The Thursday Update

Lakeshore Friends—

One of the big challenges of romance is knowing if your attraction to someone of the opposite sex is true love.  Sometimes, what we think is love is actually something else: infatuation.  True love will always last, infatuation will always fade over time.

But it isn’t always easy to determine if what we’re experiencing is love or infatuation.  How can you decide which is which in a relationship that you think could lead to marriage?

On Sunday, we will provide five biblical tests to determine if what’s happening in your relationship is true love or temporary infatuation.  We’ll use 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 as our guide for making this important distinction.

If you want to better understand this difference (for yourself or for someone else you know), you’ll want to be here.

This Sunday is also Father’s Day, the day we honor our fathers for the good things that they’ve done in our lives and for the place of fatherhood in our world.  We will have a special surprise for everyone at church, just like we brought in a Lugia’s Ice Cream truck on Mother’s Day.

Warmly,

Vince

Lakeshore Friends—

When it comes to love, sex and romance, the cultural norms have made a very significant shift in our country over the past 60 years.  You could even say a radical shift has taken place in just a few short years.

The “make love, not war” movement of the hippie era in the 1960’s began a tidal wave of so called “free sex” where people connected in very prematurely intimate ways.  Marriage was no longer the standard for determining when people made intimate, physical connections.  The trend has only gotten stronger since then.  So, what has that produced?  10 million single-parent homes (24% or about 1 in 4) in America with over 80% led by single mothers.  And fewer than half of all homes in America (47%) were headed up by a married couple, down from 66% of all homes just 50 years ago.

This is not a knock on people who are in these household circumstances because we don’t know why anyone is in this situation.  Neither are we trying to judge anyone here because there may be reasons beyond their control for some people.  Rather, this is a warning of what can happen when we don’t engage in love and romance in God’s biblically ordained way.

So, what’s the solution?  It starts with our proper understanding of love, sex and romance from the God who created them.  And it ends with living by them faithfully.

We’re beginning a new series on Sunday called, “Love, Sex And Romance” where we will look at:

--A biblical framework for finding the right person in your life to date and marry (this Sunday!).

--How to know the difference between true love and temporary infatuation.

--Learning how to sort out the difference between love and sex, and why it makes a difference. 

The ways of our culture and the world have failed many people, leaving increasing numbers of people hurting and lacking in the kind of abundant life that God intended for them to live.  We need to come back to the pattern God established for love, sex and romance if we want to find the satisfaction that God promises us.

No matter your situation in life, this series will help you live with the opposite sex— from singleness to long-time married couples— in amazing ways.

Warmly,

Vince

Lakeshore Friends—

Failure is a part of life.  We all fail, and we all fail more than we’d like to think or maybe even realize.  James tells us what should be obvious when he says, “We all stumble in many ways.” (James 3:2).

The question is not if we fail, but what we do when we fail.  On Sunday, I shared Proverbs 24:16 which tells us, “Though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.”  So people who triumph over failure are the ones who get up just one time more than they fall down.

And that tells me something important: failure is never final.

As long as God is in heaven and we have breath in our lungs, our failures don’t have to be the end of the road for us.  They can be the start of a new road.  For that to happen, we need to start by getting things right with God, then right with people who we may have wronged before we can get right within ourselves.  That takes courage, but it always takes courage to get up one more time than you fall.

On Sunday, we’ll look at one of the major failure stories in the Bible, featuring King David.  We’ll see what leads us into deep failure and what gets us out of it.

If you want hope for the times that you have really messed up, this Sunday will provide it.

Warmly,

Vince