You know, the thing about relationships is that
when you're in the middle of one, and
I can stand and give testimony of this,
when you're in the middle of it, that
can consume your focus.
Romance has the ability to just kind of
overwhelm your perspective.
There was this 19-year-old guy who
was going to college in Florida, and he
was engaged to be married to this girl
named Emily Cavanaugh.
It's this beautiful girl, very much in love
with her.
Well, a few months into their engagement, she
called off the wedding and basically said to
him, I don't think that you have a
very promising future.
I think there are more promising young men
out there.
This young guy was broken hearted.
He was just overwhelmed and at a loss
of what to do.
He went over to a friend's house that
night and just cried his eyes out.
Wrote another friend a letter that said, a
very melodramatic letter that said, all of the
stars have fallen out of the sky.
She has broken up with me.
There is no reason to go on.
Well, that young guy's name was Billy Graham.
And I think we can all agree that
at 19, Billy still had a lot to
live for, as a matter of fact.
But you see, he couldn't see that at
the moment, because at that moment, all he
could see was the fact that he had
lost this girl that he loved.
He couldn't see that God was going to
use him to take the gospel to more
people than any man in history.
He couldn't see that a few years later
he was going to bring into his life
Ruth Bell, this incredible woman who ultimately became
his wife and has supported him throughout his
ministry.
She is an amazing woman.
A loss of perspective.
You know, there was a time in my
life where I was consumed with relationships and
I love girls, which is a terrible combination.
But I remember the first time, well, my
first girlfriend.
I was 13 years old.
I was at this church junior high party.
It was a Christmas party.
We were playing a very spiritually charged game
of Chubby Bunny, where you stick, you see
how many marshmallows you can stick in your
mouth and still say, Chubby Bunny?
Well, we're playing this game and somebody leans
over to me, one of my friends, and
says, Josh, Carrie likes you.
And I was like, all right.
You know, Carrie was cute.
She was fun.
But then I was like, well, what should
I do?
What am I supposed to do?
And my friend's like, ask her out.
Ask her out.
Whatever that means when you're 13, when your
mode of transportation is a skateboard, I was
going to ask her out.
So I'm trying to get the nerve up
to ask her out.
And finally, her mom is picking her up.
She's getting in her van and I run
out of the house where this party's being
held.
And I catch the sliding door on this
van and I lean in and I say,
Carrie, will you go out with me?
And she said, yes.
And I was like, okay, all right.
Well, the relationship lasted two weeks.
And during that time, I don't know if
you remember junior high relationships, we didn't talk
to each other once because we were so
embarrassed to be when we were around each
other and we'd be at church and we'd
talk to everyone else, but we wouldn't talk
to each other.
And we'd get on the phone and tell
all of our friends how we were going
out.
And yeah, you know, we're going out, but
we couldn't get the nerve up to actually
call each other on the phone.
Well, she finally called me at the end
of two weeks and basically said something like,
maybe we should see other people for a
while.
You know, something like that.
And that was the end of the relationship.
I remember getting off the phone and being
like, I just went out and broke up
with my first girlfriend.
Cool.
But now I'm 21 years old and I
grew up with the mentality that a lot
of us do, that having a girlfriend or
having a boyfriend in a girl's case is
a nutritious part of this complete teenage experience.
This is what we do.
This is how it works.
And if ever there were a time in
my life to pursue romance, pursue a relationship,
now would be the time because I've gotten
more freedom.
I have a car now that other people
consider a car.
And I could take a girl out.
I could show her a good time.
Now would be the time to get into
a relationship.
And yet I've made a decision not to
date, not to be pursuing short-term romance
with anyone, waiting until I'm ready for marriage
to get anything started beyond friendship with girls.
Why?
Why would anyone make that choice?
This might seem simplistic.
Do you know what my motivation is?
My reason?
You just have to take this at face
value.
That I want God's best.
I want God's best.
I want God's best I want to experience
God's best.
It's easy for us to say that.
We can all raise our hand.
Yes, I want God's best.
But what I realized the past several years
is that while I wanted God's best, I
had never submitted the area of romantic relationships
to his lordship.
I wanted his best, but I wasn't really
willing to play by his rules.
And in the process, I was settling for
second best.
I remember being at the True Love Waits
stakeout in Washington D.C. several years back.
True Love Waits is an awesome thing.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with
this, where young people are signing commitment cards,
saying that they are going to remain pure.
They're not going to have sex until they're
married.
And at this stakeout, over 210,000 of
these cards were placed on the lawn from
the Capitol.
And I walked up and just took all
this in this sea of cards.
What an awesome sight.
And yet, I could not help but feel
a tinge of fear, asking the question, how
many of these cards is the enemy of
our soul going to burn in the next
couple of years?
Now, by the grace of God, every single
one of those commitments will be kept.
But here's the problem.
A lot of us can make a commitment
to purity.
A lot of us can see the negative
consequences of other relationships around us.
But what is not being said is that
if we want a different outcome, we are
going to have to live differently.
That's what's missing.
I remember sitting in on a session being
taught by a very well-known youth pastor.
And he was telling this story.
He was speaking on the topic of love,
sex, and dating.
He was telling the story of a couple
that he knew in his youth group who
had started going out.
And he was actually seeing this in retrospect,
years later.
But this couple started going out and, you
know, dating just real innocently, going and, you
know, playing putt-putt golf and going to
the movies together.
But they got closer and closer emotionally.
And like it is so easy to do,
God designed this, that they became intimate sexually.
And they violated each other's purity.
And they broke up not long after this,
disappointed and discouraged.
And he was seeing them at a high
school reunion years later.
The young lady was now married to a
guy, had a child.
The guy was still single.
But they both came to him separately and
said, when I see her or when I
see him, all of the memories come back.
The pain is still there.
Now we were listening to this story in
this audience and really on the edge of
our seat, waiting for a solution.
Because we've seen that happen in our friends'
lives.
There are people here that have had that
happen to them in their own lives.
We wanted something different.
But you know, that day no alternative was
given because basically what the pastor said, and
I respect him, but what he said grieved
me, that you're going to go out and
you're going to get into those same dating
relationships.
You're going to go along.
And at that moment of temptation, you need
to have more self-control than they did.
I would just like to say that that
is not working.
It's easy for us, it's easy for us
to look around and say, oh no, we
don't want sexually transmitted disease.
No, we want to maintain our purity and
be virgins when we're married.
Oh, we don't want a pregnancy.
We don't want all these different things.
But are we willing to get off the
road that is leading so many people towards
those consequences?
There's a story that's told by Ravi Zacharias
that really aptly illustrates the dilemma that we
face.
Very simple story.
A young boy has a bag of marbles
and this little girl that he knows has
a bag of candy.
And so he goes to the girl and
says, I'll trade you my marbles for your
candy.
She thinks about it and says, that sounds
like a great idea.
They go to get their marbles and their
candy.
But while he's getting his marbles out of
his room, he realizes that there are some
of them that he just can't bear to
part with.
He just can't give these up.
And so he takes three or four of
his favorite ones out, rather dishonestly, hides them
underneath his pillow, goes and makes the trade,
and the girl never knows that he cheated
her.
But that night, when that little girl is
fast asleep in bed, the little boy is
wide awake.
And you know the question that is rolling
over and over again in his mind.
I wonder if she kept her best candy.
Now a lot of us go through life.
We go through our single years.
We get married.
And the question we have for God is,
God, is this your best, Lord?
Lord, is this your best?
Am I experiencing all that you want for
me?
God, I want your best when I'm single.
I want your best when I get married
someday, when I have a family.
God, is this your best?
But you know something?
You and I will never experience God's best
until we are willing to give Him our
all.
Are we willing to make that trade?
What I want to look at with you
in the remainder of this session, what it
means to get back to truth in the
areas of love, purity, and singleness.
There are five things we want to look
at.
Getting back to truth, number one, God's definition
of love and His model for relationships is
completely different than the one the world works
from.
God's definition of love and His model for
relationships is very different from the one that
we're used to seeing in our culture.
If you look in the scripture, you open
up the Bible, you're going to see that
God's model for relationships basically gives you two
categories.
You can be here as a single person.
Being single is a state that God looks
at and says, that's good.
I can use that person in my kingdom.
They're flexible.
They can go and do all of these
different things.
But then He also has this other category,
this incredible thing called marriage, where two single
people actually in His sight become one.
And God looks at marriage and says, this
is established by me.
This is a good thing.
And in this union of a man and
wife, I can build a family and build
my church.
And that is something that is good.
Those are the two categories for relationships that
we see.
Single with no commitment, married in a lifelong
commitment.
But we come along and we are sort
of a 31 flavors society.
We don't want just chocolate and vanilla.
We want chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.
And what we've done is we've sort of
inserted a new category of relationships.
Instead of being single with no commitment or
married in a lifelong commitment, we're in a
short term relationship.
A relationship that is really for the sake
of the relationship.
Now, I understand that there has to be
a transition where two single people get to
know each other well enough to figure out
whether or not they want to get married.
That is very true.
But the majority of the dating relationships that
we get entangled in before we're ready for
marriage have nothing to do with moving towards
marriage.
They're relationships that are for their own sake,
for the sake of enjoying romance without being
fully committed.
And that is where the majority of our
problems take place.
In relationships, in a category of relationships that
God never really wanted us to get bogged
down in.
God's definition of love is also very different.
So often our definition is based on feeling
while God's is based on commitment.
I want to read to you 1 Corinthians
13, 4 through 8.
I know you've heard this before.
I want to invite you to hear it
as if it were the first time and
ask yourself the question, am I living this
kind of love?
Is this the kind of love that the
relationships I see around me or the relationship
I'm in is based on?
Listen to how God describes love.
Love is patient.
Love is kind.
It does not envy.
It does not boast.
It is not proud.
It is not rude.
It is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered.
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices
with the truth.
And listen to the words that describe it.
It always protects.
Always trusts.
Always hopes.
Always perseveres.
Love never fails.
Now this is the frightening thing about our
dating relationships.
This is true in Christian marriages as well,
just as much.
That we as Christians have the opportunity to
misrepresent God's love for us.
God's love to the world.
John 13, 35, Jesus says, by this all
men will know that you are my disciples
if you love one another.
The thing that's going to distinguish you from
the world, the factor that's going to set
you apart and point to me is the
way you love.
And the question I want to ask you
is what definition of love are you modeling
in your short-term dating relationships?
That's the question that I want to ask.
What kind of love are you practicing?
What definition of love are you basing your
lifestyle on?
Getting back to truth number two, follow me
on this one.
The right thing at the wrong time is
the wrong thing.
The Ecclesiastes 3, 1 says, there is a
time for everything and a season for every
activity under heaven.
This is the problem.
God has things that he wants to give
you.
He wants you to experience.
I believe romantic love and marriage and relationships
are part of that.
God has these good things, but the mistake
we make is that we take this good
thing out of its appropriate season that God
wants it to take place in.
We take it out of its appropriate season
and think that it's still a good thing,
when often it can become destructive.
I think dating is really a great idea.
I remember reading this article in Focus on
the Family magazine where they were talking about
how important it is to date your wife.
That is exactly what I'm going to be
doing.
I've got about five years of pent-up
dating I'm going to release on that poor
girl.
We take it out at the right timing.
It can be destructive and distracting.
It can be dangerous.
The timing of most high school dating relationships
is a lot like going shopping when you
don't have any money.
You're looking for heartache basically, because even if
you find the right thing, you can't do
anything about it.
Girls, you can relate to this.
You go to the mall and you don't
have any money, but the idea is that
you want to look.
That way, when you do have money, you'll
know what you want.
Isn't this true?
It makes sense.
Let's just say you're walking through this mall
and you come to this store and in
this window is an outfit and it's called
in your name.
You think, I'll just try it on.
You go in, but you don't have any
money, but you go in and you try
it on and let's say it is you.
It fits perfectly.
What are you going to do about it?
One lady in the audience shouted out, charge
it.
Or you can do the thing where you
go to the clerk and you say, I
was wondering if I could put this on
hold for about five years.
We can laugh at that, but that is
exactly what a lot of us have done
in dating relationships.
We're not content with friendship.
We're not content with being a brother or
sister in the Lord.
We want something more and yet we're not
ready to do anything about it, so we're
out shopping around in short term romantic relationships.
And even if we find the right one,
we can't do anything or we end up
trying to hold on to this person for
five years through college until we can graduate
and get married and end up doing God
and them a disservice.
It really all comes down to faith.
That's what it's about.
Would you be willing to look to God
and say, God, I believe in your goodness.
I believe in your sovereignty Lord.
And I believe that by passing up something
good now, because it's the wrong time, you
would give me something better when it's the
right time.
That's the faith that's involved.
Be willing to wait for God's timing.
Getting back to truth.
Number three, any season of singleness is a
gift from God.
Any season of singleness is a gift from
God.
I'm not talking about a lifelong condition or
state where God has called you to be
single.
The majority of the people here will get
married.
But what we need to realize and recognize
is that any season of time, whether it's
a year, whether it's five years, is a
gift from God.
Paul writing in first Corinthians seven thirty two.
I'm reading from a paraphrase.
I want you to live as free of
complications as possible.
All right.
When you're unmarried, you're free to concentrate on
simply pleasing the master.
Marriage involves you in all the nuts and
bolts of domestic life and then wanting to
please your spouse, leading to so many more
demands on your attention, the time and energy
that married people spend on caring for and
nurturing each other.
The unmarried can spend in becoming whole and
holy instruments of God.
Paul is not ripping on the institution of
marriage, but what he's trying to get through
are thick skulls, is that if you are
single, don't view that as some sort of
purgatory.
It is a gift from God.
And what I want to challenge you with
and ask you is, are you using this
time to become a whole and holy instrument
of God?
Is that your focus?
John Fisher writes, as a single young man
at the time, God has called me to
live now, not four years from now.
He wants me to realize my full potential
as a man right now, to be thankful
for that and to enjoy it to the
fullest.
I have a feeling that a single person
who is always wishing he were married would
probably get married, discover all that is involved
and wish he were single again.
He will ask himself, why didn't I use
that time when I didn't have so many
other obligations to serve the Lord?
Why didn't I give myself totally to him
then?
Someone has said, don't do something about your
singleness, do something with it.
That's precisely the spirit that we need to
have.
And I would be remiss if I did
not say that if you have the mentality
that somewhere out there, there is a human
being on this planet that is going to
be that ultimate relationship, even if it's in
marriage that you're looking to, that will always
be there for you to pick you up
when you're feeling down.
You are looking in the wrong place because
only Jesus Christ can fill that in your
life.
When God is your strength, when he is
your sustenance, then it's all right if once
in a while those human relationships let you
down because he is your source.
Getting back to truth number four, you cannot
own someone outside of marriage.
We have to realize that there's more to
save for marriage than just sex.
There is a claim of time and focus
and loyalty that is to be reserved for
that covenant of marriage.
And we really have no business demanding that
or asking for that from someone else until
we've made that commitment.
I have a lot of friends that are
going out and I love them.
I do not at any moment think I
am better than them because I'm not dating
and they are or anything like that.
I don't know if you have friends like
this, but you know, couples that are going
out and for all intents and purposes, they
might as well be married in terms of
the way they act with each other and
they spend their time.
And I'm assuming I'm not talking about being
impure in their physical relationship.
That may be completely fine, but they monopolize
each other's weekends and their time and they
can't do anything unless they're together.
I really don't believe that we have any
business making that kind of claim on another
person's life or letting someone else make that
claim on our life until we have both
committed ourselves to them.
Elizabeth Elliot in Passion and Purity writes this.
Oh, this is potent.
Unless a man is prepared to ask a
woman to be his wife, what right has
he to claim her exclusive attention?
Hello, did you hear that?
Unless a man is prepared to ask a
woman to be his wife, what right has
he to claim her exclusive attention?
Unless she's been asked to marry him, why
would a sensible woman promise any man her
exclusive attention?
And then she gets a little harsher on
the boys.
If when the time has come for a
commitment, he is not man enough to ask
her to marry him, listen closely, girls.
She should give him no reason to presume
that she belongs to him.
She should give him no reason to presume
she belongs to him.
And yet that's exactly what we do.
Giving away pieces of our heart one by
one, giving ourselves completely to someone when we
are really not committed to each other, when
that relationship is not even completely defined.
You know, a lot of people have this
idea that being in a dating relationship, a
long-term relationship or whatever, is sort of
like getting the best of being single and
the best of being married.
Because you still have the freedom of being
single and you're still pretty flexible, you don't
have all the responsibility, but you sort of
have the intimacy and the romance and the
relationship of being married.
You're living in the best of both worlds.
I would like to argue that you are
living in the worst of both worlds.
Because you not only are really wasting the
true freedom of singleness, you're not able to
utilize that, you're distracted.
At the same time, you're never able to
have the true security of a marriage relationship.
You are living in the worst of both.
You know, my hope, my prayer is that
somewhere out there, God has a girl that
He is preparing for me, preparing each other,
both of us for each other, to serve
Him.
But you know, if I spent all of
my time right now trying to hunt her
down or having found her to try and
hold on to her, I would not only
be doing God a disservice by wasting this
season of singleness when I know I'm really
not ready to get married yet, I would
not only be doing God a disservice, I
would be doing her a disservice.
Because guys, she doesn't need a boyfriend.
What she needs is a young man who,
by the grace of God, will be mature
enough to use his season of singleness to
prepare to be a godly husband and father
someday.
Getting back to truth number five, we've looked
at love, we've looked at the season of
singleness, and now I want to touch briefly
on purity.
This is something that fortunately has been a
focus lately in the church, and this is
awesome.
But I think it's important to realize, and
this is number five, that purity starts in
the heart and is expressed in a lifestyle
that avoids settings of temptation and compromise.
I realize that we have some really messed
up ideas of what purity is.
We have this mentality that purity is sort
of a line in the sand.
This is the line right here, right there.
And everything on this side is pure, and
everything on that side is impure.
Purity is a line.
So you know what we do with that
mentality?
We get just as close to the line
as we can.
Oh yeah.
Whoa, I'm still pure.
I am all, oh yeah, I'm pure.
Uh huh.
Whoa, I'm pure.
Yes, I'm still there.
But you know something?
That is not God's description of purity.
What is his admonition?
Do not let your heart turn in that
direction.
Keep yourself far from it.
There's a story in the life of David
that graphically illustrates this principle.
We all know the story of David and
Bathsheba.
This is the black spot on this godly
man's life, where he not only committed adultery,
but he murdered the woman's husband to cover
up his sin.
Well, you think about David.
Here is a man who loves the Lord,
who communed with God and had a relationship
and intimacy that most of us can only
dream about.
And yet, how did he fall so far?
How did it start out?
Well, let me tell you how it didn't
start out.
It didn't start out with David waking up
one morning and saying, I really want to
sin today.
I am so sick of being a goody
two-shoes, psalm-singing, God-fearing shepherd king.
I'm going to go sin.
Now, you know where it started?
The story starts here.
In the spring, when kings go off to
war, David stayed home.
Now, it's not as if you and I
can say, well, God should have put that
in the Ten Commandments.
In the spring, thou king, thou must go
off to war.
No, but the point is, he was not
doing something really wrong.
It was just a small step.
He was not where he was supposed to
be.
A small step in the wrong direction.
And then he's on this rooftop, looks out,
sees a woman bathing.
Just a side note to the girls.
Please, do not take baths on your roof.
Thank you.
A thought process is kicked into gear.
Instead of rejecting it, he lets it linger.
He calls for the woman, commits adultery.
And then to cover up this sin, he
has her husband murdered in cold blood, one
of his most loyal soldiers.
And it's not until the prophet Nathan has
his finger pointing in David's face saying, David,
you're the man, that David finally wakes up
and realizes just how far he's come.
He's not only a homewrecker, he's not only
an adulterer, but the blood of an innocent
man is on his hands.
And the question that must have been burning
in his heart at that moment is, how
in the name of all that is holy
did I get here?
The answer is just one little step at
a time in the wrong direction.
At the conferences that we do, I meet
a lot of 12, 13, 14, 15-year
-old girls that come up afterwards and say,
what are you talking about?
Not dating?
You are nuts.
And what's the big deal about going out
with somebody or holding somebody's hand or kissing
them?
What is the big deal?
And it's not as if I can look
at them and say, oh, no, it is
a big deal.
You are going straight to the pit of
H-E double hockey sticks if you do
that.
It's not a big deal.
It's just small steps.
Small steps in the wrong direction.
Because you see, I'm meeting 16, 17, 18,
19-year-old girls.
And after a few of those relationships, a
few breakups, that heart that once was so
soft is starting to get hard.
Or one night, he didn't stop when she
asked him to, and she took that test,
and she's going to have a baby.
I remember being in Pennsylvania, a beautiful 16
-year-old girl walked up afterwards.
She had just found out that she was
pregnant by her 19-year-old boyfriend.
Good family, good Christians.
You know the question that's hard at that
moment?
How did I get here?
And you know what the answer is?
It's the same as it was for King
David, just one little, little, little step in
the wrong direction.
The purity that God asks for in your
and my life is not a purity that
sees how close you can get to some
imaginary line.
It is a purity that has you running
as fast as you can in the opposite
direction.
That's what he's asking for in your life.
In the heart.
It's because of these five principles that I've
made the following commitments.
I call this a commitment to pursue God's
best.
These are the commitments that I've made based
on what we've talked about.
I will recognize that intimacy and that closeness
and that trust in a relationship is the
reward of commitment.
And I will not pursue a romantic relationship
before I'm ready for marriage.
Second, I will view my single years as
a gift from God.
Third, I will recognize that I cannot own
someone outside of marriage before I'm ready to
get married and commit myself to a young
lady.
I have no right to try to control
her life or monopolize her time.
Fourth, I will view every relationship as an
opportunity to model the love of Christ.
Finally, I will avoid situations that could compromise
the purity of my body or mind based
on these commitments.
Why is it that I'm not dating?
Well, what I found to be true in
my own life is that when I pursue
a short term relationship where the focus of
the relationship is the relationship itself, before I'm
ready for commitment, it encourages me, number one,
to practice a wrong definition of love.
It focuses on the moment.
Second, no matter how hard you try, it
distracts you.
It distracts you from fully using your singleness
to be tying yourself up in a short
term relationship.
And finally, and this is true no matter
how strong you might both be as Christians,
and this has been true in my life,
is that typical dating that has two people
focusing on each other, becoming intimate before they're
ready for commitment, going off alone, places you
in situations and environments that encourage compromise, encourage
small steps in the wrong direction.
And that is why I made the decision
not to date and I'm waiting until I'm
ready to make the commitment of marriage, to
pursue romance.
Now, I want to talk to you about
what it means to some steps in living
this kind of commitment.
I don't know what you think of anything
I've said, but I want to ask you
to step back and ask the Lord to
help you see this from his perspective.
I'm not concerned with whether or not you
agree with me or like the way I
presented something or agree with every single point.
But the thing I want to beg you
to do today is forget about me.
And if God is saying something to you,
if he is speaking to your heart, then
answer that and obey that voice.
That's the primary concern right now.
If you would respond to his prompting in
your life and not turn your back on
it.
And so if you've been listening and you've
been thinking, yes, I see that that point
is true.
I've seen that prove true in my relationships.
I want that to change.
I want to live that same kind of
commitment.
How do I do that?
Well, this is, these are some steps that
can help you live that kind of commitment.
Number one is important to start with a
clean slate.
Repenting of past behavior, ending a relationship that
you know is wrong.
You might be in the middle of something
that you know is distracting you, has a
wrong focus.
I know that that's not easy to get
out of something like that.
I, when I was 15 to 17, I
was in a serious relationship.
I went out with this girl for two
years, cared deeply about her, but there was
a point at which I began to realize
that our focus was wrong, that we were
distracting each other.
We were hindering our walk with the Lord.
It was the wrong time.
And I do not want to try and
make it sound as if it's just the
easiest thing to go and end that kind
of relationship.
It is not easy at all.
But I'm here to tell you that if
God asks you to do something, he will
walk through the path of obedience with you.
He will not leave you alone.
And I stand as a witness to tell
you at the moment that we ended that
relationship, it was as if God looked down
and said, all right, now I can use
you both.
Now that you are fully available to me.
This girl is still one of our family's
closest friends.
She is very close with my mother.
It was very hard to do.
And yet it was the path of obedience.
Second step in living this commitment is to
make your parents your teammates.
And I cannot emphasize this enough.
You need them on your side.
You need them on your team for accountability
to answer to and also for wisdom so
that you can ask questions.
There was a time in my life where
the area of relationships and who I liked
and so on was something that I did
not talk about with my mom and dad
because I knew if they got involved, they
would mess it up.
And I regret that to this day.
And one of the most awesome things in
my relationship with my mom and dad now
is the ability we have to sit down
and I can just talk about girls with
them.
You know, I don't need to be thinking
about this girl.
I should not be thinking about this girl.
I am not thinking about this girl.
And my mom and dad will get on
both sides of me and say, that's right.
But just being honest with them, just sharing
my struggles, just sharing when I'm feeling attracted
to someone.
And there have been so many instances, even
in the last year where I was allowing
a relationship to become intimate when it going
beyond friendship and it was their love and
counsel to just say, wait a second, Josh,
does this line up with what you've committed
to?
Does this line up with what you believe?
And being able to say, oh, you're right.
I'm going off track with this.
This is the wrong time.
How can I say this to you?
I know there might be those things in
your relationship with your mom and dad that
are barriers, walls that have been built up.
Maybe there's a need for humility and repentance
on both sides.
But all I can say to you is
nobody wants you to have a better marriage
than your mom and dad.
Nobody cares more about that.
Nobody wants to cheer you on as you
use these years for God, as you experience
all he has for you.
And be humble enough to go to them
and say, mistakes have been made in the
past.
It has not been right in the past,
but I want to work and make it
right.
I need you during this time.
Establish that team.
Next, establish protective boundaries.
Rules will not save us.
They cannot be the starting point.
There has to be a heart change, an
attitude change.
But once you've made that heart change, those
boundaries can help remind you of what you
believe and help keep you on course.
I remember getting to know this one girl
in my church.
When we were first getting to know each
other and I was spending time with her
family, her dad called me up out of
the blue.
And he said, Josh, I'd like to go
to breakfast with you.
And I'm thinking, hello?
That sounds really serious.
What's going on here?
So he took me out to breakfast.
I think this is the most nervous I've
ever been eating a fried egg.
And he just wanted to say to me,
you know, we, um, I talked to every
guy that's a friend of my daughter's.
I know that you guys are not romantically
interested in each other, but I just want
you to know that these are certain guidelines
that we've established.
We've got a team with Rebecca.
I just want you to understand what these
are and respect these.
You know, I was not, ladies, I was
not turned off by that.
It was awesome to see a dad who
loved his daughter and was not going to
let just any, any Joe waltz in and
do whatever he wanted to do with his
daughter.
Be back by 12 o'clock, Mr. Smith.
Thank you.
No, they had a team.
They had boundaries that they expected me to
honor.
Next, it's important to check who's whispering in
your ear, check your influences, whether it's what
you're reading, what you're listening to.
If there are those things that are pulling
you down to your commitment, be willing to
turn it off.
Be willing to look for alternatives.
And finally, probably most importantly, trust God with
the details.
Trust God with the details.
So often we want to know everything that's
going to happen and exactly how it's going
to unfold for the next, hey, 10, 15
years of our life.
People come to me, well, Josh, if you
don't, you aren't dating, you know, checking girls
out.
How are you going to know what you
like?
What's going to happen?
I mean, what if you blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah?
They go through all these different scenarios.
I don't know.
I don't know how it's all going to
unfold.
I don't need to know how it's all
going to unfold.
All I need to know is that God
has called me to trust him.
I want to trust him in the details.
Elizabeth Elliott writes about her relationship with Jim
Elliott.
We were being asked to trust, to leave
the planning to God.
God's ultimate plan was far beyond our imaginings
as the oak tree is from the acorns
imaginings.
The acorn does what it was made to
do without pestering its maker with questions about
when and how and why we have been
given an intelligence and a will and a
whole range of wants that can be set
against the divine pattern for good are asked
to believe him.
We're given the chance to trust him when
he says to us, if any man will
let himself be lost for my sake, he
will find his true self.
When will we find it?
We ask the answer is trust me.
How will we find it?
The answer again is trust me.
Why must I let myself be lost?
We persist.
The answer is look at the acorn and
trust me.
While listening to this tape, perhaps God's spirit
has been talking to your heart.
If you felt the need to draw closer
to your creator, why not start today?
God has provided a way for man to
enter into a relationship with him forever through
his son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth and
the life.
No man comes to the father but by
me.
The Bible says that as many as receive
him, to them give he power to become
the children of God.
You too can receive him right now by
asking him to forgive you of your sins
and asking him to come into your life
and to be Lord and savior of your
life.
If you'd like to receive Jesus Christ in
your life today, you can do so through
a simple little prayer.
Just open up your heart and repeat this
prayer with me.
Lord Jesus, I admit to you that I
am a sinner.
I believe that you died on a cross
for my sins.
Please forgive me of all of my sins.
Please come into my heart and into my
life.
Please make my life acceptable unto you.
Thank you Lord for your gift of eternal
life and I receive you this day.
In Jesus name I pray.
Amen.
Now if you prayed that prayer with me
right now, you are a new person.
All your past sins and faults have been
forgiven by God and in his eyes you
are a brand new creature.
The Bible says that if any man be
in Christ, he is a new creature.
Old things have passed away and behold all
things become new.
Now as a newborn spiritual infant, you should
seek the sincere milk of God's word so
that you may grow by it.
So read your Bible and pray to the
Lord often and seek out other Christians and
enter into fellowship with them.
We'd love to hear of your decision for
Christ and we'd love to give you a
free study of the book of John on
cassette by Pastor Chuck Smith.
Jesus never turned a spiritual or hungry or
thirsty soul away but filled everyone who asked.
So we'd like to do the same for
you in his name.
So please write to us at the address
on this tape and tell us of your
needs and what the Lord has done for
you today.
May the Lord bless you now and keep
you in everything you do and everything you
say.
Welcome to the family.
We want to see Jesus,
Jesus.
To reach out and touch him
and say that we love him.
Open our ears Lord
and help us to listen.
Oh we
love him.
We
want to
see Jesus.