I came across a poem this week:
“My heart was a giver And time and again
The pieces were ravaged and shaken
Broken yet longing It opened again
Hoping that love would awaken
And then my heart met her And smiled again
The hurt was no longer My heart found its friend
In giving it gained And for her it flamed
As my giving heart was taken.”

Taken. Have you ever heard that phrase when it comes to a heart?
Typically we hear “stole” my heart. Either way, it means that you are all in, completely and totally head over heels for that person you love.

Let me ask you married folks:
Do you feel that way about your spouse?

I didn’t ask if you loved every single thing about your spouse. Typically it takes people longer to identify something they love about their spouse than it does to identify something they can’t stand about them.

Joel Osteen:
“Your spouse has approximately 80% of what you need. No person has 100%. If you’re not careful, you’ll focus on the 20% and end up frustrated.”

Let me take it further: when you focus on that 20%, you go looking for it elsewhere, and while you might find 20% you were missing, you realize you lost 80% at home. Satan wold love to trade you 20% for 80%.

The goal should not be to find the 20%. It should be to get to 82%. Then 85%. The percentage of return only grows when the percentage of investment does. You might say nuh-uh. What about interest? I got you. However, you shouldn’t expect interest to be paid on the 80% when you are investing in someone else’s 20%.

Why am I yapping about percentages and interest?
Because I am convinced that your relationships will get better when you stop focusing on what you are missing and start focusing on making what you have better.

No one has a perfect relationship. You don’t even have a perfect relationship with yourself. How in the world are you going to have one with someone else?

1 Corinthians 1:10
I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

How do you think this is accomplished? Is it by complaining about what the other person is or isn’t doing? Or is it by working together towards unity?

Amos 3:3
How can two walk together unless they are agreed?

So what is the real issue here? Is it that the 20% is just that bad? Is it that one or both are refusing to meet in the middle?

Or is it that you like them, but your heart hasn’t been taken?

By the way, if you are single, don’t check out. Odds are you will be in a relationship were this will help, but even if that doesn’t happen, these truths work with your relationship with Jesus too.

What does taken actually mean? A movie with Liam Neeson. No “To lay hold of with one’s hands.” Etymology: from “tacan” to grasp

So when I ask if you are taken by someone, I am really saying:
“Do they have you in their grasp and you have them?”
“Are you completely captured by the one you love?”

Let me ask it like this: Do they have all of you?

This is the real crux of the message today: who has all of you?

Does your spouse have all of you? Are you in their grasp? Does God have all of you?

Look at Genesis 2:18-25
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

What can we learn from this and how can we embrace the idea of being taken by our spouse? By God, too

1. Don’t be alone.
I don’t do being alone very well. My DISC personality profile is ID. I am driven, but I love people more than anything. I get refueled by being around other people. Any time Monique is gone, I my sleep is trash. I don’t do alone well. A couple days? No problem. A week? Hate it. But this has to do with more than me loving being around people. It is not good when I am alone. You aren’t either.

Now, you introverted folks out there, I don’t mean it isn’t good for you to isolate in order to refuel. Monique is like this. She needs alone and quiet to refuel.

What I mean is that it is not good to be alone in two main ways:
your spirituality, which we’ll talk about next week
your marriage, and single folks, think of future and your relationship with God now.

Proverbs 18:1
Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.

If you want a successful marriage it will not happen if you are two people seeking their own desires. If your heart is taken, it isn’t yours anymore.

1 Corinthians 7:4
4 The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife.

The context of this is in terms of marital relations with your spouse. Don’t withhold from your spouse. I realize they are responsible for their own actions and though life, but if your spouse, who you’ve given your all to,
who you’ve joined together as one, is on fire and you have a water hose, how cold is it to let them burn?

But this verse hits even deeper if you embrace the principle: You are not your own.

What does that mean? It means you should never do anything pertaining to your marriage alone.

What am I really talking about here?
When you are focused only on the 20% missing, you are being alone. When you are withholding intimacy sexual or otherwise, you are being alone. When you are engaged in activities that you are hiding from your spouse, you are being alone. When you refuse to share what is going on in your life with your spouse, you are being alone. And even more than that, you are revealing that your heart isn’t really taken.

Lukewarm isn’t love. Covenant is all or nothing. And you can’t give to someone else what has already been taken.

Some of you are seeking your own things and it is creating discord in your marriage, either between you and your spouse, or you and your savior. At some point, you have to be willing to peel back the curtain and let your spouse in.

THEY DESERVE THAT.
Why? Because YOU said I DO. YOU committed. And when you did that, you joined with them. What happens to you happens to them. Whether it is lying, misrepresenting, immorality, pornography. You think this is just your little secret. You are poisoning your own body. It isn’t you and your spouse individually. You are ONE.

If it means no cell phone in the bathroom or deleting that social media account or joining the bank account together, whatever it takes, don’t be alone.

REAL PLAIN LANGUAGE:
Don’t keep anything from your spouse.

But be careful with this…
Jimmy Evans talks about being careful when bringing up things from the past that have no impact on your present or future. In unburdening yourself, you could inadvertently burden your spouse.

Monique and I had a very different moral past. Hers was much better than mine. At the start, it wasn’t an issue, but after us getting married, it because a big issue. But at one point she realized I’d already asked forgiveness and God had forgiven me, so all dwelling on it was doing was allowing a past mistake to create destruction in our marriage.

You can’t build a future by digging up the past.

2. Be a fit helper.
Look again at the passage:
v 18
It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.

v 20-24
But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The word helper in this passage is actually “suitable helper” in the Hebrew, but even more interesting, while the word helper means helper, the word suitable in Hebrew is actually, “in front of, to stand boldly out opposite.”
This is interesting for two reasons.

First, men and women are not the same, and by design. Your spouse has things in them that you don’t. I am a dreamer visionary who is always ready to charge the hill. Monique is collected and values details, loves preparedness. I keep her moving forward with vision and she keeps me tethered to the ground so I don’t get lost in the clouds. So physically and in terms of personality, your helpmate is different from you and that is not only good, it is God's design!

Second, that helpmate is designed to be in front of you. What does that mean? It is hard to focus on something that doesn’t have your attention. “Grass is greener on the other side of the fence.” Well friend, if you’d focus on your side of the fence and do what it takes to make that grass greener, you’d have greener grass. Don’t try to steal someone else’s work making the grass green.

If your relationship isn’t where you want it to be, then from last week, what are you gonna do about it?

Now maybe you say that you aren’t compatible. “We’re just not in the same place we used to be.” Well, first, no duh. Everyone changes and we change daily. But two, are we just gonna give up that easy?

“Well, preacher, we weren’t living for God when we met so we probably chose the wrong person. Neither of us were seeking God then.”

So the thought here is that because you weren’t seeking God when you met that it is impossible for your spouse to be the helper God intended for you? And that is an excuse to try something different?

Do you really think that God’s power is so limited that he can’t take two people who came together in sin and make something holy out of it? God is RENOWN for this type of thing!

Abraham was a liar.
Jacob was a deceiver.
Joseph was arrogant.
Moses was a murderer.
David was an adulterous murderer.
Peter was a impetuous fisherman.
James and John were hotheads.
Matthew was a hated tax collector.
And Paul persecuted the church and sanctioned the first martyrdom of a Christian.

If he changed all of them, do you really think he can’t change you and your spouse’s heart?

This is the problem: that we think it is up to us to fix all these issues. Sorry to keep throwing the Word back at you, but read it again.

v 18
It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.

Not YOU will make a helper, not YOUR SPOUSE.

GOD DOES IT.

As long as you have your hands on it, you are going to mess it up.

That is why if you are struggling with issues between you and your spouse, now more than ever you need to take your hands off of the solution and allow God to intervene. He might do that through another couple helping.
Maybe through a counselor. Maybe yall just need to start praying for each other every night. But one thing will have to happen: You need to give your entire heart to your spouse and to God.

God can’t fix hearts he hasn't taken.

It is so easy to get wrapped up in how the other person isn’t “holding up their end” of the helper bargain. I get that, and sometimes it is like that.
But I’ve found that people’s actions are rarely random and are most often based on circumstance. Negative actions are often a result of perceived lack in their lives.

So let me say plainly:
If your own person relationship with God is suffering, if you are not where you need to be with him, if you haven’t given everything you are to him, you cannot expect to have successful relationships with your spouse or anyone else.

Matthew 22:37-39
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

If you don’t know the love of God, then your love for others will always be missing something.

If you want to be all in with your spouse, to be a helpmate that God created you to be, ir is going to require you are all in with God.
It is that simple.

3. Be vulnerable
Genesis 2:25
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

There is a reality TV series on Discovery called naked and afraid. Ridiculous premise. They take a random woman and random man, send them out in the forest completely naked, and try to survive 14 days without help. This is so dumb.

It is almost like we are conditioned to fear vulnerability. Obviously Discovery Channel is taking this literally, but don’t think of physical nakedness, think of emotional and spiritual nakedness.

Can you be completely vulnerable with your spouse?

God wants you at a place with your spouse where there’s nothing hidden between you both.

Can you share anything with your spouse?
Can you share struggles and defeats?
Can you share good things and victories?
Can you share what you believe God is telling you?
Can you share your frustrations?
Can you share the things that make you happy?

If you can’t, then why?

Shaq
“A man should never open up to a woman. Whenever something goes down, they gonna throw it back in your face.”

Good thing Shaq is not God.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Godly love always creates room for vulnerability.

If you can’t tell your spouse what you are struggling with, it means that you don’t trust them to respond in a way that helps you.

If your spouse feels this way, you need to understand that they think you won’t respond as a helper, no matter how you feel.

You have to remember that how your spouse perceives things is often more important than how things really are. I know that sounds unfair, and it is, but if you think something is dangerous you aren’t going to try it, or at the least, you will proceed with extreme caution.

So if your spouse feels like they can’t be vulnerable with you, it doesn’t matter if you feel like they can.

It means at some point, whether it was with you or someone else, they tried to be vulnerable and they got blasted for it.

So what do you do in this situation?

1. Follow the Golden Rule.
How would you want your spouse to respond if the tables were turned?

2. Create intentional space for vulnerability.
How?
Be willing to be vulnerable, yourself.
Control your reactions.
Remember your spouse isn’t perfect, just like you.
Remember you are supposed to help each other.

3. Employ a third party.
A counselor doesn’t mean you failed.
It means you are willing to succeed.
Whether a professional or a couple in our church, if you need help, it is available.

God doesn’t want you to be alone.
If you’re married, it is your spouse. If you are single, its those people around you who have the 5 (know you, know God, love you, love God, have your best interest in mind).

God made a person to be a help to you.
Not only is there someone to help you, he made you to be a help to that person too. The only way you can be the help you need to be is when God has everything. He is the one who changes your heart.

God wants you to be vulnerable.
He wants you to have that with your spouse and with him, too. But to do that, you have to be surrounded by people who create room for you to be vulnerable. But that also means that you have to be willing to create that space for others, too.

The premise of this series is, to be the spouse God called you to be, your heart needs to be taken. Covenant is all in. Full tilt. No holds barred.

Your spouse deserves all of you, not just a part of you. And if you really want to have the relationship with your spouse that you’ve dreamed of,
it is going to require you to really love them, to cherish them, to honor them, to give your everything to them.

“Taken, was my heart, not stolen
For stolen assumes I was wronged
Gladly I gave all to my beloved
For her my heart always has longed.”

This is how it should be with your spouse. And with God, too.

Grab your spouses hand today. If you’re single, open your hand to God above.
"Forgive me for not giving you everything.
Take my heart. All of it. I am yours completely.
From this moment forward. Amen."

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?