Myths of Marriage: "Date nights are key to a healthy marriage."

at this church. Thank you all for coming to this and thank you to those who are volunteering to set things up.

I appreciate it very much. This is also being generously hosted here by First OPC of Sunnyvale.

It's very gracious of them to do this. If you do not have a church in this area, this is a good church at the same time.

I wanna welcome you to, invite you to come join me for worship as well over at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church.

Yeah, the fellowship of the saints is a very important thing. God instructs us not to neglect the gathering of ourselves together, especially as you see the day draw near and the day is drawing nearer and nearer every day.

There's more reason to gather for worship today than there was last year and even more reason than last century and even more reason than the last millennia.

The day is drawing closer and so we should gather for worship and I would encourage you to do that at a good church.

Let's see, other announcements, just as a reminder, if you parked in the parking lot across the street, that gets locked up at night, might've already been locked up at this point.

So make sure you don't park in the parking lot at the school across the street. And let's see, is there anything else that I'm neglecting to say?

Oh yeah, bathrooms. Women's bathroom right over there, men's bathroom just through, well, there's a unisex bathroom just through there in the men's bathroom upstairs.

So yeah, feel free to use all of those. Each month we go through a different myth about marriage.

Today's myth is that date nights are key to the health of a marriage. Okay, date nights are key to the health of a marriage.

The fact is that leisure is not the essence of a marriage.

Okay, leisure is not the essence of marriage. So yeah, the myth is that date nights are key to the health of your marriage.

And the fact is that leisure is a luxury and not essential to the health of a marriage.

All right, so what is a date night? Have you ever heard of this before? The date nights are very important to maintain your marriage, et cetera.

Let me give you a couple of examples from this, from a book about dating in your marriage.

This is an example. This is for people who are in their first years of marriage.

Once a month, get out of town for two nights to date your wife, cultivate your friendship, grow your romance, have fun and relax.

Okay, so that's a short quote from a book about how to date your wife.

Okay, here's an example for a couple who's been married for a little longer and has had three kids.

Enjoy a weekly date night every Friday from eight o 'clock to 10 p .m. Twice a month, go out for a date and twice a month, hold these dates at home.

Once a month, watch the kids and give your wife a night out with her girlfriends. Once a year, take your wife on a three -night getaway without the kids.

Okay, so when a lot of people hear this, they think, oh, these are really good ideas. These are really good ways of investing in your marriage.

When I hear this, I think, this is probably not as helpful as people might initially think.

Okay, and it is even potentially very indulgent. So I get, pretty often

I'll have people who are close to me who observe my marriage and they see that I don't very frequently take my wife out on date nights like a lot of couples do.

And they'll tell me that I need to do this. I need to tend to the guard in my marriage by taking my wife out on date nights.

And the irony is that in none of these cases have I ever perceived that the person telling me this has a better, more healthy functioning marriage than mine.

In fact, in a lot of the cases, I perceive that it's even worse. So it's not something that I'm getting from people who seem very experienced at marriage, who seem to really deeply understand what the health of marriage entails.

Okay, so why are we talking about this? Especially to singles. Well, first of all, it'll help you prepare for the future.

And then secondly, I think that as you think through these things, as you consider some of the stuff that might sound very new and strange to you, it will help you think about how to go about dating even now, how to think about your future, how to motivate you to pursue marriage even more strongly.

So I think this view about date nights being essential to the health of marriage comes from five misunderstandings, maybe more than that, but I'm gonna throw out five here.

Okay, and that would be misunderstanding of love, a misunderstanding of marriage, a misunderstanding of work, home, and kids.

Okay, so those five things, love, marriage, work, home, and kids.

So what do I mean by a misunderstanding of love? So consider what the Bible says about love in 1

Corinthians 13. It says, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way. It's not irritable or resentful, et cetera. Now, many of you have heard this passage before.

A lot of people, when they think about love, they're thinking about the emotion of love. Okay, they're not thinking about the activity of love, you know, the self -sacrifice of love, these attributes about being patient and kind, et cetera.

They're thinking about the emotion that they're cultivating. And so what they are thinking about cultivating is not love as the

Bible describes love. What they're thinking about cultivating is the emotion of love.

Okay, now the emotion of love is a good thing, but that is secondary to the substance of love itself, being what 1

Corinthians 13 describes, this essence of love being patient and kind, not envying, boasting, et cetera.

This care, true care for one another that goes beyond just the emotion.

A lot of times people in addressing problems in their life will try to address the emotion without addressing the substance.

Okay, you see this a lot of times with happiness. People say, well, my life isn't happy enough. I'm gonna address that happiness.

I'm going to, you know, eat food that I like and try to make myself happier with food, or I'm going to use drugs to make myself happier.

This includes illegal drugs. This includes legal drugs. A lot of people get prescribed drugs to make themselves happier, right?

And a lot of times this is to avoid addressing the deeper things that are keeping them from being happy, right?

The Bible, when it talks about happiness, a lot of times it's using words like contentedness or blessedness, right?

These are concepts that are at the core of that emotion of happiness, but a lot of times people are addressing the emotion without addressing the core.

Now, yes, you should have a good emotion of happiness, but that comes from a place of contentedness, spiritual health.

It comes from a place of truly being blessed by God, blessedness and happiness being synonyms, especially in older English.

You know, the Bible, when it talks about blessed is the man, a lot of times older translations will say happy is the man.

Now people do this for worship too. A lot of times people think, okay, I don't feel like I'm worshiping God rightly, so I'm gonna work on the emotions of worship.

You see this a lot with modern worship music, right? Modern worship music very much focuses on the setting.

A lot of times the lights will be really dim, right, to help you cultivate the emotions. A lot of things will be repeated over and over to kind of put you in the mood.

There's, you know, the focus is on the music and not on the singing a lot of times, whereas in scripture, the focus is on the singing.

It's not on the music, right? Make a melody in your heart, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to one another, the melody is primarily in the heart.

The words are what's going out of your mouth to each other, right? That's the primary thing that's happening.

But a lot of times people are trying to address the emotion of worship and not trying to address the actual substance of what worship is.

And this is true in marriage as well, right? A lot of times people are trying to address the emotion of love and not trying to address the substance of love.

And that's ultimately trying to put cancer on, or excuse me, a Band -Aid on cancer, right? You can't fix cancer by putting a

Band -Aid on it. You know, if it's gotten to the skin, maybe you can make it a little bit better, but it's a superficial treatment.

Dealing with the emotion by itself is not enough. Okay, so a misguided view of love leads to the idea that date nights are going to be key to the health of your marriage, because what are date nights addressing?

They're addressing primarily a lot of those emotions, right, that you feel towards one another at the surface level.

Okay, now secondly, this comes from a wrong or misguided idea of marriage and what marriage is.

And by this, a lot of what I'm referring to is sex in marriage. In fact, this book that I'm getting some of these quotes from here addresses this.

And it really sees date nights as the key to cure an unhealthy sex life, right, if you're not having sex frequently enough.

And it describes this here, saying that, let's say you're not having sex frequently enough, what do you do?

Do you go tell your wife that you're, this is a book written to men, do you go tell your wife that you're not having sex enough?

He says, that won't work. Your wife isn't the problem, you're the problem. I'm the problem, men are the problem.

If you want to change marriage, change the man. Later on it says, men, we should all have the same answer to this question.

Let's try this again. What's wrong with your marriage? Marriage, me, me, I'm what's wrong with my marriage. You are what's wrong with your marriage.

It's your fault. Okay, so the problem, if there's not enough sex in marriage, it's the man, it's the man's problem.

He has to deal with this through means, including date nights, right, to make sure that this addresses this problem of not enough sex in the marriage.

Well, what's underneath that is that sex is a privilege that needs to be earned by the man, okay?

It's not necessarily said explicitly in this book, but that's the idea that a lot of people have. Now, what is marriage?

If we're going to operate off a biblical idea of what marriage is, what is marriage? I would like to get a definition from the crowd.

Anybody want to try to define marriage? Yes. Yeah, a covenant, good.

A covenant to do what, to be what? One flesh, to be one flesh.

A covenant to be one flesh, right? One flesh, even referring to sexual union.

First Corinthians 7 .3 says, "'The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights "'and likewise the wife to her husband.'"

Now, did this say the husband should give to his wife her conjugal privileges and likewise the wife to her husband?

Doesn't say conjugal privileges, right? It says conjugal rights. If you're approaching marriage with the idea that being one flesh has to be earned by one to the other, even after having entered the covenant, you're working with a rocky foundation.

You're not working with the substance of the covenant. And so you're not able to, if you're stepping back from what the marriage actually is and it has to be constantly earned, this is not addressing a foundational problem in the marriage.

So I think that's the second reason that people think date nights are key to the health of your marriage is because they see sex as something that needs to be earned because they don't understand that marriage is a covenant to be one flesh.

And if it is, then date nights are not the answer, or not at least the only answer.

Okay, so beyond that work, a misguided view of work.

So when I was younger, I really saw entertainment as being the main goal of life.

I wanted to play video games. I wanted to get a job so that I could buy all the video games

I wanted. And then I wanted to retire as early as I could with like enough money that I could really enjoy it.

I was into the FIRE movement before the FIRE movement was a thing, right? If you're familiar with the FIRE movement, that stands for Financial Independence Retirement Early, right, even as a little kid, that's precisely what

I wanted. And I thought this was the end of life, retire early, enjoy things, that you work in order to get vacations.

You don't vacation in order to get rested so that you can work, you work in order to get vacations. But is that what the

Bible describes? The Bible describes work as not being something that has come about because of sin.

It's not a curse on mankind. Work is good, work is a gift from God. Genesis 2 .15

says, "'The Lord God took the man "'and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.'" And so God put

Adam in the garden to work the garden. This is a good thing that before sin enters the world, man is supposed to enjoy work.

This is a gift to him. And so when people see work as a curse that must be avoided at all costs, they're not appreciating work as they ought.

Now, what are date nights, right? They're times of leisure, right? And if people see leisure as the substance of marriage, then what they're seeing as a substance is something that is really a small portion of the human life.

Marriage is just this very small thing then. Ecclesiastes 2 .24 says, "'There's nothing better for a person "'than that he should eat and drink "'and find enjoyment in his toil.'"

This also I saw is from the hand of God. Work is a good thing. In fact, work is such a good thing that it is something that you really should be doing more than 40 hours a week.

In Exodus 20, verse nine, it says, "'Six days shall you labor and do all your work.'"

This is describing command to the Sabbath, for the Sabbath. The Sabbath isn't just on the seventh day you shall rest, it's six days you shall labor and do all your work.

Work is a good thing that we're supposed to be enjoying a majority of our time. Now, if you see it as a bad thing that we're supposed to be minimizing as much as possible, right, and then the good thing that we're supposed to be enjoying is leisure, that will make you tend to see date nights as being the real substance of marriage, okay?

Work is something you wanna avoid. Date nights, leisure, that's the substance of the thing. If you think about just how myopic this is in terms of viewing human history and other cultures, right, being able to enjoy so much leisure, even as much as the typical

American does, you know, working a 40 -hour work week, something that's very, it's a very privileged position to have so much freedom and flexibility with our time.

It is not something that has existed throughout human history. If you were to tell this kind of thing to people in former times, say, how am

I supposed to get, you know, look at those examples we had, you know, two days every month to take off and just go out of town, you know, just abandon my responsibilities this frequently, this is not something that is, it's really that possible.

It's almost like there was this headline a while ago where some politician was commenting on the high gas prices and people complaining about the high gas prices.

He says, well, if they have such a problem with high gas prices, why don't they just buy a Tesla? Teslas don't require gas.

You know, just this very out -of -touch comment that, oh, yeah, you just have money in the bank to just go buy a

Tesla. You know, if someone can't buy a gas, then they can't buy a Tesla. The idea that, oh, if you're having difficulties in your marriage, just throw this ample luxury free time you've got at it, this is making a lot of assumptions about who you're talking to that aren't sound assumptions, especially if we're saying that something is essential for marriage, right?

If it's essential for marriage and God has given marriage for all times and all places, right? Prior to heaven, where the angels will be like the angels in heaven, neither being given in marriage nor married.

If it's for all times before then, it's gotta be, the essence of a marriage has gotta be something that applies to them, right?

If we're saying you need all this luxury time in order to really invest in a marriage, you're saying that basically only in this modern time can we enjoy a truly healthy marriage.

Prior to this time, it was pretty much impossible. And that's, of course, a foolish thing to say.

So marriage, yeah, marriage, the substance of marriage is not to be found in leisure.

It is to be found primarily in work. You know, if you think of, yeah, if you think of leisure as being the main thing, it's like swapping the icing and the cake, right?

Cakes are good with some icing. Little icing on the top is nice. If you make it mostly icing, that's pretty gross, at least to me.

I know some people like that kind of thing, but that's a problem, putting too much icing. You know, if you had about this much cake, imagine this much icing.

Oh, that's just, that's not good. But that's what a lot of people wanna make their marriage, right?

They wanna make it mostly leisure, right? And very little work. That's not a healthy marriage, as much as you might think that it is.

All right, and then a wrong idea of the home. So the home is something that is supposed to be built up, but a lot of people, because they have this odd idea of work, they have an odd idea of home, where they think that a home is primarily a place for leisure.

Proverbs 24, three, and many other passages talk about the home being built. By wisdom, a house is built, and by understanding, it is established.

By knowledge, the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. You know, and this idea of the house being built is not a one -time thing that you do just as you're building the house once.

This is talking about households being built, right? There are plenty of times where it talks about a foolish wife tearing down her household, right?

This is not talking about her literally taking apart the bricks, right? This is talking about her disassembling the fabric of the relationships in the home.

So a home is something that is to be built up. There is much work to be done. And we can even see in the

Bible's commands to hospitality that homes are to be built up. Hebrews 13 says, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

You know, we're commanded toward hospitality. If you're not building up your home, how can you be hospitable to others?

It's not something you're really capable of. And this is something that married couples especially should be pursuing. You know, if the man is working, has a lot of resources, the wife is able to take care of the home and beautify it in such a way, they have the ability to be hospitable together, even beyond the sum of the parts, even beyond husband and wife summed together, they are more powerful than even that to engage in hospitality.

This is a very good thing that couples should be pursuing. But if you see the home is just for relaxing for yourself and not a place to be built up, to be made suitable for others as well, you will miss this.

And consider the passages that talk about the wife's work. Talks about her working around the home in Proverbs 31.

She puts her hand to the distaff and her hands hold the spindle, you know, talking about her making clothes. In Titus 2, in Titus 2 it says, older women likewise would be irreverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine.

They are to teach what is good and to train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self -controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husband so that the word of God may not be reviled, working at home.

And so, you know, as you're building up the home, you could be asking questions like, you know, can I make this home larger?

Can I make it more orderly? Can I make it more hospitable? These are the things that couples, you know, married couples should be addressing and thinking about.

Now, it's a great temptation in more urban areas to not think of this, okay, because houses around here are smaller.

I remember a headline a while ago where there was somebody in San Francisco who was renting out a plywood box in a

San Francisco apartment so that he had a place to stay, right? If this is what you imagine your house being is just like a small place where you get to sleep, it's hard to think of it as being much more than that, but the home is supposed to be much more than that.

It's supposed to be, yeah, it's supposed to be a great blessing to yourself, to your wife, to your kids, to others.

It's, yeah, it's supposed to be a great blessing. And then lastly, this comes from an odd view of children.

So if you consider what the Bible says about children, in Psalm 127, it combines the idea of building up a house and having children.

Psalm 127 says, unless the Lord builds the house, the one who builds it labors in vain. And then later on, after talking about building up a house, behold, children are a heritage from the

Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward. If you ever wondered why these two ideas are in the same

Psalm, right? It's because building up a home and having children are functionally synonymous.

These are similar activities designed towards the same end of the married couple's lives not being just for themselves, but to go beyond themselves and to extend beyond themselves and to be a very fruitful union that builds up others.

Now, of course, today, this is something that's not very prioritized. People don't think much about this.

It's considered replacement rate for having children is 2 .1 children on average per family.

In 2023, does anybody know what the statistic was for having kids? What the average number of kids in America was?

It's 1 .6, 1 .6. Below replacement rates means that the population, apart from immigration, will decline.

Look at the command given to Adam, be fruitful and multiply, the command given to Noah to be fruitful and multiply. And then on top of the command, it's placed in a covenant, a covenant with God that's made with all men, where he says, as long as my rainbow is in the clouds, the stands, you still see rainbows.

This is still the case that we are to be fruitful and multiply. But if people see kids as a, kind of a luxury, or not a luxury, but like an optional thing that just some people have, if that's something that would entertain you, then you will see yourself as having a lot of freedom to go on all kinds of date nights.

If you're someone who, it's just you and your wife, yeah, you're gonna have a lot of leisure time to go on date nights.

If you have kids, if you have a lot of kids, especially, it will be a lot harder to go on date nights, especially if they're small kids, especially if you've got infants, right?

If you've got an infant, you can't, but a lot of people see it, infants as just like this very short stage. If you have multiple kids, it's not a short stage.

You know, this takes years to get through all the infants. And so, yeah, the idea that you should go on frequent vacations with your spouse to distant places while someone else is watching the kids, et cetera, or that you should be giving your wife frequent breaks from the kids as though they're a serious burden that, you know, women shouldn't have to endure.

This is a bad idea of children, right? Children are a blessing from God. They're a gift.

They're not a burden. And so this is a, these ideas are related.

If you see children as optional, if you see children as just a small stage in your life, there's going to be a lot more freedom to go on more indulgent, to have a more indulgent schedule when it comes to dates, things like that.

All right, so stepping back, some disclaimers. I'm not saying it's wrong to enjoy leisure time with your wife.

I'm not saying it's wrong to show your spouse you appreciate them. Not saying it's wrong to go on date nights.

Go on date nights. That's not a problem. But it is foolish to think that they are the key to a healthy marriage or that they are essential, right?

And that they're the substance of a healthy marriage. If you think that, you might be tempted towards a sinful indulgence.

And two, you might be misguidedly trying to address problems in a marriage that will not be addressed by the solution because they are not the way to address problems in a marriage.

Okay, so applications for you all as singles. For your future, for your future, you can be thinking about how to build up a marriage in a very godly way, considering building up the home.

This is very good news. This is good news because it means that the substance of your marriage is not just these edges of the week or edges of the day where you have leisure time.

It's the whole time, okay? All of that is building up a home. All of that, you're working together and you're working towards something much better than just enjoying some leisure together so that you can look back at years of leisure, okay?

You can look back at something that you've accomplished, you know, a beautiful home with children, with a legacy that you've built up.

Now what about for you now? Well, as you date, as you meet other people, this should give you the right kinds of things to evaluate.

Not just evaluating, do I enjoy leisure time with this person? Okay, if that's not the substance of the marriage, you should be asking yourself, not just do

I enjoy leisure time, but will this be someone who wants to build a home with me? Will this be someone who is equipped, who has the character to build a home with me, who wants to?

Women, you should be trying to see whether or not this man will lead you in building this home.

Men, you should be seeing whether or not this woman would have the qualities and characteristics to build this home with you, to be your helper in that.

Now I'm not saying that if someone doesn't already have a mindset towards this, because a lot of what I'm saying is fairly countercultural.

I'm not saying if someone doesn't already have a mindset towards this, that there's no hope. I mean, this is something that you talk about, this is something that you show people scripture on, and you lead in the right direction.

But yeah, if someone does not want to build up these things, then that would show that what they're looking for is not marriage, what they're looking for is a leisure partner, something else, something entirely different.

Now what about relationships in general? I think one of the lessons to learn here is that you should think about, step back and provide good definitions for things, right?

If you don't even know what a marriage is, you're going to end up at conclusions like this that sound very good.

Oh yeah, date nights are key to a healthy marriage. That sounds really good unless you step back and you define what things a marriage is, what are the objectives of a marriage, et cetera.

This is true with all relationships, okay? This is true with friendships. I think any kind of relationship, you can step back and ask biblically, what should be my objective in this and what is this relationship?

And I think that's a very helpful question to be asking that a lot of people don't ask when they're pursuing their relationships.

All right, so those are all things to consider here. And remember that as you look at marriage, as a

Christian, you are supposed to be looking at the relationship between Christ and the church. That is supposed to be the model of marriage. And if I ask the question, does

Christ date the church? I don't see a clear answer of yes to that in scripture.

I don't see any verse that says Christ date the church. I do see a lot of things about him building a home with her.

In fact, she is the home. And Ephesians 2, 18, excuse me, 2, 19, it says, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone and whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the

Lord. In him, you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit.

This is the activity between Christ and the church is building up a home. Okay, it's, yes, there is enjoyment of one another.

Yes, there's even leisure. We see that there's a marriage feast that is going to happen.

Those things are not off the table, but they are not the substance of the relationship. The substance of the relationship being building up a home together.

And if you have your mind really fixed on Christ, really trying to understand what the

Bible's view of marriage is, what the Bible's view of salvation is that points us to how we should think about marriage, then you will think rightly about this so that you don't take a good thing, take a small good thing and make it the foundation.

If you do that, you will end up, things will end up collapsing. But if you leave that the icing on the cake, and the cake is still good.

Let me go ahead and pray for us. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it provides guidance in all areas, including areas like this.

Pray that you would help us as we think about your word, that you would help us to pursue marriage as we ought.

Pray, especially your blessing on these folks here that you would provide them with a spouse that they would be able to serve you together with all the days of their life, building up happy homes in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, so next we're gonna do just 10 or 15 minutes of discussion.

It looks like the questions have been written on a whiteboard. So there you go.

Yeah, hopefully everyone brought their glasses. So yeah, and then in about 10 or 15 minutes, we'll do a

Q and A. Yeah, I've been here.

When I was here, I was at the other church. Oh, I'm sorry. I came on the door. I'm sorry. Then I texted you guys.

What's up? Oh, I'm sorry. I said, forget it. I'm about to get cast, and I just looked across the street,

I said, what, maybe that's it. Really? She just happened to be here. I've been here since 627.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, man. What's your name, sir? Conlon. Conlon Owens.

My pleasure. Thank you. Nice to meet you, Captain. Is this your school? No, this is another church.

So all we have is that tent that you saw over the church. So during the winter, we've got a - No, I didn't see it. Oh, okay. Yeah, at our church -

Are there two churches here? No, so you showed up at the other church, right? Right down the street. Oh, oh, okay.

No, no, no. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, I don't know, sorry. Got it, okay. I thought you went to, so I'm a pastor of a different church.

We're using this building. We're somewhere else in Sunnyvale. Okay, I thought you were saying you went to there.

Got it. You went to somewhere else around here. Okay. You don't know there's another church about a quarter of an hour down? There is one down there at the

Unity Baptist Church or whatever. Yeah, yeah, the Missionary Baptist Church or whatever it is. Yeah, it has a roof.

Okay. Yeah. Because he come running down saying, what's going on?

I said, I don't know. And then he found it. Let's discuss the questions on the board. Hopefully you were able to see them.

We're gonna do a Q &A now. Like I mentioned last time when we do this, just questions, please.

Don't try to answer previous questions. We all can discuss later, but I wanna make sure this goes quick enough that you have more free time.

So any questions either about this talk, about dating, marriage, Bible, other things?

Yes, yeah.

Yeah, I would say one of the reasons why I end up addressing marriage itself and not just the pursuit of marriage pretty frequently is because I'm working with the assumption that God's will for almost everyone is marriage, right?

This is the play on the garden. It is not good for man to be alone, right? A man who finds a wife finds a good thing.

What you see throughout scripture is an imperative toward marriage. In 1

Timothy 5, when Paul addresses the younger widows, he says that they should marry, right?

It's just kind of an assumption. He's not even floating the possibility that maybe they shouldn't, right?

So in 1 Corinthians 7, when he addresses them in their present distress and this possibility for God to use a lack of marriage for something good, he's describing an incredibly rare situation, right?

He's not describing the norm. He's not describing the norm for most times or most people, right?

So what you should do is you should look at whether or not you desire marriage, right?

A lot of this is about self -control. Like, do you desire to be united with someone? If you do, then you are not gifted for singleness, right?

A lot of people talk about singleness as a gift. Bible doesn't, 1

Corinthians 7 doesn't. It talks about people being gifted for singleness, right? And so what you need to ask is, am

I gifted for singleness? Am I, yeah, am I lacking something? Do I, yeah, do

I desire to be united with someone else? And if you do, then yeah, God's calling you to marriage. And another, one more thing.

When people are thinking through, when people are thinking through discerning God's will, a lot of times there's a conflating of the prescriptive will of God and the decretive will of God.

What that means is when God says to do something, right, that's his will in one sense, that doesn't necessarily mean that thing will come to pass, right, that what will come to pass is

God's decretive will. So a lot of people will ask, well, which job should I take? And they've got two job offers. Like, what's his will for my life?

And what they're trying to do at that point is peer into the secret things of the Lord. Deuteronomy 29, 29 says the secret things belong to the

Lord, but those things that have been revealed are for us and for our children so that we may do all the words of this law, right?

The things that are God's revealed will is his law. That's what we're supposed to be obeying. And we don't have to look into the secret will of God.

We don't have to look into like, you know, who is that one person I'm going to marry? You know, am

I going to get married, et cetera, is what is God commanded for me? And then pursue that thing. And God has commanded for most people, you know, unless they are eunuchs, unless they have the gift of continence, which is the theological term for, you know, perfect self -control, like a true self -control that doesn't desire to be united in marriage, right?

Then, yeah, then you're called to marriage. Okay. Yeah, so Paul says, to the unmarried and to the widows,

I say it is good for them to remain single as I am, but if they cannot exercise self -control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

So someone who cannot exercise self -control is not gifted for marriage. Someone who can exercise self -control is gifted for marriage.

And self -control here is not, you know, they do a pretty good job of, you know, not having too many lustful thoughts or whatever.

It's really that they don't have that desire, right? You know, that they are not fit for marriage because they are eunuchs or because they lack that desire or they are, yeah, they are, yeah, just especially gifted to not desire this thing.

And so Paul speaks of himself this way, right? Yeah, but in general, marriage is a good thing and it should be pursued.

It's really in our own time where, you know, one of the things you should have, hopefully that you were picking up in this message is that we live in a very special era that has its own special temptations, right?

And one of the temptations that comes from being in such a prosperous society is that there isn't the same kind of like demand or need for marriage in terms of survival, right?

Like if you live in a society where, you know, there aren't as many people and not meeting the replacement rate means that you are going to crash and burn in a single generation and not like, you know, three or five like our, you know, for our country, we could probably take the hit once or twice, right?

You will get married, you will, you know, continue to, you know, build up children, et cetera, right? If you're on a farm, that's not going to, it's not going to just keep working itself after you grow old, you know, you're gonna need children.

If you are a woman who isn't able to do the kind of, the kind of higher earning work that a man would do, right?

In this area, you can be a software engineer, like women can do all kinds of very high earning jobs. Like that was not the case for a lot of human history, right?

And so there was a need, like women had a need for marriage in a way that they often don't now and men had a need for marriage in a way that they often don't now.

But that doesn't mean that, just because those kinds of physical needs don't exist in such exigencies doesn't mean that there isn't a spiritual need to be fulfilled through marriage.

But yeah, all right, any other questions?

Yes, Captain. Yeah, it's just, because recently I talked to some friends about this.

I didn't really expect marriage was going to be the number one sign when I walked through the door today,

I have to admit. But since we're talking about it, and I don't want to be judgmental, but it appears everybody in here is a little bit mature.

Sure. So I'm sure they've already went through some stages of kids and et cetera, which is primarily,

I believe, that's when you first want to get married is because you want to produce and reproduce. So I was just wondering that when you get to this time, what are you really seeking in marriage?

Is it companionship? Is it, can it be procreation?

Because you kept bringing that up. Sure, yeah. What's the other angle? Not angle,

I'm sorry, everybody. What's the other thought about that? Yeah, objective priorities, right?

So I described building up a home, right? And so one aspect of building up a home is children. You're right, that is an important thing.

Something people should be pursuing a lot more than they typically do. You see two of my kids here.

I think a lot of you know that these aren't my only kids. I have seven others. I have nine total. Wow.

So like, you know, I really believe what I'm saying here. But yeah, you can still build up a home.

You can still pursue hospitality in your older years. You can still be a blessing to others in a way that you are not capable of doing when you're by yourself.

However, yeah, if you find yourself in a position where, yeah, you are at such an age that you don't desire sexual union anymore, et cetera, then maybe that would be the sign to pursue singleness.

But yeah, in general, so long as you still have, you know, desires to unite with one another in marriage, then you should pursue marriage.

Yeah. When you say pursue marriage, you don't mean go look for it, right? Because if God wants you to be with someone, then he'll put them in your path, right?

You're not supposed to go out and just try to find a husband, right? No, I think you should. The Bible says, for husbands and Proverbs, the

Bible says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing, right? He found a wife, he sought the wife.

Yeah, but the guy's supposed to look for the wife, right? Like, God is preparing the woman for the man, right?

Okay, so consider some of the scriptural examples you have. And so I agree with you. There's an asymmetric dynamic, right?

The woman's not supposed to be doing the same thing the man is, necessarily. But consider some of the examples we have in scripture.

Ruth, you know, she doesn't just sit there and wait. She's given some pretty specific instructions from her family about how she can make herself available, right?

So she goes and puts herself in Boaz's field, right? And every woman that's come here, you know, this is one way of letting people know that you're interested in marriage, right?

And so that is a good thing to do. And that's not, yeah, that's not like reversing roles or anything like that.

And as far as God's providence, that applies to everything. Like God's will for you is to work, right?

As unto the Lord, God's will for you is all. I could list all kinds of things that require you to do something, right?

So if God says that it's good for people to work, then, you know, if you're an unemployed man and you say, well,

I'm just gonna wait for the job opportunities to come because if God wills this for my life, you know.

Well, that's different, yeah. I mean, like. Well, a lot of people see them as categorically different in a way that they're not.

This is a one -time thing, so God's going to supernaturally take care of this in a way that he wouldn't supernaturally take care of other things, right?

And yeah, and so they're not categorically different like that, that's right, sure.

All right, any other questions? Yes, Dancy.

Well, if you can't find a partner, I don't know how you would do anything else, right? That's kind of just definitionally the case.

But no, you should, I think your question is, should you ever decide, okay, I'm just giving up?

I think the answer is, until you are incapable of marriage, incapable meaning that you cannot do the duties of a wife.

Until you are incapable of marriage, this is something that you should be pursuing. This is something that is good. And I understand that people can get very discouraged about it, but they should not be so discouraged at the point of giving up.

Yeah, Jesus says, or excuse me, the book of Hebrews says to the task of dealing with difficulties in the

Christian life, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. Okay, so if you have not pursued marriage to the point of shedding blood, you don't have enough reason to complain yet.

And even if you do, the point of Hebrews isn't that, oh, then you can give up. Looking to Jesus for the joy set before him, right?

And what was Jesus looking for? It was the marriage between him and the church, right? He is willing to go through bloodshed in order to pursue that good thing, right?

And this is the mindset we should have toward marriage. That is a good thing for the joy set before me. I'm going to endure whatever trials, not just give up and say, this couldn't be too hard.

Yeah, hopefully you mean denomination. Hopefully you mean denomination or something. We shouldn't be looking outside of Christianity.

Yeah, Jesus. Yeah, so, right.

First Corinthians seven says that we're supposed to marry in the Lord, right? So that is a requirement.

I don't understand, in Christianity. Okay, yeah. I'm not saying that. You're referring to denominations of Christianity?

Denominations, yeah. Okay, yeah, sure, sure. Followers of Christ. Yeah, yeah, if you're a

Baptist, you can marry someone non -denominational, sure, yeah. Right, yeah, you shouldn't, right.

You should not, just to take your, to broaden out the statement a bit. Yeah, you shouldn't be so picky where you've got this set of objectives that says, you know,

I want all these things. I've got my checklist, like I'm getting a Subway sandwich, you know, and I want a little of this,

I want a little of that, and I'm just gonna keep going until I find that thing. This is, no, this is not the way.

Adam didn't get a choice, okay. He took what the Lord provided. And yeah, we have to have that same mindset of receiving what the

Lord provides. Not lowering our standards beyond what God has said to, but we should not, yeah, we should.

And I think that you can do that if you are valuing what the Bible says to value. I think, and then pursuing marriage the way the

Bible says to pursue marriage. Once again, as Christ pursued the church, right, because he wasn't like, okay, who's the one who's the most beautiful, who's this?

Right, the church was a mess when he, right, when he found her. Now, this is not, this is not to say that human, mere human husbands have the same capacity to improve, you know, some woman that they find, right.

But what I'm saying is that Christ's mindset was toward the potential of them together, and that should be our mindset is toward the potential of us together, not what is the current situation, yeah.

Yes, and what was your name? Madonna. Madonna, okay. So I just wanted to say, like, before I was saved,

I was married to an atheist, and we had children. And now we're in, obviously, divorce and not together.

But, you know, I go to Echo Church, I don't know if you've heard of that, and they were talking about it in one of the sermons.

I actually wrote it down, Matthew 19, 10 through 12, where Jesus is saying, like, being single is a good thing, kind of.

Sure, so there are some who are eunuchs, right. Okay. Yeah. Okay, it's just about eunuchs?

Well, there's different kinds of eunuchs. Like, is that, before I was saved, obviously,

I was in celibate, but since I have been, I have been, so it's like, what does that mean to you?

What's the question there? Sorry, this is in Matthew 19. This is, okay, thanks.

The disciples, Matthew 19, 10 through 12. The disciples said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.

But he said to them, not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, right.

So this is someone who is incapable of marital union, right, because their body is not suited for it.

And there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men. So this is later on in life. You know, they've lost the ability because of an injury or a lot of times they would have, like the king would make them eunuchs so that he could serve him in his harem or whatever.

And there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.

Okay, and so this seems to be describing something like Paul or something like Jesus himself, right, who is,

Jesus being 30 plus years old at this point, right, not having married, which is, yes. And the part between those two, it said, and there are some who have chosen to live in celibacy for the sake of the purpose of evidence.

I'm not sure what translation you're working with, but these are all, the word eunuch is being used each time. Okay. So in the final category, so there's those who are eunuchs from birth, right, there's who are eunuchs later on in life.

And then those who are choosing to be eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. And this is describing someone with, yeah, so now that is not describing, like I said, that's not saying that they're physically unfit for marriage.

I don't believe Jesus was physically unfit for marriage, right, actually one of the requirements for the lamb to be slaughtered was that there was no general mutilation, right.

And so Jesus, Jesus fit in that way, but he has perfect continence to be able to, continence meaning something else in our time, but I keep using that because that's the older theological term.

He has perfect self -control, sexual self -control to pursue the purposes that the father gave him, right, for this other marriage.

Paul, same thing. Okay, so there are those who do that, but having self -control is not the same thing as just choosing not to have sex, right, like there are all kinds of ways that you can sin, and lusting, et cetera, right, by even though you are not having sex.

And so it's not good to be filled with this desire for a good thing and then try to mortify that desire for a good thing because you think you can serve

God better that way. Like you shouldn't mortify good desires. Yes.

I just want to ask, is that Echo Church? Hey, yeah, it's on Murphy Ave.

And so, but I just want to get one thing clear.

So you're saying, I heard you repeat sex a lot, so. Sure. So primarily, marriage, that is the fundamental purpose of marriage.

I do believe that that is, that you do not have marriage without sex, that's correct. Yeah, it is a covenant to be one flesh together.

And in 1 Corinthians 6, it describes the notion of being one flesh as, yeah, as sex.

It says, let's see. Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

Never. Or do you not know that he is joined to a prostitute who becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh.

Now, what's interesting about that passage is it's not even including the notion of the covenant of marriage, but it's still saying they are becoming one flesh, right?

So the covenant to be one flesh requires one fleshness to it. Yeah, a lot of people think of marriage as some kind of other kind of like emotional fulfillment or thing, right?

Or they see it very offensive to suggest that you would need, that some people would not be fit for marriage, right?

But this is the Bible's view of it, that, yeah, marriage involves sex.

Now, that does not mean that if someone in the course of marriage becomes incapable, that they aren't still married, right?

Or something like that. But it does mean that if you are at a point where you are not capable of sexual union, you are not capable of marriage.

And so that would be one indication that you are, that would be a certain indication that you should not pursue marriage.

But, yeah. Any other questions?

A lot of thinking. One more? Okay. So it's okay, so while you're single though, like it's okay to just work on yourself in terms of like your relationship with God and, you know, like put time into that.

Like I put a lot of time and effort into my, you know, following Christ. Like I volunteer at my church,

I lead a group. You know, I do a lot of things to, I read the Bible every day, I pray, you know.

So I spend a lot of time with that and I'm trying to fix a lot of things that are not right with me. Sure. And like you say, nobody's ready.

It's not good to say that someone's not ready for marriage, but I feel like personally, like I have a lot of things to repair with myself before I'm ready for a man.

And I think maybe that that's what God's working on with me, but I don't know if that's right. Or like you say, should

I go out and look for a man? Like it's a job, like I don't know. I think it's interesting that you say it that way because that's the way

I've been thinking about it lately. Like how blessed would people be if they stopped making this like a recreational, occasional pursuit and made it like their full -time job pursuing marriage?

I think there would be a lot of blessing that came from that. I think a lot of people would be suited for that, especially,

I mean, you've heard the things that I've said about what the Bible says about women working in the home, right?

And so a lot of times they're pursuing a career that Lord willing, if they got married, they wouldn't even need to pursue, right?

And so it's kind of odd to be going in two different directions at once where you're achieving something that you wouldn't even need if you were to achieve this other thing, right?

So yeah, why even work against that end? Why not just, in as much as you have the financial resources pursue wholeheartedly marriage?

You know, that's gonna look like different things for different people. There are Christian conferences for singles.

There are, you know, there's online dating, which some, I think some resources are not good for that.

I'd like to do a talk on that at some point. A lot of the swiping apps I don't think are very good, you know, encouraging prioritizing the wrong kinds of things.

Yeah, but. Do you have any resources, links you wanna share with us? So I, no, no, yeah, absolutely.

No, it's a good question. There are, I would like to do a talk at some point where I have a whole list.

I've mentioned this before. I want to really evaluate a lot of the resources. As far as Christian ones, the ones

I am aware of are in the reformed tradition. I'm part of a reformed Baptist church. And so there's like tulipsingles .com.

There's Reformation Singles. I forget what the other names are. Sarah, my wife, has started a

Facebook group for, not for singles, but for married couples to advocate for single friends.

And several marriages have come out of that. So that's a group where we say, hey, we know the single person in our church.

Do you all have anyone who is about the same age, et cetera? Right, and several marriages have come out of that.

So that's really good. That's another thing is you should, you should enlist the married people in your life to help you.

Don't try to do this alone. You should be doing this with others. Yeah, but sometimes they just. They don't care.

They're the worst people to even look at. Sure. Like I know some of them, I'm like, no. Yeah, well,

I mean, it's not that much of a burden just to meet somebody. Christian, Christian, I have a guy that's half

Christian. Half Christian. Hilarious. Which half of him is born again, the right half or the left half?

Yes, what's your name? My name is Richard. Richard, right. Yeah, I have, so I started dating her.

Then end up, it's like, maybe like my worst relationship. Something like that. It happened to me already a couple of times.

And I was like, my first time I saw the girl, I thought, oh, she's the one. Yeah, this is God's will. This is

God's answer. Yeah. And she was dating me.

And also at the same time, she's dating another guy. And she told me, when she drive to see other guy, and she saw the rainbow.

And then she said, oh, that's the guy that God's chosen. She decided to marry with that guy.

In like maybe like two months, I was just like left alone. So then, like two years later, she told me that's the worst marriage you should ever enter into.

So just like how you attribute God's message. Yeah, it's interesting, because this is the topic that I was originally planning on addressing tonight, and decide

I'm gonna address next month. So come back next month. I'm hoping to address more of that. But yeah, just in short, once again, the secret things belong to the

Lord. If you see something that seems like an answer prayer, that is not God telling you the future, right?

That is just God telling you the present. God's not revealing his secret will beyond just the present.

You should not expect God to give you any kind of sign. So she's doing the wrong thing too, right? You're interpreting signs, she's interpreting signs.

Like that's bad on both ends. If you, Bible says, if you lack wisdom, ask of the

Lord. He gives generously to all without reproach. You should be asking for wisdom, not asking for signs. Asking for signs is testing the

Lord if he has not offered a sign. If he's offered a sign, that's great. But if he's not offered a sign, it's testing the

Lord. Yeah, and so if you say, okay, I will do, if this thing happens or that thing happens, I'll do this thing.

Then you're kind of putting God in a corner where he can only operate a certain way, right? And God is free, he's going to do what he wants.

This is, my mom, when I was very young, she used to do this kind of thing. She would like say, all right, God, if you want me to do this turn,

I'm gonna turn my Bible randomly. And if it's a page on this topic that I'll, oh, I should do that thing, you know?

And so God is kind of bound to give her a yes or no answer in the moment. And that's, yeah, God's not going to be bound that way.

Yes. Yeah, I mean, there were certainly answered prayer along the way, but none of the answered prayer was if I see this thing, then

I know that she's the one I'm supposed to marry, right? It's when we first met, she was not a believer. She was interested in me,

I was interested in her, but I would not let her know that because I wasn't going to date an unbeliever, right?

And so I prayed for God to save her, God saved her. And then so that opened up the door to pursuing that relationship.

That did not tell me because I got that answer, therefore this is certainly going to happen, you know?

But it was an answered prayer. It is good to pray for those things, but not to assume God's secret will. Too long, way too long.

Yeah, I've talked about this before. That's why you had so many kids once in a while. Well, I think about that occasionally.

We ended up dating for two and a half years. If we had just gotten married earlier, we could have one more kid.

She was in school. She had just started college and I was under the impression that it was right for me, especially in order to honor her parents, that we not get married until she was done with school.

I look back at that and I think it was fairly foolish. I think we should have just gotten married much earlier. We would have saved ourselves a lot of temptation, you know, a lot of difficulty.

We've gotten to enjoy the blessings of marriage much sooner. I don't recommend that anyone date for very long.

A lot of people date for a long, either because they're in situations like that where they think that they have to because of societal expectations, or they date for a long time because they're not using the time wisely to discern, right?

But if you're using the time wisely to discern, if you've got older people around you, more mature people around you who can tell you whether or not this is a good idea, if you are asking the right kind of questions, you can figure this out quickly.

Like, getting married does not have to be more than a few months thing, right? It doesn't have to be years.

A lot of people think you need a date for a year. You don't need a date for very long at all to find out whether or not someone is, yeah, fit for marriage.

How long? Okay, so what I recommend for people is the second you're seriously considering someone else as a potential spouse.

At our church, I offer a discipleship course, which is functionally like a pre -engagement counseling.

We go through what is, usually people would do something similar for premarital counseling, like after they've gotten engaged, before marriage, a lot of the same kind of material.

We go through it on a weekly basis. There's 12 sessions, and usually by about the, somewhere between the fifth and eighth,

I'll give a couple of the green light and be like, I think this is a good idea, or a lot of times it'll fizzle apart before that.

Because they're very actively pursuing it, they're figuring out real quickly, oh, this isn't gonna work out, right?

No, no, I mean fifth or eighth session. This really doesn't have to take a long time. If you're asking the right questions, if you're figuring out the right thing, it doesn't have to be like a, let's try each other on for size for a long time.

Look at the marriages in the Bible. Jacob, when he, or sorry,

Isaac, when he meets Rebekah, right, what is that? That's a servant that goes out there and finds her. Like he doesn't spend a lot of time getting to know her or anything before he already makes up his mind about this.

Like if you have, and part of the problem is we don't tend to enlist the discernment of others.

Usually people's pastors aren't involved, usually people's parents aren't involved, their older, wiser couples in the church aren't involved.

If you involve those, and you're asking the right questions, you can figure this out really quickly and without a lot of the heartache that comes from just trying to do it on your own.

What's that? Right, questions. I mean, a lot of it has to do with what they think marriage is, the stuff that we're talking about today, right?

If someone thinks that the substance of the marriage is going on dates or something, right, then you can talk to them about what the

Bible says about building up a home. If that, you know, makes them light up as they're seeing the

Bible's wisdom, that's like, yes, this is someone who would, who wants the right things, right? But if they're not, if they're saying, oh, no,

I, you know, kids sound like too much work. You know, having people in my home,

I don't like that. I'm more of an introvert. I don't like being hospitable, right? This is not, these are things that are against the

Bible's priorities for a marriage, for a home, right? And so that would not be the right thing. So yeah, the curriculum that we have put together, you know, it's 12 sessions, and each session is probably,

I don't know, like 25, 30 questions each. So it's, yeah,

I can't really, like, just list every single question here. But yeah, it's good. We don't have it in a published format yet, but it's very similar.

It's very similar to most premarital counseling books that you can buy, like workbooks.

There are some things that I felt like were not being prioritized by those books, like some of the stuff about roles, right?

And they're just looking at, like, compatibility and things like that. Or, yeah,

I also, being in a Reformed church, we have certain views on what the home should look like, like having family worship, like the family worshiping together daily, right?

Most of these books are not addressing those things because they're trying to hit the broadest audience because that's going to sell the most books, right?

And so their view of what the family looks like is pretty undefined and broad because they're trying to reach a wide audience, whereas I have a very specific idea of what

I believe the Bible's saying for homes. Oh, yeah, we would want you to have someone else that you would be going through it with.

Yeah, do it, do it, yeah, come join. Yeah, sure,

I could bring some, yeah. All right, any other questions? I'm gonna wrap this up here so you all can have more time to talk to each other.

All right, let's just go ahead. So that's, okay, so it's called

Reformed Matchmakers, but like I said, it's for married couples, right? So you find a married friend to go join that and advocate for you in that group, yeah.

There's lots of groups on Facebook for singles. There's lots of them, right? But this is a group for married people to advocate for single.

I think there's something much, there's something very wise about doing it that way, right? Was it Reformed what? Matchmakers, yeah.

All right, yeah, it's kind of a, I mean, it's a kind of tongue -in -cheek name, but really it's just, yeah, we believe that it's good for others other than just the individual to be involved in trying to, yeah, discern.

Yeah, yeah, sure. Okay, I'm gonna end it there. Enjoy the rest of your time.

We'll be cleaning up a little. We're not trying to rush you out. Connelly, yes.