(upbeat music) - Happy Friday, listeners. We are joined again by Matt Chandler, the lead pastor at the Village Church and the author of the new book, The Mingling of Souls, God's Design for Love, Marriage, Sex, and Redemption. He joins us by phone from Dallas. And Matt, I've got 10 questions on relationships queued up for you.

Here's number eight in our list. If a man or a woman is trying to stop looking at pornography, but he cannot, and many Christian men struggle here, are they ready to date or not? And if not, what is the line between being ready and not ready to date for a Christian porn addict?

- Yeah, so this is an extremely, I think, complex question that's hard to answer outside of actually knowing the people involved. So my knee-jerk reaction is, no, you're not ready, let's get this handled. But I think what I would wanna do is sit down and I would wanna know what's going on.

Where's mortification happening? Where's vivification happening? What do we mean when we say porn addict? I mean, are we saying that this guy or this girl once a year stumbles into, or are we saying this is every couple of times a month is, where are we in relation to frequency, healing, victory?

And I think all of those would come into play on whether or not I would encourage someone to be in a relationship while they wrestled. The truth is, all of us, every one of us, are coming into our relationship with the opposite sex needing further sanctification, needing growth, needing to grow in our identity, needing our identity in Christ, needing to have parts of our flesh mortified.

And so this one's just gonna affect the relationship in deeper ways in regards to being able to, I've read almost everything I could on the horrific issues that porn addiction brings about in a guy's or a girl's ability to even be emotionally connected to people. And so that's why I mean, I would kinda wanna get to the bottom of who we're talking to here.

I mean, when we're saying addict, what do we mean by that? And so without kind of that information, it becomes hard to just lay a hard answer down. But I don't know that I would say absolutely not until this is not an issue for you anymore, or until you don't, but at the same time, if this is a serious, several times a month, you're giving yourself over to this, you're actively seeking it out, then man, I don't think you have any business dating.

- Sobering but wise, thank you, Matt. And that leads us into question number nine. Are there any other circumstances in which you as a pastor would tell someone that they are just simply not ready to pursue a dating relationship? And what are some of the indications that would signal to you that a person is simply not ready to pursue dating right now?

- So when I'm telling someone, or leveraging my relationship with someone in regards to dating or not dating, I'm always doing that within the covenant of me being their pastor and them being a covenant member of the church. So our relationship from the beginning is one that's not just me having a cursory view of their life, but hopefully me knowing where they are.

And so I have oftentimes recommended someone hold off until dating, until the season that they were in with the Lord has changed. And so I told a man last year, a young man last year, that where he was in his relationship with the Lord, I would hold off pursuing a girlfriend until he had given himself back over to growing in this relationship with the Lord.

It wasn't just that he was in the desert or just stagnant, but that he had really, I believe, was walking in sin and hadn't grown stagnant, but had stopped altogether pursuing his relationship with the Lord. So wasn't in the word, wasn't praying, had become kind of hit or miss in the gathering, hit or miss in his home group.

He had guys pursuing him that he was avoiding. He had had relational conflict with some guys that he was refusing to kind of connect with them and reconcile. And so I had just recommended to him that this would be a really foolish time and a time that I thought would end in either his heart being broken or some poor girl at our churches being heartbroken.

And even didn't threaten, but said that I would probably engage the girl he pursued to tell her that I didn't think this was wise for where he was at the season. - That's tough love, but certainly a category we need to be thinking through. Thank you, Matt. We're gonna take a break for the weekend now.

On Monday, we'll return with Matt once again, because the statistics are staggering when you look at the number of young men and young women in churches who are victims of past sexual abuse. So what does this abuse do to their dating relationship? What type of baggage will this bring into courtship and into marriage?

And how should couples talk through it? This is an important issue, and it's one that hits close to home for Matt, and we will address it on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Aspester John podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)