Stupid In Love Series Recap with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the final week of our Stupid in Love series.

The last four weeks were like a funnel, taking us from the broadest perspective of what love is all the way down to the most specific expression of love inside a great marriage.

The scriptural truths that undergird great relationships are so valuable, specifically because our world has them so backwards.

Virtually every piece of relational advice, every attitude or action we are encouraged to take, and every cultural prescription for love, dating, and marriage is not just wrong, it's kind of stupid.

Both the research and our own observation bear this out.

People today are less happy, more anxious, less fulfilled, more lonely, less relationally satisfied, and more depressed than ever before.

Something has to change for us to get to the level of relational and romantic quality that we desire.

Fortunately for us, the answers already exist.

They're laid out in the ancient wisdom of Scripture.

So we're gonna go back through the last four weeks to review and more importantly to apply this content into our lives.

I do believe that this content is so important and that the state of relationships in our world is so broken that it's worth taking a second look at what we learned in our Stupid in Love series, starting with what love is.

To really live your relational life God's way, you have to be in relationship with God.

And the same that is true for Samson, that as a kid, I just looked at the feats of strength and never understood his purpose.

It's true for dating, that we often just look at the physical attraction and don't look at what's on the inside.

In week one, we looked at one of the great heroes of the Old Testament, Samson.

What's so interesting is while history remembers him as a hero, he lived almost his entire life in a series of gut-wrenching mistakes.

Samson is the perfect model for what it looks like to be stupid in love.

You see, Samson had an incredible purpose.

In fact, an angel of the Lord prophesied to his parents that Samson would play a role in starting to save Israel from the power of the Philistines.

The Philistines were the Old Testament enemies of God.

They were lawless, immoral, idol-worshiping, child sacrificing heathens.

Nowhere in Samson's prophecy did the angel talk about his immense strength or his bulging muscles.

Those were simply gifts that God gave him to help accomplish his actual purpose.

And to give him credit, Samson did cause some problems for the Philistines, but his mission was derailed by falling in love.

Not real love, stupid love.

It says that Samson went down to Timna and saw a young Philistine woman there.

He went back and told his father and his mother, I've seen a young Philistine woman in Timna, now get her for me as a wife.

Samson was getting ready to marry the enemy.

Everyone knew this would drag him off course and kill any chance of him reaching his God-given potential, but he was adamant.

Samson told his father, Get her for me.

She's the right one for me.

Now, if you translate the Hebrew word for word, what Samson actually said was, She is pleasing to my eyes.

In other words, she's a dime.

She's super hot.

Here we see the first step to falling stupid in love.

We fall in love with the outer person before we know their inner purpose.

Of course, the danger of falling in love with the outer person is it blinds us to someone's red flags.

Red flags are the obvious warning signs that this is not a good person for you to invest in a romantic relationship with.

We've all experienced someone with red flags, whether it's someone you're dating or a friend is dating.

You see, we fall in love and it's kind of like a blank slate.

It's shiny and attractive, but pretty soon you start to notice some things, and if you don't notice them, your friends certainly do.

Like the way that they talk to you just doesn't seem right, or the way that they spend their money, or maybe they are dependent on things like drugs or alcohol.

Maybe they're always trying to pull you away from your friends or your family.

You know, perhaps they just don't respect your boundaries, or they can't ever hold a job, or all kinds of red flags that we should be able to see.

And the reason that we fall into relationships with people with red flags is we're viewing them through the love lens.

And through the love lens, these rose-colored glasses, all the red flags seem to just fade away.

We think that we're in love, but it's not real love, it's stupid love.

It's love with the outer person before you know who they actually are on the inside.

Maybe it's time to learn how to dig deeper and attract the right kind of person.

If you want to be more attractive, get driven in your life.

Have something that wakes you up.

And if you are a believer in Jesus, then you are surrounded by a world of people whose lives are in the balance between heaven and hell.

Attraction is tricky.

First, there are just preferences that we are naturally attracted to.

Then there are culturally dictated attractions.

Don't believe me?

In the 80s, all the hottest guys rocked mullets.

Then, for like 40 years, mullets were exclusively for rednecks, and all of a sudden, 2020 hits, mullets are back.

Culture dictates a lot of what we find attractive.

We also know that men and women typically assess attraction very differently.

Women are thoughtful and nuanced and specific, and men are typically quite simple, and their initial attraction is almost exclusively visual.

In week two, we actually built some models of attraction, like people who are well dressed and successful and brilliant, or people who are really strong and really confident, but also really kind, or are maybe the perfect Chris, like the humor of Chris Pratt and the muscles of Chris Hemsworth and the good looks of Chris Evans.

But just looking at outward attraction can make us stupid in love.

Whether it's good looks, height, weight, wealth, career, all of these are superficial to who the person actually is.

Remember, what got Samson in trouble is that his only concern was that the woman was pleasing to his eyes.

He fell in love with the outer person, regardless of knowing that they were not aligned at all on their inner purpose.

So, how does this work in today's world?

Most single people are all too familiar with how difficult it is to attract the right person.

On dating apps, men find about 60% of the women attractive, while women find only 4.5% of the men attractive.

Men swipe right more than half the time, while women only swipe five out of every 100 times.

This leaves women feeling like there are only losers and men feeling like there are literally no women.

Women can't find the right one while men can't find anyone.

However, we often forget one essential truth.

To attract the right one, you have to be attractive to the right one.

If you want someone to settle down with, but all of your socials are you going out and partying, you aren't going to attract what you're looking for.

If you want a godly partner but give no indication of your own faith, you probably aren't going to find them.

So let's look at a biblical prescription for being attractive and attracting someone who is worthy of investing in a relationship with.

First, you have to be real.

Far too many people are playing the character that they think will attract someone.

Whether it's pretending that you are wealthier, more successful, more confident, unrealistically adventurous, more independent, or more sexually promiscuous, there's a huge incentive to try and put up a strong sales pitch for why someone should be with you.

Proverbs says, as water reflects the face, so the heart reflects the person.

So what does it mean to be real?

First, it means you actually know who you are.

This requires dealing with the hard parts of your story.

The pain in your past causes you to mask parts of yourself.

These coping mechanisms usually become sin patterns in your life.

Pride, insecurity, guilt, grief, unmet needs, all of these cloud the actual person that God created you to be.

Second, being real means submitting your life to Christ.

Your truest identity is found in Christ.

Scripture says that once you believe, you are made a new creation.

When you are a believer but still walking in your old ways, you are not being real.

Last, the realest you is a healthy you.

We are called to be spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and financially healthy.

We're also called to take care of the bodies that God has given us.

Being financially healthy is not about showing off your wealth to attract someone.

Being physically healthy is not about the world's superficial beauty standards.

Getting healthy is about being the realest version of yourself.

Not only are we called to be real, we're also called to be holy.

To be holy means to be set apart.

This is a part of following Jesus.

First Peter says that as the one who called you is holy, you are also to be holy in all of your conduct.

Paul says an unholy life is obvious, and it's obvious because it looks and it operates just like the rest of the culture.

In other words, it's not set apart.

This is how we stay in the world, but live for our real home and eternity with God.

It's holiness.

Holiness covers all areas, including our sexual decisions.

If you want to find a special someone, you have to be a special someone.

You need to be set apart.

Last, we are called not just to be real and to be holy, but to be driven.

People are attracted to someone with a focused vision for their life.

I'm not necessarily talking about your job or your hobbies.

I'm talking about a deep, underlying engine that turns every day, giving progress and purpose to your life.

As believers, we should have the clearest focus of all, on the highest purpose of all.

One day Jesus was teaching about all the worries that tend to bog us down.

And instead, he said, to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be provided for you.

The ultimate romantic relationship is one where both people are helping each other fully seek God's kingdom together.

Think about Samson.

His lust and pride clouded who he really was.

His sin patterns caused him to forsake his holiness.

Though he was purposed to be God's strongest warrior, he instead was driven by his own selfish ambition.

Because he was not real, not holy, and not driven, he attracted that very thing into his life, not once, but twice.

The first one cost him his marriage and a lot of headaches.

The second one, Delilah, cost him his life.

Your last term is a sneaky link.

A sneaky link.

I believe in you.

Is this a secret romantic or sexual encounter typically kept hidden from others?

Is it a playful term for sending secret love letters?

Is it a date that involves solving puzzles and riddles together?

What is a sneaky link?

Go with one.

Number one, and he's right.

There are a lot of ways to study a civilization.

One of the most fascinating approaches is to try and understand their use of language and what it reveals about their society.

In week three, we talked about dating and we looked at Gin Z's language around the topics of love, dating, and sex.

After careful study and our own observation, we can see that dating culture today is selfish, sexual, and senseless.

Here's some of the common words used today: things like benching, which means keeping someone as a backup option while dating others more seriously, which is obviously quite selfish.

Or a situation ship, which is a sexual relationship that's never formally established as a real relationship.

Convenient, for sure, but senseless.

It has no purpose.

Ghosting, where you just disappear out of someone's life, is obviously selfish.

Breadcrumbing, which means leading people on, is so senseless.

Things like trying to be a thirst trap or a sneaky link, having someone on the side, these are obviously meant only for sexual pleasure.

Selfish, sexual, and senseless perfectly also describes Samson's romantic philosophy.

Most people know the story of Delilah, but they miss the part of the story of how the two met.

In Judges 16, Samson went to Gaza where he saw a prostitute and went to bed with her.

That's right.

Samson is so far away from living out his God-given purpose that he's going into enemy territory to visit prostitutes.

Selfish, sexual, and senseless.

There is no purpose to it.

A couple verses later, it says, sometime later he fell in love with a woman named Delilah who lived in the Sorek Valley.

The Soreg Valley is in, you can probably guess it, Gaza.

Odds are Samson was on his way to visit a prostitute when he met the infamous Delilah.

Not exactly a Hallmark movie.

This move ended up costing Samson his life.

Now, following a selfish, sexual, senseless prescription may not end in your imminent death, but it will cost you.

The more our culture moves in opposition to God's design for our relationships, the more we suffer relationally.

So, how has Scripture asked us to live?

We get incredible insight from the creation of the first man and woman.

God created Adam, but it was not good for the man to be alone.

We are created for relationship.

So God put Adam to sleep and took out one of his ribs to make Eve.

So what does this mean?

It means that to have a satisfying relationship cost Adam.

It's straight out of this story.

The saying is this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

And more than that, it highlights a willingness to sacrifice for that person.

True relationship costs you, and true love makes you more than willing to pay the price.

For Adam to get his Eve, he had to give up a part of himself.

This is the proper prescription for relationship.

We are called to be selfless, not selfish.

Being selfless means putting others' needs ahead of your own.

It means seeking to serve instead of being served.

It means a willingness to change and become more of the man or woman that God created you to be.

Culture calls us to be selfish and to be sexual.

However, scripture implores us to flee sexual immorality.

Paul writes, every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.

Why does Paul tell us to save sex for marriage?

Is it because God's just gonna be mad at you or so you don't get someone pregnant?

Is it just so you'll set a good example or because God doesn't want you to have any fun?

No.

Paul says that sex outside the boundaries that God created is you sinning against you.

Other sins are external and the consequences are external, but sex is more than physical.

It's a level of intimacy that gets to your soul.

It's you stealing from you in the future.

Not only that, but every week of this series we saw the critical importance of having a common core purpose with the person you are investing in.

Nothing clouds your judgment of that quicker than a sexual relationship.

Scripture calls us to prioritize spiritual compatibility, not sexual compatibility.

Remember, you are sexually compatible with far more people than you are spiritually compatible.

Wise dating relationships honor God's design for sex inside the bounds of marriage.

This allows you to slow down and truly suss out whether this person has the same core purpose that you have for your own life.

Last, culture pushes dating that is selfish, sexual, and senseless.

That means it has no purpose, no direction, no greater meaning.

If you date and get married out of selfish convenience, you'll bounce as soon as the marriage gets inconvenient.

If you date and get married solely for sexual pleasure, you might eventually find someone else more sexually compelling.

However, when our romantic relationships become a part of how we live out our God-given purpose on the earth, they become significant, not senseless.

The person you marry someday is who you will become one with.

So will you walk into that marriage selfless and spiritually aligned and living a significant purpose together?

Or will you be in the turmoil that comes from the world's broken view of dating?

Remember, the purpose of relationship is laid out all the way back in the garden narrative.

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife and they become one flesh.

Now everyone is looking for their one, the person to spend their lives with.

At the same time, most people are not dating with the type of intention to actually find that person.

This matters because how you date today will affect your marriage someday.

The truth is, the culture has lied to us every step of the way, and all the studies and all the research bears that out.

The selfish, oversexualized, senseless form of dating has plunged us into misery and turmoil.

Samson experienced this very thing.

Delilah seemed like the one, but no sooner had they gotten together than she decided to stab him in the back for a lucrative payout.

If we are wise, we will learn from his example and we will be selfless, not selfish.

We'll be spiritual, not just sexual, and we will have significant relationships, not senseless relationships.

You are not gonna find a perfectly compatible person, but one of the things that you're looking for is not just where we lack compatibility, but how we deal with it.

You see, two selfless people who have a common life purpose, they can have areas of incompatibility and view it as an opportunity to serve one another.

Once we learn to stop just looking at the outer person and start digging down to a core inner purpose, we've taken the first step in escaping the stupid in-love trap.

We'll finally have a chance to reframe what it means to be attractive and how to attract the right kind of person.

Instead of simple, superficial appeal, we will look for someone who is real and holy and driven.

Of course, to find that person, we first have to become that person.

Once we reframe love and attraction, it's time to get honest about our dating lives.

We must reject the lies of culture that dating should be selfish, sexual, and senseless.

Once we begin approaching our relationships as selfless, spiritual, and significant, we're primed to potentially find someone we could spend the rest of our lives with.

And that brings us to marriage.

Last week we saw that it is possible to have your happily ever after.

But there is one big caveat.

Your happily ever comes after a significant amount of conflict.

Now, there are broadly two types of conflict: the healthy kind that grows you as an individual and strengthens your relationship, and then the kind most of us are used to: toxic, terrible, tension-creating conflict.

To help us embrace the former and escape the latter, we looked at the story of Abraham finding a wife for his son Isaac.

Now, what makes this story so significant is that Isaac would carry the greatest promise ever given in the Old Testament.

God told Abraham that he would become a great nation, but even more important, the Savior of the world, Jesus, would be born through his lineage to rescue the entire human race.

Those are big stakes.

Last week we went through all the details and found three key things that protect your marriage from unhealthy conflict.

The first two are common life purpose and compatibility.

Here's what's interesting.

While these protect you from harmful conflict intention, they're only achieved through healthy conflict intention.

How do you know if you have a common life purpose?

Typically, you have to have a lot of hard conversations.

You need time to see this person in a lot of different environments and responding to hundreds of situations.

How do you know if you are compatible?

Do your worldviews and personalities actually line up?

It takes healthy conflict, compromise, even disagreements.

How do you find out where you lack compatibility?

You just give it time.

No one is perfectly compatible.

The problem is for the first six months to a year of dating, you are on your best behavior, hiding the parts of yourself that you think might damage the relationship.

For the first six months, an introvert will act like a party animal to keep up with their extroverted boyfriend or girlfriend.

But did you know if you date at least two years, your odds of divorce get cut by almost 30%?

And if you date three years, your odds go down by 40%.

It's because you've spent enough time for your areas of conflict to show through.

So you need time, but you also need intention.

Once the conflict becomes obvious, you have to have the fight.

Now you need to fight fair and with a common purpose in mind because healthy conflict is what we're looking for.

In the story of Abraham and Isaac, they had found a woman who was compatible, everything Isaac was looking for, and they shared a common life purpose, but there was still one last step: common life purpose, compatibility, and confirmation.

Confirmation is finding someone who is wise and who you can trust, to be brutally honest with you.

Because if you just want confirmation for what you're currently doing, it won't be hard to find.

But if you want to marry from the inside out, you need someone who will challenge you.

Confirmation from a wise, godly person helps ensure that you aren't just viewing this person through the love lens, missing all their red flags.

It ensures you aren't just attracted by what is superficial.

A wise person will assess if you're being selfish or senseless in your pursuit.

If you get these things right, you will have a hedge of protection around your relationships.

If you get them wrong, each of these will create conflict for you.

Just ask Samson.

In Judges 14, his father and mother said to him, Can't you find a young woman from among your own people who share a common purpose with you?

Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines for a wife?

But Samson told his father, Get her for me.

She is pleasing to my eyes.

The heartache and misery that Samson could have avoided had he sought confirmation from his godly parents.

Confirmation helps to ensure that you truly have a common life purpose, and the people who love you will point out whether or not you truly are compatible.

Now we have covered a lot of ground.

We've gone from the broadest level of love to understanding attraction, how to date in a godly way, and how to protect a great marriage.

I believe this practical wisdom will guide you, whether you're single, dating, married, or just plain confused right now.

Above all else, seek God and submit to His Word.

Often, this will put you in direct contrast with the rest of the culture, and that is okay.

Don't be afraid to be holy, set apart from the world that you're living in.

After all, this world is not your home.

Live like that's true, love like that's true, and you will experience the life that you were created to live.