Love Up: Matching Up with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

I want to welcome you to our Love Up series.

We are digging into a scriptural view on sex and relationships.

Last week we talked about framing up the conversation.

It's a really important message.

If you're new with us, I'd really encourage you to go back and watch that.

That framework is going to carry us all the way through this series.

You can find that on our website, metachurch.tv or on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash metachurch.

What we saw is how the pre-Jesus world framed sex and relationship, how Jesus and his movement radically revolutionized that understanding and how the world today has tried to frame these important issues.

What we saw in our framework is that historically, this is in the pre-Jesus world, sex and relationships were selfish.

They were based on convenience, not on consent.

They were purposeless and they were bad.

Really, the only people with any kind of sexual freedom or sexual autonomy were the top 10% of males, the upper echelon of those in society.

Everyone else lived under sexual tyranny and oppression.

Relationships were a way to dominate you.

If you were a woman, or if you were impoverished, or if you were a foreigner, foreigner, your life was hell on earth all of the time.

And it was in that context that Jesus came and started a movement that reframed this issue.

Instead, the scriptural framework for sex and relationships is selfless.

It is consensual.

We saw out of Paul's writings, the Apostle Paul, where consent actually came from that we now hold to today.

It was purposeful, actually fulfilling its purpose God gave it from the very beginning.

And it was good.

It led to beauty and flourishing among people.

Today we are trying to proverbially have our cake and eat it too.

We want the pre-Jesus framework with the Jesus outcomes.

We want it to be selfish but consensual.

We want it to be convenient but good.

We want it to be purposeless and we want it to lead to human flourishing.

That framework cannot lead to those outcomes.

We learned a very different story than what you hear in modern culture, which advertises Jesus and the Christian ethic as something oppressive and regressive, especially for marginalized people.

When in fact it was the movement of Jesus in its original intention that finally set the world free, that made sex and relationships good and beautiful, that guided things by the guardrails of consent, and that gave purpose and well-being.

We believe that God created sex, relationships, and marriage, that he made it very, very good, that in our brokenness and sin we corrupted and distorted that.

And Jesus came and he started a movement to redeem and rescue all things, including our sex lives and our relationships.

And so that was week one.

If you missed it, I really encourage you to check it out.

Today, in light of that scriptural framework, we're gonna begin looking at dating and at hookup culture.

Week one was framing up.

My message today is matching up.

Um I just came from Latties.

I thought her profile said fasty and classy.

Um so I got her some drinks.

Cool.

So like how was your week?

It was really good.

So you're an artist?

Um yeah, this is my day job.

Um I'm a sandwich artist, or at least that's what they call it in some way.

Is this guy for real?

But I'm actually inspiring to be an engineer.

Um I built a few cityscapes now.

I don't know if you're familiar with um Minecraft.

It's pretty legit.

You have to be kidding me.

But um you said you were into sports?

Yeah, I really like sports.

Who's your team?

Um I like all the Houston teams.

So the strews or the rockets.

The Rockets, that was my favorite.

Oh, okay.

So she likes sports, or is she alive?

What do you do like in your free time?

I'm a photographer.

What kind of photography?

It's kind of like self-portraits.

So like selfies?

Exactly.

You want to see portrait?

What is this happening right now?

Smile.

I'll post that one later.

Okay.

So cheers.

Cheers.

Man, dating sucks.

Oh my gosh, dating sucks.

Uh today we are talking about dating.

Any of our singles had similar experiences where you didn't exactly get what you thought you were walking into.

Oh, you all date perfectly, good.

Dismissed.

Uh, transparently, it has been quite some time since I have been single and dating.

Uh, in October, Katie and I will have been married 10 years, so we're really excited about that.

Yeah.

I uh wooed and pursued her for two years prior to that.

So, really like 12 years ago, and the world has changed massively.

And so I had to really do my research, and part of that research is I have a lot of friends who are dating, some who are in their 20s and 30s, and they've never been married, and they're trying to figure it out, and some of them are really trying to do it the right way in a God-honoring way, and some of them are just trying to kind of push adolescence as far as it can possibly go.

I have other friends in their 30s and 40s who are coming off of a divorce, trying to get their bearings and figure out how to date again.

The world has changed massively when it comes to the ideas around sex and dating.

We talked a lot about the sexual revolution last week.

We saw how hookup culture is in full swing.

There was nationwide research that went out in the 1970s.

What it found is that over 70% of Americans believed that it was not okay to have premarital sex.

Over 70% of Americans thought that sex should be saved until marriage.

Recently, a poll went out and it found that now only 40% of people believe that premarital sex is a bad idea.

And maybe like you, I was shocked the number was that high.

When you actually dig into the statistics, what you find is that almost all of that 40% is our older generations who grew up under the ethics in the 70s.

And so things have really, really changed, and things have changed relationally as well.

We are now dating in a digital world.

Now, online dating is not new.

You can go back 15, even 20 years ago, and people were online dating, you know, sites like eHarmony, where you take a really thorough assessment and it tries to get below the layers of superficiality and make good matches.

But if you remember back then, people were really hesitant to say that they met online.

There was kind of a stigma attached to it, you know?

If you found out that one of your homeboys was dating someone they met on the internet, you were like, what is going on with this guy, you know?

Like your date started with www dot.

Like this was really blowing our minds.

Things have changed so much that 20 years later, the opposite is true.

It's mind-blowing when someone who is dating didn't meet digitally first.

Now it's like, bro, you got her number in person?

Like IRL in real life?

This is crazy, man.

It's really changed.

And the actual digital platforms have changed as well.

Even 12 years ago, there weren't dating apps like there are today, the biggest of which, of course, is Tinder.

And what these try to do is they try to stay at the superficial level, at least in the beginning stages, not cut down to the deep held beliefs and goals and ideas and worldviews, but just to get a gut reaction of whether or not you think you will be a good match for them.

Really, what they're trying to do is they're trying to make things convenient again.

And, you know, things like Tinder, they push themselves as a dating app, but we know that a lot of people are using them really as just hookup apps.

They're looking for someone to spend the night with.

And, you know, if things go further than that, then so be it.

But they're really just trying to, in a selfish, convenient, purposeless way, find somebody to have sex with.

And uh, I don't really understand these things because they were, you know, after my time, but I did some research and it's really shocking.

I looked at Tinder, which is by far the biggest dating app right now, but all of the statistics around it hold across all of the other platforms.

Uh the way that Tinder works for for the rest of us is you get a picture of whatever you're looking for, whatever gender you're looking for, and then you kind of have this gut reaction.

And if you think you want to explore things, you swipe right.

Yeah.

No one in here is dating.

No one.

You swipe right.

I know this.

If you're not interested, you swipe left.

Here's what's crazy on Tinder, there have been 1.6 billion swipes per day.

1.6 billion swipes per day.

Now, once you swipe, it's kind of like the digital holler, you know, letting them know you're spitting some game.

And then they'll see if they're interested in you.

If they swipe, then it's called a match.

1.6 billion swipes, 30 million matches per day.

Now, a match doesn't mean that you're gonna meet up, it just means you go to the next level of finding out about each other's.

Now, you look at those numbers, and it seems like the place to be.

How hard could it be to find somebody?

Over a billion, almost two billion swipes per day.

But those numbers are incredibly, incredibly deceiving.

And I want to break down a little bit of how these apps work and what they are causing in our dating relationships.

Did you know that on all of the dating platforms that there are over 70% men using them?

On Tinder, it's 75% men.

Fellas, that's called a supply and demand issue, okay?

75% of people on Twitter are men interested in women.

And it gets worse because not only are there far more men than women, but the women are far more selective than the men.

Men find 60% of the women that come up on their profile adequately attractive.

Six out of ten.

Women find 4.5% of men who come up reasonably attractive.

Men will swipe right 53% of the time, women only swipe right 5% of the time.

Not only are there far more men on the platform than women, 75% of men, but the women are hardly ever swiping to try and match with someone, and men are getting carpal tunnel from trying to find a match.

So we have this huge imbalance.

There's a lot of reasons why, and I know that we live in a day and age where we're supposed to pretend like there's no differences between men and women.

This data would argue otherwise, and so we're not gonna go into anything else except this.

There's at least one difference between men and women, and that is that women have standards, okay?

Congratulations to the women in the room.

The real problem comes down to a problem of adjectives, okay?

Women have endless adjectives, and this is kind of how it works when a woman's on Tinder.

A guy comes up and they can look at that picture and psychoanalyze all of the different layers just by seeing a picture.

And they say, Oh my gosh, he has such kind eyes, you know?

Just looks like he'd be really good with kids.

It looks like he probably is really close to his mom.

Like there's all of these things going into it.

And if they have a thousand positive adjectives, they have a bazillion negative ones, which is why most of the times they don't swipe.

It's like, I don't know.

That's kind of like has creepy eyes, you know.

Like, oh, he's got the lips of my ex-boyfriend.

I could never, I could never go down.

Men have one adjective.

Hot, hot, not hot, hot, that's it.

That's as far as we get.

Much, much higher standards on the woman's side.

This creates real, real mismatch.

Average females get almost three matches per day, while the average male only gets one match per week.

Tough out there to be a guy.

At that rate, to expect a match, a typical woman, to get a match, a typical average woman has to swipe right on three guys.

To get a match, an average guy has to swipe right on 50 women.

Now remember, a match just means you get to learn a little bit more about me.

To get a date, the average man will swipe through 6,000 women.

Now that doesn't even account for other attributes like wealth, attractiveness, net worth, accomplishment.

Here's where it gets really interesting.

Because these sites are saying people are getting together, man.

Dates are happening, like millions of dates are happening.

People are hooking up on these apps, they'll advertise that, so you'll download it and you'll use it.

And then a lot of men are so frustrated because they hear about all these people hooking up and having sex and starting to date, but it's not happening to them, and there's a reason.

Because when you adjust for all of the expectations, especially that women bring in, what you find is that 10% of the men on these dating platforms, only 10% of the men are having virtually all of the matches.

10% of the men are going on virtually all of the dates.

10% of the men are having virtually all of the sex.

If you were here last week, that is really interesting.

Because what we found is that in the pre-Jesus world, when the framework was selfish and convenient and purposeless, that it was only the top 10% of men who had any sexual freedom or liberation.

And we, by trying to make our dating convenient and selfish, and purposely purposeless, have accidentally moved right back into that same exact fear.

The average man gets one match per week.

A top 10% man gets six matches per day.

That's one a week versus 42 a week.

This has created a real problem.

It's really rewiring how we actually think about this.

I mean, really, for most of human history, the average man would not ask 60 women on a date.

There's just no way.

You have too small of a circle, takes too much nerve and courage to actually walk up to a woman.

60 women in a lifetime, and now they will swipe through 6,000 in a month.

We're not built to handle that kind of bandwidth.

It has even further exacerbated this hookup culture and this pressure and urgency to start having sex in your dating life.

And here's why there's problems for everyone.

There are problems for the bottom 90% of men, because they have to swipe 6,000 times just to get one woman on a date.

Partly they feel like after all that work, they deserve to have sex with you.

And partly they think if it took me 6,000, it'll take me 6,000 more.

I better strike while the iron's hot.

Meanwhile, the top 10% of men, they expect sex from you on the first date.

Because they have 41 other women they've matched with just that week.

And if you won't give it to them, somebody else will.

And the poor women who are only swiping every once in a while, left swipes for days, they are inundated with male attention, most of which they are not interested in at all.

And so they have thousands and thousands of men who they have no interest in and no attractive attraction to.

So when they finally find even a decent guy, they think I better do whatever I have to to lock this down.

These apps have created even greater sexual urgency.

In our sex positive hookup culture, it's simply understood that dating comes with the expectation of sex.

Research finds that in dating relationships, a super, super high percentage of people have sex for the first time on the third date.

Most people are having some form of sexual activity, if not full-on intercourse, on the first date.

And the older you get, the quicker people are having sex in their dating lives.

Now, this can create a real problem because we kind of got to go back to the basics of what is the purpose of dating?

Why are we even doing this?

And there is the false answer that culture will give you, and then there is the real answer that cries out from the deepest part of who we are.

The fake answer is that we're a generation of people who are trying to push adolescence back as far as we can possibly go.

We want some of the benefits of being an adult.

We want to be able to vote and drink and buy lottery tickets and rent a car, but also we want to stay in our adolescent behaviors.

And so you'll hear people talk about their dating life.

Like, look, I'm just out here trying to have some fun right now.

I'm really not trying to get into anything serious.

I'm out here sowing my wild oats.

You know, I want to experience some things.

You know, I'm not ready for the old ball and chain yet.

I'm still doing a little bit of experimenting and used to, that's what 18-year-olds said.

And used to, that's what 22-year-olds said.

But now that's what 32, 35, 42-year-olds are saying they're pushing back adolescence.

We're a culture of rights.

We want all of our rights, but we are a culture that shuns the responsibility that might come with marriage.

And the truth is that the longer you push off that responsibility and the more sexually promiscuous you are, actually, the greater you fall into loneliness and depression, the anxiety of not knowing what your life is actually centered around.

You see, at the core of us, and you can't escape that because God put it inside of you.

You can deny it and suppress it and try to fill it with all the things of this world, but at the core of you, you are longing for love, real love, not making love, which has nothing to do with love, real love.

You're longing for intimacy and you were wired for relationship.

God created Adam and He placed him in perfection.

Placed him in perfection.

We can't even think about perfection.

We have we have no mental model of it, actual perfection, and yet he wasn't fulfilled.

He was not fulfilled until his relationship and his marriage to Eve.

That is a story about the deepest longing that we have, the longing for relationship, the longing for love.

Look at the movies we watch.

Look, look, even reality TV, right?

It's still a little trashy, but now it's trying to bring love and married at first sight.

Love is blind, you know.

The movies that we watch with compelling arcs, this is us, you know.

Like we just sit and cry.

It's like, why am I doing this to myself?

It's because we love love.

We do.

Men don't want to say that, but you love love.

And here's how you know it because every new sexual partner that you bring into your life is taking something away from you and making you even lonelier.

Here's the lie that culture is pushing on us.

The lie is that your sexual and relational decisions today have no bearing on your future.

Sexual liberation, do what you want now, settle down later.

Here's what's true how you date today will affect your marriage someday.

And even people who don't want the ball in chain and they want to be free and they just want to have fun, even those people will admit, I want to get married someday.

It calls out from inside of us, and how you date today will affect your marriage someday.

This matters.

We've seen last week that God created sex and marriage, He made it to be good and good for us.

Right at the beginning in Genesis 2.

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

But if we do not know how to date, we will not make it to the kind of marriage that the deepest part of us actually longs for.

Here's the frustrating part.

Dating, even when we're really trying to do it right, is so difficult.

It's so difficult to find the right person.

And part of why it's difficult is because you have a list, and you may not know you have a list.

You've probably never written this list down, but I'm gonna suggest that you do.

It might even be kind of subconscious, but you have a list, and this list is your standards for who you will date.

And so, you know, everyone has preference, like attractiveness preferences, like like height and weight and size and shape and facial symmetry, and maybe you have some other ones you haven't written down, but they really matter to you.

Like maybe you you're really focused on career preferences or or net worth.

You want someone with a flexible schedule, you want someone who's honest and hardworking, who will tell you the truth, who will build you up with their words.

As followers of Jesus, finding someone who also has Jesus at the center of their life should be near the top of our list.

We all have lists, and we all have some silly things on our list.

And if we're not willing to really write This is a different sermon, but I'm gonna give a little bit of it.

You should write down your list and you should be brutally, brutally honest with yourself.

Because if we're really honest, women, some of you, you're dating, it's frustrating, but you're like, if he ain't 6'4, he better not holler.

You know, it's like 6'4, that's 3% of the human population.

You've just closed the door on 97% of people.

Okay, well, you know what?

I'll do six foot, 18%.

82% of the human population is now out of the picture.

There is a 5'5 Romeo ready to sweep you off your feet and love you like Jesus.

You won't even look at him.

Men, we listened to too much ludicrous back in the day.

You're like 36, 24, 36, or don't even talk to me.

That doesn't exist, bro.

You're not ludicrous.

I can put up with a lot, I can put up with a lot, but in this house, in this house, in this house, we root for the cowboys in this house, okay?

And it's like maybe I'm a cowboys fan.

But maybe she likes winning, you know?

I don't know.

And so we have our list, and this is a separate sermon, but I'm gonna give it to you in short order.

I would really tell you if you're dating, go home, write down your list, be brutally honest, because you're gonna need to rearrange some things.

You're gonna need to really be honest.

If you're not intentional about it, then the dumbest priorities will drive your dating decisions.

Some of you, I talked about having someone who also follows Jesus as your top priority, and you've been following Jesus for a few years, and that's never dawned on you.

That the center organizing principle of your life, if they don't have that as well, you will not be unified at the deepest part of who you are.

We should look at our list, it's frustrating.

What I'm really describing is called relational compatibility.

And relational compatibility is very, very hard to find.

The majority of people that you go on a date with, you are not gonna be relationally compatible with, and you'll find that out over time.

And it really does take time.

There's this interesting statistic that couples who date at least two years reduce the risk of divorce by over 30%.

In a world where every other marriage ends in divorce, you want to get those odds in your favor.

Why is that?

What's magic about dating for two years?

What's magic about it is someone can't fake who they are for two full years.

See, there's a real danger in jumping into bed right away.

And statistically, people are beginning their sexual relationship three dates in.

And the problem is, everyone, barring like a true psychopath, everyone can be on their best behavior for three dates.

After three dates, you have no idea who you are dating.

Three dates, anyone can be on their best behavior, especially if they think their best behavior is going to end with them getting to have sex with you.

Here's the danger you are sexually compatible with far more people, exponentially more people, almost infinitely more people than you are relationally compatible.

It's tough to find someone you're actually relationally compatible with.

Same goals, same worldview, same plans for the future, like a forever and ever type of person that you can commit the rest of your life to.

That is very, very difficult to find.

Finding someone you are sexually compatible with, you both have a pulse, you both have all the working parts.

Congratulations! You're sexually compatible.

I'm not saying it's gonna be the most mind-blowing sex of your life.

I am saying you are sexually compatible.

You can make it happen.

You are sexually compatible with exponentially more people than you are relationally compatible, and that's a problem because we are jumping into bed so quick in our dating relationships, and as soon as we begin having sex, sex makes us stupid.

Sex clouds our judgment on the person that we are actually dating.

Sex makes us ignore all the warning flags that we should be paying attention to.

It makes us disguise all of the parts of them that we know is not something we actually want to spend the rest of our life with.

If you have a bad date, you can end it with good sex.

You don't have anything in common, you can have a common sexual experience.

You don't have any of the same long-term life goals, you can still get together and score at the end of the night.

Sex forces us to ignore the very real warning signs of whether or not we are actually relationally compatible with this person.

And sexual compatibility alone will not take you the long haul.

It requires relational compatibility that brings things like intimacy, that brings things like the real union of two people together.

And so you get into this date, you start having sex, you don't really like the way that they talk to you, but bringing up that fight might ruin the mood for the end of the night, and you're a little bit concerned they might have some dependency issues, like they are really drinking a lot, or you have found like a lot of porn at their house, or you're really concerned about what all of those pills are in the bathroom, and you know you need to bring it up.

You know you're not ready to bring your life together with someone who is in the midst of an addiction and yet, not tonight.

We can't fight about it tonight.

It will ruin the way things are going to end.

And you really don't like the way they talk to you, you don't like the way they talk to their mom, they have anger issues, that they're terrible financially, they're in debt up to their eyeballs, they have deep insecurities.

You find all of these things, but here's what happens at a biological level, when we start having sex with someone, everything in our biology, our physiology, our mind, our neurology, everything fights against doing anything that would keep you from having sex that night.

That is a biological response.

You are now clouded when it comes to relationship.

Sex makes us stupid.

In our culture, we have taken our brains and put them in the trunk, we've taken our libidos, put them in the driver's seat, and hope that we ended up in the right destination.

And it is not working.

Sex drags out relationships you shouldn't be in.

Possibly, while you're in the wrong relationship, causes you to miss the person you're actually relationally compatible with, and it disguises the issues that you should run away from.

Confusing sexual compatibility with relational compatibility will doom your relationship before it even starts.

Someday there will be a problem that simply jumping into bed together can't fix.

So what do you do then?

And here's the real answer.

When someone's behaviors become impossible to ignore, if you were not sexually active, odds are you would walk away.

But now that you have become sexually entwined with this person, it would be very difficult to call call it quits.

You'll end up sticking around way too long.

And here's why.

And this this happens with both men and women.

We get this in our mind, I can fix them.

For some of you, this describes your entire dating career.

Your entire dating career has been one really long, sad episode of fixer upper.

I can fix them, I can heal them, I can get them back, I can get rid of the anger, I can help them heal their relational wounds, I can help them with their money and with their finances, with their drug habits.

I can change them.

I promise you.

You do not want someone to change for you.

If you are the source of their change today, you will be the source of their resentment tomorrow.

When change happens, is when somebody decides within themselves that they are sick and tired of being sick and tired of living the way that they're living, and decides to give that thing up to God and allow God to actually go through a process of changing them from the inside out.

And if they just white knuckle whatever change you want them to make on your behalf, the second you piss them off, they will resent you to no end.

We can't change people.

The reason they're doing that behavior you can't stand is because they want to be doing it.

They give that up for you, and you are now making yourself their God.

And I promise you, you cannot bear the weight of being their God.

At this point, when we realize we can't actually change them, we get desperate.

And this happens a lot.

And I realize this is some of our story.

We think, what is what is the big guns that I can bring out?

How can I really get them to change?

So we think, you know what?

We should get married.

Because sex makes you stupid.

And it's like in this horrible hellscape of a relationship I'm in, you know what will fix it?

Locking that relationship into a lifelong commitment.

And then that doesn't work.

So the next weapon we bring out is, you know what?

We'll get pregnant.

Because everyone knows babies make your life so much easier.

Stress-free, you have more money, more free time, you're better rested.

These are the real solutions that we pull out to try and get out of relational turmoil.

And the truth is, if we would follow a selfless, consensual, purposeful, the real purpose of why God made sex and relationships and marriage.

If we would follow you know that old, antiquated, archaic idea that probably 80% of people don't believe in anymore of actually saving yourself for the person you're going to marry.

If we would date with intentionality, if we would hold off allowing our sex drive to drive all of our decisions, then we wouldn't be stuck having to change someone that we cannot change.

We wouldn't be stuck confusing sexual compatibility, which is what you have, with everyone with the right parts, with relational compatibility, which is what can create a thriving marriage till death do you part.

Our dating culture has reversed the order that things are supposed to go in.

And our culture has convinced us that how we behave sexually and relationally today will have no bearing on our future.

And I promise you, how you date today will affect your marriage someday.

This is an uphill battle, but we're not the first culture that was super sexually promiscuous.

There was a town in the first century called Corinth, and the Apostle Paul started a church there, and he wrote to them, and here's some of the advice he gave them.

In 1 Corinthians 6, verse 18, he says, flee sexual immorality.

1 Corinthians 6:18

Run from it, sprint from it, Usain bolt away from it, flee sexual immorality.

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

Just so we're clear, in the scriptural framework, sex before marriage and sex outside of your marriage is all considered sexually immoral.

Flee sexual immorality.

Now, why does Paul tell us to save our sex for marriage?

Here's the answers you might have heard if you grew up in church.

Because God says so.

Because God will be very mad at you, because God will punish you, because God will give you an STD and make you pregnant and ruin your life forever and you'll probably die.

Those are the answers we got.

Is it because God is trying to ruin your fun or cramp your style?

What does Paul say?

He says flee sexual immorality because every other sin a person commits is outside the body.

But the person who is sexually immoral sins against their own body.

Sex is different.

Scripture again and again says sex is different.

It's not like the other sins, it's not like your other actions, it is more significant than that.

It runs deeper than that.

Sex is the one thing we have as human to human that bridges the mind, the body, the soul, and the spirit together.

Look at what Paul says a few verses before this.

Don't you know that anyone joined to a prostitute is one body with her?

Now look, take prostitution out of it.

He's writing to a culture of people who were not sexually promiscuous like our culture is today inside of the church.

This was their real thing.

Today, it's status quo to behave sexually the way that prostitutes would behave in the ancient world.

The real point he's making is for scripture says, the two will become one flesh.

One flesh.

Paul intentionally uses the language of Genesis, the language of creation, the language of marriage, that the two will become one.

You see, God has a program for how your life is supposed to function.

And God's call is for sexual purity, which is something that I know is like ridiculous to us today, the idea that someone would walk into marriage having saved themselves for their spouse.

But this is why.

What he says is that sin matters, but sexual sin is different.

He says all the other sins that are committed outside the body actually affect you outside of the body.

And yes, it is messy.

And yes, you have to spend time cleaning this up in your relationships, cleaning this up in your own life, when you gossip, when you slander, all of these things create a mess around you, but they are different.

He says, sexual sin is when the two become one.

That sexual sin is not just sin against others, it is sin against you.

It is sin against you in the future.

And so people laugh at the idea of saving our virginity.

We make movies called the 40-year-old virgin to just talk about how ridiculous it would be.

I mean, it's the movie title.

Hilarious, dude.

40 years old and a virgin?

Hilarious! That's a joke in our society.

The truth is, at some point we give our virginity away and that stays with us, and we think, you know, it's just it's just a small act.

I mean, it really doesn't mean a whole lot.

And you know, some people are really trying to do it right.

Maybe you came up in the church and you went to true love weights and they scared the crap out of you about ever having sex with anyone, but eventually thou shalt not, and the Bible says so, and God will get angry, didn't really do it for you.

You didn't understand that every sexual decision you make is a vote for the kind of world that you want to exist in.

And what happens is after the first time, it becomes easier and easier, and we have a mind frame that I'm no longer a virgin, I've already had sex, so does it really matter?

And it really matters because every sexual experience leaves something behind.

It sins not just against you, but against your own body.

And that's a problem because we weren't just made for ourselves, we were designed for relationship, and we were designed for relationship with somebody else.

And if you've been to a wedding in the last 10 years, you've seen this, right?

And at the end, you have the sand and you pour the sand together, and it's like look, just like no person could come in here and pull out every little grain of sand and give his, his back, and hers, her back.

So no one can divide this.

But what we don't realize is we bring our sexual history into the marriage.

And statistically, people have five or more sexual partners before they ever get married.

And so we are bringing in significant, significant sexual baggage into our relationships.

And here's what's interesting as well is when polled, the majority of people who are in the culture today will admit that they want this.

They want to have lots of sex with lots of people, and yet most people, when they're honest, will say that they hope whoever they marry in the future has not acted in the same way.

Paul says sexual immorality makes the two become one before the two have become one.

And we think that being sexually promiscuous will lead us to the greatest levels of satisfaction.

And the truth is you're sinning not just against your future self, but you're sinning against your future spouse.

And you're bringing that into the marriage as well.

And most people think that if I can push back adolescence and have lots and lots and lots of sex before I get married, that will make me most sexually fulfilled.

But did you know the highest rates of sexual satisfaction happen inside faithful monogamous marriages by a factor of 31%.

The best sex, the most frequent sex, and the highest sexual satisfaction happen inside the confines of marriage.

And the more sexual partners you have before marriage, the lower your sexual satisfaction in your marriage because of the points of comparison you have to make to it.

And the more sexual partners you have before marriage, the greater your risk is of divorce.

And that's because sexual sin is not like other sin.

You're sinning against yourself, yourself in the future, and against your future spouse.

It's interesting because in a loving marriage, you will tell each other everything, man.

You'll tell about that time that you got arrested going 120 miles an hour on 1604 and had to spend the night in jail.

And you'll tell your husband about the time that you wore a disguise and snuck backstage at an in-sync concert.

And you'll tell about the time that you peed your pants in middle school.

You'll talk about your biggest heartbreaks, your biggest disappointments, your biggest traumatic moments.

You will disclose everything, and yet most couples will lie about their sexual history.

It's different.

It's different.

Marriage is tough.

Marriage is an endeavor.

There is turbulence in marriage, and the more your marriage shakes up, the more your past will come back because how you date today will affect your marriage someday.

And if you don't believe that, spend some time talking to married people because married folk know that that is true.

If you're single and dating, then you're looking for the right person, and society will convince you that to even have a shot at finding them, you have to lower your standards, you have to change your boundaries, you have to make sex a normal part of your dating routine.

And so here is my suggestion.

My suggestion is to stop trying to find the right person and to take a season to try and become the right person.

You see, we want the right person for us, we want them to make the changes for us, but we're perfect just the way we come.

And if you don't believe me, ask my mother.

I am a cat and a half, you know?

I shouldn't have to change.

You should have to change.

Quit trying to find the right person.

If this is the way that you have been living and behaving, if you have fallen into the lies of the world, the only shot you have is to have sex, to have sex early, to have sex frequently, to have multiple sexual partners.

My suggestion to you is it's time to take a break.

To take a break from dating, for finding the right person, and focus on becoming the right person.

Pastor Andy Stanley, we're gonna be selling one of his books today.

This is a great saying.

He asks, are you the person?

The person you are looking for is looking for.

All those standards you have for them, all the things you want to see out of them in your relationship.

You see, for some of us, if we found the exact perfect partner, that would be the worst thing that could happen to us because right now we would not be prepared for it.

I'm suggesting you take a break.

I didn't know how to date all through high school and after high school, all the way back as far as I can remember, even in middle school, I didn't know how to date.

I objectified women.

I didn't know how to set boundaries, I didn't know how to put guardrails in the relationship, they had no purpose.

I was extremely selfish.

This all came to a head my senior year as I was making decisions then that had the capacity to affect my marriage later.

And so moving into college, I knew I had to take a break.

And let me tell you what happened.

When I just quit looking, I quit trying, when I quit dating, it allowed God to begin to refresh my spirit that was so burdened, so labored, so heavy under the pressure of trying to find the right person.

It allowed God to start to rewire my mind so I was in the right space to make the right decisions.

It allowed God to renew my heart and what I was looking for.

For some of us, if we're like right now or to find the exact perfect person, it'd be the exact wrong time because you know you're not the person the person you're looking for is looking for.

God wants to take all of us, all of our baggage, all of our sexual mistakes, all of our relational mistakes.

He can redeem it, he can renew it, he can make something better, but we need a break.

It's like stop dating, man.

If I stop dating, then I get behind, then I'm out of the game.

And it's like, look, if what you're doing is working, you really believe that it's gonna lead you to the life you want, have at it.

But if you are stuck in the dating habits of most of the world right now, take a break.

You need God to refresh and rewire and renew you.

You need to stop pursuing the right person and start becoming the right person.

Women, it's time to quit buying the lie that your empowerment and your strength come from being just as sexually aggressive and sexually promiscuous as the sad, sad men around you.

Before you are ready to walk out as the person ready to date, you need to be able to find your worth and your value, not in the arms of ill-intentioned men, but in the arms of God who created you and instilled a purpose inside of you.

And if you're not ready for that, then the savage, sad men of this world will continue to take advantage of you and push you further and further away from the person that God created you to be.

Your life is worth more than that.

Take a break and learn who you are from God.

Men, it's time.

It's time to grow up.

It's time to quit trying to push adolescence as far as we can possibly push it.

It's time to bear under the weight of some responsibility.

Well, bro, what was I supposed to do?

She wanted to have sex.

I'm supposed to say no.

Yes.

Yes, you're supposed to say no.

Men, it's time to become aware of how you are conditioning yourself with the information that you're taking in.

It's time to get real about the incredibly detrimental effects that pornography is having on you and your view of women.

And it's not just hardcore pornography, it is most of the things that we are watching on TV.

It's like, look, man, you expect me to give up Game of Thrones, dude?

Dragons?

I'm supposed to give up the dragons?

Yes, dude.

Grow up.

It's time, man.

It's the best storyline ever.

Yeah, also, it's full of nudity and sex scenes, graphic sex scenes and rape.

It's conditioning you, conditioning your mind, what you're listening to and watching and taking in.

Women deserve a man who finds their confidence, not in their ability to get a bunch of women in their bed, but who find their confidence in who they are in Jesus Christ and what he's placed in front of them.

Until you're ready to find your confidence in something outside of your dating and sex life, you're not ready to date.

So it's time, and my suggestion is to take a break.

Easy for you to say, bro, you're going on 10 years.

I'm only there.

I promise you this.

I'm only there because I took a break.

I was only ready to become the man that Katie and our children needed me to be because I took a break.

If I would have stayed on the path I was on, I would have just been another statistic.

And I promise you, your life is worth more than that.

I was talking to Pastor Nola about today's message, and he reminded me of what Jesus said about following him.

Jesus said, narrow is the path, following after me.

And very few will find it.

Metachurch, I believe in our dating lives, you could be a part of the few who begin to get it right, who give it back to God, who find your confidence, worth, dignity, and value in something higher, who start stop trying to find the right person and start to become the right person and see just how God works in your relationships.

I want to ask you to pray with me.

If you would bow your head and close your eyes just right where you're at.

I know.

Statistically, I know there are many of us in this room, there are many people watching online or watching this back on an archive who have fallen into the world's framework for sex and relationships.

You've had lots of sexual partners.

You may be having sex out of wedlock right now.

You need to know that God is not a God of guilt.

God is a God of conviction, and conviction is not meant to keep you where you are, it is meant to call you to who you could be.

God hates sin.

He hates sin because sin destroys our life.

It pushes us into more depression, more anxiety, more loneliness.

God loves you.

And God can redeem the mistakes that we have made in our relationships, but only if we're willing to give it to God.

Even right now, you can begin to confront the decisions that you've made.

You can begin to lay them at the feet of Jesus, to ask him to take them from you and use them as fuel for the fire to begin to get this right in your life.

God has a future for each and every single one of you.

A future that if you would fully follow him into it, is something that you would have a hard time even imagining.

God, I lift this up to you: a heavy message, a hard message, but a true message of how the world is operating, how you've called us to something greater, to reframe our lives sexually and relationally, to put you at the center of them.

I pray, God, that we would take the time that we need to be refreshed, rewired, and renewed, ready to go back into our dating lives as you would have us.

God, I pray for the marriages in the room, the future marriages, that we would walk into them as people of purpose.

We love you.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.