Signs a Single Should Stop Dating

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Happy Friday, listeners.

00:00:06.640 | We are joined again by Matt Chandler,

00:00:08.520 | the lead pastor at the Village Church

00:00:10.880 | and the author of the new book, The Mingling of Souls,

00:00:13.640 | God's Design for Love, Marriage, Sex, and Redemption.

00:00:17.520 | He joins us by phone from Dallas.

00:00:19.320 | And Matt, I've got 10 questions

00:00:20.760 | on relationships queued up for you.

00:00:22.380 | Here's number eight in our list.

00:00:25.680 | If a man or a woman is trying to stop

00:00:27.440 | looking at pornography, but he cannot,

00:00:29.880 | and many Christian men struggle here,

00:00:32.360 | are they ready to date or not?

00:00:35.000 | And if not, what is the line between being ready

00:00:38.140 | and not ready to date for a Christian porn addict?

00:00:41.960 | - Yeah, so this is an extremely, I think,

00:00:45.920 | complex question that's hard to answer

00:00:48.400 | outside of actually knowing the people involved.

00:00:52.280 | So my knee-jerk reaction is, no, you're not ready,

00:00:54.940 | let's get this handled.

00:00:56.380 | But I think what I would wanna do is sit down

00:00:58.760 | and I would wanna know what's going on.

00:01:00.400 | Where's mortification happening?

00:01:02.080 | Where's vivification happening?

00:01:04.040 | What do we mean when we say porn addict?

00:01:06.360 | I mean, are we saying that this guy or this girl

00:01:09.520 | once a year stumbles into, or are we saying

00:01:12.080 | this is every couple of times a month is,

00:01:17.080 | where are we in relation to frequency, healing, victory?

00:01:22.320 | And I think all of those would come into play

00:01:25.960 | on whether or not I would encourage someone

00:01:27.560 | to be in a relationship while they wrestled.

00:01:29.760 | The truth is, all of us, every one of us,

00:01:33.320 | are coming into our relationship with the opposite sex

00:01:37.480 | needing further sanctification, needing growth,

00:01:40.440 | needing to grow in our identity,

00:01:43.760 | needing our identity in Christ,

00:01:45.840 | needing to have parts of our flesh mortified.

00:01:49.260 | And so this one's just gonna affect the relationship

00:01:52.880 | in deeper ways in regards to being able to,

00:01:57.220 | I've read almost everything I could on the horrific issues

00:02:02.220 | that porn addiction brings about in a guy's or a girl's

00:02:05.360 | ability to even be emotionally connected to people.

00:02:08.920 | And so that's why I mean, I would kinda wanna get

00:02:11.560 | to the bottom of who we're talking to here.

00:02:13.800 | I mean, when we're saying addict, what do we mean by that?

00:02:17.600 | And so without kind of that information,

00:02:19.440 | it becomes hard to just lay a hard answer down.

00:02:22.200 | But I don't know that I would say absolutely not

00:02:24.640 | until this is not an issue for you anymore,

00:02:26.560 | or until you don't, but at the same time,

00:02:29.240 | if this is a serious, several times a month,

00:02:32.600 | you're giving yourself over to this,

00:02:34.340 | you're actively seeking it out,

00:02:36.440 | then man, I don't think you have any business dating.

00:02:39.280 | - Sobering but wise, thank you, Matt.

00:02:41.280 | And that leads us into question number nine.

00:02:44.480 | Are there any other circumstances in which you as a pastor

00:02:47.280 | would tell someone that they are just simply not ready

00:02:49.800 | to pursue a dating relationship?

00:02:52.760 | And what are some of the indications that would signal

00:02:54.840 | to you that a person is simply not ready

00:02:56.760 | to pursue dating right now?

00:02:58.980 | - So when I'm telling someone,

00:03:04.400 | or leveraging my relationship with someone

00:03:07.160 | in regards to dating or not dating,

00:03:11.040 | I'm always doing that within the covenant

00:03:13.240 | of me being their pastor and them being a covenant member

00:03:16.000 | of the church.

00:03:17.240 | So our relationship from the beginning is one

00:03:20.820 | that's not just me having a cursory view of their life,

00:03:23.960 | but hopefully me knowing where they are.

00:03:26.560 | And so I have oftentimes recommended someone hold off

00:03:31.280 | until dating, until the season that they were in

00:03:35.460 | with the Lord has changed.

00:03:38.120 | And so I told a man last year, a young man last year,

00:03:43.120 | that where he was in his relationship with the Lord,

00:03:46.440 | I would hold off pursuing a girlfriend

00:03:51.740 | until he had given himself back over to growing

00:03:55.700 | in this relationship with the Lord.

00:03:57.160 | It wasn't just that he was in the desert or just stagnant,

00:03:59.880 | but that he had really, I believe, was walking in sin

00:04:02.660 | and hadn't grown stagnant,

00:04:04.420 | but had stopped altogether pursuing his relationship

00:04:07.900 | with the Lord.

00:04:08.740 | So wasn't in the word, wasn't praying,

00:04:10.540 | had become kind of hit or miss in the gathering,

00:04:14.540 | hit or miss in his home group.

00:04:16.060 | He had guys pursuing him that he was avoiding.

00:04:18.620 | He had had relational conflict with some guys

00:04:20.920 | that he was refusing to kind of connect with them

00:04:24.260 | and reconcile.

00:04:25.420 | And so I had just recommended to him

00:04:27.520 | that this would be a really foolish time

00:04:29.540 | and a time that I thought would end

00:04:31.400 | in either his heart being broken

00:04:33.340 | or some poor girl at our churches being heartbroken.

00:04:37.620 | And even didn't threaten,

00:04:39.580 | but said that I would probably engage the girl he pursued

00:04:42.740 | to tell her that I didn't think this was wise

00:04:44.580 | for where he was at the season.

00:04:46.140 | - That's tough love,

00:04:48.340 | but certainly a category we need to be thinking through.

00:04:50.860 | Thank you, Matt.

00:04:52.080 | We're gonna take a break for the weekend now.

00:04:53.700 | On Monday, we'll return with Matt once again,

00:04:56.120 | because the statistics are staggering

00:04:58.060 | when you look at the number of young men and young women

00:05:00.420 | in churches who are victims of past sexual abuse.

00:05:04.800 | So what does this abuse do to their dating relationship?

00:05:07.620 | What type of baggage will this bring into courtship

00:05:10.020 | and into marriage?

00:05:11.100 | And how should couples talk through it?

00:05:13.480 | This is an important issue,

00:05:14.980 | and it's one that hits close to home for Matt,

00:05:17.620 | and we will address it on Monday.

00:05:19.940 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:05:20.940 | Thanks for listening to the Aspester John podcast.

00:05:23.540 | (upbeat music)

00:05:26.120 | (upbeat music)

00:05:28.700 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Signs a Single Should Stop Dating

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