Dating, Before and After Marriage
Relationships That Work, part 1
Wildwind Community Church
David K. Flowers
May 20, 2007
I Googled the word “love” this week. You know how many results came back? Exactly 1 billion, 60 million. One billion, sixty million! Interesting stuff. There was lovecalculator.com where you can enter your name and the name of the one you love, and it will tell you how likely your relationship is to survive, just based on your names. Christy and I scored a terrible 34%. I quote: “You must be aware of the fact that this relationship might not work out at all, no matter how much time you invest in it.” Hmmm. Kind of depressing. Note to self: Discuss lovecalculator.com results during extended weekend getaway next February for 20th anniversary. Mike and Susie, I have really bad news for you – yours came back only 28%. I mean, that’s terrible – that’s less than one percent for every year you’ve been married!
Wes and Kim Ellis, you only scored 14% - half of what Mike and Susie scored. Things must be terrible for you guys.
How about our new pastor? Brent and Linda, a relationship might work out between you guys, but the chance is very small. 23%, to be exact. Now a successful relationship is possible, but you both have to work on it. The site cautions you, “Do not sit back and think that it will all work out fine, because it might not be working out the way you wanted it to.” Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
Now the one that really came very hard for me was my own dear parents, Chuck and Nina Flowers. It turns out there is a 0% chance of that relationship working out. You’d think after more than 40 years together they’d have figured that out.
Now who DOES have a chance? Josh and Courtney Hrinik stand a 76% chance. Those are good odds! Scott and Elise McCullough came in at a respectable 69%. And Bill and Michelle Webster weighed in at 66%. Not bad, you guys.
I want to talk to you about relationships in the coming weeks. Today we’ll talk about dating. Then it’ll be marriage, then parenting, then work, then a break for Father’s Day, and then we’ll wrap up the series discussing our relationships in and with the church.
I have entitled today’s sermon Dating – Before and After Marriage. Interesting, huh? Usually in a series like this we cover dating on its own, then we “move on” to cover marriage, etc. We think of dating as something that happens before marriage, and stops after marriage! (Unfortunately this is how some think of sex too, and we’ll address that later this morning!) So this morning we’re going to do this differently. I want to talk to all couples this morning who are, or should be, dating. That would include all unmarried couples, and all married couples. Unmarried couples, you are almost certainly dating right now. Married couples, many of you stopped dating a long time ago, and need to get at it again! So you don’t get off the hook with our dating sermon this morning just by virtue of being married!
My friends, what is there to say, Biblically, about dating? I mean, there’s nothing in the Bible about it. Dating didn’t happen in Biblical times – marriages were arranged. Dating is a fairly modern phenomenon. When a subject isn’t addressed directly in the Bible, we look for principles – for general advice we can find about one area of life that applies to other areas. This is really easy to do with dating, because although the Bible doesn’t talk about dating, it does talk a lot about relationships. So I want to suggest to you today three principles that should guide those who are, and who should be, dating! Following each principle, I’ll suggest a practical action step that unmarried daters can take, and a practical action step that married daters can take.
Principle #1 – Honor God as the author of your lives. Where else would we start in a Christian church? In everything we do, in every attitude, every decision, we must honor God as the author of our lives. Remember this passage I used just last week?
Psalms 139:13-16 (NIV)
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
God is the author of our lives, the one who created us, and as we see in verse 16 here, God laid out all of our days before we were ever born. In other words, you were created with a purpose for your life. Think of J.K. Rowling, who writes the Harry Potter books. Good authors don’t put meaningless characters in their books. Some characters have larger roles than others, some are more essential to certain parts of the plot than others, but every character is there because they have a role to play – every character has a purpose in the story. If we were to give a dinner in honor of J.K. Rowling as author of Harry Potter, that would mean acknowledging that without her there would be no such character, and thus no stories revolving around him. We would understand that Ms. Rowling knows much more about Harry Potter and all of her characters than what she writes in the books. You could say, in a sense, that Harry’s frame was not hidden from her when she wove him together, that all the days ordained for him were written in her mind before they ever came to be on paper. This scripture says the same is true with us and God. I realize it’s an imperfect analogy, as all are, but there’s still something important we can learn. We each serve a purpose in a grand drama where God is author and star. As part of this drama, you have a unique purpose, a role to play. As you date the person you love, you must seek to help him/her find and fulfill that purpose. To honor God as the author of life is to live in a way that acknowledges that without him we would not be at all, that God knows more about us (and the one we are dating) than we ever could, and that we each serve a specific and vital purpose in the immense story God is telling in history.
Dating, if you are a Christian, must begin there, with God’s purpose for the one you love, God as the author of his/her life, and the one who cares for them most and knows them best. So here’s what I would suggest as an action step, for both non-married and married dating couples. This week, have a conversation with your loved one, and ask this question. “Who do you think God wants you to be, and how can I encourage you?” Be prepared for your partner not to know the answer to this question, and to help them think it through! Be constructive and encouraging! This needs to be something you think about on a regular basis, something you ask your partner about. What is God doing in your life? How are you growing? How do you see God making you into who he created you to be? If those questions sound strange to you, that’s a shame. It’s a shame that the church has not done a better job of helping couples honor God as the author of life. I want to encourage you to begin having these conversations this week. And never stop.
Principle #2 – Honor God as the owner of your lives. God is both the author and owner of your life – that is, if you are a Christian. If you are not a Christian, then God has a purpose for you, he is the author of your life, but you do not acknowledge him as the owner of your life, and I would encourage you to do that. To honor God as the owner of your life (and the life of the one you love) is to keep God’s priorities sharply in focus, to make sure that his priorities are your priorities. What does this mean?
1 Corinthians 6:19 (NIV)
19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
You are not your own. You belong to God. Thus your life is to be lived at his discretion. This requires keeping your dating life in proper perspective.
When couples are dating before marriage, they tend to get so lost in each other that they completely lose focus of everything else in their lives. Special friendships are neglected, work and school might not get the attention they need, relationships suffer with their parents – they just lose themselves completely in each other. This is unfortunate because as we date, God is still the owner of our lives if we are a Christian. God’s priorities should still be our priorities. If we are in school when we start dating, we should remain diligent in school. If we are working when we start dating, we should keep working hard. We should maintain the vital relationships God has given us. It is unhealthy to lose one’s personal identity so completely in another person. Dating couples tend to do this before marriage because they have some romanticized idea that to be intimate with another person is to not know where they stop and where their partner begins. The media reflects this ridiculous notion in the way they combine a couple’s two names into one. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez became Bennifer. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are called Brangelina.
Dating couples who are unmarried – you are not your own. If you have committed your lives to Christ, you do not belong to yourselves and, at this point before marriage, you do not even belong to each other! You must maintain your own interests, your own lives, because this is the only way to keep dating in its proper perspective. Otherwise dating becomes your whole world. You know why that’s a bad thing? Because if you move into marriage, dating will not be your whole world but rather will be a special treat – the rest of life will be lived in the real world. Having said that I want to turn and focus on married couples for a moment, but unmarried couples, listen really closely to what I’m going to say.
Married couples, remember when you were doing what I just talked about? Remember when you lost yourselves in each other? Remember when you spent all your time together and neglected all your friends and your parents and your other close relationships? Remember when every time you got together it was like an event? Married couples, look at yourselves! What happened? Chances are pretty good you’re no longer lost in each other. Rather than spending all your time together, you have probably had a million arguments about whether or not he should still get his time out with the guys, and why she wants to be gone all day at that scrapping event and leave you home with the kids. Rather than being together being an event, being together is just a way of surviving. Somebody has to bring home a paycheck. Somebody has to get the mail and pay the bills and get the kids to the doctor.
Understand, I’m not being critical here, I’m saying that’s the difference between dating and being married. Dating, by definition, is living in a fantasy world. Dating is where you are always putting your best foot forward. Dating is where you try really, really hard not to say the wrong thing. Dating is where you might never consider belching (or worse) in front of your loved one. Dating is where the whole point is to try and have fun together and spending money is often the point. Married couples, don’t you think more dating would be a good thing? Wouldn’t it be great if we continued to put our best foot forward, to make a good impression, to impress our partner, to not say the wrong thing, to show the basic respect of doing personal things (burping and worse) in personal places, to have more fun together and not worry so much about the money we’re spending?
Here’s the fact. Dating couples need to bring more reality into their dating, and married couples need to bring more dating into their realities! In many ways, dating is an escape from the real world, and those who have been married for a while – you guys need to escape! And in both cases it comes down to God’s priorities as the owner of your lives. Unmarried couples, until you make that final unbreakable commitment to one another, you do not fully belong to each other, and should not live as if you do. Date. Have fun! Enjoy one another’s company. But continue living in the real world – God does have other priorities for you to maintain! Married couples, get out of the real world once in a while. It’s killing some of you. Baby poop and messy house and barf and discipline and crying and maintenance and work and school and money – it’s wearing you down. And as life wears you down, there is less for you to give to your partner. Married couples, you MUST make dating a priority for the same reason dating couples must stay engaged in the real world. Because God is the owner of your life and God’s priority is for you to stay together forever. God does not want you to break up. God does not want you to continue living together but have separate emotional spaces. God wants you to be truly “one flesh,” and that means spending time together and being carefree (even when there’s so much to care about), like you used to be before you were married.
So here are the action steps for honoring God as the owner of your lives and keeping his priorities first. Unmarried couples, do something without your partner this week! Get into the real world! When is the last time you did something separately – hung out with your guy friends or girl friends? God still has an individual purpose for your lives. Married couples, go on a date this week – with each other! Get out of the real world! When is the last time you spent a weekend at a hotel, or went out for dinner and a movie? How are you honoring God’s desire that your relationship be strong, faithful, and healthy?
Principle #3 – Honor God as the authority in your lives. Principle two was about God’s priorities, principle three is about God’s standards. And God has many standards for us in terms of respect, encouragement, gentleness, etc. But there’s one particular standard I really want to get to, because it tends to be unique to romantic relationships.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20 (NIV)
18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
You are not your own. God is the owner of your life. Therefore, in light of God’s ownership of your life, live your life the way he would have you live it. Honor God with your body. Avoid sexual immorality. What does this mean for unmarried couples?
Hebrews 13:4 (NIV)
4 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
My friends, I tend not to preach don’t sermons. And here I’m not preaching a don’t sermon. I’m telling you something affirmative – honor God as the authority in your life. And I’m telling you that to properly honor God’s authority, you must not have sex while you are unmarried. The very difficulty of staying away from sex, the very extent to which we find ourselves desiring it, is precisely the reason that sex is a very big deal. The power of that drive is intended for something permanent – something committed – something safe. And you might say, “Well, marriage isn’t that safe – people can always get out.” And that’s true. But all you are doing there is making a case for why God does not want divorce – why Jesus himself had strong words concerning it. I’ll be speaking more about divorce on August 12, but for right now, can we just take what is clear in this book?
“Sexual immorality” in the Bible refers to all sexual activity that happens outside of marriage. Dating couples that are Christian but not married, are you honoring God’s authority in your lives as a couple? We cannot live before God in a willing state of sin, once we know what is right and what is wrong. Yes this is a high standard, yes, it’s a challenge. But God calls us to the very best he has for us. And why is it best to avoid premarital sexual activity?
Because somehow your sexual organs are wired directly to your soul, and God made it that way. Ask any pastor, any counselor, what the mistakes are that people make that they can just almost never seem to get over. People can get over financial mistakes, relationship mistakes, academic mistakes, substance abuse mistakes, religious mistakes, career mistakes, but sexual mistakes leave a lifelong impact. They just do. Sex is powerful. It’s like duct tape. You take a piece of duct tape and put it on your arm and pat it down. Let it set for a while, and then rip it off. As you rip, pieces of flesh and hair come off and stick to the tape. Stick that tape to your other arm. It won’t be quite as sticky, will it? And when you tear it off, it’ll still take pieces of hair and skin, but not as much. And it won’t be too long before it won’t stick at all anymore, and consequently it won’t hurt when you pull it off. It eventually loses its power to stick things together.
I believe sex is like tape. Sex fixes you to another person. When you and that person are no longer together, you take pieces of each other that can never be given back. And sex will be less likely to help fix you to the next person. Eventually sex loses its ability to stick you to someone. The single greatest property of sex is its bonding power. And that power is weakened with every sex partner you have.
Married couples, you need to be close to each other. You need to be dating, like I said before. You need to decide to get away from the real world. And you need to cultivate your sexual relationship. Sex has power to do in a marriage relationship what nothing else can do, and couples who neglect this are missing out, and leaving themselves open to dangerous distractions that could eventually crumble the marriage. Married couples, we must not make the mistake of thinking that as long as we have not committed adultery, we are being completely faithful to our spouse sexually. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re the spouse thinking there should be less sex or the spouse thinking there should be more. You need to get together on this and work this out. I’m not saying every couple should have sex a certain number of times per week. What I’m saying is that sex should be understood as the incredible bonding force it is – couples should approach sex creatively, with a sense of adventure, and make it a priority. Married couples, remember when you were dating and you just wanted to have sex all the time? You’re married now – have at it! Contrary to popular opinion, studies show that married couples report more satisfying sex lives than couples who are not married. Unmarried couples, that’s another great reason to save sex for marriage. It’s better that way anyhow! I am a huge advocate of sex, my friends. I think married couples should have sex a lot! In the 80’s, Marvin Gaye sang a song called Sexual Healing. I do believe we can find a kind of healing for our souls and relationships through sex and I think it’s worth being a student of it, learning how to please our partner in whatever ways both spouses are comfortable with, and letting the bonding and healing power of sex work its magic.
And fellas, keeping the marriage bed pure means something else. Get rid of pornography in your life. Dating couples, both married and unmarried, I will tell you this clearly. The majority of men who seek counseling for issues related to pornography end up talking not about pornography but about intimacy and connection issues.
Proverbs 5:15-19 (NIV)
15 Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.
16 Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?
17 Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.
18 May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19 A loving doe, a graceful deer-- may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.
Men, the more you connect sexually and emotionally and spiritually to your spouse, the easier it will be to get free from the grip of pornography. Understand these are all related. Men, we cannot neglect our wives emotionally and then demand a sexual connection with them! Women, you cannot neglect your husbands sexually and then demand an emotional connection with them.
So action steps for honoring God’s authority in your life. Unmarried couples, I encourage you to stop having sex today, until you are married! (And do this not because sex is bad, but because it is very, very good.) If you are living together, it gets more complicated. Move out! The research is in and living together does not increase your chance of having a stable marriage, it decreases it, and I will email that research (not Christian research) to anyone who asks for it. If you can’t or won’t move out, at least stop having sex. But I encourage you to embrace God’s authority in your life completely.
Married couples, make a commitment to cultivate a mutually satisfying sexual relationship, keeping the marriage bed pure. I challenge both partners to make this a priority. I want to say it again for the record, because I don’t want any couples at Wildwind to say that problems in their sex life come from the church. Married couples, I encourage you to hit the rack often and make sparks fly. If that aspect of your relationship has stalled, find out what resources are available to help you that you could both be comfortable with, and make something happen! And I’m sorry if I’m too candid for some people. I realize that’s probably the case, but I’m positive I still haven’t been candid enough for others. Sex must be a priority both for married and unmarried couples. For married couples to pursue it and make sure it is vital and life-giving; for married couples to respect its power and save it for a commitment that can help sex fulfill all its promises.
