We’re in week three of this series, Guardrails, and we’re really excited about this. Just a
heads up. Next week Sandra is going to come and we’re going to tag-team preach, so you won’t
want to miss next week. Essentially, she’s going to correct everything I’ve said for the first three
weeks in the series. We’re thinking maybe we should do that every series, just have her kind of
come up at the end. I’m just kidding. It’s going to be a lot of fun, so you won’t want to miss that.
If you’re thinking about bringing friends, next week will be very entertaining; so don’t miss that.
The whole point of this series—we know what guardrails are, but essentially they’re a
system designed to keep vehicles from straying into dangerous (and that’s the key word), into
dangerous, or off-limit areas. We said just like a guardrail accomplishes something for us when
we’re driving, we asked the question, I wonder what it would look like to have guardrails in
other areas of our lives.
The interesting thing about a guardrail is that a guardrail is actually placed in a safe zone
to keep us from going into an unsafe zone. Guardrails aren’t in the area of danger; guardrails are
always a few feet or a few yards inside the area of danger. So again, we asked the question, what
would it look like to have guardrails in other areas of our lives? We came up with our own
definition of a guardrail just for this series, and here’s what it is: A guardrail is a standard of
behavior—that’s a behavior you choose—a standard of behavior that becomes a matter of
conscience. The idea being that you would choose behaviors for yourself that would keep you a
few feet or a few yards away from disaster, whether it’s financially, or in your friendships, or
morally, in your dating relationships, in your thought life—whatever it might be, and that as you
recognize there are lines out there that “Once I cross them, there’s a consequence; that once I
cross them, there’s a penalty; that once I cross them, I hurt the people I love the most.” As you
recognize those lines, that you would step back from the line and establish a guardrail for
yourself. And a guardrail would simply be a behavior that you would decide, “I’m never going to
do this in order to keep me from doing that,” and that this would become so clear to you that it
would send bells and whistles and red flags waving—that it would become a matter of
conscience. That is, that you would feel bad if you actually bumped into a guardrail you’ve
established.
The temptation, of course, in life is to live right on the edge of disaster financially, get as
much debt as you can, live right on the edge of disaster morally, live right on the edge of disaster
in terms of friendships, and your thought life, or the Internet, or any of those kinds of things. But
the wise person says, “You know what, I’m not going to live on the edge of disaster. I’m going
to step back. I’m going to establish a guardrail.” So we began asking what it would look like to
have guardrails in different areas of our lives.
Today I want to talk about what I think is the most important area. This is the area that’s
most needed, but it’s also the area where we find the most resistance. In fact, whenever I talk
about this subject, and I do from time to time, even though I feel like I repeat myself, I’ve decided I just don’t care—we just can’t talk about this enough. Whenever I talk about this
subject, I feel literally like one of those Old Testament prophets who’s yelling and screaming and
everybody is just passing by ignoring him, and that no matter what I say and no matter how I
illustrate it, no matter how graphic I am and no matter how ridiculous I get, no matter how
creative I get, the average person goes, “Yeah, well, that’s what we would expect a preacher to
say,” and then he or she just goes right back to business as usual. But if we as a culture would
begin establishing some guardrails in this one particular area, it would impact poverty in our
nation, it would cause an amazing change in our inner cities in our country, it would begin to
reduce the number of people in prison in our country, and thousands and thousands of little boys
and little girls would be tucked in by Mommy and Daddy on the weekend instead of swapping
back and forth every other weekend to visit Mom and Dad because they’re not together anymore.
It would actually impact healthcare in this system in our country. In fact, there’s not one single
area in our culture that would not be positively impacted if we could just get this one area
correct, if we as a society and if we as a culture would step back and establish some standards of behavior that tripped off our consciences before we stepped over into the abyss.
In every area of our lives where there is a desire, we need guardrails, but in the area of
our physical and sexual intimacy, our desire for physical and sexual intimacy, we need
reinforced steel when it comes to guardrails. And the reason is this. Because unlike any other
area of your life and any other area of my life, you can fully recover from just about any other
kind of disaster, but sexual disaster is almost impossible to fully recover from. You can fully
recover from a financial disaster, you can have no guardrails in your life, you can rack up a lot of
debt and get into a lot of trouble, but given enough time and enough discipline, you can fully
recover from financial disaster. You can laugh about it. You can learn from it. You can teach
your children about it and fully recover from it. The same is true of an educational disaster. You
can flunk out of school, but then you go to summer school, you take extra credits, you work
really hard, and it’s nothing more than a funny story you tell your kids someday.
You can recover from professional disaster. You can go bankrupt. You can get fired. You
can get kicked out, but you can recover, get another job, and one day it’s just a story you tell. But when it comes to the area of our sexuality, those are the stories no one ever laughs about,
because—and even though our culture is finally coming around this—what we know intuitively,
what we know in our hearts, what every single adult knows but we don’t know how to talk about
it, is this: Sex is not just physical. It’s way deeper than that. When people cross certain lines in
their desire for physical intimacy, when people cross certain lines when it comes to their
sexuality, there are things that they carry with them the rest of their lives. We know that; we just
don’t talk about it, because we live in a culture that says sex is purely physical, but we know
better.
And if there’s any area in our lives where we need guardrails, I’m convinced, and I think
you’re convinced as well, this is the area, because the damage done follows us throughout our
lives. The memories follow us throughout our lives; the guilt follows us throughout our lives,
and the ghosts follow us throughout your lives. It goes on and on and on and on and on. Every
desire you have, whether it’s your desire for food or whatever, every desire requires guardrails.
This one requires the strongest and the toughest guardrails.
So today I want to be very, very explicit and I want to be very, very specific. Some of
you are going to think I’m being way, way, way too conservative, and that’s okay. We’re going
to talk about that in just a few minutes. Because this is such a big deal, and we’re not the first
ones to know this—this is one of those issues that for some reason we as adults have a hard time facing up to, like we talked about the very first week of this series. But when we finally begin to face up to it and finally begin to see realistically—yeah, that’s probably true, and yeah, I need to give that some more thought. The verse that we’re going to look at today comes into focus in a
more impactful way, because the verse I want to look at today seems kind of extreme. But as you look at what’s happened in our culture and as you look at what’s happening in your life and your family, and as you think about your own past, the truth is, you would be better off, I would be
better off, our culture would be better off if we would take this very, very simple verse a little bit
more seriously than we tend to take it. Here’s what Paul said in I Corinthians 6:18.
I Corinthians 6:18 (TNIV)
18 Flee from sexual immorality.
Flee. Not “be careful,” not “watch out,” not “get as close to the line as you possibly can
and peer over the edge.” He says flee. In fact, the name of this sermon is “Flee, Baby, Flee.”
When it comes to sexual immorality, what could be any more clear than this? Flee. Now here’s
the thing I know about you. You may not be a church person or a Christian person, or you may
think, Oh, good grief, this is exactly what I would expect from the pastor, but here’s what I know
about you. If you’re married, this is what you want your husband to do, isn’t it? This is what you
want your wife to do. This is what you want your children to do. This is what you want your
little sister or your little brother to do. This is what you want your best friend to do. This is what
you want everyone you care about to do. You’re just not so sure you want you to do this, right?
I mean, you’re saying, I’m so glad my husband is here hearing this. I’m so glad my
wife’s here. I’m going to get a copy of this for my cousin. Glad my kids are here. I’m glad my
grandkids are hearing this. Because when I look at everybody else’s life around me, what could
be any clearer than this, because we know the implications of stepping over certain lines
sexually, so we would say to the people we love, “Flee sexual immorality.” But when it comes to
you, when it comes to me, we don’t flee. We flirt, don’t we? We ask, Well, I’m not even sure
exactly where sexual immorality is, so just tell me when I’m getting too close. Am I cold? Am I
hot? Am I cold? Am I hot? Am I cold? Am I hot? My conscience isn’t telling me anything.
I said this last week. In all of these areas we’re going to talk about, our culture baits us to
the edge of disaster and then mocks us when we step over. In no other area in our culture is this
more illustrated than the area of sexual immorality or the desire for physical or sexual intimacy.
Everywhere we turn in our culture, we are being baited, baited, baited to the edge, and then once
we step over the edge, culture chastises us. In our culture, somewhere on the other side of the
guardrail, everybody agrees that a certain aged little girl shouldn’t get pregnant, that teenage
pregnancy is a problem. Everybody’s against teenage pregnancy, but have you paid any attention
to how we market to teenage girls? Have you been to the mall? This is a little offensive. But if
you were to go back in time 40 years—but I’ll just say 50 years to be conservative—if you were to go back in time 50 years, did you know that what we’re marketing to teenage girls to wear is
what hookers wore 50 years ago? You realize that.
Some of you are old enough to remember how your mama used to dress and your
grandmama used to dress. If somebody showed up 50 years ago wearing what we market like
crazy in the mall, people would say, “Oh, she must be a hooker. Look how she’s dressed.” That’s
what we market to. And then when a teenage girl gets pregnant, we go, “Oh, that’s such a shame. She probably came from a terrible family. What’s wrong with those people?” We walk through a mall full of pictures and full of posters and full of things that are so explicit, and then we wonder why, because culture baits us to the edge and then chastises us when we step over.
Everybody agrees now more and more that the culture is finally talking about it, that
somewhere on the other side of that guardrail, there’s inappropriate male sexual activity as it
relates to the Internet and porn and all that stuff. Somewhere out there, there’s a line where
everybody goes, Oh, that’s gross, that’s too much. I can’t believe he got so involved in that. And
guys, you know what we all know? That every time we turn on the television, every time we
walk through the mall, every time we flip through a magazine, we are being baited in that
direction, aren’t we? And then when some guy finally falls in and gets all addicted, it’s like, Oh,
that’s just disgusting. What’s wrong with him? Well, he just took the bait; because every place
we go we’re being baited.
Come on; let’s be really honest. All of us, all of us, even the pastor, all of us entertain
ourselves with affairs. Every show you watch, every movie I watch, all of us entertain ourselves
with affairs. And then when somebody actually has one, we’re like, Oh, I can’t believe he did
that. That’s so disgusting. Why would she do that? Why would he do that? And almost every
single day, every single show, every single movie, every single novel, we entertain ourselves
with affairs, and then we’re surprised when somebody actually has one. When was the last
time—and I’ll answer this for me in just a second—when was the last time you saw a movie
where there was a love scene between married people? Why is that even funny?
When was the last time you saw a movie and there was like a romance scene, love scene,
and they were married? And there’s something in us, this is so weird, it’s like, well, who would
even want to see that? That’s like my parents. That’s like, ugh, I don’t want to see married
people have sex. I thought back and I think the last movie I saw where the romance scene was
between married people was Rocky I. It was the first Rocky movie. Adrian—and he got married
and then there’s like this 45-second kind ooey gooey love scene, and it was kind of creepy, but
you’re thinking, well, at least they’re married, but it’s still creepy because both of them are kind
of “ugh.”
But the point is, come one—we’re adults—we entertain ourselves with this, and then
when somebody actually acts out on what we entertain ourselves with, it’s like, “Oh!” Because
here’s where we are in our culture: We are constantly baited to the edge of moral disaster and
then when we step over the line, we’re chastised and looked down on. So, you know what you
need and what I need and what we all need? Because culture is not going to change. The point of
this isn’t let’s go boycott and quit going to the mall and stop watching movies. That’s your business. But you know what we all need in this culture that’s probably not going to get any
better? We need guardrails. You need to decide, “This is as close to that as I go, and when I
bump up against my personal standard of behavior, when I bump up against my personal
standard of behavior, I’m going to feel guilty, and I’m going to say, ‘God, I’m sorry,’ and I’m
going to make a big deal out of something that’s five yards away or ten feet away from disaster.
I’m not going to live out on the edge of that line anymore.” That’s what a guardrail is.
If you’re a Christian, there’s even greater incentive for you and for me to flee sexual
immorality. There are even greater incentives for us to create guardrails. Look what Paul goes on
to say in this verse. He says this:
I Corinthians 6:19 (TNIV)
19 Do you not know [Which meant he didn’t think they knew, which means some of us
didn’t know until today.] that your bodies are temples
Did you know that? When you got up this morning, you went, Look at my temple! My
temple’s growing. I’m a growing temple. And this is throughout the New Testament and is
implicated in the Old Testament, too, when we transition from the Old to New Testament, that
your body, God says your body is a temple. That means it’s holy. Look at what it says.
I Corinthians 6:19 (TNIV)
19 your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you.
Now, if you’re a Christian, and even if you’re not a Christian, your body is sacred, we
believe, but you’ve got to figure out your own worldview. But Christians believe that all bodies
are sacred, and that when a person becomes a Christian, God’s spirit comes to live inside of our
physical bodies, which means our bodies are temples.
I Corinthians 6:19 (TNIV)
19 whom you have received from God.
The Holy Spirit came to live inside of you. Your body is very, very, very special. Then
listen to the implication he says:
I Corinthians 6:19 (TNIV)
19 You are not your own.
You don’t belong to you. Your body doesn’t just belong to you, because God moved into
your body.
I Corinthians 6:20 (TNIV)
20 You were bought at a price.
The implication, what he’s talking about as you read the whole passage, is that when
Christ came into this world and died for your sins, that he purchased you. You have been
purchased from sin. You are no longer a slave to sin. You don’t have to do what your desires tell
you to do. You don’t have to do what your appetites tell you to do. You are the master of your
body, because your body is now under the authority of another master. So, consequently, he says, you are not your own. You have been purchased, and specifically, purchased from the power of sin. Therefore, here’s the application:
I Corinthians 6:20 (TNIV)
20 Therefore honor God with your bodies.
And the context for this whole discussion is sexual—the whole thing. Flee sexual
immorality. Don’t you know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you know
that God resides in your body? You are not your own. You have been purchased, and what was
the price? The death of your Savior, Jesus Christ—that was the price that God paid for your
body. So he says, here’s what I want you to do with your body. If you have any questions, if it
gets unclear, if you’re trying to figure out as you’re trying to make a decision, here’s kind of the
litmus test: Honor God with your body. Honor God with your body. If it’s dishonoring to God,
don’t do it with your body. If it’s dishonoring to God, don’t take your body there. If it’s
dishonoring to God, don’t look at it. If it’s dishonoring to God, don’t think about it.
Decide every morning, “God, my body belongs to you. It’s a temple. I want to live this
life, and I want to live this day in such a way that everything I do with this body honors you.”
And God says, “Well, if that’s the case, then when it comes to sexual immorality and your desire
for physical intimacy, you must flee, flee, flee, flee, flee, flee, flee. Not flirt, flirt, flirt, flirt, flirt.”
You’ve got to flee sexual immorality, which means practically speaking, you’ve got to establish
some guardrails, because if you live on the edge and you step over the edge, it’ll be a
catastrophe. But if you have guardrails and you bump into your guardrails, even though your
conscience lights up, there are, generally speaking, no consequences.
For the next few minutes, I want to give you some really, really, really specific
guardrails, but before I do, if you’ve been counting lights or not paying attention—just listen to
this one part, okay—or daydreaming, or acting like you’re taking notes, and texting. Just give me
your undivided attention a second. Listen, this is a decision you have to make, and by not making
it, you’ve made a decision. At some point you decide, either by not deciding, or maybe today
you’ll decide, am I going to honor God with what I do with my body, especially as it relates to
my sexuality, or am I not? And if you’ve never decided, then you’ve decided not to. In a minute,
I’m going to go through some things, and if you sit here and go, “That’s so extreme. Oh, that’s
so extreme. That’s really extreme. And now I think you’re just trying to get a laugh there, Andy. This is so extreme, nobody does this.” First of all, you’re wrong. A lot of people do these things.
They just don’t talk about it because they’re so extreme.
But if your whole take on what I’m about to say is “that’s just too extreme, too extreme, too
extreme,” then here are two things I want you to think about while we go through this list.
Number one, going back to something I just said: what do you want for the person you marry
and what do you want for your children and your grandchildren? And if there’s duplicity, if
there’s hypocrisy in your answer, you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself why. Why is it
I want my kids, my grandkids, why is it I want my fiancé, why is it I want my boyfriend, why is
it I want my husband and my wife to take this seriously, but I don’t want to take it seriously for
myself? You owe yourself an answer to that question. But here’s another thing I want you to
think about as we go through this list. Let’s say that at the end of this message you go,
“Nobody’s going to do that. I’m not going to do that.” And you just live your life however you
want, and let’s say two or three years from now you find yourself on the edge or in the midst of
some sexual disaster. You have an addiction. What began as a pastime is now an addiction, an
unwanted pregnancy, or suddenly your girlfriend’s pregnant, or all of a sudden there’s been
inappropriate touching with somebody at the office and you think your husband is about to find
out or your wife’s about to find out, or all of a sudden you’re in the midst of some drama and
some trauma and, Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I’m in this and I can’t believe this happened.
Here’s my question. If in two or three years you’ve found yourself dealing with the
consequences of the fact that you haven’t had guardrails and you haven’t been careful, in the
midst of that, here’s my question: Do you think you’ll pray? Do you think at some point, “Oh,
my God, please don’t let me be pregnant.” I mean, would you throw up a prayer like that? “Oh,
God, please don’t let her be pregnant.” Do you think you’d throw up a prayer like that? “Oh,
God, don’t let her find out.” “Oh, God, just get me through the this. God, if you get me through
this, I’ll go to church every Sunday, I’ll go to the 9:00 o’clock, the 11:00 o’clock, the 12:45, the
6:00, I’ll give, I’ll tithe.”
Do you think you would start wheeling and dealing with God if all of a sudden you
thought, Oh, my gosh, there’s a way for this not to be a complete disaster if God will just do a
miracle—and if all of a sudden the whole Internet goes down forever, and no one can track any
of your emails, and all of a sudden what was there isn’t there, and Facebook collapsed, and
Twitter collapsed. It’s like, God, thank you. The whole world turns upside down just so you’re
not caught. Do you think that in the midst of that drama that you would cry out to God? Let me
answer the question for you. Yes, you will. You will. Even if you don’t believe in God, you’ll
pray. You’ll say, “Oh, my God.” He’ll say, “Hey, that’s a start.” You’ll say, “Oh, God, if you’re
there,” you’ll say, “God help me.” You’ll just throw up a prayer. You will cry out for divine
intervention if you find yourself in a situation you made yourself, but you want out of; you will
pray.
Here’s what God will whisper: Remember the guy with the microphone strapped to his
head with the plasma television, and the whole time he was preaching you were thinking, I’d like
to have one of those at my house. And the whole time he was preaching you were thinking,
nobody does that. And the whole time he was talking, you were thinking, Well, I hope my wife’s paying attention, but that’s too extreme for me. God’s going to say, Remember that? You’re
going to say, Yeah. He’s going to say, Darn it.
I don’t think God will actually say that, but the point is, this is your opportunity. And I
will promise you this. What I’m about to go through very quickly, if you establish these
guardrails, you will not regret this. Where I got these—these aren’t in the Bible; I made all of
these up. I made all of these up based on, not a conversation, but many, many, many
conversations, many, many emails, many, many tearful phone calls, many, many heartbreaking
circumstances, and I’ve come to the conclusion that in this culture that is so dangerous for you
and for me morally, that in this culture that is so dangerous in terms of what we’re baited to and
taunted to, that these aren’t extreme at all—this is how you flee sexual immorality in our
culture—that these should just be standard operating procedure. And some of these, I’ll tell you
before we look at them, some of these you’re going to look at and say, in my environment, in my
industry where I work, that’s impossible. And all I would say is this: Would you begin praying
toward this possibility? Because here’s what I’ve discovered: I have talked to so many men and
women who would say, as some of you will say as a result of this message, I wish I had heard
that and I wish I had done that. This is more possible than you think, once you make up your
mind to establish these kinds of guardrails.
I’ve got two lists, one for the married people, and one for the single people. Here we go:
married people, number one: Don’t travel alone with members of the opposite sex. Just don’t do
that. Just don’t travel alone. Don’t get in a car, don’t fly with. Just decide I don’t travel alone, if
you’re a married person, with somebody of the opposite sex. When we built this building out
here in Alpharetta and we built our first campus, Julie Arnold and I were on staff together, our
offices were in Dunwoody, and we had a hundred meetings out here with the architects and with
contractors. And it was just funny, because I’ve asked our staff, I don’t care how far you have to
go, and I don’t care how much gas you eat up, don’t travel alone with members of the opposite
sex. It’s just a standard for our whole organization. And she and I would get in two cars parked
next to each other, drive up here, have our meetings, get in our separate cars and drive back to
Dunwoody and wave at each other on the highway. And it seemed kind of silly, but you know
what, we just think that should be standard operating procedure for married people who are
really serious about maintaining margin morally in this dangerous, dangerous culture. Just
decide—just not going to travel alone with members of the opposite sex.
Number two: Similar—don’t eat alone with members of the opposite sex. Every affair
except for one, every affair I’ve ever been involved with as it relates to talking to people, both
people, one or the other, every single one of them, it began right here. We had a meal. I said,
“Hey, you want to have dinner?” “Hey, let’s have coffee,” that become lunch, that became
dinner, that became another dinner, that became, “let’s work late.” Just decide—I don’t eat alone
with members of the opposite sex. You say, Andy, that’s extreme. Well, guardrails are extreme.
Guardrails are always within the safety zone. That’s the point of a guardrail. And if you find
yourself in a situation where you’re surprised by the fact that you’re having to eat alone with
somebody of the opposite sex, you call your spouse. This has happened to us on several
occasions. I was supposed to meet a couple years and years ago. They wanted to talk about the
church. I went to OK Café, I got there, and there’s the woman, and the husband couldn’t make it. I said, “Oh, hold on one second, I’ve got to make a quick phone call.” “Hey, Sandra, I’m sitting
here with, __, and we’re over at the __.” And we both laughed and we went ahead and had
breakfast. That’s it, but it’s a standard. And when suddenly I’m in a situation where I can’t avoid
it, I make a phone call.
Number three: Don’t hire cute members of the opposite sex because you want to help
them. Let me explain what I mean by that. Listen, you laugh. Come on, some of you’ve been
there, some of you are there. Some of you, your wives, or your husbands said, I’m not
comfortable with you working with him. I’m not comfortable with you working with her. And
you said, Yeah, but she really needs this job. And she said, Well, why don’t you find somebody
ugly that needs the job, okay? Why is it she has to be so cute and needs the job? I’m just telling
you. Don’t hire cute people because you’re trying to help them. Now, listen, I’m in the ministry,
so I’m a professional helper. Everybody should get help that needs help, and everybody can be
helped. But come on, don’t deceive yourself. Don’t deceive yourself. Don’t deceive yourself.
Don’t hire cute people because they need your help. Get them help, but don’t hire them.
You say, Andy, where’d you come up with that? Take a wild guess where I came up with
that. Story after story after story and tearful women and tearful men saying, I told her I wasn’t
comfortable with it. I told him I wasn’t comfortable with it. I asked him not to and complained,
and the next thing I know they’re having coffee, then they’re having lunch, then they’re having
dinner, and then there are phone bills I can’t explain and credit card things I can’t explain.
Next one: Don’t confide in or counsel members of the opposite sex. Just don’t. This is
huge, and this is what everybody does at lunch. This is why you’re having lunch. It’s going to be
twenty minutes of coffee, and an hour and a half later, “No one’s ever listened to me like you
before.” “Really?” “No, can we talk again? No one’s ever understood me.” Oh, good grief. It’s
like a bad movie, right? In fact, if you saw some of this in a movie, you would know exactly
where the plot is headed, wouldn’t you? But some of you do this, and I understand. “But they
need me.” Time out. No. They need help; they don’t need you, and you don’t need them. Well,
Andy, that doesn’t sound very compassionate. Well, it’s the most compassionate thing I can say.
It shows compassion for your marriage and for their future. Do not confide in, do not counsel
with, do not confide in, do not counsel with—should we just turn it into a rap or a song? Do not
confide in . . . “But, Andy, she’s the only one that will listen to me.” No, she’s the only one you
know who will listen to you.
It is dangerous when your emotional world gets entwined with somebody’s emotional
world. You have crossed an invisible, intangible, but dangerous line in terms of intimacy.
Because intimacy, which is really what we all want—it’s not really sex. (This guy’s sitting here
going, No, it’s just sex, pretty much. No, it’s just because you don’t even know yourself. You
really don’t. You can figure that out with your counselor.) But what you really want —it’s true—
what you really want is intimacy. And intimacy doesn’t begin with the physical. Intimacy begins
with the emotional. That’s why this is so dangerous. I can’t even begin to tell you all the pastors,
all the Christian counselors I know who ditched and blew up their marriage trying to help
someone. The most compassionate thing you can do for you, your family, your grand family someday, and the other person is to get him or her help and refuse to be the shoulder he or she
leans on or cries on.
Next one: This is huge, married people. When you feel your heart or desire drifting
towards a specific person, tell someone. When you feel your heart or your desire drifting toward,
getting attached to, being attracted to—not just other women or other men—a specific man, a
specific woman, you need to tell someone. I’m not saying tell your spouse. There’s a time when
you do that. I’m not saying that up front. There needs to be someplace safe. That’s why we do
community group, men’s groups. That’s why we’re trying to put people in circles and not just
rows. There needs to be someone you can go to and say, Guys, or girls, this is kind of awkward
for me. I’m uncomfortable saying this, but there’s a guy at work and he just kind of gets to me. I
don’t know what it is. He just kind of gets to me. There’s this girl at work and every time she
comes by, she’s so chatty and friendly and, guys, this is embarrassing, but I find my thought life
going that way. You say, Andy, is that necessary? Yes. Andy, is that a little extreme? No.
Because you’ll never, ever, ever, ever regret that. Now one more thing about married people.
Married people, your spouse needs to know where your guardrails are so he or she can call you
on it. And your spouse needs to be comfortable with your guardrails. In fact, some of your
spouses are sitting here going, I’ve been trying to tell him. Oh, I’m so glad he’s here. And you’re
sitting here going, Oh, great. We should’ve done something else today—because you’ve already
had this conversation. And God is trying to use the man or the woman in your life to protect you
and you’ve resisted this.
But this needs to be a conversation among married people. And I need to know, and
Sandra needs to know, and you need to know, and your spouse needs to know, and everybody
needs to know where the guardrails are, because here’s the deal. You see, if you decide I am not
going to have a meal alone with an unmarried person, and then one day you just do anyway, and
the whole time you’re having a meal with that unmarried person, your conscience is going, You
idiot, you idiot, you idiot, you promised—you’re going to feel bad. Here’s the great thing about
guardrails. You’re going to feel bad about something that’s not even a sin. You’re going to feel
bad about something from which there are no consequences, but your conscience is going to light up. That’s what guardrails do. But if you don’t have them, you’ll never feel bad about anything
until you step over a line that everybody feels bad about and culture will chastise you for.
Single people—number one: Just gouge out your eyes with a spoon. That’s pretty much
what you’ve got to do. Just kidding. There is a verse about that. I don’t understand that verse,
and I haven’t ever applied it about plucking it out, but …Okay, let’s get on … Just apply the
married people’s guidelines in your relationships with married people. In other words, treat that
married person like you’re going to want somebody to treat your married person once you get
married. I can tell you this, when you’re married, you don’t want single, cute, sweet things
tripping around your husband saying, “Hey, let’s have coffee and dinner. Can you explain this to
me?” You’re just not going to want it, so don’t be that person. You just decide, I don’t travel
with married people. I don’t have lunch, dinner, or coffee with married men or married women. I
don’t confide in and I don’t counsel with married people.
And some of you single people—you’re doing this. And when he sits down and pours out
his heart, you feel so smart, you feel so valued, you feel so cherished—you are in trouble. You
even go say, God, when I meet with him today, just give me wisdom to know how to point him
back in the direction of his wife and his kids. Just give me wisdom to be a good counselor to him
today when we have lunch together, in Jesus’ name, amen. And God’s going, I’m not listening,
I’m not listening, I’m not listening to your prayer. It’s foolish. But, Andy, don’t you care
about—of course, we do. That’s my life. But you know what? You’re foolish. You are moving
toward something you have no business being a part of.
Second thing for single people is this: No sleepovers, okay? Now, look, eight-year-olds
have sleepovers. Don’t have sleepovers. Just decide my boyfriend never ever spends the night at
my apartment, ever. “Well, it was really late.” Just decide, your boyfriend or your girlfriend or if
you’re dating, no sleepovers. Now, for the sake of full disclosure, when Sandra and I were
dating, we had a sleepover. And next week, I’ve asked her to tell you the whole story, because
we want to be as transparent as we can. So I think next week is worth coming just to hear her tell
about our sleepover, okay? You say, Well, Andy, he slept in the living room on the floor. Look, I
got married when I was thirty. You don’t have to give me the scenario. Is it a sin to have a
sleepover? No, it’s not a sin. The point of a guardrail is to keep you from getting close to the
thing you regret the most, so you just decide, no sleepover. Well, Andy, you don’t understand.
You’re so old, you don’t understand how our culture is. Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. I
understand way more than you think I do, or I wouldn’t be up here talking about this. Because
who needs this? Let’s just talk about prayer and Jesus and sweet wonderful things, okay? People
like it better.
Last one is this. This is enormous. This is gigantic. This is huge. This is the advice I am
most thanked for through the years. About every year someone will walk up to me and say,
Andy, you may not remember this, but when you spoke at 7/22 or in church a few years ago or
you were at this conference, or you did this thing for singles, and then during that conference you
gave advice, and I took your advice, and now I am happily married, and I’m so grateful I took
your advice. And here’s my advice. If in the dating scene that you’re a part of, and if in the
singles world that you’re a part of, or college world that you’re a part of, if date has become
equivalent to sex—in other words, friends have told me, Andy, a date, that means sex. If there
was no sex at the end of the date, I don’t even think it’s a date. I mean, that’s just the world I
come out of. And here’s what I’ve said. You know what you’ve got to do? You’ve got to take a
break. You need to go to your calendar and put an X on a date one year from this day and decide
I am having zero, none, none at all, zilch, no relationships for a year, because I’ve said to them,
you need a year to renew your mind. You need a year for God to renew your heart. You need a
year to reset.
Most people ignore that advice, but there are several members of this church who are
happily married with children who have walked up to me and said, Andy, when you gave that
advice, I decided to do it. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for the challenge. God did
so much in my life in that one year. I think completely different about women, completely
different about love, completely different. I am a completely different person, but it took a year
of no relationships to get to the place where I could really establish a godly kind of safe, right kind of intimacy, healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex because of the
background I came out of, and because of the mindset I had, and because of the fact I’d never
been taught anything different. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I attribute the happiness and
the ease of my marriage to that year I took off and said, God, cleanse my heart, and prepare me
for the person you want me to spend the rest of my life with.
Now, are those extreme? I don’t think so. I think they’re just common sense. Are those
extreme? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what. If you did all these, five years from now you
wouldn’t look back and say, Dang it, I wish I’d had more sleepovers. I wish there were more
people I hope I never run into again. I miss the fact that I’m able to go to Kroger week after week
after week and I never run into anybody I have to dodge. I wish there were more people that my
spouse never meets and I wish there were more things I never told my kids. You’re never going
to regret having these kinds of guardrails. Are they extreme? Let me tell you a secret. That’s how
you have an extremely amazing, one-of-a-kind, you’re-the-only-one-for-me marriage. See, you
know what fuels intimacy in marriage? There are several things. You know one of the big things
that fuel intimacy in marriage? Exclusivity—when your spouse believes that she or he is the only
one for you. There’s an old, old song that says I only have eyes for you. When your spouse
believes that, that’s a powerful, powerful thing. Do you know where that begins? It begins with
guardrails. It begins perhaps with a year off. It begins by setting standards that no one else in
your culture is going to understand. But don’t be fooled by culture, because culture will bait you
to the edge of disaster and then turn its back on you when you step over certain lines.
And so, what would you expect your heavenly Father to say? He would say, Flee sexual
immorality. Don’t you know your body is precious to me? Don’t you know in some kind of
strange mystical way I live inside of you? That being the case, I want you to honor me with your
body. And if you honor me with your body, I will honor you in your relationships. Because God
is the Creator and the giver of sex. I mean that’s not in the seven days of creation, but it got
created in there somewhere. It was his idea. If sex is a fire, God brought the matches. It was his
idea. And when you learn to honor God with your body, the reward is that God will honor you
with a relationship of intimacy the way he intended and designed it to be. But if you’re going to
get there, if you’re going to live there, you’re going to have to establish some guardrails. Let’s
pray together.
