Dating is more art than science; it can feel more like navigating an ocean than putting together a piece of furniture from Ikea (which for a directionally challenged person like me is still no easy task). Don’t I know it. Those first few weeks of dating for Korie and I were euphoric. There was a date night at the movies where we saw Titanic, air hockey at the Santa Monica Pier and long walks on Redondo Beach. And while I thought we were having the time of our lives, what I didn’t realize was Korie was also feeling overwhelmed. She ended up expressing that to me in a marathon phone conversation that went from 11pm-6am. She had just gotten saved, and immediately started to date a pastor and the pressure was just too much. So she broke up with me. I was crushed y'all…just crushed. But, even after breaking up with me, Korie kept calling to tell me all of the wonderful things the Lord was teaching her from Bible studies, to her time in her discipleship group. Now, please forgive me for being “Petty Roosevelt,” but if you break up with me, I really could care less what the Lord is teaching you! It was during this brief intermission in our relationship that we both realized the depths of feelings we had for one another, and so we ended up getting back together, and trying to make our way across the ocean of dating.Talk about a time of uncertainty. 

Felt Need

I hold in my hand a sextant (need this prop), a navigational tool that allows you to use fixed things, like the horizon and sun to get your bearings. There are stories of people being lost at sea, and using this tool to lock in on fixed realities and being able to navigate the bumpy ocean waters. In many ways, this is what Pastor JD and I have been doing the last few weeks- giving you a biblical sextant, filled with principles drawn right from the Bible on dating. It’s important that we do this series because if you think about it, singleness is the only season every person will experience. In fact, right here in the Triangle, half of the adult population are single, which is roughly double what it was fifty years ago. What this means is if we are going to really engage our mission field effectively with the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have to have a clear compelling vision for what God glorifying singleness looks like, and since most singles will spend time dating, we need to equip and disciple our people with sound, fixed biblical principles for dating. As I said last week, we also want  to encourage married couples to not check out on us. One reason is that dating should not just be something singles do, but should also be something we engage in regularly after we say, “I do.” And of course, who hasn’t made their share of mistakes in relationships? By applying these principles in relationships, we can set a new hope-filled trajectory for future relationships. 

Involving Others- Genesis 24:60

As we begin, I want to double click on something Pastor JD pointed out in the first week of our series, and that is the need to not date in isolation, something our passage really models. Genesis 24 is the story of how God is multiplying his people- the nation of Israel- through the courtship of Isaac and Rebekah. And one of the things that should strike you is the sheer number of people involved in this whole process. This is not just Isaac and Rebekah, huddled off doing their own thing. No, there are a whole lot of people who are a part of the process. Consider these people who play a crucial role in their courtship: Abraham, Abraham’s servant, Laban (Rebekah’s brother), Bethuel (Rebekah’s father), Rebekah’s mother, Rebekah’s maiden. What’s more than clear is that Isaac and Rebekah do not date each other in isolation, but this whole thing unfolds in the midst of an engaged community of people. 

Now what Genesis 24 is doing at this point is cutting against the grain of our culture of dating. The very word, date or dating, the way we use it today doesn’t appear in literature until the late 1800s, when our culture is going through a seismic shift where young people are leaving rural communities and their families en masse, and coming into the city. Now, away from family, they begin to arrange what they called “dates” for the purposes of a relationship. Previously, there was this thing called courting, where when a woman was around the age of 16, suitors came to her house, presented their cards, and sat in the parlor with the young woman and at least her mother where they would be interviewed. With a lot of input from the parents, the suitors were whittled down to one, and given permission to take the daughter out. So what I want you to see, is before this thing called dating, there was courting, and the fundamental difference was courting was communal, and dating became individual. 

So what’s the point here, Bryan? Are you saying we need to end dating, and go back to courting? No. But I do think there’s extreme wisdom in taking a major tenet of courting found not just in American history, but also in the Bible, and that is making a commitment to invite others in the dating process. Why? Well, one, the bible says so: “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety”- Proverbs 11:14. Listen, if you’ve ever bought a house, you know you don’t make that decision in isolation, but there are a whole lot of other people included. There’s the bank who is going to really scrutinize your finances and ask the question if you can afford this. There’s the inspector who will meticulously look the house up and down to see if this is a worthwhile investment. There’s the appraiser who will determine if the home is what it’s worth. There’s the legal realm who will be involved. Now if we include all of these people and more for something that will involve the next decade or so of our lives, how much more do we need to include others for something we will potentially say, “Till death do us part”? There’s just wisdom in including others. And the time to build that community is now.

The second reason you need to involve others is because you have contracted an illness. You sure have. Listen to what these Christian therapist’s say, “Being ‘in love,’ in the beginning of a relationship is an illness. It is treatable, but it is an illness nevertheless. The illness is the inability to see reality. For the very state of ‘being in love’ is a state of idealization, where the other person is not really viewed through the eyes of reality. He or she is mostly seen through the eyes of someone’s own wishes or fantasies…”- Dr’s. Cloud and Townsend, Boundaries in Dating. I’ve seen this happen many times. It amazes me how many people can have a PhD in other people’s relationships, but be at a Kindergarten level in their own. Why? Falling in love distorts reality, because our emotions overwhelm our ability to see straight. It’s at this point where we need to involve others to help navigate us through. 

I Got You- Genesis 24:53

The final three points of the message I need you to hear them from the vantage point of me pressing fast forward in the dating relationship to the point where you are contemplating engagement and marriage. Now, when we read

Genesis 24, one of the things which should stop you in  your tracks is what made Rebekah comfortable enough to leave her own family, and head out to a country she did not know, to marry a man she had not seen? Verse 53 answers that for us. Scholars tell us what’s going on here is Abraham’s servant isn’t just giving nice gifts, but these gifts are actually the bride price. No, this isn’t buying a woman, but the bride price was a cultural arrangement whereby the groom was communicating he could take care of the future bride. I’ll never forget, when I was in Bible college, I had a classmate who was an international student who was working like three jobs; it was crazy. I remember asking him why he was working so much, and he said it was because he was in love, and was planning to propose, but before he did so, her family required 10 cows as the bride price. I was like, “Do you have to get her a ring on top of that?” He said, “Yes. You American’s get off so easy.” 

Men Need to Feel Significant

You know what the message of the bride price is? Three words: I GOT YOU. What these gifts do for Rebekah is it instills in her a confidence that this person can provide for her. It communicates, I got you. And in the same way, both men and women in the dating relationship need to be able to say in so many words, “I got you.” Yeh, but what exactly does that mean? Two things. Men have a core need to feel significant. Now, of course I am not saying women do not need to feel significant. Of course they do, but this tends to be more pronounced with men, and the bible underscores this, where over and over again in the NT women are told to respect their husbands. What this does is speak to a man’s basic wiring to feel significant. We all know Aretha Franklin’s  hit song, “Respect,” but what you may not know is that a man, Otis Redding, actually wrote it. Pastor JD, in the first week of the series, pointed to this when he said that one of his favorite things about his wife Veronica is how she makes him feel, and no doubt a part of this has to do with feeling significant. 

How does a woman practically do this? Well, one of the ways is by speaking what Dr. Gary Chapman calls our love language. Many of you know this, but there are five love languages: 1. Words of Affirmation; 2. Quality Time; 3. Physical Touch; 4. Gifts; 5. Acts of Service. Now of course this is a two way street, where both men and women need to speak each other’s love language, but when a woman speaks her man’s love language it makes him feel significant, and says, “I got you.” My love language is words of affirmation. Pair that with me being introvert it pretty much means tell me how great I am and leave me alone! Just kidding. But I tell Korie, “I don’t care how many compliments I may get from other people, their words don’t carry a fraction of the weight your words do.” When my wife takes the time to speak my love language it touches on my core need to feel significant.

Women Need to Feel Secure

While a man’s core need is to feel significant, women have a driving need to feel secure (And in the same way we are not saying men don’t need to feel secure). This is why SUV’s have historically been marketed towards women, why the average woman when she envisions her husband thinks of someone taller and stronger than her. It’s also why for many women, the financial dimension is really important. When Rebekah receives these gifts, they are tapping in on her core need to feel secure. These gifts in so many words are Isaac’s way of saying, “I got you.” 

Now it’s at this point where some of you may be saying, “Wait a minute Bryan, are you telling me I need to be financially wealthy to get married?” Not at all. In fact, when Korie and I were dating, I was making 18k a year with no benefits in Los Angeles! I used to pray that Korie wouldn’t order certain things from the menu! I was broke. So how in the world was I able to speak to Korie’s driving need to feel secure? I asked her this a few years ago. Korie said that while she knew I didn’t have money, she saw two things which spoke to her need for security: Direction and Drive. She said, “Bryan, I saw that you knew where you were going in life. You had a plan, and not only did you have a plan but you also had a drive, a strong work ethic.” Korie saw me going to grad school, burning the midnight oil, working hard at what God called me to do. And those two things communicated to her, “I got you.” So men, I want to say this pretty clearly: If you don’t have a general sense of direction, and the drive, then you need to press pause on dating seriously. No, I”m not making an argument for single income households where the guy works outside the home and the woman doesn’t, but men you should have a sense of direction and drive to your life. 

I’m Leaving- Genesis 24:58-59

Now remember, we are pressing fast forward in the dating process on these last three points. They are for people headed into marriage. Look at what Rebekah does in verses 58-59. She throws up the deuces and says, “I’m leaving,” to her family. This is completely in keeping with Genesis 2, when God says to the first marriage, and therefore to all marriages, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh”- Genesis 2:24. See the principle of leaving? What Genesis 2:24 and Rebekah’s leaving her family communicates is a universal principle to all marriages and that is in marriage, the husband/wife relationship is the primary relationship over every other human relationship. It’s primary over the children. I remember once I bought something really nice for Korie and one of my kids asked why I didn’t buy them something that nice? I simply said, “Because I don’t love you as much as I love your mother. Your mother was here before you got here, and she will be here once you leave…at 18…never ever to return!” LOL. A bit overstated, but you get the point. And leaving also communicates that the husband/wife dynamic is more important than our own parents. You can’t be a mama’s boy and have a great marriage at the same time. And you can’t be a daddy’s girl in the sense of relating to your dad as if he’s the most important man in your life and have a great marriage at the same time.

TABLE VISUAL. Now I know what I just said is very hard, so let’s spend some time to flesh this out, and I really need you to grasp this because if you do it will really set the trajectory for an amazing relationship with your parents and in-law’s once you get married. Some psychologists use the visual of a dinner table to describe this point of leaving. Before this man or woman came into your life, your parents were not just at the table of your life, but were seated at the head of the table as authority figures. Once you get married, two things have to happen. First, your parents and your spouse’s parents must get demoted. They are no longer seated at the head of the table. Wife, your dad is no longer the number one man in your life, your husband is. Husband, your mama is no longer the number one woman in your life, your wife is. So they have to get out of their seats, which leads me to my second point: We still want and need them at the table. We want a relationship with them. We want their input, wisdom and involvement. We just need them in different seats. Now I wish I could tell you this is a one and done movement, but it’s not. It’ll take several years with several hard conversations where you need to both communicate your desire for them to be at the table, but also that they are in different seats…

I Love You- Genesis 24:67

Finally, our passage ends with love. Again, these final points are in the advanced stage of dating. Look at verse 67. Here the text says that Isaac loved her, and this is the last thing you must be prepared to both do and say if this relationship is going to be one that lasts a lifetime- I love you. Those words are weighty words which communicate way more than what our culture would tell you they do. These words are not just a feeling, but biblically speaking point to a sacrificial commitment. Paul would say it this way: “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 is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends”- I Corinthians 13:4-8a. Did you notice in all of those descriptions of love, not one is a feeling? Now of course love, at times, contains feelings, but biblically speaking, agape love is a sacrificial commitment that seeks the absolute best in the object loved. 

Let’s press this a bit further. Paul describes love as patient. One pastor describes patience as the decision to move at someone else’s pace instead of pressuring them to move at yours. What this means is that in the course of a relationship you are going to see things in the other person you want fixed, patterns you want changed, and it won’t happen right away. Sometimes it will take years. And love means I’m patient. Not only that, but Paul says love is kind. You know what kindness is? It’s love’s response to weakness. You really see kindness contrasted with something that is unpleasant. Here’s the point: When the bible speaks of love being patient and kind it assumes that in the context of a relationship we will see each other at our worst, yet love kicks in and says, I’m still with you. I’m often asked the question, “How long should I date before I decide to get engaged?” My answer is always the same, “Date long enough to see the mess. Date long enough to have a good fight, because you want to be able to discern if there is enough commitment there to deal with the weaknesses in others and vice versa (by the way, there are plenty of deal breakers in relationships that you would be wise to end things over.).”

Some years ago a woman got into a horrific car accident that damaged her face. As the doctors were performing surgery they struck a nerve around her mouth that caused her mouth to twist badly. A few days later when the bandages came off, the woman was horrified at what she saw, and she immediately wondered how her husband would react. Later on that day when he saw her for the first time he came over to her, stroked her head and bent down to kiss her twisted mouth. But in order to do this he had to twist his mouth to hers. After the kiss he told her he loved her. This is love friends- seeing the twisted parts in each other and embracing one another.

And this is what Christ did for us on the cross. How do I know Christ loves me? Because he sees the absolute worst in us. He sees our immorality, our rebellion, our prideful self-righteousness. He sees how sin has twisted the image of God in our lives, and yet the bible says that, “God demonstrated his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The hymn writer, Charles Wesley was so amazed by the love of Christ he wrote: And can it be that I should gain

An int'rest in the Savior's blood?

Died He for me, who caused His pain?

For me, who Him to death pursued?

Amazing love! how can it be

That Thou, my God, should die for me?