Roommates, Bad Dates And Great Mates: Dating Series

1. Date. Who cares about a mate?

The first one is the most popular one. It’s the prevailing philosophy in our culture, write this down, it’s dates, who cares about a mate? This philosophy says, it is never good to have a weekend without a date. This philosophy says date as many people as you can and it doesn’t matter who they are, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you are having a lot of fun. Now, I had a good friend in college who really bought into this philosophy and he had his own saying. His saying was—date all you can and can all you date. It may take a few minutes for some of you to figure out what he was saying. You see, this philosophy is unhealthy. It is not in our best interest because it ultimately sabotages our desire to find the right person, the person that God might have for us. That’s the first philosophy. Date. Who cares about a mate?

2. Never date unless you plan to mate.

The second philosophy goes to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. This philosophy says—never date unless you plan to mate. This philosophy is on the other end of the spectrum and this proposes that dating itself is bad. That it brings up too many temptations. Too many things can go wrong. So you should avoid the dating process. Instead, dating should start the engagement stage and so you find the person that you are going to marry and then you enter into a stage of dating. The problem and the question that I had with this philosophy is, how are you going to find the right person if you never spend time with them and you are just going to guess and then enter into the dating stage. So that one is difficult as well.

3. Date to discover your mate.

But there is a third view of dating and it’s the one that I am going to propose that we should buy into, and that is—date to discover your mate. And this philosophy says that dating is a process that I can enjoy but whose main purpose is to discover is if the person that I am dating, is a person that I can or should marry. Now, I believe this is a view that allows us the best opportunity to enjoy dating, while at the same time, staying within God’s plan for our life. Seeking God’s best for our life. Look at what Paul says should be our goal. II Corinthians 2, Paul write, “Our goal is to stay within the boundaries of God’s plan for us.” You see, you can enjoy dating and you can discover God’s plan for your dating life, but only if you commit to staying within God’s boundaries. It’s when we stay within God’s boundaries, when we stay within God’s will and His plan for our dating life, that we receive the maximum enjoyment and maximum blessing that God can give to us.

So, if this is right, if what I am saying is right, and we date to discover our mate, then the question becomes, how do I do this? How do I discover my mate? Well, we are going to look at three questions that we have to ask to discover our mate through the dating process. That’s where we are going to spend the remainder of our time today. So here’s the first question that we have to ask—