Dating

Dating

I found this sermon one of the most difficult of all the ones I have prepared

- Perhaps it was so difficult
- For the same reason
- That people, particularly our young people
- Have with dating
- It isn’t something God wrote directly into the Bible
- If I were to preach on immorality
- That would be much easier
- The Bible has clear teaching on that
- But there is no clear statement in the Bible
- “Thou shall not date”

There are some principles I think can be applied to dating

- And we will be looking at some of them
- I suppose the first task is to define dating
- I was not really surprised
- To discover some young people have a different definition of dating
- Than older adults might have
- Dating used to be simply a guy asking a girl to go out to do something together
- If you were dating each other
- It might have been an exclusive relationship
- Or going steady
- But now dating has a whole new context
- It seems that young people think in terms of
- Single, dating and married
- Single means not seeing anyone
- Not dating or not going steady
- Dating means involved in an exclusive relationship
- It is like being married without the paperwork or the wedding
- Or without the responsibility
- You don’t support the girl you are dating
- But the other activities and expectations of marriage
- May be freely engaged in
- Many dating couples are now sexually involved with each other

Our culture has changed the norm and the expectations of young people

- In the process attitudes and activities have changed
- So while dating might not be wrong
- Some of the activities of dating couples might be wrong and damaging

Having watched and counseled several young men and a few young ladies about broken relationships,

- Expectations and such
- That go with dating
- I have found there are some serious issues
- That need to be discussed
- There have been too many tears, too much pain
- And a few unexpected babies and marriages
- Because people went into dating
- Without understanding what could happen

If dating was just a group of young men and women

- Going out to a movie
- Or to eat
- Even if they were paired up
- I don’t think there would be reason for much concern
- If people simply liked each other’s company
- And asked them to do something together
- There would not be much of a problem
- If relationships weren’t exclusive
- But the couples were loosely grouped
- As a part of a larger group of friends
- There would be entirely different expectations
- And entirely different outcomes

But when two individuals, a boy and a girl, decide to date each other exclusively

- And limit their social contact largely to themselves
- Things change
- They begin to look for more than companionship and friendship
- In the relationship
- Romance becomes a part of the expectations
- And part of the activities
- Expressions of love, real or imagined, appear
- Emotions and feelings begin to rule
- Things change
- They are fundamentally different
- The problem is that these emotions nad feelings
- Are not a good place to build a relationship
- Ask any married couple
- If they haven’t felt unloved or like leaving the relationship
- At one time or another
- See a permanent relationship is built
- On something other than emotion or feeling
- On something other than sex