GYC SE 2014: The Daily Battle

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GYC Southeast

Dating Isn't For Cowards

Alan Parker

Dating Isn’t For Cowards- Part 1

All right, I think we're ready to officially begin.

Father God, we thank you for being with us as we go into the seminar.

We ask for your Holy Spirit to be present.

We pray, Lord, that you will give us guidance as to how to effectively use your word and use the guidance we've been given in the spirit of prophecy in order to be able to shape our understanding of how we should engage in bringing 2 lives together.

We pray now that you will also be with the other presentations and help us to surrender our lives to you for we ask it in Jesus name, amen.

So the title as I mentioned is dating isn't for cowards.

So I'm going to just pretend that you and your potential or your current partner are sitting on a plane together And you're about to go off on the wonderful trip of marriage.

And so you're all excited, you're giggling, and you're sitting next to each other and getting warmed up, and you're just so excited about what's going to take place here.

And then The air hostess comes along and she says, I just need to alert you to something before you get too far into this journey.

And you're like, well, what is it, what is it?

And she says, well, you know, we have pretty bad accident statistics here.

In fact, just getting up to where we get above the clouds, there's like a 95% chance that the plane will crash.

But once you get above the clouds, it's a whole lot better.

It's only between 30 to 50 percent of the planes crash at that point.

Now how many of you are interested in going on this plane flight?

And yet every day people decide to make this decision.

Because the shocking statistics suggest this.

According to 1 study in England, the average woman will kiss 15 men before settling down and getting married.

I mean, this is the average, so again, you know, this is not a Christian perspective, but you know, that's what most people out there are going to face.

41% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages, and 73% of third marriages.

I mean, your chance of not making it is pretty high.

So why would you even consider getting married?

Why would you even consider getting married?

Alright, why would you consider getting married?

In spite of the statistics, marriage is still biblical.

And you always figure out, I won't be 1 of the statistics.

And hopefully by the time we're done with this seminar, you'll be far better along with not being 1 of those statistics.

I do believe, however, that there is a problem with today's dating strategy.

You know, it's kind of, let's get in there, have a quick meet and greet, and then if we're lucky, we get to see each other again.

And things go fast pretty rapidly from there.

So what goes on in a traditional dating scenario?

Well the first thing that happens is the hormones kick in.

You come along, and suddenly you experience the tingles.

I just met someone, and I just felt this incredible sensation and feeling.

You can get the tingles for people who are absolutely wrong for you.

I mean, I remember getting the tingles for this girl who had come for a wedding.

And this girl had come, she was 1 of my friend's friends, red hair, beautiful smile.

And we were walking along the beach, and somehow her shoulder brushed against mine.

And she smiles back at me, and she doesn't seem to mind.

And so I'm there next to her, and she was pretty aggressive.

And I'm like, and then it happened again.

So we spend the day, we barely talk to each other, we just go along in this mist of hormones, wandering down the beach.

And then when we finally, that evening, we're kind of sitting there, everyone else is talking about us, because they've seen us walking hand in hand.

And finally, when we get a little further on, I go, by the way, what denomination are you?

And I said, yeah, Pentecostals are great.

And I said, but tell me more about your life.

And she was like totally emotional, and I have a much more logical strain to me.

And as we talked more and more, I was like, we have nothing in common.

And she's like, well, what was that that we've experienced back there?

You know, the tingles don't always make sense.

This couple, they work with a lot of premarital couples.

Natural chemicals such as dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, what's called the love hormone, can cause the same reaction as an illicit what?

Dating and engaged couples often find themselves in a chemically induced condition.

And so they have the uncanny ability to focus on their partner's positive strengths and traits while rarely noticing the reality of their partner's weaknesses.

It's like the couple we had come over to our house once.

Dating Isn’t For Cowards- Part 2

All right, let's begin with a word of prayer.

Lord, we want to thank you for being with us.

We want to thank you for our opportunity to think about dating again.

And we pray that as we go through this and dialogue that you will guide our approach to dating so that it's not just from a worldly perspective, but based on the Bible.

So the title is, again, Dating Isn't for Cowards.

You know, dating is going to involve change.

Sometimes 1 person doesn't change, like this cartoon.

I've grown, she says, and you're still stuck in the past.

And there he is with his club and his caveman outfit.

Well, hopefully that won't be your situation.

I'm also hoping that 1 of the things we learned from the last session that we had is that we need to be careful about intimacy.

When we become intimate with another person, it's like taking 2 pieces of wood and gluing them together.

Have you ever tried to separate 2 pieces of wood that are glued together?

They don't separate very well, because what happens is parts of the 1 piece of wood get left on the other piece of wood.

And so when you pull them apart, it's all jagged.

You've got pieces of wood ripped out and belonging to the other piece of wood now.

And If you've ever gone through a breakup, you know what that feels like.

I remember I had dated a girl for 3 and 1 1 years, really believed I was going to marry her.

And then the next day I cried again, and then the third day I cried again, and then I started finding dumb reasons to try and connect with her, like, oh, you left a book at my house, can I bring it over?

And then I would bring it over, and then she wouldn't, you know, I'd say, you know, have you, here's the book.

And I'm like, well, you know, have you been thinking about us?

I said, but doesn't it do anything when you see me?

And then I would get all mad and take off in my car and just so upset.

In fact, I'll be honest, for about a year and a half, I didn't cry every day.

But I did think about it every day for a year and a half.

And so when you've gone through a relationship, sometimes you're glued to that other person.

And the more close you become with them, the harder it is to break apart.

And if we haven't followed the steps that we're going to go through here, then every breakup is going to leave a part of you with someone else, and you could even end up depressed and suicidal, and you definitely need to get some counseling if you've gone through a breakup like that.

Because your heart feels like it's ripped in 2.

Any of you ever gone through, anyone who's willing to admit to it, you've gone through a breakup like this?

And it's traumatic when you go through it.

So I went back and I said, all right, how do we do this?

So I went and I read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and I looked at the options, and I said, well, do we just get rid of dating?

And I, I'd identified that doing worldly dating was no good.

So I could kind of eliminate that 1 pretty rapidly.

Then I said, you know what's been recommended to me is courtship.

But I said, is courtship going to be the best way to move ahead, or is there another way?

Of course, I was a little older by the time I came to this, and I was 28 when I got married.

I found out that traditional courtship is a great model if you have godly parents that you live with, if you live in a close-knit community where people know each other and you're likely to marry someone from that community, and if you are a healthy and secure individual who knows how to interact with the opposite sex.

But in our modern and disconnected society, I did find some challenges with courtship.

People that I saw following the courtship model were not getting married until much later or there were young people feeling pressurized to marry the first significant other.

We got on a date and then everyone says, well, they must be getting married.

A second problem I found was a tendency to rely on groups to secure healthy interpersonal relationships.

And the idea here was that instead of dating someone, you just hang out in groups.

And you don't get to spend ever too much time alone with someone.

And so you just hang out in the group, and you watch them from a distance.

And then 1 day, you go out, and you decide, you know what?

And you say to the dad, listen, can we go chopping wood together?

And as you're chopping wood, you say to the dad, you know, I've really been impressed with your daughter.

Because that's a traumatic thing for him to hear.

And then eventually, he says, well, here are the conditions.

So the problem was this group approach didn't seem to give enough information that was needed.

And it didn't seem to do enough to grow a healthy and secure individual, particularly for someone like me, who didn't have a godly parent.

Sometimes you can also ignore chemistry and personality.

So that would be a good reason to get together.

And so I'd like you to go ahead and give him a chance.

Series

Dating Isn't For Cowards

Dating Isn’t For Cowards- Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

God's Love Stories (Noon Meetings)

5. The Bible’s Most Powerful Evangelistic Couple

30m

Biblical Relationships (Afternoon meetings)

Overcoming the Myths of Marriage

32m

Alan and Nicole Parker - Desires Of the Heart: God's Plan for Your Life

Crawling in Love: Finding The Love Of Your Life, God’s Way

1h 18m

Phil Mills: Preparation for a Happy Marriage

God’s Purpose in Marriage

45m

Keala Thompson: Relationships, God's Way

Marrying the Right Person

45m

God's Love Stories (Noon Meetings)

10. Doing Right

43m

Alan and Nicole Parker - Happily Ever After: Finding True Love, God's Way

Romance, Courtship, and Marriage

1h

Dating Isn't For Cowards

Dating Isn’t For Cowards- Part 2

51m

Things I Wish I Learned in My 20s

06 Things I Wish I Learned in My 20s

59m

Dane Griffin: SWYC 2005 Practical Christianity Seminar

Practical Christianity Seminar, Part 2

56m

Love and Marriage

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine