Marks of a Great Mate - Up Close and Personal Pt.1

Well, good evening everybody.

A lot of fun doing this together. But we're also going to make sure that you get some really valuable information as you think through relationships and you think through the whole dating and mating game. But I thought we should start off with a little bit of Mars-Venus stuff.

So first we'll do the Venus stuff. Okay, ready? What I've got is a list here of the 10 kinds of men that you want to make sure, ladies, you absolutely avoid.

You ready for this? All right, here are the 10 types of men to make sure you avoid. Number one, men who consider Super Bowl Sunday a religious event.

You don't want to. Number two, men who wear full army fatigues to go grocery shopping. No. Number three, men who can sing the entire Gilligan's Island theme song by heart. Don't want that guy. Number four, men to avoid. Number four, men who believe that pro wrestling ought to be an Olympic event.

Negative. Number five, men who bought the Ginsu knife set. You don't want that guy. Number six, all right, here's to avoid. Men, number six, men who consider burping on demand a marketable skill. Number seven, men who miss the Village People. You don't want that guy. Number seven, number eight, rather, number eight, men with car stereos that are worth more than their car. Number nine, men to avoid.

Number nine, men who still do cannonballs at the pool. You don't want that guy. All right, and last of all, this is my favorite, men to avoid are men who think that a yeast infection is what makes bread turn green.

You don't want that guy. Okay. I told you, that's great, isn't it?

I love that. Okay, now, now it's Mars time. So, guys, here we have, I got this from Maxim Magazine, ten reasons why it's great to be a guy.

Ready? Number one, ten reasons why it's great to be a guy. Number one, a five day vacation requires only one suitcase. All right, number two, number two, why it's great to be a guy, you can open all your own jars. Isn't that wonderful? All right, number three, number three, it's great to be a man because you can go to the bathroom without a support group. Number four, number four, it's great to be a man because wedding plans just take care of themselves.

Wonderful. Why it's great to be a man. Number five, one mood all the time.

Number six, great to be a man because if you retain water, it's in a canteen. Yeah. Okay, number seven, number seven, it's great to be a man because the remote control is yours and yours alone. Yeah. All right.

Number eight, it's great to be a man because same work, more pay. Oh, lighten up, lighten up. We're just having fun here.

Lighten up. All right. Number nine, it's great to be a man because if another guy shows up at the party in the same outfit as you, you'll probably become best buddies for life.

And number ten, why it's great to be a man, you can write your name in the snow. Okay. You'll get it later. All right. That's why I love being here because I can't get away with any of that in the morning crowd.

If I did any of that, I'd lose my job. Okay. Now, we're going to talk about dating and relationships here. And, you know, when I was in my 20s, back when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I hated dating. Dating was a miserable experience.

I mean, first, there's coming up with that killer opening line, which I could never do. Then there was getting up the courage to ask the girl out for the very first time. Then there was dealing with the rejection when she laughed at you when you asked. That was tough. And then there was always living under the stress of, I wonder if this is the one, I wonder if this is the one, how will I know if this is the one? I thought many times that if Brenda, if anything ever happened to my wife Brenda, I don't know if I could push myself to go back to doing the dating thing again. But, you know, God really blessed me, threw it all somehow.

God really blessed me and gave me my wife Brenda. And this coming June, we will have been married 24 years. Yeah. All right.

Good deal. Now, friends, it has not been an easy 24 years. Brenda and I are different as chocolate and vanilla. We can disagree about anything. We can disagree about the right way to make a right hand turn at a stoplight. We can disagree about anything.

And yet we're still hanging in there after almost a quarter of a century for one reason. And that is that when we got married, we decided that we were going to build a marriage not based on outward looks, not based on personality, not based on chemistry or anything like that, but that we were going to build a marriage that was based upon character and integrity and mutual spiritual respect. And after 18 years of being a pastor and counseling all kinds of couples, I am more convinced than ever that this is how you build a successful relationship.

You build it on character. And the marriages that are built on that foundation are the marriages that really make it. This is what I want to talk to you tonight about. See, as guys, we often pick a gal out that we want to get interested in.

We pick them out for the wrong reasons. We look and we go, wow, I love her hair. Wow, I love her face. Wow, I love her superstructure.

And I want a relationship with this girl. But superstructure changes, friends. Or girls, we hear you guys. You guys don't think we ever listen to you.

We listen to you guys talk. You say, wow, hadn't he got great eyes? Wow, hadn't he got a great smile?

Hadn't he got a cute little butt? I love him. In fact, that's exactly what Brenda said about me when we first met, you know, great eyes.

But things change, folks. You ever watch any of you guys listen to Lisa's workout Z104 at noon? Any of you listen to that? Well, there's a guy that comes on in the middle of the workout in this big old deep bass voice and he says this. He says, it's not the pants that make your butt look so big. It's the chili cheese fries.

And see, after 24 years of chili cheese fries, I can't even get one leg into a pair of jeans I used to wear when Brenda and I were dating. Things like that change. But character doesn't change. Character is the foundation upon which you can build a lasting and successful relationship. And so tonight, I want to talk to you about the marks of a great mate and they're all character. I'm not going to talk to you a thing about chemistry or looks or shape, but we're going to talk about character. And guys, these are the character qualities that I'm going to outline for you that you're looking for in a gal. Gals, these are the things that you're looking for in a guy if you're serious about building a strong lasting Christian marriage, Christian family and Christian home. Now remember, we're all just growing in our walk with God. You're not going to find anybody who's got all this stuff in absolute perfect development. There is no such person. But what you can find is a person that has all of these qualities in their life and they're serious about them and they're working on them and they're trying to grow and mature in these areas of their life.

That you can find and that's really what you're looking for. Now I've got seven to give you and I hope you'll write them down and I hope you'll use them as you date and go out with people. We're going to do them quickly. Ready?

Here we go. Number one. Spiritual quality number one is if you want to build a successful Christian home, Christian family, Christian marriage, you're looking, number one, for a person who is spiritually connected. Listen to 2 Corinthians chapter 6. You don't need to turn there.

I'll ask you to turn to another passage in a minute. But listen to what 2 Corinthians chapter 6 says. Verse 14. It says, Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.

Another translation will say do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. And what this means, it's a picture from the world of agriculture of the Old Testament, and what it means is you've got a plow and you're going to put two animals on the front of this plow on the yoke and you're going to have them pull the plow. And what the Bible is telling us here is that when you take two animals of completely different character and nature and you put them on the same yoke to pull the same plow, it's not going to go well. If you put a horse and a mule on the same yoke to pull a plow, they're not going to pull it in sync. If you put an ox and an elephant on the same yoke to pull a plow, things are not going to go well.

They are going to pull at cross purposes and out of sync with each other. And in the same way, God says, if you take a Christian and you take a non-Christian and you put them on the same yoke, the yoke to pull the plow of marriage, and you ask them to pull it together, they are not going to pull in sync. They are going to pull at cross purposes because a believer and a non-believer have different value systems. They have different priorities in life. They have different world views. They find pleasure in different things and very often they have different morals and different ethics.

You cannot put them on the same yoke and expect them to pull a plow together very well. And friends, if you're serious about your walk with Jesus Christ, if you're serious about establishing a long, successful relationship, a solid marriage, a Christian home, then you are looking for a person who doesn't just say, oh, I'm a Christian, I'll go to church. No, no, no, no, no. You are looking for a person who has a vibrant, active, growing, living, real, authentic relationship with Jesus Christ and takes it seriously and don't settle for anything else. You will regret it the rest of your life. Principle number two is if you want to make marriage work, you're looking for, principle number two, a giver. Now, a big part of what makes marriage so difficult is that marriage is not a 50-50 deal. To make marriage work, to make intimacy work, both people have to be giving 100%. And takers have a very difficult time making marriage work.

More often than not, takers find it nigh on impossible to make the kind of intimacy and demands of a marriage work. Now, I saw a bumper sticker the other day that I loved. Here's what it said. It said, honk if you've been married to Liz Taylor.

I thought that was a cool bumper sticker. How many times has Liz Taylor been married? What do you figure, eight, nine? I've lost count.

I don't know how many times it is. What's wrong with this woman? I mean, after being married four, five, six times, you'd think she'd figure out what she was looking for and get it right, wouldn't you? How come the woman can't seem to find anybody that she can stay married with? Well, Dr. Joyce Brothers wrote an article explaining why. I thought it was a very insightful article.

Here's what Dr. Brothers said. She said the reason that Liz Taylor can't stay married is because Liz Taylor is a love consumer. She's not a love giver.

Liz Taylor knows how to be loved. She knows how to consume love that's being shown to her. She knows how to embrace love that's being given, but she does not know how to give love to anybody else. She's a consumer, not a giver.

And Dr. Brothers said Liz Taylor could marry 50 people and every one of those marriages would end in divorce. Because as long as somebody is loving her and giving to her, she does fine. But as soon as the demand is put on her, like marriage puts it on you, to have to start giving love to somebody else, she picks up her Gucci bag and she goes home.

She can't do it. So Dr. Brothers said Liz Taylor is never going to have a marriage that works because she doesn't know how to give. And friends, this is, I think, an incredible insight. And what it means is when we are looking for a great mate, we are looking for a person who knows how to give love because they are the people who make marriage work.

We are looking for people who know how to give of themselves because they are the ones who know how to make relationships work. And I love what Philippians chapter 2 verses 3 and 4 says. Philippians 2 says, and I'll read it to you. It says, Philippians chapter 2 verse 3, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider other people's needs along with your own.

Each of you should look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others. You should have this same attitude in you that Jesus Christ had. You know, Jesus Christ is the quintessential example of being a giver. He came to earth and died on the cross because we needed him to. He came to earth and gave his life for us because he did what Philippians 2 said. He put our interests ahead of his interests and that's why he did it. And what Philippians 2 is telling us is that this is the way to live if we want to make relationships work.

I'll tell you, God blessed me beyond my wildest dreams in giving me my life. Brenda, she is one of the greatest givers I have ever met in my life. She'll give up clothes that she really wants because she'd rather buy clothes for her children. She'll give up going somewhere that she really wants to go to stay home and take care of something for the family that needs to be done.

She'll give up some pleasure that she wants to have to stay and go and meet the needs of another person that she feels like she ought to be there meeting and she'll give up doing what she wants to do to do that. Almost to the point that sometimes I get angry with her and say, you know, at some point you need to think of yourself. I mean, at some point you've got to do something for you. I mean, isn't it wonderful to be married to somebody you're trying to talk them into doing something for them? What a wonderful blessing. One of the reasons our marriage has worked for 24 years is because I'm married one of the greatest givers I've ever met in my life. God blessed me with that. These are the people who make marriage work, givers, and that's who you're looking for.

Number three, you ought to be looking to marry somebody who's not afraid of hard work. See, Hollywood is wrong. It's not all about fireworks. Marriage is not all about fireworks and warm, fuzzy music and strolling off hand in hand in the sunset. You can forget that.

That has nothing to do with this at all. Marriage is all about hard work, friends. Marriage is all about diligence and responsibility and industriousness. It's about duty and commitment and holding up your end of the wagon. That's what marriage is all about. And if you're looking for a marriage partner, you're looking for a spiritual marine.

You're looking for somebody who understands Semper Fi. You're looking for somebody who doesn't run for cover when the hard work starts. Gals, when you go to your boyfriend's parents' house, pay attention to what he does. Watch him. Does he walk in the house, plop down on the sofa, start eating a little bit of chocolate or some cookies while his mother sets the table and gets the whole meal on? After dinner, does he go over, sit in the easy chair and watch the football game and take his shoes off while his mother cleans up the dishes and puts them all in the dishwasher and knocks herself out and lays down totally exhausted on the couch three hours later? I mean, does the God get up and help?

Or does he just sit there and let everybody else do the hard work? Be careful. Whatever he expects his mother to do is what he's going to expect you to do.

And you know what? Marriage is a lot of hard work. You don't want to marry somebody who wants you to do it all, ladies.

Or vice versa, guys. When we're looking for someone to marry, we're looking for a guy or a gal who has no illusions about life being easy, a person who will put their shoulder to the plow and will pull it right along next to you, will be partners with you. You don't want a lazy person to be married to. You want a person who has the character to do hard work. Number four.

A person that you're looking for to marry is a person that is sensitive to the needs of other people. I want you to take a Bible and look with me at 1 Corinthians chapter 13. It's page 813 in our copy of the Bible.

If you didn't bring a Bible, use our copy. Page 813 in our copy or 1 Corinthians chapter 13 in your copy. Now you say 1 Corinthians 13.

That sounds so familiar. What chapter is that? That's the love chapter. You know, the one everybody has read at their marriage ceremony? Somebody reads 1 Corinthians 13.

You say, well, Lon, you act like you're a little bit, I don't know, kind of cynical about that. I mean, what's the problem with reading 1 Corinthians 13 at your marriage ceremony? There's no problem at all.

It's wonderful. But marriages don't work because you get up and read 1 Corinthians 13 at the ceremony. Marriages work because you take 1 Corinthians 13 and you live it in the marriage.

Now look what it says here about what makes a successful lover in a marriage, a successful partner in a marriage. Look at verse 4. It says love is patient.

Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast.

It is not proud. Verse 5, it is not rude and it is not self-seeking. Now look at the words God uses here to describe a person who makes a good lover and a good marriage partner, a person who is patient, who is kind, who's not jealous, not boastful, not proud, not rude, not self-seeking. To sum up, this is a person who is sensitive to the needs of other people.

Now why is this so important, friends? It's so important because marriage is a relationship, if you do it right, that peels the layers away and exposes you like no other relationship in the world. If you do marriage right, marriage is a relationship where you become not only physically naked with one another, but where you become emotionally and spiritually naked with one another.

Remember what God said in Genesis 2. It says the man and the woman were together and they were naked and they were not ashamed. And he's not just talking about being physically naked, but being emotionally naked with one another as well. It's a relationship that slowly peels away the levels so we become more and more vulnerable with each other. We become more and more aware of one another's deepest fears, deepest insecurities, deepest faults.

And when you're in a relationship like that, if one of the people in it is an insensitive, verbally abusive, brutish sort of person that abuses other people, you can do damage because you're revealing yourself at a level that no other relationship calls for and you can do damage that is lifelong if you marry a person that's sarcastic and cynical and insensitive. You're looking for a gentle person to marry. You're looking for a person with whom you can be safe when you're emotionally naked.

You're looking for a person who's sensitive to the feelings of others. I was getting my hair cut the other day and I was reading Mademoiselle. And so I ran across this, what? What's the problem with that?

I don't look at the pictures, I just read the articles. And so anyway, I was reading in one of the Q&As in Mademoiselle and here's what this girl writes in and says. She says, question. She says, I went to see a sad movie with a date and he cried at the end of the movie. I was mortified.

Does this mean he's a total wimp? This was her question. I read this and I thought, this girl's clueless. Clueless.

I mean, imagine this now. You're a guy, you're out with a girl on a date that you hardly even know. You go see a movie and this guy has enough sensitivity that he begins to break up and weep over some part of this sad movie. This is not a wimp.

This is a wonderful person, all other things being equal. This is a guy who can be touched by the pain and the pathos and the feelings of others even through a movie. Man, if everything else was good, I'd grab this guy in a heartbeat because if he'll cry at a movie, he'll cry when your real needs become known to.

He'll be sensitive to them. Man, I'd grab a guy like that. Girls, what's wrong with this girl? What kind of guy does she want?

Macho, macho man. Is that what she wants? Who wants a guy like that? And guys, believe me, you don't want to marry Roseanne.

You know, that's not who you're looking for. You are looking for people who are sensitive to the needs of other people who can be touched by the pain and the real hurts of others because in marriage, you're going to peel it all off and you want somebody that's safe. You want somebody that's sensitive. We've got to hurry. Number five.

Ready? You're looking for somebody who's loyal. Look what it says here. 1 Corinthians 13.

Look at verse 7. It says, Love always protects. It always trusts. It always hopes.

It always perseveres. In describing true love, verse 7 is telling us like a big old neon sign, This person is loyal. This person is loyal. This person is loyal.

Now, being loyal doesn't mean that you're a doormat. I meet these guys all the time, you know, Christian guys. And when they're dating a girl, what they want is for that girl to submit. First question they ask them when they go out on a date, have you read Ephesians 5?

Do you know what it says in there? Do you know the Greek word for submit? And they're looking for some woman to roll over, play dead, and let them do whatever they feel like. That's not biblical submission. That's not biblical loyalty. I have a definition of submission I love to share with young Christian guys. I say, hey, listen, submission does not mean that a woman shuts up, puts her brain in neutral, and accepts every stupid idea you come up with. That's not submission. Y'all ladies can clap if you want.

You should. That's not submission. Real submission means, real loyalty means that you've got the courage to be honest with your partner. You've got the courage to be real with your partner. And if you see danger, and if you see trouble, and if you see problems, that you take the relationship serious enough that you're going to take the risk to tell that other person, I see trouble here.

I see problems here. That's real loyalty. And real loyalty means that even though that other person may cut you off at the knees in private, when you walk out in public, if you're the lone ranger, she's Tonto. If he's the lone ranger, you're Tonto.

I mean, that's what real loyalty is, but loyalty doesn't mean that you just roll over and play dead. You know, I saw the movie Jerry Maguire. Did y'all see the movie Jerry Maguire? I love that movie, except for the one part that fogged up my contact lenses. But other than that one scene, the rest of the movie I thought was a great movie.

And I love Cuba Gooding. I mean, that man must have no muscles anywhere between his waist and the bottom of his hips the way he moved in that little show me the money thing, because I actually tried it, and I can't move like that. Can you move like that?

I can't move like that. Anyway, that has nothing to do with what I'm going to say, but I just thought that was interesting. Anyway, do you remember in the movie when he asked Jerry Maguire why Jerry married that woman? And Jerry Maguire said, well, I married her because she was loyal. She was loyal. Now guys, that is not the right reason solely to marry a woman.

And that's what, of course, Cuba Gooding tried to point out. But it is a very important thing, and Jerry Maguire appreciated the fact this is a great quality in a marriage partner that they're loyal. And you're looking for somebody, if you want to make a long-term marriage work, you're looking for somebody who is a loyal person who even though behind closed doors they may chop you off at the knees, friends, when you walk out of that house, it's one for all and all for one. That's the kind of person you want to marry. All right, we've got to do the last two quick.

Ready? Here we go. Number six, you're looking for a person who knows how to forgive. See, marriage is a contact sport. You might not believe it, but it is. And we're going to talk in the number four message in this series about how to fight fair. Because I promise you, if you get married, you're going to fight.

If you don't, somebody has either had a lobotomy or just didn't show up. You're going to fight. It's going to happen. The real secret is how do you fight without destroying the relationship? We're going to talk about that in message number four.

You don't want to miss that. But the point is, when you fight, people get bruised, people get hurt, people's feelings get damaged. I don't mean physically bruised, but emotionally bruised. And if you're going to make a long-term marriage work, you're going to have to be a person who knows how to forgive. Because people hurt each other in marriages. I mean, it just happens. Now, let's all agree, forgiveness is not easy. For some people, it's easier than others. But the person you're looking for is a person who, when you watch them interact in your dating relationship, when they get hurt, they are people who know how to forgive, they know how to put it behind them, they know how to make an ancient history, they know how not to bring it up again, and they know how to go on with life.

You say, well, how do I find this out? Do I go out of my way to walk up and go, you know what, that dress is really ugly. And your eyes tonight, you know, they're all pouchy, too. Oh, I'm sorry, would you forgive me? Is that how we find out if people can forgive?

No, no. Listen, you will create enough problems and opportunities for this, just date. You'll have plenty of opportunities to do this.

You don't need to go looking for them. Just be yourself, and believe me, they'll happen, all right? But when you are yourself, and they do happen, find out, does this person know how to forgive, or am I still hearing two years later about the thing I did on the first date?

You don't want that, friend, because you'll be hearing about it the rest of your life. You want a person who can forget what you did on the first date, forgive it, and let's get on with life, okay? Last of all, you're looking for a person with integrity, a person with integrity. Ask yourself some questions about this person. Does he or she mean what they say and say what they mean?

Is this a person I can count on? Do they keep their promises? Does he or she fulfill their obligations? Do they get to their appointments on time? Do they go through their calendar and their to-do list, and do they carry all this stuff out? Are they people of responsibility?

Do they pay their taxes without cheating? Do they tell the truth? Does this person tell the truth, or do they ask me to answer the phone and say they're not there? Can you trust this other person implicitly? Because, you see, trust is a basic building block of marriage. You can't build a marriage without trust, and trust is based on integrity. You can't trust a person who doesn't have integrity. So integrity is key to making a marriage work. So find out, is this a person of integrity? Watch how they live. And decide, can I trust this person when I lay my life in their hands?

Because that's really what you're doing when you get married, both of you. Well, let's review, okay? What are the seven things you ought to be looking for in a marriage partner? Number one, a person that's spiritually connected. Number two, a giver. Number three, a hard worker. Number four, a person that's sensitive to the feelings and the needs of others. Number five, a person that's loyal. Number six, a person who knows how to forgive. Number seven, a person who has integrity.

And listen to me, guys. You find a person that has these seven qualities in their life, and I'm telling you, it doesn't matter what their eyes look like, it doesn't matter what their hair looks like, it doesn't matter what their teeth looks like, and it doesn't matter what their superstructure looks like. You can build a long-lasting, successful relationship with a person who has these kinds of character qualities.

This is what you're looking for. The rest of it's going to come and go, believe me. This is what lasts, and this is what builds successful relationships. Let's pray together. Father, thanks so much for talking to us tonight about what it really means to find a partner that we can build a lasting relationship with. And my prayer is that you would help each of these young guys and gals here who are searching for such a partner, that you would help them, Lord, to make sure they understand just what the target is, just what kind of man or woman they're really looking for. We thank you, God, for reminding us tonight that it's character, not outward beauty, not chemistry, not personality, not looks, but it's character that builds successful relationships. And I pray that you would help each of these guys and gals to find a person of character like that that they can build this kind of relationship with. Lord, we commit them to you in Jesus' name. Amen.