Boy Meets Girl - Encore, Part 1, Jonathan Pokluda
NOTES:
JP's Story
JP always had a girlfriend since the 5th grade, and many of the relationships were overlapping. He had a "serious" relationship in 8th grade with a girl who gave him a bible and they didn't have sex. They broke up, she quickly started dating someone else and subsequently JP quickly started dating someone else, and had sex. He cried that night, but ended up having sex with that girl again, and from then on sex was sport. JP later became consumed with porn and serial dating. He didn't know what was happening to him, like a frog who's slowing boiling. He then moved to Dallas. He felt he knew God, he knew he wasn't supposed to have pre-marital sex, but he didn't know why. JP started dating his wife began growing in Christ and got married. JP prayed at his wedding thanking God that he had escaped the consequences of his sin. Two years later he realized that was a stupid prayer. Because of his past he didn't know how to properly treat a woman.
Why wouldn't all of us go out, sin, binge on porn, have lots of anonymous sex, dress provocatively, etc? Obedience and avoidance of consequences is not a good enough answer.
Influences: Friends, culture, media, church, bible, your desires.
Why do we do what we do:
Genesis 1:1-2 Keywords: Formless and empty - Filling and shaping
You were created to rule
Genesis 1:26 God is creating something different. Keywords: "Let us make man in our image", our likeness.
-We our image bearers of God, whether we want to or not, and therefore we have responsibility.
There are two reasons to have sex: 1. Procreation. 2. To bond a husband to his wife.
When you orgasm your brain bonds to who your with. Science just discovered it, but Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 7.
Quote from guest on Larry King Live. "Show me a naked man and a naked woman and I'll show you God's original design."
Something goes wrong
Romans 1:18-32 Keywords: "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie." This verse is not talking about a person, but it's talking about a culture, a group of people.
Many say that the church wants to remove freedom from society.
-You could use your freedom to play a piano, but without discipline and restraint it's not beautiful.
The devil is switching price tags. He takes that which has infinite value and cheapens it.
What does this have to do with dating?
As image bearers of God we move through cultures as ambassadors of Gods and we redeem it through our example.
He's showing himself by the way we work, by the way we date, by the way we breakup.
Redeem, Renew, Restore, Regenerate, Reconciliation: Making things whole again.
Therapeutic moralistic deism: We do good things because it will make our lives better. It's one of the biggest heresys to the gospel.
1 Corinthians 5:11-21
The world is dead and fractured. We bring life to it once more. i.e. The prince waking up Sleeping Beauty, Freeze tag.
We don't date differently or keep ourselves pure because God said so. That would be good enough, but we do so because we are image bearers of God.
God is using us to bring life into a dead culture.
-D. Wright