Love Sex and Lasting Relationships - The Secret to a Lasting Relationship, Part 2

Are you currently in a relationship that's frustrating? I mean a relationship that's going nowhere. You know, and is it a pattern? Is it relationship after relationship, but there's no real connection, no real intimacy?

Then stick around. We're going to talk about how you can have that by the grace of God. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this international discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians. Well, in just a minute, Chip continues his study in Ephesians, Chapter 5. Last time he compared the world's model for love, sex, and lasting relationships to God's.

And interestingly enough, we learned that the biblical design is the exact opposite of what culture teaches. To contrast these two ideas for yourself, download Chip's message notes. There you'll find a picture of these two models and some helpful fill-ins as you follow along in the teaching. Get them under the broadcasts tab at livingontheedge.org.

Have listeners tap fill-in notes. Well, with that, let's get started. Here's Chip with part two of his message, The Secret to a Lasting Relationship. Ephesians, Chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, and I put the text in your notes. The first half of that book, he tells us who we are in Christ and how precious we are, how loved we are, what he's already done for us, that you are a son of God because of Christ, and that you are adopted, and he cares for you, and it doesn't matter how you look. And he actually wanted you to be exactly the height that you are with the personality that you have, with the eye color that you have, with the personality that you have, and he actually likes you. And you don't have to be this skinny or this hard-bodied or wear these kind of clothes.

He loves you just the way you are. And by the way, that is the key to experiencing great love with other people, because until you understand how deeply loved you are, you will try and find that love and make someone else the completion to make your life work, and it always ends in disaster. And so he says, therefore, be imitators of God. How? As beloved children. And walk in love just as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Now pull out a pen.

I'm going to ask you just to make a couple of observations. This will really help you. Put a line under where it says, be imitators of God. Just put a little line under it. And then above it, write command number one. There's two commands in this passage. The word is mimic.

Literally, it's command. Mimic God. Do in relationships with others what God does to you. Mimic him. Now notice, I want you to put parentheses around. The next phrase is as beloved children.

So put a parentheses. So I'm to mimic God. I'm to love the way God loves in relationships with other people, but I'm to do it as someone who's already dearly loved and accepted and precious by God. Command number two. Underline walk in love. Walk in love. It's a command. Notice the line that comes up next describes what it means to walk in love.

Just as Christ also loved you. Put parentheses around that. So command number one. I'm to imitate God.

How? As someone who's deeply loved and accepted just for who I am. Command number two. I'm to walk in love. Walk is a choice. Walk is progressive. Walk is steps. Sometimes you fall down.

But I walk how? Just as Christ loved me. The rest of the verse says, well, how did Christ love us? Who gave himself for you? It's a picture of in all the portal of all time and all humanity, God saw you and he saw me. And when Christ was hanging upon the cross, he died in your place and in my place to pay for your sin. And then he rose from the dead to prove that it was true to offer spiritual life just as we're physically born to offer a spiritual birth and a new relationship with God.

Question. He does it to God. It's an offering. It's a sacrifice. When Jesus was praying through, for those of you with a little Bible background, remember the Garden of Gethsemane? Did he emotionally want to go to the cross? Yes or no? Emotionally. I didn't hear you.

No. So he's agonizing why? He understands separation from the Father. He understands the cross. He understands the thorns. He knows he's going to get beat within an inch of his life.

All those things. But he looked at you and he looked at me and here's what love is. Love is choosing to give another person what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost.

That's what he did. And see, it changes your relationships. It's not, well, how do I feel?

Is she meeting my needs? Are things going well? You know, our sex isn't as hot as it used to be. He's gained a couple pounds. You know, this is really difficult with our kids right now.

There's a lot of pressure in our job. I don't think she, I don't think he's really the right person. I think we're growing out of love.

No, no, no, no. Those are feelings and those are movies playing in your head. Love is a commitment. Love is a choice to give another person what they need the most, not when they're being good, when they deserve it the least at great personal cost.

Now notice, if I could take all this passage and put it in four steps like Hollywood's formula, it would look like this. Number one, become the right person. That's what God's saying.

Become the right person. If you have your Bible or mobile device, open up to Ephesians chapter four, because it says therefore, right? It says therefore be imitators of God. You need to look behind it because what he's going to say is there's certain attitudes that you need to get rid of that are poison in relationships and there's certain attitudes that are like God's that will transform relationships. So notice Ephesians four, pick it up with me at verse 31.

It says get rid of what? All bitterness, rage, anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice. Any of you ever struggle with having some of those attitudes, actions or words come out of your mouth in your relationships with the opposite sex?

Oh good, I do. When you get hurt, when you get rejected, when you're confused, when you feel betrayed, anger, bitterness, slander, start telling other people, malice, how do you get back at them? But notice, look at verse 32, but be kind to one another, compassionate or tender hearted, forgiving one another just as God in Christ also forgave you.

When he says mimic God, he says become the right person. You become a person that's kind. What's kind? You do nice things for other people just to bless their life. Compassionate, that means you're tender hearted and you walk in their shoes and you're empathetic and you understand where they're coming from and it's not demanding about what do I get but it's how do I give. When they blow it, you're forgiving. It's not that you become a doormat. It's not that you're doing that and there's boundaries of course, but when they blow it just like you blow it, you don't hold it against them. You get it on the table and you forgive them.

Mimic God. Here's the deal, here's what's wonderful about God's deal. For those of you that are divorced and not in a relationship, for those of you that are single and not in a relationship, for those of you that are 13, 14 or 15 and thinking, I'm not exactly sure what all this is about, but my parents said it'd be a good idea for me to sit in on this, alright?

And I can hear them saying, I know a lot more of what this is about than this guy thinks, which is actually quite true. You don't need to be in any relationship to become the kind of person who mimics God. Let me ask you this, if you found a person to date that was kind, compassionate, tender hearted, other centered and forgiving when you blew it, would that sound like a pretty good catch? That's a different set of qualities than man, she looks good in tight jeans or I love him in a tight t-shirt or he drives a Ferrari.

That's really different, isn't it? And see the thing is, you know the people that are really kind and very loving and forgiving and godly, guess who they're looking for? They're looking for other people that are very kind, very loving, right? So the way to get the best is to become the best.

You need to become what you want and you can work on that every day. That's why the greatest thing I do for my wife every single day is pursue passionately my relationship with Christ so I can become more like Him as His Spirit creates in me through His Word and community, the living Christ in me. The second thing is rather than finding the right person, you become the right person and then if you don't fall in love, you walk in love. You walk in love, so it's a choice and we've defined it. It is, you got it yet? Love is giving another person what?

What they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost. See what I can tell you is I didn't know any of this. I never picked up a Bible until I was 18 and I did the whole deal Hollywood's way until I was in my early 20s and all the fallout and all the mess, get it, okay? And then I got married and in our relationship we really did do it God's way. So I thought it's God's way, it's going to be great, it's going to be awesome.

Well it was for three months. It was really awesome. And then I found out that you know I needed to walk in love and you know Teresa wasn't going to meet all my needs and I didn't know that if you're the son of an alcoholic you become the rescuer and my antenna was always up everywhere. How do I help? How do I rescue?

Because I feel good about me when I rescue people. And she had this little light that said I came from a difficult home and then I got abandoned by this guy and he was selling drugs and ran off with another woman and I got these two kids and I'm looking for help. Well we were a match made in hell.

And I don't mean that as a cuss word, I mean that as a description. And so we both love God, we got married, well three months in she really doesn't want me to fix her because that's all I can do. And I really am really pretty struggling with some of this dysfunction that was really attractive because so I mean you know we're married like three, six months and now I'm in seminary, now I'm in counseling.

It's the best money and the best time I ever spent. Why? Because you can only walk in love as a dearly loved. You know I've got the word beloved, we don't use that a lot.

Think about this, walk in love as someone who feels God's love and acceptance pouring over your mind and your heart and your soul so at some level you don't care what anyone on the whole earth thinks about what you think, what you wear, what your body is like because you are so precious and so loved and you are someone's son or someone's daughter and he made you special. And when you get that, now instead of needing you can give. And so I had to learn how to do that. But a lot of it was, I mean I made her nuts, she made me nuts. And she tried to fix me, it did not work.

So I tried to fix her, did not work. I talked to couples that are going through really hard times, it goes something like this, well if she would boom boom boom boom then it's going to be okay. Well I would do that you know, if she'd like pick up stuff around the house and you know before we got married we like used to have sex and now it's kids and stuff and work and pace and pressure and then you know before we got married I mean he did silly stuff like open the door he jotted me notes, he called me, I'm just thinking of you, we talked for an hour and a half on the phone. Now I can't even get him to text me back. And then he wants to make love, are you kidding me? Give me a break dude. Boom boom boom boom and you know what, someone has to stop and say you know what, I'm not going to keep asking what do you give me and am I fulfilled.

That's Hollywood. Someone steps up and says you know what, we can break the cycle. I'm so deeply loved by God in the midst of all this, yeah we probably need to get some help, we probably need to get some good counseling, we probably need to get in a small group with other people that are as messed up as we are because everyone's messed up they just don't admit it and we're going to help one another and I'm going to choose to give my mate what they need even when I'm not getting anything back because once that happens a cycle breaks. Hearts get tenderized, restoration occurs.

The third is you not only become the right person and walk in love but you fix your hope on God and you seek to please him through this relationship. See at the heart of all of Hollywood is narcissism. I mean we will be nice to people, we'll do things but there's always a sort of a I'll do this if you do that, I'll act like this if you do that, I'll give this to get that.

That never is sustainable. And then when you put your hopes and dreams on this person and then things break apart, you're devastated. God's the only one that can make this work and until you're whole with him, you don't have the ability or the capacity to really love.

There's a couple of professors in Seattle Pacific and they teach a course that everyone takes that's not required. It's about love and relationships and how to find the right person and there's no notes, you don't have to take any notes, you don't have to come to class and they come thousands of them but they read this statement at the first class and everyone has to memorize the statement and they go over it every week and then they teach people about how this works. Les and Leslie Parrott write, if you attempt to build intimacy with another person before you've done the hard work of becoming a whole and healthy person, every relationship will be an attempt to complete the wholeness that you lack and end in disaster. Boy we could have, if we were like one of those old time tent meetings that I've seen on TV, I'd say, can I get a testimony?

Right? We've all done this, haven't we? We've all done this. We're trying to find someone to fix these holes in us and see if you just say, you know what, no one has the power to do that. I don't care who they are or what they look like, they will always let you down because they're human just like you let them down and the paradigm is I'm going to become the right person.

I'm going to walk in love with my Heavenly Father so I can choose to give what only He can give me and I'm going to fix my hopes and dreams not on this person because they're going to let me down but this marriage, I want it to be, as much as I want to be fulfilled and that would be a nice byproduct, I want this to be an offering to God. There's been times in my marriage, I'll admit this, even as a pastor, it was like I don't want to stay in this marriage. This is too hard. I'm too frustrated. I mean, in a nice way.

She makes me nuts. We had so much stuff to work through and we needed all the counseling and a little bit more and since then, we have read so many books and listened to so many things on Gone Away on weekends. You know why? Because we're desperately needy to learn how to love God and to love each other. But you know what it did? It sustained us through the little hard times. It sustained us through the years three through six. It sustained us with baby in diapers when you didn't have much time and it sustained us when some of our teenagers were going crazy and then boy, the empty nest, it was hard for me.

I was real excited about it. My wife has all this grief. We were losing our kids and ministries that went this way. All kind of seasons, they have difficult, difficult times. And God wants you to know if you could but grasp that in a fallen world, you will always have difficult times but if you become the right person, if you walk in love and you set and fix your affection on Him, He'll take the difficult times like a piece of sand that rubs the wrong way in the oyster of your heart and you'll create a pearl.

And you'll end up, if you persevere, like I've hit a window that I never dreamed was possible. The intimacy in the marriage that I have is beyond anything I dreamed. Every area of my marriage is better than I thought it could be. And every area that you can imagine we've struggled in. And then the best we could out of all of our dysfunction, we tried to model for our kids.

This is the direction to go. And they grew up and they said, you know what, I think I'm going to do relationships God's way. And they found mates that love God and now they're raising kids like this and adult kids that want to be around you. It's like, are you kidding? And here's what I'll tell you.

The rewards that God has for you are beyond your wildest dreams. And the great majority of people and the great majority of Christians bail out too soon, too early, because basically you can believe in this stuff and these are just magazines. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. And before we get back to today's message, let me quickly remind you that this teaching comes from Chip's popular book, Love, Sex and Lasting Relationships. So if you're ready to find love, stay in love and develop meaningful intimacy with your spouse, you're going to want to get this resource.

Stick around after this message to learn how to get your copy today. Well, with that, let's get back to Chip's talk. You can't watch five Netflix movies a week and watch three reality shows. And it just seems like all the action is out there. The fact of the matter is this, interesting research.

Those who walk closely with God, pray together as a couple, are in God's Word on a regular basis and worship together, divorce is in the low single digits. It happens, very rare. And then this is research.

I mean, someone has to do this, I thought I would. You know where the hottest, greatest sex is in America? It's not in the singles at all. Monogamous couples with deep spiritual values and commitment to one another.

You know why? Because sex wasn't designed to, quote, just have a physical experience. When there's a spiritual connection and a connection of the soul and the heart and the mind, and when there's two people doing life together, coming together physically is a celebration. And God says the marriage bed is holy. It's not dirty. It's holy. And there's something that happens, even the current research about in a man's brain, certain things happen inside our brain that allows walls to come down as we're with our wives in intimacy, that allows a depth of sharing.

God's plan is you become the right person, you walk in love, you set your affections on Him, and when failure occurs, repeat steps one, two, and three. And it will. I mean, does anyone think Theresa and I ever have an argument? Raise your hand.

Put them all up. Of course. Does anyone think that she disappoints me or I disappoint her and we hurt each other's feelings? Yeah. So in the old days, what I did was, man, this, you know what, this is what she's doing. And when she changes then, and she was going, well, you know, I'll tell you what, I'll change when you change.

Because it was all about finding the right person falling in love. And now, you know, when that happens, I go back to step one. The grammar actually isn't just become the right person. It's literally not just imitate God. The grammar is demonstrate yourself as imitators of God. And I go back when we're having a conflict and it's a choice.

And I say, God, this is not, I'm not happy. So what do you want to do in me? What is it about me as a man?

What is it about me as a father? What is it about me as a husband that you want to change, that needs to change? Because I can't, I tried like years to change her.

That's not going to work. I've got zero control of her, a hundred percent of me. So I go back to step one.

I want to become the right person. So I'm going to own. I mean, even, even if in my perverted little heart, it's 90% her and 10% me, I'm going to own my 10%. I'm going to repent. And it's probably 60, 40. And it's probably me the 60. But I'm deluded like you.

That's the way we are. And now I'm going to walk in love. I'm going to give her whatever she needs and I don't feel like she deserves it. And I'm going to choose to do that not even for her.

I'm doing that for you. And I will tell you, power, forgiveness, breakthrough. I come from a non-Christian home, little Christian exposure. I thought born again, evangelicals, whatever the term is of people that actually believe the Bible and a personal relationship with Jesus. I grew up thinking you all were just nuts.

Okay. Until I saw it lived out. And then I watched how the world lived and I thought, you know, I've always been at least shrewd, maybe not smart, but shrewd. And if you're shrewd, what you look at is, let's see, 50% chance round one it won't work, 75% round two. You know, I don't know if I can afford to be on a diet and have a hard body the whole rest of my life. This is a lot of work that doesn't work for almost anybody. I'm probably not in the 1% of the gene pool. You know, maybe God's way does look a little better.

Right? And so I'm going to take everything we've said about God's way of doing relationships and put it on a little pyramid. If you are single or if you are divorced and feel like there's a freedom to pursue a relationship, if you're a widow, now, by the way, if you're married, you can say, how am I doing at this?

Here's where you want to start. The issue is not, does she look good in tight jeans or does he look good in a tight t-shirt and what's he drive? The issue is spiritual. Is he a godly person?

Is she a godly person? Integrity, character. That's what you're looking for. Number one, regardless of if the little electricity goes through your head.

You can hold off on that. Secondly, you want to see them in a social situation with no dating. You want to see how they treat friends and people when you go out and you hang out and you see them at work or see them with friends. You want to see them socially so they don't put on their, like, I'm trying to get you face.

The moment you start dating, you paint your face, he paints his, and you play a game. Third, then, you want to really get to know the person. More beyond a little psychological profile that's on the internet. You want to get to know his heart, her heart, genes, personality. What do you want? Kids, finances.

You want to really get to know them. All the research tells us that before 1960, the reason that there were so fewer divorces is that people took a long time and a slow road toward relationships for a number of reasons. Number one, there was taboo of getting divorced. Number two, there wasn't contraceptives or acceptance of cohabitation. And so you realize if you get in a relationship and you get pregnant, you're stuck.

And so people took a long time to figure out is this the right person they've evaluated. In 1969, the reform of the laws changed, there was no fault divorce. Pretty soon cohabitation went from a thing that people should never do whether you're a believer or not to it's normal, it's accepted. So people slide into relationships. They slide into relationships, now they feel trapped, now they have a baby, now it's like this is not the right person but it took me two and a half years to find out. And so now I'm going to get a divorce.

And so you want to know this person. Then you kind of hold back those emotional feelings and as God gives you green lights, then you click in on the emotion and then are you ready for this? As these things line up, you get married.

Okay? You get married and then the spiritual and the social and the soul and the connection and you don't just have sex, you make love. And the angels in heaven and the God of heaven far from being dirty says, this is a holy and pure thing. And so when your kids are small and they ask about sex, you tell them, absolutely, it's a wonderful gift from God. And then when they're preteens, you say, yeah, pretty soon your body's going to be changing because God is preparing you for something very wonderful. And then when they're teenagers, you talk about sex and how the sacred stewardship that it is and why and you know what? You train your kids. You give them God's prescription early on and all the way.

You'll be glad you did. Now, that little pyramid that I gave you, I did for a number of years a divorce recovery program in our church and 80% of the people would be people that were not Christians, but they'd been divorced and they found out this was a really good place and so they would come. And so I thought showing them that pyramid and what they ought to do would probably not go over real well. So here's the one that I showed them.

I put it on, just on a big sheet of paper and I put it up. And I said, hey, you know, you probably think I'm a pastor and I'm going to really shove Jesus down your throat and tell you people how terrible you've been, what you need to do. And I said, actually, I'm pretty new.

I just became a Christian, you know, early adulthood. Let me just talk about relationships. This is how I learned to do relationships. And just let me walk through this. I learned to do relationships.

I was looking for a hot girl, maybe you two, and you know, I'd go to bars and then like most of you, probably within at least a week or if that night, you kind of hook up and you get involved sexually or at some level. And then pretty soon you have, you know, the dropping of 30 points of IQ and you have these overwhelming feelings. Oh, I'm in love and I'm love. And you know, you don't.

And then you kind of get to know them and sometimes you start to get to know her and you go, oh, my lands. She is so hot that there's zero between her ears, right? Or this guy, like he is a hunk. And I mean, he's in the self-worship. He kisses his own biceps all the time. I mean, he's a narcissist. I mean, it's just, it's like sickening being around him.

He looks good from a distance. And so you go, what? Yeah, that's not the one for me. So what do you do? You go back fishing, physical, emotional, and then you find someone, hey, we really connect. And as you really connect and for many people, you've already started living together. And then, you know, you get social, you're around his friends, your friends, even family. And then you usually move in together and you do it for three months or eight months or a year or two. And what is it about all the celebs and all people at some point, there's this sense, there's more to marriage than just cohabitation and having kids and sharing jobs. And it's like, because God has put in the DNA, it's a spiritual moment.

And what do they want to do? They call people like me and say, would you marry us? Right? And so I asked him in the divorce recovery, how many of you did relationships that way, like I did?

100% of the hands. And then this was before Dr. Phil. So I feel very proud of myself at this moment. I said, let me ask you, so how did that work for you?

I mean, we're in the divorce recovery class and they're going, it didn't. And so what I did, I said, okay, are you all ready? It was on a sheet of paper.

I said, ready? One, two, three, turn the sheet of paper over. And I said, you know, if the pyramids were made like that, they probably wouldn't be here today. And then I said, look at, look at how they're made. This is God's design. If you really want help, first get right with God. He loves you. And go on this journey and it'll transform your life.

And for some of you, that's the message he has. In fact, let me give you a couple just to go thoughts and we'll wrap things up here. Three or four quick questions. Question number one, sort of an honest moment just between you and yourself. Which triangle most represents your approach to building lasting relationships, whether you're married or not? I mean, if you were honest, don't tell anybody.

But which one? Hollywood's or God's? Second, what would your present and or future relationship look like? I mean, what do you want it to look like?

God's or Hollywood's? Third, what specific steps do you need to take to begin implementing God's secret to a lasting relationship? And let me do a little coaching here. If you're an uninvolved single, what I mean is you're not in a deep relationship. Don't do the dance. Don't do the little thing and the little, you know, go through that process. Hold your emotions back. We're going to talk about until a green light comes on. Second, if you're an involved single, you're dating someone or maybe you're living with them right now, then let me encourage you to take that triangle out and say, where are we?

What did we skip? What would we need to do to get this relationship where it really functions the way we want it to and God wants it to? If you're married, I encourage you to sit down over a cup of coffee this afternoon and kind of look at that triangle and look at each area and just kind of say, how do you think we're doing?

You know, scale of one to five, one maybe not so good, five, awesome. You know, how are we doing in spiritual, social, emotional, psychological? And then will you please, I'm going to talk to ladies first, do not use this as a club.

Okay. Remember, you're going to mimic God, kind, compassionate, forgiving. See if someone says, I'm sure glad we went to church.

I finally got you to go. We never pray together. You don't come to church with me. You're not spiritual. You know, I got news.

He's never going to ever. Or if you're the guy, you're going, hey man, finally someone's talking about sex. I'll tell you what, I've been trying to get through this. It's kind of hard to bring up. And so, well, yeah, honey, those other four things are really important. Let's talk about the top of this and how we're, don't do that. Take that sheet of paper and a cup of coffee and say, you know something?

We all struggle. Let's just talk about where do you sense we're at with a gentleness and what would it look like to maybe just, maybe you choose an area that we could make some just baby steps toward and I'll choose an area and could we talk about what it would look like to live before God and to be kind to each other, to forgive each other, to make progress. We're going to help you discover both inside, outside of marriage, how to know with absolute certainty if you're in love and the difference between love and infatuation. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and the message you just heard, the secret to a lasting relationship, is from our series Love, Sex and Lasting Relationships. Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute. Everyone desires to love and be loved.

It's built into our DNA. So why are wholesome, committed relationships so hard to find and hold on to? In this 10-part series, Chip paints a more satisfying picture of love than what you'd find at any relationship workshop or dating site. Discover the truth about romance, sex, true love, and marriage, the way God intended it.

If you've missed any part of this series, catch up any time through the Chip Ingram app or at LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well, Chip's with me in studio now, and Chip, you've been talking a lot recently about relationships, commitment, and intimacy. So I want to point our listeners to a really insightful book you wrote called Love, Sex and Lasting Relationships. Take a minute if you wouldn't talk about the purpose of this tool and who it's geared towards.

Well, Dave, I was teaching through the New Testament and I've pastored now for many years, everything from college students to small, medium, and large churches. And what I learned over the years was there was this constant difficulty, especially among single people. But if you are dating or engaged, this is the book to find out how to build the relationship so it works.

In fact, there's a section where you can actually take a test to find out whether you're really in love or whether you're just infatuated. If you're married, this is the kind of book that will guard your heart and help you focus on the things that draw you close together and keep you from the things, the people, the temptations that can pull you apart. And finally, if you're divorced, you'll get renewed hope. If you find yourself like my marriage didn't work, I don't know why it didn't work, this book will help explain a lot of why it didn't work and give you God's game plan to make it work if He has someone in your life for the future. Let me encourage you, get the book, put it into practice. To learn more about this valuable resource, visit Special Offers on the Chip Ingram app or LivingOnTheEdge.org. If you're ready to experience God's blueprint for intimacy, romance, and security, then you're going to want to get your hands on this book. Again, to order your copy of Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships, go to Special Offers on the Chip Ingram app or at LivingOnTheEdge.org.

Well, to wrap up this program, here again is Chip to share some helpful application from today's teaching. I can still remember drawing that equilateral triangle and then describing how God's formula for love and sex and lasting relationships is just the opposite. And you should have seen their faces when I drew it, you know, sort of the world's way, Hollywood's formula. And I said, how many of you did it this way?

And 100% of the hands went up. And, you know, I had sort of that moment like, so how's that working for you? And then I said, what if it was like this?

And I flipped it over. I said, what if the foundation of that equilateral triangle was spiritual? What if it was really about a relationship with God that each of you have individually? And that it wasn't about getting and it became about how you give to the other person?

And then second, what if the next layer on that pyramid or that equilateral triangle was social? And then rather than jumping in bed or just looking at his biceps or her figure, you begin to say, how do they really relate with people and what are they really like? And rather than a date, you do something in a group and you get to see them, especially with family members. But then the big question is when and how do the emotions kick in? When do you allow, you know, that drawing, that attraction that you have to become a part of the relationship? And that is exactly what we're going to cover in our next broadcast.

God wants you to have a great relationship, but he wants you to do it completely different than most of us have learned. Great reminder, Chip. Thanks. Before we go, I want to thank those of you who regularly give to Living on the Edge. You're making a big difference in helping Christians live like Christians. But if you're benefiting from our ministry and haven't started giving yet, let me encourage you to join the Living on the Edge team. Now, you can do that by setting up a recurring donation at livingontheedge.org or by calling us at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003 or visit livingontheedge.org. App listeners, tap donate, and thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. For Chip and the entire team here, this is Dave Druey, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge. ...