The Six Radical Resolutions for Biblically-wise Dating, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. You're not really ready to date until you're ready not to date because you're not ready to date until you're at a place where you're like, I know who God's made me to be and I know what he's called me to do. And at that point you're ready to date because now you're ready for a lifelong companion and partner in doing the will of God. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author and theologian J.D.

Greer. I'm Molly Vidovitch. You know, dating is not easy whether you're 16 or 56.

Trust me, I remember. When you choose to apply God's biblical standard to dating, you're going to stand out because the world has not figured out how to be successful in relationships without God's wisdom. Today, Pastor J.D. shares how adopting six biblical resolutions for dating may make you look a little different, but it will also lead to the kind of marriage that you long for and Jesus wants for you. If you missed the first part of this message yesterday, you can listen free of charge by visiting J.D. Greer dot com.

But now here's Pastor J.D. Dating is a time where you're supposed to evaluate the person that you want to join yourself to for life. So, if the purpose of dating is to choose somebody to marry, and if that means character matters most of all, then physical intimacy is something that, for the most part, you should keep to a minimum.

Why? Well, it's because physical intimacy works like a drug. It intoxicates you and masks the other things that are actually going on. When the physical excitement of sex fades, which it will, all that you're going to be left with is a sick relationship.

Listen, let me be clear, okay, because what I'm trying to do is make an argument to you as to why this is in your best interest. Let me also make very clear to you, the Bible is very clear that awakening sexual lust, awakening sexual stimulation outside of marriage is sin. Jesus said, Matthew 5, for example, the Sermon on the Mount, he said for us to look at or think lustfully about somebody who is not our spouse is committing fornication with them in our hearts, in God's eyes. And so, obviously, doing things that get your motor running, even if you're not going all the way, is going to cause you to think lustfully about that person until it's become sin.

So, we are to avoid this kind of thing because it's sin, but what I'm saying is even beyond that, even beyond that, y'all, knowing what I know now about marriage, even if I weren't a Christian and the law of God was not a factor, I would counsel a couple who were dating to keep physical intimacy to a minimum because sexual stimulation sabotages the spouse search. Very practically, for me, my dad gave me advice when I was 16 years old and it was a good guidance. This doesn't come directly from the Bible, it's just a wise father counseling his son. He gave me four laws. He said, if you abide by these four laws, he says you're going to stay mostly out of trouble. He called them, my dad's first name is Lynn, so he called them Lynn's Laws. Here they are.

I have given to you before minister here. Number one, he said nothing in the dark. Just keep the lights on. Nothing in the dark. He said, number two, nothing below the chin. No reason for you to touch anything below the chin except for maybe their hand. He said, number three, never, ever, ever lie down. I mean, let me quote Matt Chandler here, nothing good and godly ever happens between dating couples when they lie on a couch together late at night to watch a movie.

It has never in the history of humankind led to discussions about cinematography or the symbolic resonance of the director's body of work. You know exactly where it leads. There's just no way that you can be in that kind of, and not have those things awaken. Number four, my dad said, nothing should last longer than five seconds because once it crosses five seconds, it almost for sure has become sin. Now again, those are just guidelines. Your goal here is not to obey rigidly laws, it's to seek purity. It's not to see how close to the line you can get and you can abuse any of these, right? I mean, you can get pretty creative in five seconds, am I right?

Yes, you can. One of our pastors, Eric Gravel, he makes a really helpful distinction, I think. He distinguishes between acts of affection and acts of desire. Acts of affections that show somebody that they're special to you.

Acts of desire that are awakening these desires that are supposed to lead somewhere else. And let me also say this, by all means, do not live together. I mean, first, again, if you're living together, you are in blatant sin.

And I cannot say for sure that that means you're not a Christian, but I can say you're living in unrepentant sin and there is no possible way that you've got the blessing of God on this part of your life, which we have seen is the one thing you most need in this part of your life. But second, I would say even beyond what God says, studies show statistically that somebody who has lived with two to three people before they get married has less than a five percent chance of staying married. Living together, I've heard it said, is better preparation for divorce than it is for marriage. Because marriage, true love says for better or for worse. Living together says for better. Right?

And if it gets worse, then I'm gone. The purpose of dating is not to give you marriage light. It's not to give you an intimacy appetizer that tides you over until the meal of marriage.

It is to give you space to get clarity about the character. Now, by the way, sometimes I will get asked, how does this apply to high school kids? You know, should they be able to date?

Well, I'm just telling you again, just speaking as a father, we don't have a rule against that in our house. But since they are not able to get married, that's a road. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to go too far down when you're not in a time when it's time to look for a spouse. So we say that the three ideals that you would pursue at this stage, right, in any kind of dating is non-exclusive, non-physical, non-escalating. Those are your three ideals, non-exclusive, non-physical, non-escalating because we know that dating is a road to give you clarity about the person that you married. Dating is for clarity, not intimacy. By the way, to those of you who are single, I know, just sitting here listening to this, I know that living like this is difficult.

It would be counter-cultural, but I will say it again. If you want something nobody else has, you've got to be willing to do what nobody else will do or a few people will do. You need to understand that dating is a time of testing. It is where God has seen whether or not you're willing to wait on Him and do things His way. God gives His best to those who leave the choice to Him.

And when this is an area, this powerful area where you say, God, I trust you and I'm going to wait on you, God will use that portal of obedience to release all kinds of blessing in the best parts of your life. Even this stage of dating ought to be characterized by selfless, sacrificial love. Not lust for them, but love for your future spouse, love for their future spouse. You understand physical intimacy creates bonds that are really difficult to undo. It just means that out of love for your future spouse and their future spouse, don't steal for yourself something that ought to be special for them. Don't prioritize the satisfaction of your lust over their long-term good.

Number three is your third resolution. I will reject the marriage equals completion myth. This myth says that there's a right person out there for you, and if you don't find that person, then you're never going to be happy. And if you're not happy, well, the problem is you just haven't found that person.

Here's how it plays out in dating and marriage. In the dating stage, you're on the prowl, right? You've got to find that right person, you've got to find Mr. Right, you've got to find Mrs.

Right, and you're always worried about it. Well, what if I don't meet them? What if I miss my chance? What if I'm not the right person? What if I'm too picky?

What if they like somebody else? Well, finally, at last, you find that one, and you're like, I found him, I found her. They make your heart flutter, they make your liver quiver, however you want to say it, and you think, this is it, this is it. Our relationship is special, they just make me feel like nobody else has ever made me feel. When they look at me, I just feel like I melt inside, and I just, oh, I can't believe it. We never, ever, ever fight, and we're just awesome to each other all the time.

This is the perfect person for me, and we're going to get married. But then you get married and figure out that they're not as perfect as you thought, right? He is totally insensitive to your needs, and he just smells bad at night. And that cute little burp that he used to do when y'all were dating, it's just plain annoying now, and you're like, why are you sitting around the house burping all the time? And it starts to drive you crazy, and she is selfish, and she acts crazy sometimes, and all those little habits that you thought were cute start to drive you bananas. And in the dating stage, you thought they were quirky, and now you're like, I think something is seriously wrong with you, right? And then their selfishness and their bad temper or their thoughtlessness start to hurt you, and looking at them doesn't intoxicate you anymore.

If anything, it makes you want to go get intoxicated, but you don't get the intoxication from them, and so you come to a crisis point in your marriage, and you think, oh no, things are just bad, and they're unraveling, and you think, I know, I know how we can fix this. Let's have a baby. Oh, brilliant, brilliant, yes, let's bring another life into this dysfunctional relationship. And then after you have the baby, right, you start to think as you're holding the baby late at night, you think, maybe the problem is I actually married the wrong person. I was young, and I was naive, and I didn't really know what I want, right? And then, when you're sleep-deprived and you're tired, one day one of you is at work, and guess who you meet? Oh, the right person, the right person, and you're like, I get it now, I get it, I was young, I didn't understand, and I thought they were the right person, but they're actually not the right person, this is actually the right person, and so you decide to correct the problem by getting out of that marriage to the wrong person, and then getting remarried to the right person. But that doesn't work either, and let me tell you why. You always marry the wrong person.

You understand that? You always marry. Look at your spouse, if you're married right now, and be like, you're the wrong person for me.

You always marry the wrong person for at least two reasons. First, okay, we're not primarily lonely people who need soul mates, we're primarily sinners who need a savior. I love how Gary Thomas said it, he said, marriage doesn't solve emptiness, marriage exposes emptiness. Somebody can't live without you, he or she will never be happy living with you either. Lonely, insecure, single people become lonely, insecure, married people, because problems like loneliness and insecurity are not cured by the love of another person. Loneliness and insecurity come from not being connected rightly to God. You've got a guy, this is his most dating guy, drowning in a sea of loneliness and despair, and along by floats a five foot two brunette life preserver.

And what do you do when you're drowning and a life preserver comes into your field of vision? You cling to it, you grasp it, and he starts to suck the life out of her, why? You're looking to her for things that she was never designed to give him. Tim Keller says it this way in his book, Meaning of Marriage, most people today approach marriage with the attitude, I want somebody to feel every vacancy in me, awaken all the dormant gifts inside of me, continuously enrapture me in other worldly emotional bliss, and that puts tremendous unfair pressure on them that dooms the relationship. That's the first reason you always marry the wrong person, the second reason I say you always marry the wrong person is they're a sinner, and so are you, and that means they will inevitably let you down. In fact, marriage's purpose, one of its purpose is to try to teach you how to love somebody with flaws, like God loves you, it's supposed to teach you about the love of God. That's why, again, the way Tim Keller says it, the best you can hope for in marriage is less of a bad match for you.

That's the best you can hope for is less of a bad match because everybody is going to end up disappointing you. So here's the idea, what if you gave up the myth that there's a perfect person, and what if you understood that that's not what marriage was about anyway? What if you saw that God's main purpose in life, not just marriage but in life, was preparing you for Himself? And marriage was a way, not the only way, but a way that He can do that.

It is a way that He can supply some of those needs, but it's not the only way that He can do those things. If that were the case, wouldn't that change how you approach singleness? Rather than being on a rabid, obsessive search for the right person who was the key to a happy life, you could put your eyes on Jesus and focus on following Him, trusting in Him to be your sufficiency and to meet your needs, and then trusting in Him to supply your needs and the way and the timing of His choosing. You could finally begin to live out Matthew 6.33, which says, Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these things will be added to you. You make me first, you seek me first, you become who I want you to be, and then you won't turn marriage or dating into an idol and kill it. You'll finally be able to love out of fullness and not out of emptiness, which leads me to number four. The fourth resolution is, I will seek God first and my significant other second. I will seek God first and I will seek my significant other second. When you reject the marriage equals completion myth, you can put your eyes on Jesus, and you can trust Him to supply your needs. I've heard the best marriages are like two people, one who happen to be running a race, and one just trucking along as fast as he or she can get there, and all of a sudden you look over and there's somebody running the same direction, at about the same speed, and you're like, hey, you look good. We should run together.

We should, and boom. That's what begins this dating relationship and marriage. You're not meandering around in the neighborhood just on the prowl looking for somebody. You get going after what God has told you to be and who He's told you to become, and then God supplies you the right life partner to go along with you. I know that some of our single people are like chameleons. You just take on the characteristics of everybody around them.

Don't do that. Be your own person. Be full in Christ. Be sure of your identity and how He's made you and what He's called you to. In fact, here's a statement I love. You're not really ready to date until you're ready not to date because you're not ready to date until you're at a place where you're like, I know who God's made me to be, and I know what He's called me to do, and at that point you're ready to date because now you're ready for a lifelong companion and partner in doing the will of God.

Don't look for another human being that you should be finding in Jesus. I even love this counsel from the book of Proverbs that my dad gave me when I was in late high school. Proverbs 24, 27. Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready. After that, build your house.

Outdoor work means your job. Your house is a metaphor for your marriage. Translation, guys, get a job.

Get a job. I promise you will become a much more attractive spouse. I'm just going to go ahead and say that right now. The point is, men or women, get going where God's told you to go. It's not a formula, if you do this, then God will do this. It's just saying, hey, pursue what God's told you to be independent of marriage, and then if he's got a marriage partner for you, he'll bring them on and you'll be able to love them out of a sense of direction and fullness. If not, then you haven't wasted a decade of your life just puttering around not doing what God's told you to do. That's a really practical way for you to apply Matthew 6-33.

Here's another one, number five, fifth resolution. I will date only in the Lord. If marriage is about friendship, if marriage is about lifelong companionship, finding somebody to walk alongside of you, then why would you unite yourself to somebody who doesn't share the most important part of who you are? Again, let me say this, I'm trying to make an argument for what's best for you, but Scripture is very clear on this. 1 Corinthians 7, Paul's talking to a single lady in the Corinthian church, and he tells her, he's like, hey, she's free to be married to whoever she wishes. She gets to choose only in the Lord. You can only do that in the Lord though. 2 Corinthians 6-14, Paul says, do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever.

What partnership, practically what partnership would righteousness have with lawlessness? Unequally yoked means join together, and it would certainly mean the dating or the marriage relationship. Friends, I want you to see what Scripture is saying here, not less like a restrictive rule and more like a loving guideline, because to be unequally yoked with an unbeliever means that you're never going to be able to share the deepest and most important parts of who you are with them.

A yoke was a harness that was put on two animals that they were supposed to then be able to pull better together than one of them could alone, and that works as long as the two animals are going the same direction, but if they start pulling the opposite of each other, it's even worse than if they were by themselves. If that person doesn't share your faith in Christ, and your faith in Christ is important to you at all, then you're going to be pulling different directions when it comes to your time, or what you do with your money, or what you plan to do in your retirement, or raising children. If you were dating an unbeliever, have you thought about your future children? Because the single biggest impact on their spiritual lives is going to be your spouse, and you are intentionally making the biggest influence on them, somebody who doesn't even share your faith. Honestly, are you really that selfish that you're going to prioritize your desires in the moment over the souls of your future kids? Please understand. I feel compelled to say this. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, I'm not trying to be mean to you.

In fact, if you are not a Christian, I will tell you, for your sake, you shouldn't date a Christian unless you plan to become one, because the Christian you're dating right now really, really wants to convert you. You mean prove that? You're here, right?

It wasn't your idea to come this morning. It was their idea. And the whole time they've been kind of, you didn't see this, but I can see it. They've been looking over at you, cutting their eyes at you like, is he connecting? Is he finally getting through?

Is JD going to make him see or see what's going on? The point is, they don't really accept you as you are. Hey, I hate to say this, but their mom and dad don't really like you. I mean, they may not like you as a person, but they don't really like you, and they want you to become a Christian.

The whole family's praying for you, right? They all know that you're here, and they've been praying all weekend about you coming, and nobody in the family is ever going to be really happy until you become a Christian. Again, I'm just being honest with you. Maybe nobody's ever been honest with you. Just for your sake, if you don't date a Christian unless you plan to become one.

If you are a believer, resolve to date only in the Lord. Believers, you need to understand, listen to this, you need to understand how our enemy works. Balaam, the famous donkey talking Balaam. Balaam was hired to go curse Israel, and God wouldn't let him do it. So Balaam, scumbag that he was, told the king who hired him to go curse Israel, he said there's actually another way you can do this. It doesn't involve me cursing him. Just get all the pretty Moabite women to go in and infiltrate the camp, and marry all the Israelite men, and the Moabite women didn't worship the same God, and he says you'll destroy the faith in a generation, and that's exactly what happened. What it shows you is that when Satan can't take you down, what he does is he joins you to somebody that kills your influence on the next generation, and Christianity in your family dies with you because the enemy found another way in.

He doesn't change what he did with Balaam, he does with us. So yes, by all means, as a loving guideline, you marry in the Lord. Don't deceive yourself by the way of saying, oh, we're not going to get serious, this is just about having fun and having a buddy. When you understand dating is a road that leads to a destination, and every mile you travel with that person, it gets harder to take the exit ramp.

If you don't want to get to the destination, then stay off the road. Number six, I will not date in isolation. I will not date in isolation. Back in Bible days, my marriages were arranged. Your community chose your spouse for you, and let me be clear, I am glad we are not there anymore. There's a lot of problems with that.

But isn't it fair to say that in our culture we've gone to the opposite extreme? In what is arguably the most important decision of your life, you isolate yourself and you tell yourself the Hallmark Channel myth, which is my heart knows what's best for me. I'm going to tell you right now, your heart does not know what's best for you, and other people in your community can see what's happening even when you can't all hopped up on pheromones as you are. You need godly and wise counsel more at this stage than maybe any other.

Singles, if there were no other practical reason for you to be deeply involved in the life of a church, this would be it. Sometimes those other people can see the obvious problem with this person or with your relationship that you just can't see. Like if they have lust problems or flirtation problems or they have a failure to keep their word or they're manipulative or they have controlling behavior.

They can see that when you can't because you're hopped up on pheromones and your view is just going to be totally distorted. Matt Chandler again, one sure way to walk in foolishness in a romantic relationship is to date somebody who troubles the godly counselors in your life. Stay connected to people in the church.

Ask older believers to speak into your relationships. There's your six resolutions. I know what you're saying. I can hear you. I can read your thoughts.

I can see the way you're looking at me. I know that when it comes to this subject, some of you are listening to this and you're like, I have blown it. I have messed up. I have been damaged.

I have caused damage. Maybe it's sexual sin. I need you to understand the greatest truth in Christianity is that we worship a savior who brings life back from the dead and whose blood can make anything clean. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. Paul, when he was talking about sexual sin and sexual mistakes, he told people, he said, you were bought with a price.

It means after you had sold yourself down a road, you shouldn't have gone down. Jesus shed his blood to bring you back and in him you are washed. You are cleansed.

You are justified. It means you're forgiven. You are sanctified. It means you're set apart and made special in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. It means that you can be special not because you live the perfect past.

You can be special because of Jesus' power and his work within you. See, there's no purity in any of us except for the blood of Jesus and that is a forgiveness and it's a power that's available to all of us. So if you have just messed up royally, well, now you know things you didn't know before, right?

And you're operating with knowledge you didn't have. So today, starting today, make these six resolutions and trust the power and the cleansing power of Jesus to make all things new and lead you into the marriage that he has for you. Praise God that no matter where you come from or what you've done, you're forgiven and you can begin again. Thank you for listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. If you missed any of this message, you can listen to all six of the radical resolutions for biblically wise dating again free of charge at jdgreer.com. Pastor J.D., we're always looking for new ways to help others integrate the truth of the Bible into their everyday lives, right?

And this is the last week to get our latest resource. Yeah, one of our goals here at Summit Life, in fact, I might think of it as our primary goal is to take people deeper in the scripture so they go deeper into the gospel. And so one of the things we've done for that is provided these 50 memory verse cards. They serve as a tool to help you get scripture in front of you and make it easy to memorize these verses. Memorizing scripture gives you a great opportunity to share that verse with other believers.

It's amazing, Molly, how many times I find myself praying the words of scriptures that I just memorize for the people. So we would love to get some of these to you. And this is a way of allowing you to be connected to our ministry. You can find out more about these and just start that conversation at jdgreer.com.

Don't wait. We'd love to send you this exclusive new set of cards today. Our new Summit Life memory verse cards make it easy to memorize scripture. They're perfect to use as a weekly resource throughout the year or as daily encouragement. These scripture cards will remind you of God's steadfastness and his unchanging promises, and they'll help you commit them to your mind and your heart.

Ask for the all things new memory verse card set and coordinating magnet when you give by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or give online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. Join us again tomorrow when Pastor JD explains how sex addresses one of our basic soul needs to be fully known and fully loved, as well as give us a taste of God's amazing love in our series called Forever Family. We'll see you tomorrow on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.