Welcome to Adulting - Dating

Opening of Lesson:

Prayers and Blessings

Recap Series we are in - welcome to adulting

Recap last weeks lesson - conflict

Todays Lesson we are looking at dating (make sure you’re taking notes)

How often do we think that marriage is the end goal?

basically, is this what we look to and think we would finally be happy/satisfied, and our problems would go away

the hard truth is that couldn’t be further from the truth

How many of you if you were honest would say that you have made some mistakes in the way you date or think about dating?

Just because you manage to get married doesn’t mean that dating poorly won’t catch up with you.

Most of the time, marriage will be easy and everything you hope and dream for a bit, but as time goes on, it is undeniable that problems will come up.

This is amplified if you enter into marriage with things like a porn addiction or a past life of promiscuity.

These things feed an addiction to variety that will come back to cause problems in marriage.

If all of your dating life outside of marriage is filled with things like porn or multiple partners, you will become accustomed to variety and will struggle with monogamy.

I can almost guarantee that marriage will be different than you think. I’m not trying to say that it will be worse or better than you think, but it will almost certainly be different.

The way you date will majorly affect your future marriage.

The good news is that God can redeem all of it, even the bad choices we make in dating. With hard work and healing, even some of the hardest situations can be turned into a great marriage.

Where does dating rank in the topics you have questions about or want to be taught about as a young adult?

probably high

Why is that?

it is one of the biggest hopes, goals, and thrills of single young adults

Unfortunately, dating is also one of the largest sources of problems for single adults. It causes more pain, heartbreak, angst, confusion, and longing than almost anything else.

Most of us are pretty bad at dating, but that is a trend across this generation and society, not just you.

Is it a surprise that we are so bad at dating?

somewhat, we have more apps, websites, and other resources than any other generation for that reason. Most movies and tv shows are about dating. We talk about every detail of it with our friends, and we start dating early as kids.

We are however really bad at it. Studies show that fewer people are getting married and the ones who are getting married are taking much longer to do so.

As a young adult in the 1950’s, you had almost a 95% chance of getting married.

That chance has dropped to about 75% now meaning that 1 out of 4 people will never get married.

Out of the ones who are getting married now, it is taking them about 7 years longer on average than in previous generations.

On top of the declining marriage rates, divorce rates are sky rocketing.

In 1867, the divorce rate was 1 out of every 35.7 marriages

In 1967, the divorce rate was 1 out of every 3.7 marriages,

and now the divorce rate is about 1 out of every 2 marriages, or around 50%.

(Those divorce rates DRAMATICALLY drop for couples that are actively involved in church btw)

Not only are we bad at dating, we are rapidly getting worse.

If the trend shows that we are getting worse, where did we go wrong and how can we fix it?

That is not a very simple question to answer.

Our first instinct is probably to look at what Scripture says about dating, and that isn’t much.

The Bible never uses the word dating, and there aren’t very many examples of dating the way we think of it in the Bible.

The closest option is Samson and Delilah and that ended horribly

Why doesn’t the Bible talk about dating?

dating as we know it didn’t exist in the time the Bible was written

Dating is a modern thing. God did not invent dating, He invented marriage.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t date, but we should figure out how to do it in a way that honors God.

Dating the way we as a society do it now is not making us any better at marriage.

There are a few common dating mistakes that people make when dating or engaged:

dating for fun

focusing on the physical

trying before buying

living together

treating love as a feeling

looking for “the one”

thinking that marriage will solve all of your problems

never asking someone out

Lets start with Dating for Fun:

Why do we date?

to find the person we are going to marry (this is the right answer at least)

In modern dating, some people date without marriage as the goal. It is something just for fun.

What is wrong with dating for fun?

if fun is your goal, that is the most you are ever going to get from it

If you aren’t aiming for marriage, you’re very unlikely to find yourself accidently ending up in a happy, healthy marriage

If your dating goal is fun, you might sometimes get that, but it won’t last.

All dating relationships end in either marriage, or they just end.

Ending a relationship is never fun. The more fun you have in the relationship, or the longer that relationship lasts, the more painful the breakup is.

Dating for fun then becomes not very fun at all.

This doesn’t mean that dating shouldn’t be fun. If you are not having fun spending time with someone you would eventually marry, you probably should break up with them before you spend a lot more time with them in marriage.

The difference here is that you have an end goal. Your goal is to determine if this is the person you are going to marry and spend the rest of your life with.

If they are not, you need to end the relationship as soon as you know that.

If you are not ready to be married, you shouldn’t date.

Entering into a dating relationship where you can’t or won’t get married is doomed to failure. This means that breakup is inevitable and the more time you spend drawing it out, the harder it will be.

Do you have to date someone before you marry them?

technically no, most of human history did not

They were either single, engaged, or married.

How did they skip the dating phase?

they observed the people around them to find the someone who would make a good husband or wife.

They relied on their family to observe these people and give advice on whether they would make a good match or not.

I’m not saying that you should enter into an arranged marriage with someone who you have never met that your dad picked out for you.

What I am saying is that if your goal is to actually get married, look around for the people who embody the characteristics you want in a spouse.

Ask your family or trusted friends for advice on if they think this person would make a good spouse, and if yes, pursue a relationship with them towards marriage.

Next Mistake: Focusing on the Physical:

Most of us had a crush in school that we wanted to be paired up with for a group project.

We wanted to paired up with them, not because they were the smartest or most hard working, but because they were the most attractive.

Most of the time, physical attraction is the thing we look for most in a dating relationship.

The problem with this is that you are picking a life partner, not just someone to look at.

If our goal in dating is marriage, which it should be, then we want to pick someone who will be really good at marriage.

The way someone looks has almost nothing to do with whether they make a good spouse or not.

If the person you marry is beautiful, congrats, that’s awesome. The problem is that beauty does nothing to help when you have an important decision to make, a disagreement to resolve, or a crisis to negotiate.

When you get married and have a sick kid throwing up everywhere, you aren’t going to care how perfect your spouses hair is, you care about their character.

When the realities of life hit, you want someone who will stand by your side, not just a trophy spouse.

Do you know what a depreciating asset is?

something you buy that consistently loses value

Beauty is a depreciating asset.

Your future spouse’s beauty is guaranteed to fade.

They can get smarter, wiser, kinder, more interesting, and become a better spouse, but they can’t become younger and prettier.

If you don’t believe this, when is the last time you were attracted to someone in their seventies? (if you have an answer you are weird)

If your sole reason for marrying or dating someone is their physical beauty, what happens when they inevitably are not as attractive in a few decades?

you lose the reason you married them

If you win someone’s attention because of your looks, you will lose them for the same reasons.

Proverbs 31:30 CSB

30 Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised.

We are all getting uglier.

As long as you don’t make physical beauty your idol or date people primarily because of looks, it’s ok that we’re getting uglier.

What this does not mean is that you can’t or shouldn’t pursue someone who is physically attractive.

If the person you date or marry is also beautiful, that’s great, but there should be much more to why you are attracted to them than their appearance.

If you are not attracted to you future spouse, I would also say that is a problem. We are not trying to eliminate that as a factor, but it shouldn’t be the one and only factor.

As we date, we should seek to see everyone the way God sees them, which is focused on the heart.

1 Samuel 16:7 CSB

7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or his stature because I have rejected him. Humans do not see what the Lord sees, for humans see what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart.”

This will also help with pursuing purity.

The goal is that we become attracted to Godliness and Spiritual Maturity over fleeting beauty.

That is the goal, but don’t date or marry someone who you are not attracted to just because, that will not end well.

Why are looks the first thing we judge someone by?

its easy

looks are the first thing you see and it is much easier than getting to know someone.

If your goal is to enter in a dating relationship to find someone to marry, nitpicking about small preferences is not a great thing to do.

Waiting for someone who is just a bit taller, or shorter, or thinner, or blonde, or brunette, or blue eyed will cause you to eliminate or overlook a lot of people who could be a great match otherwise.

The next danger is Trying Before Buying:

Lets get into the nitty gritty.

There are not many things that have caused more problems, or more pain in both dating and marriage than premarital sex.

Before we jump right into it, first lets address the question that everyone has but nobody seems to be able to answer:

Where is the line?

almost everybody struggles to define clear boundaries in dating relationships when it comes to sexual temptation.

most of the time, we think we are stronger than we really are when it comes to fighting it, and the boundaries are often not strong enough or clear enough to not get moved over time.

breaking these boundaries leads to guilt, shame, and frustration in your relationship and is guaranteed to cause problems.

Where should we draw the line?

Jesus calls us to be radical about fighting sin: Matthew 18:8-9

Matthew 18:8–9 CSB

8 If your hand or your foot causes you to fall away, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to fall away, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hellfire.

Jesus calls us to be proactive about fighting sin and temptation meaning the same should be upheld in our dating relationship

DISCUSSION:

Practically as a Christian, where should the line be?

We often think that we can draw the line somewhere between kissing and having sex, but it rarely works.

WHEN YOUR BODY GETS READY FOR SEX YOU SHOULD STOP.

making out is too far, there is nothing fruitful added to the relationship from that, and it can only lead to bad things

Now that we have established where the boundaries should be, lets look at why we need those boundaries.

It is only a recent thing that sex before marriage was socially acceptable.

Most people today expect and assume that a single person has had sex before marriage.

Not having premarital sex is almost counter cultural at this point, especially in a dating relationship.

Why is it that no other part of history has condoned this?

Have we discovered something new? Is it harmless? Is it Helpful? Does it allow us to make a better decision about who to marry?

Lets look at the results.

Premarital sex can lead to some obvious consequences like pregnancy and STD’s.

Those are avoidable though right?

not always

there are still ~ 3 million unintended pregnancies every year in the US and over 1 million abortions. About 85% of those abortions are single people. About 51% of those pregnancies happened despite the use of contraception

according to the CDC, there are about 19 million new cases of STD’s in the US every year.

Crazy truth: If every person only had one partner for life (their spouse), STD’s wouldn’t exist.

When you date to marry, premarital sex brings in even more issues.

The trend we talked about with less marriages happening closely follows the rising trend of premarital sex.

Studies show that people who have premarital sex are more prone to divorce later on.

Just one premarital sex partner increases your odds of divorce nearly 4 times in the first 5 years of marriage.

Having multiple partners results in a divorce rate 5-6 times higher.

Why does this happen?

sex is not a casual thing

Premarital sex changes things in your body and mind that make marriage harder.

When you have sex, chemicals are released in your body such as dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin. These chemicals produce strong emotional bonds.

Oxytocin is what a causes a mother to bond with a newborn baby.

In marriage, the release of these chemicals helps you bond to your spouse, but outside of marriage, they cause you to bond with someone who isn’t your spouse.

Why is this a problem?

these chemicals are addictive.

you create bonds with someone you don’t end up marrying

The way these chemicals make pathways in your brain, it becomes easier to say yes and harder to say no, causing it to be majorly difficult to fight this.

This same thing happens when you watch porn, which is what causes porn addictions to be prevalent.

When you create this bond with someone you don’t end up marrying, the breakup is much more powerful because of this connection.

The cycle continues though because when you see someone new, you are much more likely to have sex with them, and bond with them.

Ultimately, this brings you to a place where you slowly lose the ability to chemically bond with your eventual spouse.

You become addicted to variety, and this makes it more difficult to remain committed to one partner the rest of your life.

The fact that our bodies produce these bonding chemicals proves that God only ever intended us to be with one person for life in marriage.

If we follow the cultural trend of sleeping with multiple people before getting married, we sabotage our marriages before they even start.

You might be thinking:

What if i am for sure going to marry this person? Then it doesn’t matter if we sleep together because we will get married.

Bold of you to assume that, how very unwise

That is still outside the design of what God intended sex to be. Premarital sex can never be guilt free as a believer. You know you shouldn’t do it, and you will always have some sort of fear or guilt robbing you from the fullness of what God created it to be.

God intended sex to be for marriage.

If done within marriage, sex brings forth life, guilt free enjoyment, and strengthens the bond between husband and wife.

Jesus talked about marriage as two becoming one flesh, saying that they should not be separated after this.

Mark 10:7–9 CSB

7 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother 8 and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

The Bible also adresses premarital sex (or sexual immorality) more than a lot of other sins seeming to point out its severity.

1 Corinthians 6:15–20 CSB

15 Don’t you know that your bodies are a part of Christ’s body? So should I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of a prostitute? Absolutely not! 16 Don’t you know that anyone joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For Scripture says, The two will become one flesh. 17 But anyone joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. 18 Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. 19 Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.

This is an important topic and many people get it wrong.

Here is the good news: there is hope.

Statistically, most people have had sex before marriage.

That isn’t a good thing, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be forgiven or that your future marriage is doomed.

If you change your viewpoint on sex now, it can greatly benefit your future.

It might not be easy, it will take time, commitment, daily prayer, confession, repentence, and consistency, but you can defeat it if you are in it. (This goes for any lustful habits or addictions)

God invented sex. He isn’t trying to prevent you from having sex. God wants you to enjoy your life, but He wants it to happen as He designed it: in the context of marriage.

Announcements:

Last Bridge Group Tomorrow night, you don’t want to miss it! Fellowship the whole time!

BP4H packing party Wednesday! and BP4H Saturday!