or confusion about the very author himself, rather than the true answer that has lain before us.

Or, in the case of The Church, its the lack of desire to truly seek out the answers to the questions we have, in part, because we know deep down inside the answer we find will probably not be the one we want in the flesh.

You see we have all heard, and on one occasion or another since our youth, either spoken of, or seen, some kind of a scenario play out that told us of this ever-elusive "GOD". But yet we could not seem to lay our finger on exactly who, or what, this entity was. So if we didn't really have a true sense of who He might be, we weren't about to seek out an answer from what we didn't understand, let alone believe that He had the answer to what has been one of man's most difficult questions:

What is true love?

And yet the answer has lain before us, like a treasure waiting to be discovered if but one would believe in treasure maps. Yes, God has given us that treasure map but we have either read it and only wanted to believe those sections that would pertain to our life, or, pass it off as some far fetched story of some great imaginations handed down through the years. This great treasure map ladies and gentlemen is called the Bible.

We read all about great love relationships in the Old Testament like Abraham and Sarah or Jacob and Rachel and yet not one of these relationships faired any better than those today. There was adultery, lust and just as much deceitfulness as any marriage today. Why?

Simply because they, just like us have failed to look to the very creator, who is the very essence, the presence, the magnifier, the supplier, the giver, the river, the emancipation of, the declaration of and the final authority of love Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, for their answer.

God, our Father, our creator desires us to have the very thing He created us for, an intimate relationship. He knew that sin had not only separated man from Himself but that there was a lack of any true love within the human race. Let's face it; animal sacrifices but were a temporal bridge at best. Man was simply inept to grasp a covenant covered by the blood of an animal. So our Father decided to send His one and only Son to not only be a bridge between us, to be the ultimate and final sacrifice, to be a new covenant, but that prayerfully, lovingly, by sacrificing His only and only begotten Son, that perhaps finally man would see just how much the Father truly loved us. Perhaps man would finally understand what true love really was supposed to look like! Perhaps He could teach us the true meaning of love, by being love itself.

He knew that if He could somehow get us to understand the true love that He had for us, by being the perfect example of love that perhaps we would begin to share His love for us with one another.

So God gave us His one and only Son, Jesus Christ.

This is how God expressed His love for us!

We expressed ours how? By crucifying Him!

Yes, that's our love!

So our Creator, the ever patient, ever slow to anger Father that He is, through the power of The Holy Spirit, instilled upon man the answer and had him write it down, the ultimate description of true love. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, inscribed to us the perfect description of what the perfect love truly looks and acts like. Never before, nor since, has there been a greater description of what true love really is then those eloquent words written in 1 Corinthians 13:

(1) Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I have become but a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. (2) And though I have the gift of prophecy to understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (3) And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I present my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. (4) Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy, love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;(5) does not behave rudely, does not seek it's own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;(6) does not rejoice in inequity, but rejoices in the truth;(7) bears all thing, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (8) Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail, whether there are tongues they shall cease, whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. (9) For we know in part and we prophesy in part. (10) But when that which is perfect has come, than that which is in part will be done away. (11) When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child, But when I became a man I put away...