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Attraction Is Not A Choice

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In Christianity we are pretty good about telling people how to work in a relationship and marriage.  This is a great thing.  We know how to help you when you are married or considering it.  Now that doesn’t guarantee success, but at least we know what to tell you once you are there.

But we are terrible about helping you get from single to dating.  We say that we want everyone to be married, but we don’t help anyone figure out how to get there.

Here’s the truth, you could learn more about attraction from one online seminar by a secular dating “expert” than you could from 20 years of attending church, reading Christian authors and being in small group. Worse, half of what you would learn in those 20 years would be ineffective.  I know, because I lived it.

The first thing we have to understand is this:  Attraction is not a choice.

I can see the red flags rising.  But it’s true and we know it.  What I mean is that initially you don’t choose to be attracted.  You either are or you aren’t.  As David DeAngelo (secular guy – look out!) writes, “A woman doesn’t start talking to a man and say to herself, ‘wow, this guy seems very smart and funny. . . just the type of guy that I’ve been looking for. . . I think I’ll feel attracted to him.”

Attraction is much more basic than that.  It kind of just happens.  Now a couple of caveats just to calm everyone down.  No you will not always be attracted your spouse – I get it. We’ve heard you, ultra wise Christian married person.  And that is really, really important. Marriage is about love and commitment.  However getting a date in the first place is about attraction.

I’m not even talking about being perfectly attracted or attractive.  That’s not realistic.  What I’m saying is that when you meet or approach someone, initial attraction is key and one of the problems a lot of us singles have (especially men) is that we don’t understand attraction, or why we are, or are not, attractive.

Now, all sorts of things can affect attraction – on both ends.  In other words things in my life can make me more or less attractive, and can affect how attracted I am to certain people. But we have to begin to understand this and work on being attractive and attracted in the right way.  Attraction is not a choice – but what we do with it, how we handle it, amplify it, or crush it is.  But we can’t do any of that if we refuse to deal with the reality that it matters – immensely.

This is where we have to toss aside our excuses, hiding places, and “help me sleep at night theology”.  What do I mean?  Things like:

“I just want someone to like me for me.”  To some degree this is actually true.  What we really mean is, “I want someone who I’m attracted to who will like me for me.”  So we have to watch the double standard.  Also we have to be careful not to use this as an excuse to not become a better person.  The best me is yet to come.  Thank goodness.

“If God wants it to happen it will.”  This just drives me crazy – and I used to say it.  It sounds holy.  But the problem is that we don’t do it for any other area of life.  “If God wants me to lose 10 pounds then I will.”  Yeah, no need to work out or change your diet.  Yikes. At the very least spin this into fearlessness instead of laziness.  Go ask out everybody. Why not?  God won’t let you end up with the wrong person right?.  Go in full confidence.

“I have this friend who wasn’t attracted at all to her spouse but she eventually became attracted and they now have a great marriage, 100 children who are all missionaries etc.”. Two thoughts.  First was she really not attracted or was other stuff in the way?  I once dated a girl who was always talking about this other guy she was not “romantically” attracted to.  Then she married him instead of me.  Secondly, this sort of thing can happen.  And my Missouri Tigers can win a football conference title.  It’s happened before, as recently as 1969.

The truth is, we are afraid we aren’t attractive or that we can’t attract the right person.  But that’s a lie.  That’s not from God.  However, we have to engage this to fight through the lie. What is attractive?  What about me is attractive?  How do I lead with that and lean on that? How do I create attraction?  How do I handle myself when I’m extremely attracted?  How do I build on initial attraction?

Lots more to talk about here and we will.

How do you view attraction?  Your attractiveness?  Your ability to create it?

The Myth Of The Christian Soulmate

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This last weekend my fiancee and I were discussing our attempts to read Christian Fiction. First, what does that even mean exactly?  Fiction written by Christians?  Fiction about Christians? Is it always about white people living in the old west?

At any rate, one of the biggest genre is the Christian Romance Novel.  So I decided to go to my favorite resource for books, Amazon.  Wow!  Ok, here we go.  For starters apparently only Christians can write “religious fiction”.  Anyone else I guess either never writes fiction or they just don’t get a section.  Then we get to the breakdown of different types of “Christian Fiction”.  There are 183 books under Biblical fiction 3700 books under historical fiction and . . . wait for it. . . almost 8000 books under Christian Romance.

Moving past the fact that most of these appear to be about Amish people let’s get to why I’m bringing this up.  The Christian culture has been inundated with a false sense of romantic love.

It’s not really about the books which even most Christians don’t read.  It’s about the fact that we play along with what the world says and just Christianize it.  The world says that I have to have another person to be complete, that there is someone out there for you who is exactly right for you.  We say, God has someone for you.

This reminds me of back when Christian rock was getting started.  Here was the sell.  “Hey man did you hear these guys?  They are just like Metallica man – except Christian.” Really!?

One of the things that drives me the most crazy about all of this is we are never first. Never. Everything we do is a freaking reaction to what we see as “wrong” with culture.  There’s hard rock music, let’s make a Christian version.  There’s romance novels, let’s make a Christian version.  Ahhhhh.  The latest is of course, there’s online dating so let’s make a Christian version.

The truth is we should have thought of most of these first.  But we didn’t.  Worse though, most of the time “our” version isn’t as good, and we end up preaching mostly to the choir. The most effective way to make a difference as a Christian artist – don’t get labeled as one.

But here is my point today.  We have invented what I call the “Myth Of The Christian Soulmate.”

It’s everywhere.  Christian Mingle’s about section reads, “The ideal place for Christian men and women to find friends, dates, and even soulmates.”  I can’t count the times in my 20 years of singleness that someone has said something to the effect of “God has someone for you” or “God just hasn’t brought you the one yet” or “Make sure you wait for “the one” God has – don’t settle”.  What could be more paralyzing than that last one?

All of this is some sort of weird cross between romance novel, misplaced Calvinism, and what I call Help You Sleep At Night Theology.  And it is no where in the Bible.

In an attempt to encourage the hurting and lonely, as well as be protective (and often controlling) of the flock, we end up giving platitudes that aren’t really helpful in the long run and just aren’t true.

There is nothing in the Bible about soulmates.  Nothing.  It is not there.  There is nothing about how to find someone to marry.  There are some, and I mean only some, principles for marriage and getting married.  But there are no promises about God bringing you a spouse, let alone a perfect one.

The soulmate idea is bad for a lot of reasons.  The idea that I’m incomplete without someone and if I just find this other person I will be whole.  No person can fill that role. We need to be complete in Jesus.  That doesn’t mean that because we have Jesus that we shouldn’t want a spouse.  But a spouse (real or wanted) should not be put in the savior role.

It can make us mad at God.  If He has my soulmate and hasn’t brought them to me, then it’s His fault.  This is also a convenient way to avoid any responsibility what so ever. Perfect.

Finally, judging every encounter through the soulmate lens pressurizes the whole process. Some of us can never even get into a relationship at all because no one “meets” the soulmate criteria.  Others think everyone they fall for is their soulmate and then when it doesn’t turn out they have to either try desperately to hang on or beat themselves up for “missing it.”

As I’ve said before, I believe that God can and does send people into our lives.  But guess what, we get to choose what to do with that.  And isn’t that what we want anyway?  Isn’t it more romantic to be chosen than to be destined?

Marriage Is For Grown Ups

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So as a single guy, I’ve definitely watched too much late night television.  Every now and then after I’ve had enough Sportscenter, I’ll flip through the informercials.  Now I’ve only ordered two or three things ever (NuWave Oven – greatest thing ever –  Ab Roller, not so much). But one of the latest trends is just incredible to me.

This is the anti-aging movement.  We’ve got Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty (she really does still look the same – weird), Victoria Principal who is now 63 years old and has been doing “anti-aging” for what seems like forever and the latest I saw is “Julie is 53, but looks 35”.  We also have all the men’s versions.  You can get drugs to make your hair grow back, your sex drive go up (watch out for that four hour erection) and apparently get all your old energy back.

Here’s the reality.  We live in a culture that worships youth and it is confusing singles and killing marriage.

Marriage you see, is for grown ups.  Everyone knows this, which is why no one is getting married. . . . because they don’t want to grow up.

In 1970 69% of 25 year old white men were married.  In 2000 33% were.  In 2010 only 20% of all adults aged 18-29 have ever been married.  A huge part of the reason is that we keep moving the bar of what it means to be an adult.  Several studies now say that adolescence goes all the way up to 26 years old. It used to be adolescence ended at 18 and you’d have reached most of your adult milestones by 25.  Forty years ago you would have been done with your education, had a job, been married and probably had a kid. Now it’s a free for all.

Human brain development has not changed, human social development has.  

Humanity has always wanted to live forever and the natural outtake of that is that the younger I can look, feel and act, the better off I’ll be.  As a society, and to some extent as the church, we’ve embraced it all.  “Get your masters,” “Follow your dreams”, “join this short term program right after college – you know before you have to get a real job” “see the world” etc.  We have over nurturing parents that don’t want their kids to grow up. Even churches and ministry organizations have fallen into this trap.  We have youth group, then college group, then young peoples group.  Where’s the grown up group?  But I digress.

The point here is that one of the huge reasons that we have more single people than ever before is that we have more immature people than ever before.  I’m sorry if that hurts.  It’s hurts me.  But if we’re honest it’s just true.  We can get away with it so we do.  This is especially true with guys.

Adolescence and singleness are not the same thing.  But by extending adolescence we are making it harder to distinguish.  Marriage is seen as something I can do later, when I grow up – if I grow up.

This is bad for everybody.  So what do we do?

The Church must go after the unmarried.  If the church isn’t going to do this, then we are in serious, serious trouble.  I mean big time.  Here’s what the church used to do. They’d lose all the early 20 something men, but they’d get them back because when they got married and had kids they remembered that they used to go to church.  But now they aren’t getting married and they aren’t coming back.  We HAVE to address this.  According to Barna 37% of the “unchurched” are single/never married and 55% are men.  Do the math.  If our plan is, “they’ll be back when they are married” we are in serious trouble.

Second, we as singles have got to grow ourselves up.  We have to fight against the temptation to act like an adolescent.  We need to move out of our parents houses, take real jobs (even if it is a starter job), quit playing video games and looking at porn, and figure out what it means to make a vow to another person, be it the vow of marriage or the vow of celibacy.  We need to start facing our sin and woundedness. Community will be required for any of this to happen so we’ll have to actually engage others.

If we don’t it’s not going to matter whether or not you get married because you will either be a completely narcissistic single person or a terrible spouse.  We are not called to be either of those.

The good news is that grown up is good.  Facing our stuff is hard but freeing.  Getting older should mean getting better.  That’s the thing about each step of maturity.  It is harder but better.  That is what growth is.

So are you a grown up?  What areas of your life do you still feel like an adolescent?  What area of your life can you get away with because you are single?

Sexual Immorality Leads Away From Marriage

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C.S Lewis once said, “It would seem Our Lord Finds our desires not to strong but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can not imagine what is meant by a holiday at sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to what we have done with sex and marriage in our culture.  We have created a mess.

The problem is not desire.  The problem is that when we try to fill the desire the wrong way (not just sexual desire), it get’s in the way of the right way of fulfilling it.

Sixty years ago 60% of people aged 18-29 were married.  Today only 20% of that same demographic has ever been married.  That is a dramatic change. We are typically entering puberty earlier (there’s not space here to go into why) and yet waiting longer to get married.  So where as we used to say, “just wait 5 years or so to be married”, now we basically say, “just wait 15 years to have sex”.  Thats crazy!  The problem is cyclical because in one sense it’s harder to wait that long, but in another sense because people are giving up and meeting that desire other ways, it is making people have less desire to get married.

Paul writes in 1st Corinthians that if you want to have sex, get married.  He basically says, “rather than burn with unmet desire, get married and meet it the right way.”  But this is a far cry from where we are at today, even in the Church.

We mess this up a lot of different ways and none of them help us when we are single or even later when we get married.

One plan often offered is to kill the desire.  This is where we just basically tell people sex is bad, don’t have it.  We may not say it but we essentially end up leading people there.  This is a horrible idea because desire for sex isn’t bad  Being controlled by it (or any other desire) is but the desire for sex and intimacy is a huge part of the reason for marriage. Worst of all, if I get married, I won’t be able to just flip a switch that all of a sudden makes sex good.

But more often what we do is go out and meet our desire for sex in some other way. Sometimes this means having sex outside of marriage. This does not lead down a path to marriage.  That’s not to say that people who do this don’t get married but it doesn’t increase the chances.  This is why so many people who live together end up not getting married.  Playing house and being married are not the same thing.  Sex before covenant is never beneficial.

But the biggest problem in the church right now is what I call Lazy Sexual Immorality. This is where I don’t meet my sexual need with another person at all.  Instead I just watch, read or think about someone else doing it and “meet” my need that way.  Tony Campolo once said, “If you are going to sin, at least do it boldly.”  These are the opposite of bold. They are gutless.

If you are under 30 you have seen internet porn.  It’s just the truth.  You have.  The average age a person first sees it right now is 11.  Read that again.  Now this screws us up in all sorts of ways.  But fantasy and habitual masturbation are right behind it.  They are all ways that we can meet our needs without having to “involve” someone else.  And they are killing us.  I have a friend who says that every guy thinks marriage is going to be a porn movie and every girl thinks it’s going to be a romance novel.  It’s not either.  It should be better.  But that is what we are expecting, and when it doesn’t happen we bail.

When we meet our sexual desire outside of marriage it leads us away from marriage.  Either we get our desire met, and therefore don’t want to make the sacrifices to meet them in the right way, or we get wrapped up in our shame and guilt and therefore either can’t engage the real thing or feel like we don’t now “deserve” it.  Usually some sick twisted combination of all of the above.

It’s a nasty cycle and a lot of people are in it.  I’ve been in it many times in one form or another.  Fortunately, you don’t have to stay in it.  I’m going to write more on that soon.  But for today the question really is this: What are you doing with your sexual desire?  How are you meeting it?  Do you see how that affects you from engaging the real thing?

 

Sexual Immorality Is Not Just About You

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About two weeks ago I was relaxing at a hotel bar where I often go to chat with friends or write this blog.  I was just about to shut it down when a gentleman showed up who was from out of town.  He sat down and started to share about why he was in town etc. Anyway after a while he asked if I had a family and I said no, but I was about to get married.  He of course congratulated me and shared he had been married for 20 years. Then he said this, “Of course you know, that once you get married, you’ll have less sex.”  I laughed.  I sure as heck hope not, because we are not having sex now.

It was the same when I was in college.  I was literally the only person in my suite of 9, that didn’t have sex my freshmen year.  They used to joke about it.  I was also the person they came to when stuff in their life was hard.  They knew I was different.

You see we don’t just flee from sexual immorality for ourselves.  It’s one of God’s ways of separating us out – as a witness.  It’s not just about you and me and our little moral battle.

One of the big misconceptions that people have is that sexual immorality is worse today than at other points in history.  There is the idea that all of a sudden it’s “crazy” out there and that marriage is being devalued etc.

This leads to a couple of problems.  First, there a lot of people who think what the Bible says about sex is “old school” and not relevant for today.  On the other hand the Church ends up running around shouting that the world is ending, making an idol out of the family and longing for the past (which I think is the 1950’s America).

Now it is true that American culture is changing.  But none of this is new.  Neither is our call to live differently than the culture.

When you look at the sexual practices that God lays out in the old testament it needs to be understood that God was giving them these specifics for a reason.  That reason is that all the other societies in the Near East were not practicing them.  When God says, don’t sleep with an animal, He says it because others were.  He’s not making up random stuff.  The Near Eastern cultures were crazy, even by our standards.  People were having sex in every way, with everybody and everything.  They even worshiped to it.

God was saying to the Israelites, “You will not be like them.  You are my people and this will distinguish you.”

The same is true in Paul’s letter to Corinth.  They had written Paul and they asked him what they should do.  How should they practice sexuality and marriage now that they had Jesus?  Paul starts that whole message by saying, “Now for the questions you asked about – here’s how to apply God’s teaching and live the way He would want in your context.”  Which was a completely pagan and dualistic context.  Sound familiar?

If we are going to flee from sexual immorality we have to define what that is. The good news is that currently most folks are not sleeping with animals or temple prostitutes (at least I’ve never been tempted by either).  So in our day, we can’t just take one liners from the Bible and try to make them mean what we want them to.  Instead, we need to take the overall meaning of sex, marriage, and celibacy in the scriptures (which is pretty dang clear) and apply that to our current context.  In legal terms it’s like law and case law.  How does the law apply to our case today?

But beyond that we need to realize that our call to flee from immorality is not just as a set of rules to keep us out of trouble.  God called Israel out.  He made them His people and commanded them to live in a way that demonstrated Him to the world.  One of the ways they were to do this was by how they behaved sexually.  Paul tells the early church the same thing.  You are set apart.  You were bought at a price.  You are NEW and different.  Live like it – in the light!

One of the reasons we fail is that even in our morality or lack there of, it’s all about us.  That wasn’t really the point.  God has bigger plans.  When we are set apart, people are drawn to us.  Want to be counter cultural?  Want to make a difference?  Want to point towards God.  Live this area of your life differently than the world.  It was true 4000 years ago and it’s true now.

Frozen Masculinity

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My sophomore year I played varsity basketball.  I didn’t typically start but I played (a lot) on a team made up of 7 seniors and 3 Juniors.  I was the future.  But my junior year, while I was a better athlete, I was a worse player.  It was hard to describe.  It was like I was out there but I couldn’t fully engage.  I was kind of frozen.  There were many different reasons. I broke my thumb, we switched coaches and systems etc, but really, I was just off.  It was like I wanted it so bad that I couldn’t get it.  I was a starter, but honestly I shouldn’t have been.

One day after a particularly bad game my dad pulled me into his office.  We had a man to man.  He said, “Look, you’ve probably lost your starting job.  I wouldn’t start you.  You’ve got to turn it loose.  Somehow you’ve got to find some reckless abandon.  Sometimes you just have to say F it and go.”  My dad never cussed.  It’s maybe the best advice he’s ever given me.

That night I did start.  I also played freer.  I finished the last few games a little better and then had a good senior year.

Here’s what crazy.  The same thing happened to me in dating.  As a kid I had no game. But when I got to college I suddenly had dates.  I gained confidence and I was fearless.  I’d ask out a person in a store, the waitress, whoever, and they’d say yes.  But then some stuff changed. I had a long relationship that rightly ended but it was then that I knew I needed to date to get married, not just to date.  The pressure kind of mounted.  I was 22.

It was at this point (in my mid 20’s) that the whole “biblical dating” movement happened. Being a young Christian leader I of course wanted to do right.  So I didn’t date to date, never kissed anyone and even did the whole “courting” thing once.  Turns out you can get hurt there too.

When I turned 30 I moved to St. Louis, a much more target rich environment.  But there was a big problem.  I was frozen.  It was like I couldn’t pursue.  I over thought everything.  I was still too religious and when I did like someone I was too try hard.  I over thought, over pursued and felt awkward.  I was the nice guy.  It was seriously crazy.  It was like I was on the court, but not really able to engage.

There are a lot of guys in some sort of similar boat.  We talk all the time about how guys are passive and don’t pursue.  And many times when they do it’s all wrong.  A girl once told me, “I’m so tired of Christian guys.”  This was a gal who loved Jesus.  What she was really saying is, “I’m tired of wuss Christian guys who either won’t pursue me at all or who chase me and are constantly needy.”

We have a serious problem.  Many guys are frozen.  The reasons include but are not limited to:

  • Over-spiritualizing the whole thing.  This includes all I talked about here.  
  • Over-thinking the whole thing.  All of the pretend conversations with girls, trying to figure out if they like me, speculating on how it will all pan out, trying to avoid hurt and on and on
  • Fear of rejection – we are often afraid to ask out who we really want to.  Part of this comes from over thinking and building up the situation to begin with.
  • Fear of commitment – a lot of guys are just scared of marriage –
  • Not knowing how to attract girls.  Most men have no training or help on how female attraction works.  They don’t know how to do it.
  • Waiting for the perfect person – you know the one who looks just right, talks just right, and acts just right – before you even know her
  • Worrying about what others think – both the girl we might ask and what others will think of her if we do
  • We’ve spent too much time having our sexual needs met other ways, which drives down the desire for marriage and drives up our shame – bad combination (more here soon)

All of these can play into each other.  It’s a cycle.  I think about it more, which steals more of my identity away from Christ, which makes me more worried about how it will go, which makes me less likely to act, which means when I do it will be awkward, which will make me more unattractive, which will mean I’m rejected, which will make me think about it more . . . . Whew I’m tired.

We’ve got to figure out how to stop it.  We’ve got to figure out how to act with some reckless abandon (which by the way is extremely attractive).  We have to break free and just go.

What freezes you?  What keeps you from fully engaging and pursuing marriage?  What has helped you get past it?

Grace, Sovereignty, And Excuses

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Here’s a parable:

There was a young man who loved Jesus.  His ministry with people was growing and God was doing great things.  As he hit his mid twenties he was still single.  He began to pray and ask God what the deal was.  As he prayed and talked to others it seemed as if God was calling him to celibate ministry.

But this man didn’t want that.  He kept dating and eventually fell in love with a great lady.  Once again, in his heart he felt like God was calling him to celibate ministry but he was in love and he shoved down God’s call.  He married this lady and decided to not even do full time ministry.

He went to work for McDonald’s.  He started as a mid level manager and then moved up to running his own store. Now somewhere along the way, he again sought God.  He turned back and repented of his disobedience and sought God for how he should live.  He ran his store in a Godly way.  He loved his workers and many came to know Jesus. Because his workers were so good his store was the best in the state.  People would drive a little further to go to “that” McDonald’s.  He and the staff knew customers’ names and what they liked to order.  Some of them even came to know Jesus.

On top of all of this the man loved his wife well.  They had kids and they grew up loving Jesus and loving others.  God blessed them in all sorts of ways.  Was this God’s plan?

One of the huge traps for any part of life, but perhaps especially singleness and marriage is this idea that whatever happens is God’s plan.  The idea that whatever happens must be what God wants, which in my opinion really means it’s never my fault.

“I’m single right now, must be where God has me.”  “I can’t help that I like this guy, even though he leads me away from what God is calling me to.” “God wouldn’t let me have these feelings if it wasn’t His plan.”  Or my favorite, ‘God let me sin this way so that. . . .”

God doesn’t need you to sin in order to show you something or use later in ministry.  He shows us stuff and uses us in His kingdom IN SPITE of our sin.  It’s called grace.

In the parable above it worked out, sort of.  But that doesn’t mean that the man wasn’t disobedient to God’s call.  It means that God’s grace was bigger than his disobedience.  It means that God worked something that was a bad decision into a good one.  God’s grace is not the same as God’s plan.

So why does this matter?  Isn’t this basically a theological argument? 

It matters because we shouldn’t assume stuff will work out anyway. Yes God’s grace is always available but not always in the way we think.  We especially need to be careful in what we tell others.

“My wife and I had sex before marriage.  I know it was wrong but it’s worked out.  We’re following God now.” “My wife wasn’t a believer when we got married.  But she became one later and now we are on the same page.” “We just couldn’t stay married anymore. But now God has provided someone else.” If we share it as testament to God’s Grace, that’s awesome. If we share it to excuse ours or someone else’s sin, that’s not so good.

Just because God rescues it and it turns out ok doesn’t make what we did right. Disobedience is just that.  God’s sovereignty and grace are not a license to do what we want.

This is very important as we walk with others.  We shouldn’t advise sin or tell people its ok.  In the example above it wouldn’t be good for this man to tell people, “Go ahead and blow off God’s call, you can always repent later.”

Most of the time disobeying God’s call, especially when it comes to what we know for sure to be his commands biblically, doesn’t work out that well.  As an example, for every couple that lives together first and later ends up in a life long marriage there a bunch that don’t. Why stack the odds against yourself?

Obviously we all sin and make bad choices. I know for sure I have and do. That doesn’t mean we should excuse it, and we sure as heck shouldn’t advise it.  Using God’s grace to justify sin is not ok.

What we can do is advise against it.  We can point out God’s grace and how as we’ve turned to Him, He has blessed us.  It means there is hope in absolutely any situation. Instead of justifying the mistakes, let’s focus on God’s grace and use it as a platform to save others.

Unmet Desire Is Good

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When I was a kid, I really, really loved basketball.  I wanted to be good.  I would pretend to be the Missouri Tigers in the driveway.  You know the drill – down two with time running out, you shoot, and. . . if you missed – well you were fouled.  Haha.

In high school I wanted to win, and I wanted to be the star.  Now the truth is I was good but not a star, but that didn’t keep me from working at it.  I would practice a lot.  I bought the “strength shoes” to improve my vertical. I did endless drills.

I had a good not great career.  But I loved the whole thing.  But what drove me was the chance to win.  I had a desire to win.  It wasn’t always met – but it drove me to be better.

We have a huge problem in our culture and it has a crazy impact on us as singles.  We think that unmet desire is always bad.  If I have a desire, then it should be met – right now!  This is America damn it!  Meet My Desire!

Desire is good.  In fact in Psalm 37:4 God promises to give us desires (not give us what we want, but give us what to want).  Desire drives us to do incredible things.  Desire makes us want to grow, to change, to become better.  Without desire we would be dead.

Desire drives us to act.  Always. The question becomes where do we let us drive us.

We all have a desire for love. Now obviously we need to take our desire for love to Jesus first.  This is critical for everything else in life.  The best part is that God will meet us and He does love us.  In fact he is the only person who can meet that desire.

But what about other desires.  Can God meet our desire for sex?  Can God be our spouse? Can God physically hold our hand or give us physical intimacy?  No.  And yet God created sex.  He created us with the desire for physical and emotional intimacy and partnership with another person.  That’s awesome . . . and frustrating!

So what do we do with unmet sexual/intimacy desire?

We can go out and meet that base desire by having sex with someone.  I mean we have needs and they need to be met.  A lot of us don’t want the work involved with that sin though so we settle for what I call “Lazy Immorality”.  By this I mean, porn, masturbation, romance novels, whatever.  (I’ll define this more soon).

We can also just try to kill the desire so we don’t have to feel it.  Just focus on work, or school, or a hobby.  The more extreme the better.  Whatever works.  Ministry works well here.  Just focus on other stuff.  Shove that desire down deep.

We can get religious.  Just be content where you are.  We can drop in some misused Pauline quotes.  The favorite is in Philippians 4 where Paul says, “I have learned the secret to being content in any and every situation.”  So just don’t want.  “Just Be” is how we take that.  But that isn’t really what Paul is getting at.  The “secret” isn’t to kill desire.  It’s not to be ok with whatever.  Paul gives us the secret in the next verse – through Jesus “who gives me strength”.

Paul had learned that regardless of what he felt, Jesus would meet him and sustain it.  His identity, joy, or overall life was not wrapped up in unmet desire or circumstance. That is the contentment Paul was talking about.  He wasn’t saying, “Don’t feel.  Don’t try to make things different. Stay as you are it’s fine.”  No Paul was saying Jesus was bigger than all of that.  He is saying let whatever your situation is let it drive you to Jesus.  I don’t need to kill my desire or have it met the wrong way.  I need to walk straight into unmet desire – with Jesus.

We can’t just tell people to not worry about it.  We don’t do this in other areas.  The church doesn’t say to the poor – just stay poor and be content.  It doesn’t say to the sick, just stay sick and be content.  No, we step up and step in.  We act.  (Or at least we are supposed to).  All the while pointing out that no matter what the circumstances Jesus has to be desired first.

The truth is that these desires we have are natural and good, and from God.  We need to engage Him and we need to move forward.  It’s hard.  Unmet desire is a part of life to the full.  We need to feel the tension.  It drives us to the things that God has for us – if we let it.

What do you do with your unmet desire?

Religion And Dating Don’t Mix

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When I look back at my twenties and dating I just kind of cringe.  I think a lot of people probably do.  But the reason I cringe isn’t because I slept around, or dated all the wrong people.  It’s because I was too religious.  Religious dating can really screw us up.

Here’s what I mean.  First of all there is this idea that there is a “Biblical” way to date.  As I’ve mentioned in a different post, this is utter nonsense.  No where in the Bible is there any sort of guide of how to get married, let alone date.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zero. Ok, moving on.

There is also the idea that because you should only date to get married that you shouldn’t go on a date unless you know you will marry them.  Which again makes no sense. First off there is a big difference between going on a date and “dating” someone.  I agree that main reason to date is to try to get married, especially the older you get.  But the idea that you should only go on a date with someone you know you can marry is crazy.  It can be paralyzing.  Especially when you pair it with the next religious dating ideal.

There is the idea that we need to guard the other person’s heart.  This one isn’t even possible.  It starts with the right idea of not leading someone on.  I want to talk more about this later but I agree we need to be careful.  If we aren’t interested we shouldn’t date them. We shouldn’t make promises that we aren’t ready to be committed to.  We should never lie.  All those things do guard everybody’s heart but thats just called honesty.  But the idea that I don’t want to ask someone out in case it doesn’t work out and they get hurt is delusional and probably a little arrogant.  It assumes I’m the one controlling the relationship.  I’d be the one to end it.  I don’t want them to like me too much in case I change my mind.  Really?!

The truth is even if my intentions are great, I can’t guarantee that if I ask someone out that it will go somewhere.  And I think we need to give our ladies a little more credit.  Adult women are capable of dealing with hurt.  They can handle it.  I once had a woman flat out tell me, “Hey, it’s my job to guard my own heart.  We can’t find out if it goes somewhere if we don’t go forward.  I’m ok with the risk.”  She was exactly right.  Really, if she wasn’t mature enough to be ok with the risk, then it probably wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

The final problem is if you do go out with different people you can get labeled as a serial dater.  Now I’m certainly not suggesting using no discernment and just dating anyone at any time.  I’m also not suggesting dating just to date or asking out anyone just to get a rush or because you need approval of women.  Motive is everything here.  I’d also say that if you have lots of fairly long relationships that always fail, you need to check yourself and what’s going on.  There could be a fear of commitment.

But it can be a double standard.  Why aren’t you dating anyone?  Why aren’t you married?  There are lots of great women in our church – but you’d better only ask out one, because if you ask out more than one, everyone will think that you just want to serial date our church.

I big timed lived in this stuff in my twenties.  I WAY over thought potential dates.  I’m not talking about people that I didn’t really want to date, I’m talking about people I thought I could be interested in but wasn’t sure.  How the heck were you supposed to find out?

In an effort help people date right (or court or whatever), Christians have unintentionally made it harder to get married.  We are helping to paralyze people from actually pursuing relationships.  We end up over thinking, over analyzing, and over spiritualizing the whole thing.  We end up with guys who have no idea how to actually pursue someone when they DO want to because they can never be sure if they SHOULD.

Non-Christians make it way less complicated.  Like someone – ask them out. We could learn some from that.

We can’t date constantly worried about choosing wrong, trying to protect everyone, worried about what everyone thinks.  We can’t date in a context that says, don’t try, don’t risk, don’t touch, don’t mess up, don’t hurt anybody.  God’s grace is bigger than that.  We need to walk with Jesus but we need to free ourselves from a made up “Christian Dating” culture.

Has “Religious Dating” held you back?  Has it stifled your path?  Has it messed you up.

Singleness Is Not A Spiritual Gift

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Many different times I’ve been asked if I had the “gift” of singleness.  It’s always bothered me.  I think it’s because there is basically only one scripture that uses anything close to that term, and even then it isn’t singled out (ha – how about that pun).

The scripture of course is in 1 Corinthians 7.  I’ve talked about this section of scripture more in depth but basically Paul is talking about marriage, singleness, divorce etc. In the very first paragraph, Paul says that he wishes all were like him (single) but that each person has their own gift from God.

That’s it.  That is the only place in the entire Bible where you could make the case for the “gift” of singleness.

Notice that we don’t go around asking people if they have the gift of marriage.  I guess if you are married you’ve got it and if not it could go either way?

I think either marriage or singleness could be a gift in a sense.  But it’s not a spiritual gift.  It’s not tongues, prophesy, teaching, mercy, healing, exhortation, singleness. . .

The big problem I have with the gift idea is what is often implied.  It’s the idea that if you have this gift then you will know it and you will be able to handle singleness no problem. Flip this around – if you have the gift of marriage then you will not have any problems in marriage, because you will desire all the right things etc.  Um yeah, not so much.

A president of a seminary has said that to determine if I have the gift of singleness I should ask myself, “Can I go the rest of my life without sex, without the companionship of marriage, without having children and without being bitter about it?”  He says if I answer yes, then I probably have the gift of singleness.

Maybe, but the problem is that I could probably answer that yes at this point in my life.  But I’m engaged and I’m pretty sure God is in that.  My point is that I could go without sex (I’ve done it for 40 years) and I’m not bitter.

This whole area is a complete mess in our culture because we have so many people not married.  There are A LOT of reasons for this, some good, most bad.  But we have the chance here as the Church to begin to help people figure this out.  It starts with recognizing what marriage really is and what celibacy for life really is, and then helping people walk in both.  We need some different questions.

Jesus doesn’t talk about it being a gift.  In one of the most misused “singleness” scriptures of all time Jesus actually says something way more interesting.  In Matthew 19 Jesus is asked about divorce.  He says it’s not good and goes beyond what they were expecting to say that anyone who divorces his wife for any reason other than sexual immorality and marries another, commits adultery.

The disciples are shocked.  They say, “If this is the situation between man and wife, it’s better not to marry.”  Then Jesus says this not every one can accept this word (what he just shared about marriage), but only those to whom it is given.

But then Jesus goes on to say that some are eunuchs at birth, some are made that way by others and, “there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”  Big word there.  Do you see it.  CHOOSE.  Look Out!

Is Jesus saying we have a choice?

This is so critical.  We have over spiritualized/romanticized the whole dang thing.  No where in the Bible does it say that there is THE ONE.  No where does it talk about a soul mate.  No where does it say that married or single that I won’t struggle with sexual sin or have no unmet desires.  We’ve made up this perfect scenario and it messes up the whole thing – singleness and marriage.

Marriage is a choice.  So is celibacy.  I can choose to make a vow with God to another person in holy matrimony.  I can also make a vow with God, to celibate ministry.  Both are good.  Neither has anything to do with being single as we know it today.  It’s not about whether one is easier or harder for me.

We all make choices.  We pass on dating/marrying certain people and we make choices to date/marry certain people.  Other people make choices about us.  We make vocational choices, geographical choices.  We have more choices than any culture at any point in history.

This is why it is so critical that we walk with God and others – so that we can make more good choices.  God may well call you toward one or the other.  We choose whether or not to listen and obey – just like every other aspect of life.