Finding Happiness in Relationships | Pastor Steven Furtick

because I believe that the only thing you are ever always in control of is your focus so many factors in your life are beyond your control but one thing you can always control if you learn how to do it and if you’re committed to it is your focus I think that many relationships fail not because of a loss of love but because of a loss of focus that would be one of the reasons that a church fails as well while we’re at it is that you lose your focus when you stop caring about what God cares about God will no longer back you in your endeavor and so sometimes what we call failure is really just broken focus it’s the reason why the passion that exists in some parts of relationships when it’s getting started tends to leak and you wonder where it went it wasn’t necessarily that you lost the love you lost the focus it’s very difficult to keep that first loved focus in any relationship I think Jesus is calling us back to focus if you’ll notice the bread on the sandwich from the little passage that we just read both of them start with seeking seek first his kingdom ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find on both ends of this passage where Jesus is speaking on several different subjects is this idea of focus so is your focus number one on finding or becoming finding or becoming jesus said seek first the kingdom and the other stuff will move into position but if you seek first the other stuff then you will have no center of gravity for the stuff to revolve around so it’s important that your focus is not I’ve been teaching this for years man I just go around the youth camps would teach dating seminar and I would say you know it’s not original quote from me but I’ll say it all the time because I think it’s true happiness isn’t finding the right person happiness is being the right person I’ll take it further since your applause is so tepid if you find the right person and you are not the right person what do you think you’re gonna do to that poor right person now I’m not suggesting please I’m not suggesting that if you’re not married or something like that discuss you’re not ready yet because now all we have to do to disprove that stupid theory is to look at some of the people who are married so marry doesn’t equal ready okay I can offer you many examples of that starting with myself but what I am saying is that it is important to God it’s just important to God that you have the right people in your life but the only way you’re gonna have the right people in your life is if you will be the right person in your heart that’s the only way your best that’s the only way you’re even gonna attract them to begin with and that’s the only thing you can control I can always can control whether this person comes into my life but I can control the kind of person that I am you know how you have little memories from your childhood that are so random that you wonder how they’re still up there from all these years and you kind of wish you could delete them because honestly you need that space for more important things like your children’s names and stuff that you forget sometimes but I have memory I don’t know why I remember in sixth grade they gave us the Berkeley County writing test I remember the prompt of the Berkeley County writing test when I was in the sixth grade almost word-for-word pretend that you are on an adventure or they called it a journey with your friends and on this adventure or journey you fight you come across a valuable unusual object just describe the object a couple weeks later the teacher walked in with all of our writing tests and made an announcement she said I’ve never had this happen before in however many years of teaching but every single one of you failed the Berkeley County writing test we laughed she said it’s not a joke she said you wrote beautiful essays you went into great detail elaborating on the journey with your friends but that was not the writing prompt the writing prompt was not to describe the journey the writing prompt was to describe the object all of you wrote essays about walking through the woods with your friends some of you traveled across the seas with your friends some of you flew through space with your friends it was highly entertaining but none of you described the object the object of relationship the object of love is not that somebody else would complete you I’m sorry Renee Zellweger but you got it wrong your line was touching it just wasn’t true Jerry didn’t complete you touch your neighbours say you can’t complete me say we take this stuff no other single people right there have their fists up ready to fight me when I want to preach about marriage just the way we preach and teach it we teach it like until you get married you’re like this and started I only got one question to ask you if that’s true how can you worse obsessive we worship a guy who stayed single till they killed him [Applause] I’ll be like Jesus I’m happy to say that but I’m saying I’m saying if Paul would have waited to fulfill his purpose until he had somebody to complete him we wouldn’t have 23 percent of the New Testament and we teach along with tapes of all I’ve taught it wrong we teach it wrong in in the book of Genesis God’s describing marriage he thought might Adam and even he says that you know the man shall leave his father and mother and go beat his wife and it says that the two will become one let me tell you what it doesn’t say it doesn’t say the haves will become whole but yet we teach it and we treat it and we extract it like the haves are gonna become whole but I found out if you go into a marriage half the two halves are gonna make hell not all straight reaching pastor semen that’s very true pastor is it what you can control which is what God is doing in your life or is it finding you know if I gotta find a woman then you got to find a ring and you gotta find some money you got to find a date to get married and a place to get married that everybody can come to that on the same date working out continents different continents people coming together from all these different places in the world and got to find the dresses for the bridesmaids something that they’ll all wear and won’t complain about then look good against their skin tone you know find a house and find a job and finding finding finding finding finding finding finding finding do you see the pattern here but God said while all of that has its place if you will focus on becoming remember he said the two will become one that’s the focus what are you becoming it’s a good question to ask