Love Stories (Part 3)

The stories some of our friends sent our way have been on my mind the last few days. I’ve promised to share them with our readers. Here are some of them.

A fun love story or two.

An anthropologist asked a Hopi Indian why so many of his people’s songs dealt with rain. He answered, “Because we need it so badly and it’s so scarce.” Then, after a moment, the Hopi said, “Why are so many of your songs about love?”

The young girl brought her guy home to meet her parents. Her mother was terrified on seeing the tattooed, spiked-haired, bearded, earring-wearing, rough-looking young man. She said, “Honey, is he nice?”

The daughter was offended. “Certainly he’s nice,” she said. “If he wasn’t nice, why would he be doing 5,000 hours of community service!”

This woman loved her man.

Pastor E. V. Hill led a church in the Watts section of Los Angeles during some of the worst racial trouble of the sixties and seventies. At one time, the rioting was so bad, an African-American preacher was killed because he associated with the Whites. According to rumor, Dr. Hill was next on the list.

A phone call in the middle of the night woke up Pastor Hill. An anonymous called informed him that his car was a target for bombing. He tried to keep this from his wife, but she would have none of that. She insisted he tell her.

The next morning, Pastor Hill could not find his wife. Then he noticed his car was gone. After a few minutes, the car drove up to the house and she got out.

He asked, “Now, why did you do that?”

She said, “If your car was to be bombed, I wanted to die instead of you.”

Pastor Hill would tell that story and add, “Since that day I have never asked my wife, ‘Do you love me?’ I know.”

He would add, “And since that day two thousand years ago when the Son of God died on that cross, I have not needed to ask God, ‘Do you love me?’ I already know.”


Matt and Brandy’s story.

Matt was in seminary and in love. He had been in love with this young woman for two years and had a lot invested in the relationship. And yet there was a problem.

“I began to sense the Lord telling me that this wasn’t the person He wanted me to marry, but that He had used our relationship to show me the kind of woman He had for me.”

That was frustrating!

And so one night, Matt prayed: “Lord, I’m done looking for a wife. If you want me to be married and start a family, then you have to bring her to me. I’m seeking you and that’s it. Whatever else you bring me is lagniappe.” (A cajun term for “a little extra.”)

“I meant that prayer with all my heart.”

The next day was January 11, 2000. As the acting director of the seminary’s gym, Matt ran by to check on things. The campus youth minister introduces him to this girl who looked to be about 16. This was Brandy. She was about to begin her first semester in seminary.

Matt: ‘I wasn’t trying to be smooth, just kind, but you’ve seen her (he said to me), so you can imagine I instantly found her very attractive.”

Matt began finding opportunities to see Brandy, to sit near her in conferences so he could keep an eye on her without her seeing him. He found out she was a basketball fan, and used that to connect with her. He found her working at the campus bookstore and invited her to church with him that Wednesday night. Since Matt was leading the youth worship, Brandy sat in the group under his leadership.

He write me, “No kidding, I was singing the song, ‘I Could Sing of Your Love Forever.’ I would look back at her and she was looking at me. I promise, with God as my witness, that’s when I knew that she would be my wife.”

“I found out later that she knew the same thing at the same time. We had met only two days earlier. We went on our first date two nights later. On February 13, 2000, one month after we met, I proposed. Six months later, we were married.”

“It’s been ten and a half years and we are still on our honeymoon. We continue to be best friends and we laugh together. We prefer to be with each other than anyone else. We have the two best kids on the planet. We’ve both helped each other grow in so many ways, and God continues to bless our marriage.”

“This proved to me that when we put the Lord first in our lives and trust Him, Matthew 6:33 comes alive before your eyes!”

A Marriage Arranged in Heaven.

David’s best friend was David. As college students, David learned that the other David’s sister, Nikki, was dating a guy named David. Got that?

The two young men remained great friends through the years, and after “our” David–the one who told me his story–went off to law school, they kept in touch by phone. When the mother of David and Nikki came down with cancer, they kept friend David aware.

David moved to Memphis to go to work and learned on Good Friday 2005 that the mother had died. David wanted David to come to the funeral. He did, they invited him to stay with them in the family home that weekend, and that’s how our David and Nikki got reacquainted. “Unbeknownst to me,” he writes, “Nikki’s mother had encouraged her to take an interest in me, not only during college but for years after. She was confident I was going on to great things and that I would take good care of her daughter.”

At the funeral, David was asked to sit beside Nikki. He ended up comforting her with his arm around her. She was to admit later that that was when she realized her mother had been right in what she had been saying all those years.

Afterwards, David and Nikki stayed in touch. They attended law school graduation together, and gradually came to realize they were in love. “We were engaged in June, I took the bar exams in July, we bought a house in Memphis in September, and were married October 1.”

David says, “Nikki likes to add that her mother arrived at the Pearly Gates and demanded a meeting with the Almighty to arrange our marriage. Mrs. Roberts was a formidable southern woman. We discovered that all her friends knew who I was from their conversation with Nikki’s mom and had prayed with her that our relationship would come to pass.”

“We now live in Nashville, we’re active at Judson Baptist Church where we sing in the choir and lead preschool choir, and Nikki leads spiritual gifts classes. It’s a wonderful life and we give God the glory for it.”

A couple more things.

Here are two Adrian Rogers used to tell, coming to us via David Crowe.

A lovely wife wrecks her husband’s new sports car. The police arrive at the accident scene. It’s clearly her fault. They ask for the car’s registration and insurance. She digs through the glove box and finds a marked envelope. She opens it, finds the registration papers and this note: “Remember honey–no matter what happens to the car, it’s you that I love!”

I heard of a couple that had just got married and were trying to decide where to go on their honeymoon. She wanted to go to the beach and he wanted to go to the mountains. So they compromised. And went to the beach.

The Little Things Count So Much.

Connie tells me she and Rob have been married for 23 years. “What makes our story so wonderful is that we recognize and appreciate all the little things.” She adds, “One reason I fell in love with Rob–and I guess he with me–is that we nurtured each other’s love languages early on, even though we did not know that was what we were doing!”

When they began seeing each other, Rob and Connie lived in the same apartment complex, although separate buildings. Several months later, wintertime set in and one morning, when Connie walked out to her car, the frost had been scraped from the windshield. “He came to my building and did this every morning–and has continued for 27 years.”

One Christmas time, Connie bought up all the Nehi peach sodas she could find because Rob loves them so much and they’re hard to find. “We send ‘I love you’ emails during the day, and we hold hands when we pray.”

She says, “When our kids were young and I would have a melt-down, he would send me to our room with a cup of hot tea and would take over for the evening. I feel cherished and try to make him feel that way, too.”

“Our favorite date is sitting on the back deck on warm Friday nights, listening to our music, watching birds, relaxing. Just being together. It’s sweet contentment. Thank you, Jesus.”

That’s enough for this segment. More to come.

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