God’s Design for Engagement

November 16th 2025

Series: Designed by God

Sermon Title: God’s Design for Engagement

Topic: Building strong families

Key Passages: Proverbs 14:8, Proverbs 14:15, 2 Corinthians 6:14-15, 1 Timothy 5:8

Topic: Dating, Love, Relationships, Engagement

Sermon Blurb: In today’s message, we will look at God’s design for what we should be doing while engaged.

***1st week ODD months add communion & target message at 15 pages.

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***Yellow means what is yellow will be on the screens and in the handout.

Dedication, Baptism, or Ministry Highlight (1st Sunday, every even month):

Sermon:

Hello, Family Church!

        Welcome, whether you are here in person or online.

Family Moment –

Start with something personal from your family life recently to help people get to know you.

Celebrate salvation / rededications / baptisms last week.

Celebrate new disciples and disciple-makers.

PAUSE

If you are new to Family Church, you are SO happy you are here today!

Today, we continue in our month-long journey looking at relationships…

We are spending 4 weeks talking about relationships and examining cultural perspectives, and contrasting that to what God says.

PAUSE

Two weeks ago, in week 1, we looked at our culture's view of men and women and contrasted it with God’s design.

Last week, in week 2, we talked about how our culture says we should approach relationships & dating and contrast that to God’s view.

                If you missed either of those sermons, head to our website or app and make sure to listen to them!

This week, week 3, we will talk about all the things we should work on BEFORE we say “I do.”

We will talk about how we should be preparing for marriage.

Come back next week, in week 4, we will talk about what a God Centered Marriage looks like.

And then in week 5, we are going to talk about something that is VERY rarely talked about in church…

        And it is something that is probably not talked about a lot in your home…

        Anyone want to guess the topic for week 5?

        Sex…

        We are going to talk about the culture's view vs God’s…

        And parents, if you have a teen or a young adult, you NEED to make sure they are here with you!!!!

PAUSE

Parents, you need to make sure you and your kids are here every week.

Teens & young adults…you need to make sure you are here every week to learn what God’s design for your life pre-dating looks like.

        What your dating life should look like.

        What your engaged life should look like.

        And what your future marriage should look like.

PAUSE

We are doing this series because our desire here at Family Church is that all of you have GREAT relationships!

        I want you to have a healthy dating life.

I want those of you who have given up on the idea of marriage to get excited about it again! 

I want those of you dreaming about marriage to have an extraordinary marriage!

I want those of you who are married to have a great marriage!

PAUSE

Parents….if your teen is not here today….you need to sit and watch this message with them later today.

If you are an adult who is in the dating scene, you need to take really good notes today.

If you’re living with a person today and you are thinking you really want this living together thing to become a marriage…

You need to come to this whole series!

PAUSE

Let me remind you of one thing we have learned EVERY week…

        And write this down again…

Everything in life is connected. 

        (Repeat)

Did you know that everywhere you go, you carry your past with you?

Your past will show up in your future.

Your past will impact your future.

PAUSE

See here is the problem…We don’t prepare for marriage. 

We don’t prepare to be good at relationships.

We don’t train for relationships…

We don’t take classes on how to argue once married and not get divorced.

At best, we might do a few weeks of premarital… and think that is all we need!

AND let me plug something here….

        If you are old and married and still love your spouse…

        I need your help!

        I want to build a team of OLD married people to start helping me with new married couples.

        I want to start pairing up OLD married couples with young soon to be married couples to be able to talk…ask questions…and help them!

        So if you are OLD…love your spouse…and willing to let me train you how to invest in younger people, please fill out a connection card and drop it in the offering box after service!!!!

Imagine if we could pair every couple married at Family Church with an older couple to be there for questions, problems, fights, and so on…

        It would be AMAZING!!!!!

PAUSE

Today, we are going to unpack some specific stuff for unmarried people to do NOW.  And if you are married, use this as a checkup on how you are doing….

Parents, hand your teens a pen.

Girls, give your boyfriend those butterfly eyes now and ask him to take good notes.

Or girls, if there is a guy by you that you want to date and you don’t know how to encourage him to ask you out…..feel free to get up right now and walk across to where he is sitting and hand him a pen.

Single guys don’t walk across the room and hand a pen to the girl you like because she will think you’re telling her she is not paying attention…and that won’t get you anywhere…

Here we go!

PAUSE

If you are taking notes, here is the first point today….

Promises are no substitute for preparation.

(Repeat)

And I know we all know that!

Anyone who has been in school knows this!

Anyone who has been on a sporting team knows this! 

So it is safe to assume EVERYONE in this room knows this!

For example:

Anyone can sign up to run a marathon and promise to run it. 

And some people will attempt to run a marathon without preparing, trust me that never ends well!

But the smart people they do what before a marathon? COME ON WORK WITH ME TODAY!

Yes, they train….they prepare!

What determines whether or not you finish something 99.9% of the time is NOT what you promise but how you prepare!

And you are all thinking, “Well, Duh, Pastor.  Everyone knows that.”

But who here has ever gone into relationship training before a relationship?

Raise your hands?

Look around church……

We all know this….but we don’t do this!!!!

PAUSE

Let me put it another way.

Standing before God, family, friends, and your spouse. 

Saying, “I DO!!!!”

Does not make you capable of doing what you said. 

What it does is make you accountable for those words before your spouse and God.

A promise cannot overcome a lack of preparation. 

Promises don’t matter if a person has not prepared.

And let me tell you this, unmarried people… if you wait until you're married to prepare, you will spend FAR more time and FAR more money trying to learn now what you didn’t learn before you got married.

In some cases, it will be too late if you wait. 

PAUSE

Make the choice to shift your mind today….

Remember this whole month we have been talking about becoming the person God designed you to be!!!!

If you only get one thing out of the message today, let it be this. Write this down…

Prepare to commit. 

Prepare today to be able to fully commit to your spouse.

Start learning today how to commit and follow through so one day you will be skilled at it! So when you make that promise, or vow, you will be in a position where you will be able to fulfill it!

We all know those who commit to prepare at work go further.

Those who commit to prepare in sports are better athletes.

Those who commit to studying do better on the ACT / SAT.

That is just how it works!

But isn’t it interesting that probably most of you have never thought about this when it comes to your relationships? 

With your dating life?

For marriage?

PAUSE

Today, we will begin with the book of

Proverbs

        If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, would you open it there?

New Person Bible Connection:

If you do not have a Bible, that is ok!

        After service, we will give you an AMAZING leather-bound study Bible!

Just go to ADD YOUR CAMPUS PLACE and get one for FREE!!!

In the Old Testament, the wisest man to ever live was Solomon, and he speaks directly to this.

Proverbs 14:8 The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways

What does prudent mean? It is defined as: acting with care and thought for the future.

A prudent person understands that all of life is connected.

So, Solomon says….

The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their What? What does it say?

ways,

What are ways?  Ways are behaviors.  Ways are patterns.  Ways are habits.  Ways are trends. 

Ways are why your parents know what you’re going to do before you do it. 

Ways are why you can predict your parents’ responses to your questions. We all have ways. Habits. Patterns.

A prudent person would say, just look at the direction of your life, and it will give you a pretty good indication of where it will end.

He is saying… the wise person….the prudent person gives thoughts to what is coming in the future, i.e., marriage!

They pay attention to how they do things.

Solomon then goes on…

but the folly of fools is deception.

What does that mean?  Well, a prudent person is constantly examining their life, their ways, their patterns, their behaviors, their trends. The fool, on the other hand, does not pay attention to those things!

The fool thinks no matter how my life has gone.

Regardless of how I tend to respond.

Regardless of where my life is heading.

The fool thinks magically they will end up where they want to be, no matter the direction they are heading.

They think magically they will end up in that place they want to be without doing anything to prepare for it!

We would call anyone foolish to think they could never eat and be healthy, right?

We would call anyone foolish to think they could NEVER go to school and think they would get straight A’s, right?

In the same way, it is foolish to be a Christian and not follow the teachings of the Bible…..

In the same way, people think they can sleep around before marriage and not have it affect their marriage one day….

That is thinking like a fool…..

So many teens and young adults today think they can do drugs. 

They can smoke pot. 

They can get drunk every weekend.

And it really does not matter. 

That is thinking like a fool.

Skip forward to verse 15, and Solomon goes on to say this.

Proverbs 14:15 The simple believe anything,

Now, single people, I have to warn you. 

When you fall in love. 

You will believe anything. 

Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about how we base our relationships on chemistry? 

Right, OHHHH, you can’t stop thinking about him or her?

Single people listen to me…

Seriously, when you fall in love, you will believe anything because you and your boy or girl have a SONG!

PAUSE

ADD SONG HERE…….Ideas???

Right, and when it comes on… it is like OHHHHHHHH our song!!!

Pause

And your parents are thinking, “ya….but does he have a job?”

Pause

And you’re thinking who needs a job we have a song! 

PAUSE

You will think things….

And the other day at the store, there was this empty parking spot, so I pulled into it, and I got out, and his car was next to mine! 

You will think crazy things like…

“He bought me this puppy, and on the way home, we passed a house and they had the same dog. And it was a sign one day we would have a house with this dog together!!!”

And your parents are like, “Oh goodness, get married right now!”

Ya right… PAUSE

Understand, part of falling in love is losing our minds. 

And when you lose your mind in love, you will believe anything!

I hear guys say stuff like this all the time to girls:

I know this is wrong with me. 

I know I need to stop doing this. 

I have to do that.

I haven’t done this. 

BUT if you marry me, I will change!!!

And listen to what Solomon says about that.

Proverbs 14:15 The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps.

They give thought to their what?  What does it say?

STEPS

Why steps? 

Because when you look at a person’s steps, you can tell the direction they are heading! 

That is why, in sports, the good athletes know you don’t watch a person’s upper body. 

Their lower body says where they are going!

Solomon says the best indicator of where a person is headed is the direction they are going!!!

        The path people choose trumps the promises we make.

When you look at your life or the person you’re dating. 

The question is where they have been and where they are heading.

Look at the life of the person.

And that will tell you where they are heading…

NOT their promises…

Their actual LIFE choices!

PAUSE

I want you to commit now to this…write this down…

Become someone who can live up to commitments. 

Because if you can do it now, that indicates you will be able to later.

I want you to commit now. 

Not to a person or relationship. 

Commit now to becoming someone who can keep their commitments.

This is what you need to work on now so you can do it later.

PAUSE

Let me start by helping the people in the room today who do not believe in Jesus but are dating someone who does. 

Let me give you a tip first…since you took the time to be here today. Because I am really happy you are here today, I want to help you as well.

And I know you are thinking, “Don’t tell me what to do, I am not one of you… But trust me on this, you want to hear this…and Christian, it applies to you as well.”

Write this down…

Choose your relationships wisely.

(Repeat)

What does that mean?

2 Corinthians 6:14-15 Do not be joined to unbelievers…what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

Let me be super clear…

That means don’t date a Christian unless you plan to become one.

And if you are a Christian… it means do NOT date someone who is not.

Now, non-Christians, let me explain why I say that…and your GF / BF is going to be mad at me for spilling the beans, but here it is anyway.

They are trying to bait and switch you. 

And I can prove it. 

HOW, you might ask? 

You’re here right now! 

They have you at church today!

See, they are already working on this!  They want you to become a Christian. 

And in fact, they are really mad at me now!  But non-Christians, you would be better off to find someone who will accept you just the way you are.

Christians will not!

And if you marry them…it will just get worse! 

Because they are going to want to find a church.

And when you have a baby, GAME OVER, they will want your kids raised in church. 

It is just going to happen.

So, if you are not a Christian, don’t date one.

If you are…don’t date someone who is not.

PAUSE

And the second thing…write this down…

Become a whole person before you marry.

What does that mean? It means:

You need to deal with the issues BEFORE you get married.

Deal with you parent issues. 

Whatever past drama you have….take care of it…become WHOLE before you get married because if you don’t…

It will rear its ugly head in your marriage and cause problems…

And you can avoid that!

Unmarried people, let me give you a heads up on something that has happened to so many married people in the room. 

Single people, if you have any drama, any leftovers with mom or dad. 

Here is what happens if you don’t take care of it before you're married.

One day, your spouse will say something, and you are going to BLOW up on them because of something from your past that has NOTHING to do with them!

        Any married people want to be real and admit you have done that….

Here is the crazy part… Your spouse will have NO IDEA why you are so upset!

Your spouse will think, “All I said was I would like to be a few minutes early, and she ripped my head off!” 

All I said was,

All I meant was…

And I don’t understand why they responded that way…

SHARE A PERSONAL EXAMPLE….

        Let me give you an example…And I share this with everyone I do premarital counseling with.

        I always ask couples who want to get married…

        How do your parents fight?

        And they always look at me oddly.

        And I ask them to think about it and share.

Now, parents, you are probably thinking I am just being nosey…but I am not…

        I ask that because of what I learned when I was first married.

        See, growing up, I do not remember my parents fighting much…it happened behind closed doors, I guess.

        But my wife Jenny’s parents were not that way.

        They are yellers…

        And so when we got married…my wife did what she was trained to do by her parents…

        When she was MAD at me, she would YELL at me…

        And I would be sitting there thinking…what is wrong with you…that is not what adults do…because I learned something different.

        And it took us a LONG TIME to figure out what was going on…because NO ONE told us this kind of stuff!!!!

PAUSE

I tell people all the time who are having marriage issues…

        Look BACK in your life…

        How was this addressed by your parents…

        And almost 100% of the time the issue STEMS from the difference in how the two people were raised by DIFFERENT parents!

When we DON’T deal with our past trauma BEFORE we get married…

Couples live miserably, get divorced, or go to counseling. 

And months and months and thousands of dollars of counseling..

Single people…..This is enormous if you come from a home that had a divorce; you probably got some of this.

If Dad was there but wasn’t there, you got some of this.

If mom was like Martha Stewart, you probably got some of this….

But you don’t want to drag that into your marriage; overcome it now.

Next

Get out of debt.

This is so big! 

Because money is one of the #1 causes of divorce.

1 Timothy 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Debt is not providing; it is digging a hole.

And single people, trust me, you can get out of debt quicker as a single person than as a married person.

If you are a single person who has so poorly managed your finances that you have a massive amount of debt when you get married, that is a PATH, trend, habit that is a WAY you are carrying into marriage.

You know what, ladies, if he loves you and this is a priority, he will even move in with MOMA to get out of debt! 

And if he doesn’t love you enough to do that….well, it sends you a clear message, doesn’t it?

Get out of debt now!

Another one….

Break your bad habits.

So why do I put this one in here? 

Because marriage is not designed to solve problems, as we've discussed.

It doesn’t solve problems. 

In marriage, the great things get better and the bad things get worse.

So if you have a bad habit now, you will have a bad habit and be married.

If you drink too much now, you will drink too much then.

If you have an addiction thing now….you will when you are married.

Gambling problem now?

A porn thing now?

Shopping addiction?

To prepare to be able to look at someone and say, “I am going to honor and cherish you, you are going to be the priority of my life, I am never going to hurt you,” you have to break your bad habits before you say I DO!

Next

When you’re dating, postpone the physical as long as possible. 

As long as possible.

I am not talking about sex. 

I am talking about everything. 

Just postpone it.

Do you want to know something interesting? 

Something I have NEVER heard in all the marriage counseling I have done….

I have never heard anyone say to me or ANY pastor I know, “I think our relationship would have been better and healthier if we had gotten physical faster.”

I have NEVER heard that, nor do I know any pastor who has.

But I can’t even begin to tell you how many times Pastors hear…“We were in love…and we got physical quicker than we probably should have…it just happened, and I wish it hadn’t.”

Women listen to me…

I know he is going to say he loves you…

And you’re the only one for him…

And all this great stuff…..

But commit right now to postpone the physical. 

And if you get 3 or 4 dates in and you’re not doing stuff and he is like I am going to find someone else then…

Then HE IS NOT THE RIGHT GUY!

Guys, if you just feel like it is, come on, come on, come from the girl…let me tell you something….you are definitely NOT the first guy…

Unmarried people…. Remember what we have said this whole series, you are focused on becoming who GOD designed you to be….not finding the 1. 

PAUSE

Another one last one…..

Don’t live together.

I know in our culture that is normal.  I know loads of parents who encourage this. 

But DON’T do it!

Even if you don’t want to listen to me, do some research. 

There is NO research out there that shows living together helps a relationship.

In fact, most research shows that living together actually causes a far higher rate of divorce than waiting until after marriage!

There is no evidence at all that living together prepares anyone for marriage. 

The opposite is true! 

Look it up yourself.

And listen to this statistic on this….

Individuals who have lived with 2 or more people before marriage have almost a 100% rate of divorce in their first marriage. 

Now I understand people don’t listen to statistics that don’t support their lifestyle because they think they will be the exception to that.

But I have to tell you because I love you. 

If you go down this road….it is almost guaranteed to lead to a broken marriage and you do NOT want that! 

No one gets married because they want to be divorced, so DON’T live together!

----- PAUSE -----

Unmarried people, you get to do this right! 

No matter what you have done wrong or how you messed up in the past. 

Going forward, you get to get it right. You get to make a decision now that will enable you to say I DO and mean it! 

To have a track record that supports it! 

To say I WILL and be able to live it! You will be a whole person who can wholly give yourself to someone else!

This is a part of becoming the person God created you to be!

Life Application: What needs to change in your life before you say “I do.” Or if you are married what do you need to take care of to make your marriage better? As a result of today’s message, I will….

Prayer:

        Make sure to do a salvation call!

Offering:

Thank you all for being here today!

        If you would like to continue your worship through giving, there are offering boxes by the doors as you exit, or behind me on the screens. You can also see other ways to give here at Family Church.

        You can also place any connection cards you filled out in there.

Week #3 –

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Have a great week!!