Bringing Sexy Back – Parent Update – Week 3
Bringing Sexy Back week 3 – Til Death: Singleness, Dating and Marriage
This week we are continuing our series “bringing sexy back” with a look at 3 specific topics, Singleness, dating and marriage. There is so much we could say about these 3 topics that we could take a month or more alone on these. We want to quickly look this week at God’s design for relationships.
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BIG IDEA: God’s design for His family is that some people marry, some people marry and have kids, and that others stay single. All options are part of God’s complete design while God has different plans for each of us. Relationships with others don’t complete us. It is only a relationship with God that makes us whole. We can be “whole people” in marriage relationships and we can be “whole people” should we choose to remain single.
It’s not often that we talk about marriage or dating AND singleness as life options in the same discussion. Quite often people think, “I will get married.” And if they don’t, they see singleness as some horrible, lonely consolation prize. But that’s not the case. This week we are going to be talking about how all of these things can glorify God.
DATING
A huge pressure in jr high and high school is to date. Some do, some don’t. It’s a natural thing for people to be drawn to one another, but when we look at dating, we need to realize that many people do it for the wrong reasons. Here are just two of the not-so-right-reasons-to-date:
You “complete” me. Some people look to a boyfriend or girlfriend as someone who will “complete” them. This will never work and will always be a dangerous endeavor. What we are doing, essentially, is looking for them to be our Savior and to be the missing piece in our lives. We will only ever have healthy and whole lives with a clear understanding of who God created us to be if we have Jesus as our Savior and if we allow Him to complete us.
Let’s get physical. Others look to dating relationships for physical fulfillment. And, if you recall a couple weeks ago when we talked about REAL SEX we know that God’s design for physical fulfillment is within a marriage context. Trying to experiment with it outside of marriage can lead to a load of hurts and access baggage that we don’t want to have to worry about. And this goes for “hook-ups”, friends with benefits, and all that stuff that sounds fun, but can have damaging lasting effects.
The Saviour Effect. Sometimes we look to a boyfriend or girlfriend as our savior. It’s true. Instead of looking to Jesus to help us, we seek out a guy or girl who will rescue us from whatever life’s pitfalls. This is super dangerous as we turn our gaze from Jesus and onto an imperfect human for our hope. There’s a term for this…it’s idolatry. It doesn’t end well.
The tricky part of navigating the whole dating thing is that dating is not mentioned in the Bible. It’s not necessarily because dating isn’t biblical – but it is because the entire idea of dating didn’t exist during biblical times. People were given in marriage and marriages were arranged for various purposes. Marriage didn’t happen because two people fell in love, but rather, they learned to love one another because they were married…for life.
MARRIAGE – THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE DIVORCE
It’s interesting when you think about marriage this way isn’t it? When we consider marriage in our society now it is much less ‘til death do us part and much more ‘til I get sick of you. Unfortunately marriages are no longer what they were designed to be: the joining of two lives for life. Brokenness in many forms has worked its way into marriages and now almost 50% of marriages end in divorce. And that’s a painful reality.
But marriage is God’s design for two people who want to spend their lives together.
Jesus says in Mark 10:6-9:
6 But ‘God made them male and female’from the beginning of creation. 7 ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife,[8 and the two are united into one.’[ Since they are no longer two but one, 9 let no one split apart what God has joined together.”
Once to people come together in marriage (with sex being the consummation of the marriage – two coming together), they are one. Try ripping one apart – it’s messy, it’s painful, it hurts beyond repair. That is why marriage (and sex, for that same reason) is a delicate thing that shouldn’t be entered into lightly. But marriage can be awesome – why else would God use it as an illustration over and over again in the Bible about how Jesus (the bridgegroom) and the Church/us (the bride) are to interact?!
Marriage was designed by God for two people to live serving each other. That’s true love. That’s a healthy marriage – being other-centred in your relationship.
SINGLE & NOT LOOKING TO MINGLE
Singleness is another awesome option that God has for us. It is not a second thought option or a lesser option – seriously, singleness is a great option that God has for some of us. Think about it: Jesus was single. Paul was single. Those are two pretty great footsteps to follow in.
In 1 Corinthians 7:7-9 Paul writes:
7 But I wish everyone were single, just as I am. Yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another. 8 So I say to those who aren’t married and to widows—it’s better to stay unmarried, just as I am. 9 But if they can’t control themselves, they should go ahead and marry. It’s better to marry than to burn with lust.
Singleness as a first choice is rarely considered, but maybe it’s something we should think about when we think about our options forever.
WRAP UP: Dating, marriage, and singleness are all great things. But they are even greater things with God at the centre. If we date someone with God at the center of our romance, it’ll be much better than we could design for ourselves. If we marry with God at the centre, there will still be challenges, but God will continue to help you navigate the trickiness of it all. And lastly, if we remain single with God at our centre, we will still have struggles too, but God will sustain us.
Take home questions:
1. In your world how much of a focus is finding someone to date? How much focus do people put on getting married one day?
2. Why do people date at your age? What do you think is the reason for dating?
3. Why do people think they need someone else to complete them?
4. What do you think of when you think of marriage?
5. What was God’s design for marriage?
6. How might teenage dating relationships affect your future marriage?
7. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to stay single on purpose?
8. Why would God actually honor people that choose to stay single?
Extra resources:
*Relatively Speaking Series (Woodland Hills Church www.whchurch.org)
*The New Rules for Love, Sex, & Dating Series (North Point Church www.northpoint.org)
*His & Hers, Part 3: Learning Together as Family (The Meeting House, 2008)
*Let’s Talk about Sex, Week 3: Sex & Singleness (The Meeting House, 2007)
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