Dating Sermon

Dating Sermon

This sermon is mostly targeted at young people who are trying to make some headway in the dating world.

I am not really qualified to advise young people on this dating matter, as I am also a young person trying to make my way through the tangled mess which we refer to as the dating world

I am 22 years old, I am not married, and I have very little experience of dating. But I hope it may be of some encouragement to other young people that there is another going through what you are going through.

I would however advise that you talk to older people who have already dated and married, rather than taking my advice and experience as solid truth.

In my experience dating and relationships have played a major part and still are a lot of what I think about.

I’m sure that your own personal experience will be quite different from mine and you will have to rely on what the Lord tells you as regards finding that perfect soul mate, but here follows my own experience:

I was the age of 12 when I passed puberty, and started looking at girls in a different way. I wasn’t aware what was happening to me at the time, I only knew that I thought about girls a lot and desired their company. I sometimes wish I had had some proper sexual education, because I did some very strange and shameful things which were mostly part of ignorance, but I will not tell you about them… I’m sure maybe you have done things that you are too shameful to tell another person.

But that part of my life is of no importance, only suffice it to say, that I was a sinner and I have since then repented of my sins and come to Christ. I came to Christ at the age of 14, I was a Mennonite at the time, and it was quite clear that the girl I was going to marry was a girl I went to school with… she was about the same age as me and we liked each other so that just seemed to be final. And if you know anything about Mennonites they are quite a close community, and they don’t share much in common with the outside world. So I went to an exclusively Mennonite school, and the girl I seemed destined to marry was Christian and very beautiful, sounds like we could have been the ideal couple right?

Well if you are so certain about a girl and if she loves God, talk to your parents about her (girls too talk to your parents about a guy you like), your parents were given to you by God so they might advise you.

I must say though, that my relationship with my parents has become so bad that I have never been able to talk to them about a girl, which may be part of the reason that I am struggling. God can help me and He can help you to talk!

And then with your parents blessing I think that you have the basis for a perfect household. Just remember one thing, God always comes before family, and if that’s understood by all, I’m sure that God will bless your marriage!

Well, it wasn’t in God’s plans that I should marry this Mennonite girl. I God’s providence, my father was offered a job in Oxford in England, which he took, and so we moved away from Canada, and away from the Mennonite church. I didn’t look on it as providence at the time, I kicked up quite a fuss, and I am now ashamed of that. But it is a great blessing if something bad happens in providence and you are given the grace to accept that the Lord is sovereign!

I was at a loss for quite a while not knowing who or which girl I fancied. One day I thought I was madly in love with one girl, next day I was thinking about a different girl.

It seems like I think about girls 90% of the time, and yet how little of Scripture is devoted to teaching how to find the right wife, Is that because it is not so important? Or maybe it’s because it only needs to be mentioned once and clearly?

One girl I was dead certain that I was attracted to had no idea that I was a Christian, in meeting her I never bothered to mention that I was Christian, because I thought if I told her that, I might lose my chance with her. But should Christians really marry a girl who wouldn’t like them if they knew that they were Christians? I think not. And we know that no marriage or relationship should be built upon a lie, even Hollywood recognizes that. So obviously that relationship was doomed to fail.

Don’t make the same mistakes that I did, be truthful and honest with the girl or the guy who you have an attraction to, tell them that you are Christian and that you love God!

I’m still very mixed up at the moment, I have my eye on 5 possible girls, 3 of them are non-Christian, and 2 of them are. Perhaps I should forget about the girls that are not Christian and just pick one of the 2 Christian girls. It doesn’t seem all so clear as all that… I am obviously attracted to these 3 non-Christian girls, and did not God create us? Then did He not give us this attraction to the opposite sex? I don’t know the answer to these questions so there are a few things I am doing so that I can discern what the will of The Lord is. I believe firmly that if God will have me be with a certain girl, He will manipulate providence in such a way that I will not have any choice but to marry that girl.

As I said at the beginning of my sermon, I think that we should look to the older ministers for advice on dating, they have trodden the path, I haven’t! In particular I would recommend Paul Washer and Voddie Baucham, both have sermons available on Sermon Audio, and you will find quite a very dedicated to dating and marriage. They have been a blessing to me, and I hope that God will also bless them to you.

If a relationship is not based with a view to Marriage it is wrong. Premarital sex is wrong. And if you look through history marriage to a non-believer is like torture to a true Christian!

I just sometimes wish that one of these girls I like will come to Christ and become a Christian. I want to live happily ever after, I’m sure you do too, and that really is a possibility if you whole-heartedly serve the Lord!

So I need to listen to the voice of God when He tells me who I should date. So to be able to listen to the voice of God, we must commune with God, and to do that we must often read the Bible and pray, and that is what I do very often, and I recommend that you do that too.

Please learn from my mistakes, be honest, and look to your elders to give you advice, there is so much false teaching on relationships. Stay close to God and He will never fail you!

The Lord bless you.

Amen!