This year I am working with an organization called Campus Crusade for Christ.  I spend my days doing campus ministry in central Wisconsin.  We have a weekly “big group” meeting that students attend during which we present a message and the first series that we covered was called “How To Get the Most Out of College.”  These are the notes my girlfriend and I used when we gave a talk on dating.

How To Get the Most Out of College: Dating Relationships (for download) (214)

Introduce topic: How to get the most out of college: DATING RELATIONSHIPS (MITCH)

MITCH: We have been going through a series about How to get the most out of college and tonight we are talking about how to get the most out of dating relationships.

Intro of ourselves – We’re on staff with Student Impact and we’ve been dating for 13 months. The best we have come up with for a couple name is Matie…I know, it needs some work so maybe you guys can give us some suggestions afterward. We’re excited to share with you what we have learned about dating but by no means do we have it all figured out.

KATIE: Top 3 things Mitch and Katie don’t understand about each other:

1. MITCH: Why I have to sit and console and tell you I understand when I could just fix it and make it all go away?
2. KATIE: Why it’s gross for Katie to burp and fart but it’s utterly hilarious when Mitch does
3. MITCH: Why I need to tell you that I like you and that you’re beautiful today when I told you yesterday?

PRAY (Mitch)

MITCH: Dating isn’t really a term that was used when the Old and New Testaments were written…but regardless of when or where it originated, the Bible gives us an idea of what God had in mind for it. The most clear model for what dating looks like is the model that the Bible lays out for marriage. It’s important to point out though, that dating is NOT marriage. God designed marriage to be an amazing gift where a man and a woman make a commitment to each other and enter into a union of emotional and physical intimacy. God makes it clear that marriage is special, marriage is sacred and it’s not to be taken lightly. Because marriage is such an important thing to God, he let us know how to make marriage and dating be the most satisfying. I mean…He designed us…so he knows what roles and responsibilities we are best suited for. He also knows what things are terribly hurtful to us so he commands us not to do certain things before we are married. Also, as our designer, creator, and Savior, God becomes the greatest and most valuable thing to place at the center of our lives. We are made in such a way that we are only truly satisfied when we turn to him, the source of life. (MITCH)

MITCH: So we’ve broken down dating relationships into three phases to show you what the Bible’s guidelines for dating practically look like.

STAGES IN DATING RELATIONSHIPS – what does this practically look like?

“ooh, he’s kind of cute” stage (KATIE)

• KATIE: You all know what I’m talking about. You meet someone and they strike your interest immediately. I know if you’re a girl, you even imagine the possibility of dating them right at that moment. But you know what’s silly about this? We don’t actually know ANYTHING about them except that they’re cute or maybe funny. So my question to you is how should we decide whether or not to date someone? People often date for the wrong reasons. For women, it’s often because we want to be loved and desired. It’s part of who we are and dating can make us feel cared about and desired. It can give us a sense of security and identity. These things coming from dating is not a bad thing. But we need to be careful to not date just so we feel loved and desired. This motivation is dangerous because we just end up constantly seeking a next new relationship and eventually settling for someone that in the end is not worth dating. If we are always seeking a relationship to make us feel desired, we will just be left wanting. (KATIE)
• MITCH: A lot of times, men date without really thinking about why they are. A lot of times it’s based solely on physical attraction or if the girl is “cool”. Or maybe because all our friends have girlfriends so if we don’t have one, we are less of a man. This is equivilant to saying, “All my friends have really awesome shiny cars, so I better have one too.” This is just objectifying women and not viewing them as human beings with feelings and needs.
• MITCH: In order to counteract this, there needs to be a purpose in dating. In any relationship we enter, especially a dating relationship, there is the risk of getting hurt. You need to ask yourself, is this person worth the risk? Am I willing to trust them with my time, emotions, and affections? Most of the time people feel as if they have left a little piece of themselves behind in every dating relationship. The question is, how much of yourself do you want to leave behind with people other than your spouse?

• KATIE: If we are dating someone in order to find out if they are the person we could marry, then they must be someone that you really think is worthy of being your future husband or wife. Make sure that they share your love for Jesus and look for godly character in them. 1 Cor 15:33 says “Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character.” Notice that it doesn’t say that good character will help bad company to become good. It says bad company corrupts good character! If you are dating someone who doesn’t share in your love for Jesus, then you are constantly pulling in opposite directions of each other. You may think of this pulling as pulling horizontally but it is actually better understood as pulling up and down. Think about someone laying on the ground holding the arm of someone standing up. How much harder is it for the person standing up to pull someone off the ground. I’m especially wimpy so it is impossible for me to pull Mitch off the ground but if I was on the ground pulling him down, even though he’s much stronger than me, I will eventually pull him down because it’s just way easier to pull someone down than up. It’s the same with your walk with the Lord. You spend a huge amount of time with the people that you date and ultimately the person that you marry. So if you’re dating someone that does not share your love for Jesus, even if you try hard, they will eventually pull you down. I’m not just dating Mitch because he’s good looking or because we have fun together. I enjoy these things about him but in the end they’re not enough. I’m dating him because I admire his faith, wisdom and his desire to live for God above all else. Instead of one of us pulling the other away from God, we both get to pull each other closer to God.

• MITCH: Suppose you’ve found someone that you’re interested in for their godly character and you’re ready to enter a relationship with the purpose of finding out if this person is right for you to marry. What do you do next? Don’t try to sneak into her life. Here’s an example of what this can look like…hang out a lot in groups watching movies and every week gradually move closer to her on the couch. One night casually touch her hand while you are both reaching for the popcorn to let her know you’re interested. From there, linger around after the movies to stay up late exchanging your deepest and most intimate stories, anticipating the day that you feel bold enough to ask her out by changing your facebook relationship status to dating and waiting to see if she confirms that she is in a relationship with you to get her answer.
• MITCH: Be bold. Tell her you like her and ask her out on a date. Don’t leave her guessing on your intentions. And I’ll admit…doing this is scary, you’re putting yourself out there and there is the risk of rejection. When I told Katie that I liked her I was super nervous. I remember sitting on my couch and typing out a text to her that said “Any interest in a walk?” As I typed it, I wasn’t all that nervous, but as soon as I sent it, the butterflies arrived in my stomach and I began my nerve racking 5 minute wait for her response. She said yes and we went on a casual walk during which we spent most the time talking about random things until I had the courage to tell her what I wanted to tell her. (cue cheesy movie line) And the rest is history…

• KATIE: Ladies, some of you may be thinking “Amen” in your head. I know I really appreciated the way that Mitch took the initiative to tell me that he liked me. But I don’t want you ladies to think that you’re off the hook. Women don’t give into the temptation to control and manipulate. Let’s be honest here, when we’re interested in a guy, you spend lots of time thinking about how you can get them to like you and ask you out. Men would probably be shocked by the amount of time we spend obsessing over it. You may figure out where they’ll be on a Friday night or when they’ll be walking past the Science building in between their classes and just happen to be there. You do the little hair flip back trick and just accidentally look back at them and make eye contact. You text them, you plan events just so that you have something you can invite them to. Maybe you don’t want to admit it but I will, I’ve done these things to men. We do all of these things because as I said before, we want to feel desired. But doing these things is manipulation. We’re trying to control men. But it’s so silly. All it leaves us feeling is the opposite of what we’re seeking. We end up feeling undesired because we never give them the chance to initiate and make us feel cared about. This doesn’t mean that we’re helpless though. Instead of trying to manipulate them into liking you, build a relationship with them. Let them have a chance to see your character, that you’re worth the risk. If they’re not willing to lead and initiate and go after you, they’re not worth it.

“when is he going to hold my hand already?” or…to people on the outside the relationship may look like this, “gosh, they never stop hugging/touching each other when we’re hanging out…” stage (Mitch)

• MITCH: In this stage of a relationship, things are new and exciting, including physical things which makes it a necessary time to think about making your relationship pure. In 1Cor 6:18-20 Paul tells us to “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” God designed us to be attracted to each other. It was HIS idea. But he also knows how much of ourselves we can give away because of it. The Bible distinguishes sexual sin as one that is different; it’s one that affects us in a different way than any other sin. God also knows how hurtful past sexual sin can be to a married couple. In Hebrews 13:4 we are told “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be kept pure…” In the past couple years that verse has hit me in a huge way. If I look at mine and Katie’s relationship…how many marriage beds need to be kept pure? Well, Katie has a marriage bed…her husband, if it’s not me has a marriage bed, I have a marriage bed, and my wife, if it isn’t Katie has a marriage bed. If I decide that I don’t care about sexual purity with Katie, I am potentially defiling four marriage beds. It’s also pulling her and myself away from God when I should be helping us move closer to him. Sexual sin may seem like a good idea and feel good at the time, but it is a hurtful thing to mess around with. It’s similar to buyer’s remorse. I mean, when I walk down the nerf gun aisle at Wal-mart and see the four foot long, fully automatic, can fire 70 sunction cup darts a second gun complete with built in tripod, there’s something inside me that says, you need this because it’s awesome and it will feel soooo good when you successfully get the drop on your roommates from your hiding spot made out of blankets from your bed. But after that initial good feeling, I’m going to ask myself, why did I spend $92 dollars on this gun? The same is with sexual sin…don’t indulge in it just because it will feel good, think about the after effects.
• MITCH: How do we decide what is pure? For me, Ephesians 5:3 answers this question. It says “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.” That verse doesn’t just say, “don’t have sex.” It says there MUST NOT be any HINT of sexual immorality among you. Not a hint. Some questions that I ask myself are: If I don’t marry Katie, will I want to share this with my wife when I do get married? Or would I want my wife to tell me she did this in her last relationship when we get married? Another one is, would I want to share this with Jerel Sehloff, Katie’s dad? I think God gave us this verse and others because we love to find loopholes and if the Bible only says, “don’t have sex”, we can find plenty of other things to do that feel the same. Isn’t it awesome that God planned ahead to stop us from weaseling around his rules? It’s almost as if he knew everything that would happen…hmmm.

• KATIE: So we’re supposed to keep our relationship pure. You may be thinking, okay, now that I know this, I’ll just go ahead and do that. That is so much easier said than done. Keeping your relationship pure is hard, it’s really hard and that’s why we all need to be extremely careful. So Mitch and I are going to suggest a way for you to put yourself in a position to keep your relationship pure. What we’re about to say may seem crazy and ridiculous to you or you may have heard it a million times. But either way it has transformed what our relationship looks like and helps protect us from sexual immorality. What we did was set up physical boundaries, that is limits in how far we will to go physically. When you set up these boundaries you don’t want to ask yourself, how close can I get to line without crossing it.

• MITCH: See for me, a river of running lava looks really cool, however if I don’t want to have the risk of falling in the lava and burning my face off, I shouldn’t leave the tourist group I’m a part of and crawl down the bank of the lava river to see how many sticks I can burn up in it without falling in.

• KATIE: Why? Because we know better than to put ourselves that close to danger. We all mess up from time to time. If we set up boundaries that create margin or space between us and sexual sin then if we mess up, we are still within that space and have not crossed over the line into sexual immorality. As soon as Mitch and I started dating he asked me to set up boundaries with him. One of our boundaries is that we do not kiss: Mitch and I do not kiss. We don’t have these boundaries because kissing and laying down next to each other are impure but because for us, they bring us too close to the line that screams danger.

• MITCH: Personally, I’ve seen what kissing has led to. In a past relationship, our one boundary was, “no sex”. Well, in that sense, we were successful. However, kissing led to us doing things that were sexually immoral because we lacked margin in our boundaries. And it kills me that I had to basically tell Katie “Katie, I wasn’t able to control myself with my last girlfriend and now if we get married, you won’t be the first person I share some things with.” It kills me and I know how much it hurts her so when we looked at boundaries, I knew we needed margin between us and sexual sin which led to deciding not to kiss while dating.

• KATIE: I don’t want you to think right now “wow, that’s cool for you guys. I could just never do that.” It’s not just miraculously easier for us to not do those things; we don’t desire any less than anyone else to do those things. We just have a greater desire to keep our relationship pure to honor God and honor each other.

• MITCH: Ladies, here’s a tip…Sexual desire is a desire, not a need. If a guy ever says that you aren’t meeting his needs because you say “no” to going further, that’s a joke. No one is going to die because they don’t get their sexual desire satisfied. They are just being selfish.

“huh, maybe she’s not perfect. But I still really like her.” – the end of the honeymoon stage

• MITCH: People often define success in a relationship as getting married and failure as breaking up. Katie and I use this for our relationship: Whether we get married or not, success is defined as having a relationship that is honoring to both God and ourselves. We want to walk away with no regrets and we don’t want to feel like failures if, through dating, we find out that we aren’t meant to be married. One of the ways we can honor God and each other is to take our Biblical roles seriously.
• MITCH: Men, we have a challenging role..women want to be pursued. They want to know that we care about them and they want to know it often. And letting people know that we care about them isn’t always the most natural thing for men to do. Regardless, we need to have a drive to make them feel special. Delight in them. Delight in their beauty, their personality and whatever else you like about them and let them know that you are.
• MITCH: A relationship should also be Christ centered. A Christ centered relationship means that each of you should be pushing each other closer to Christ instead of pulling each other away.
• MITCH: Men, it’s your responsibility to initiate and lead in bringing your relationship closer to Christ. It’s also your responsibility to initiate and lead in bringing your relationship closer to figuring out if you should get married. So do things to find out more about her, initiate conversations to help you find out if this is the woman you should marry.

• KATIE: Women you must encourage and support men. Tell them that you respect them with your words and your actions. When you instill belief in them it spurs them on to want to be more of the man that you appreciate in them. Allow them to lead, initiate, protect and care for you. Also, don’t expect perfection in them. They need to know you still respect them even when they’re not perfect.

• MITCH: And men, don’t expect perfection in yourselves. Realizing failures is a good thing to help us grow but it doesn’t help us or her if we dwell and sulk in a passive state. It’s ok to not always be the best leader, but the key is taking initiative and being willing to try to lead.

• KATIE: Also, marriage needs to be continued to be preserved both physically and emotionally.
• KATIE: Women, fight the urge that we all have to imagine walking down the aisle in a pretty white dress to marry them or what our life and our children will look like. We must instead save these thoughts to be planned with our husband.

• MITCH: Men, stop imagining yourself being with them on the wedding night.
• MITCH: By no means can Katie and I claim that everything we just talked about is of ourselves. They are the result of lives changed by Jesus Christ. The ways we have conducted our relationship and steps we have taken to stay pure and keep growing closer to God are signs of his hand directly working in people’s lives. In leading our relationship, I relied heavily on the promise given in James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” God has all the wisdom in the world and offers it to us freely…we should use it.

KATIE: We just spent 20 minutes telling you how to get the most out of your dating relationships but in the end, no matter what you do, a dating relationship is never going to fulfill you. A boyfriend or girlfriend is NOT going to “complete you” like in Tom Cruise’s Jerry Mcguire. That’s because there is something missing in that other person. They are not perfect and never will be. If Mitch relied on me to make himself happy and to give him his identity in life, he would only end up disappointed. I can never be everything that he needs because I mess up. But there is a relationship that CAN satisfy you and that is one with a perfect being, God. God unlike people is all loving and always has our best interests at heart. He loved us so much that he sent His son Jesus to come to earth, suffer and die a painful death in order to pay for our sins and our flaws. He did this because he wanted to have a relationship with us. Think about that perfect guy or girl out there that you don’t think you’re ever good enough to have. How lucky would you feel if he/she wanted to have a relationship with you? God wants to have a relationship with each and every one of you. He loves you and a relationship with Him is the only thing that will satisfy you. He doesn’t want a relationship with you because we deserve it , because we do something to make us good enough but because he loves us unconditionally. It’s tempting to keep seeking Mitch or a significant other to satisfy you but if you do, you’ll be left wanting. If you would like to know more about how to have this relationship with a perfect God, Mitch or I would love to talk to you as well as anyone in the band, your bible study leader etc. Talk to someone and start the only relationship that you’ll have with a perfect being.

PRAY (Mitch)

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