Will I Ever Find Love?

Porch, how are we doing? Are we doing okay tonight? It's great to see you. You're here for a good one. We're really excited for where we're going over the course of the evening, so thanks for making the time to be here. Dallas, love that you're in the room, as always. We never take that for granted, but special shout-out also to everyone who's tuning in online.

We love everyone who would choose to give us a little moment of their evening to be a part of what God is doing in this room and rooms all over, particularly our Porch.Live locations. Shout-out Porch.Live Greater Lafayette, Fresno, and Scottsdale. Will y'all give it up for everybody tuning in online right now?

Well, if you were to survey my college roommates and myself, you would find we had a lot in common. We were all business majors, and we were serving in the same organizations. We all played sports in high school, which meant we were overly competitive in college and well past our prime at that point, but it didn't slow us down. We were all followers of Jesus. We loved reading his Word and engaging with his people and doing the best we could to be faithful to him. And we were single; meaning, we knew little to nothing about the opposite sex.

Even though we were single, we were like-minded in the sense that we really wanted to find love, so, over the course of our college career, we all had our fair share of attempts. We took our shots, and we miserably failed over the course of our four-year experience. You see, we had so much in common, but the minute you injected us with a little bit of love, we did really dumb things. We all went a variety of directions, because love makes people crazy.

Just to give you some perspective (maybe you'll relate to some of this)… One of my roommates was the hometown heartthrob. He looked good. He smelled good. He had great hair. (That's not weird; I shared a bathroom with him.) He had straight, perfectly white teeth. He was an athletic guy, built really well. There was not a girl he would ask on a date who would say "no" to him, because, hey, he was worth a shot, yet he was a hopeless romantic. He didn't play the field much because he had an ideal he wanted to find. So, he didn't fall often, but when he fell, he fell very hard. You know this guy.

Another one of my roommates was the perennial date party favorite. He was the guy who girls loved to take to date parties, because he had the most disarming personality and they just had an incredible time. It was such a blast always having him with them, yet nothing ever really materialized from that evening. The reason was he was a pretty chill kind of guy. Romance never rocked him much.

Another roommate of mine was clueless…so clueless, in fact, that he found himself stringing along, not one, but two girls on the same night, completely unbeknownst to him. He didn't realize that they were bringing baked goods…cookies, brownies, and muffins…as a sign of their affection. He just thought they were being friendly, but they had a very different perspective on it altogether.

The fourth of my roommates was the classic party guy. He never took anything seriously except his grades. Meaning, he never took a dating relationship seriously, but, for some reason, he was the one who figured it out, because lo and behold, one day we looked up and he was in a relationship. Then there was me. I was confusing, to say the least, probably because I was confused. I had commitment issues. My heart would tell me one thing, but my mind would tell me something different.

You see, when you injected us with love, we were a dizzying array of different directions, yet we all wanted it. What was wild was we were a reliable group of dudes. We were consistently kind to people. We were trustworthy with our word. We tried to move with an honorable approach toward other people, yet the minute we found ourselves falling…we started crushing or catching feelings…we were anything but predictable. Sound like anybody you know?

You see, love has a polarizing and powerful effect on the lives of people. In this room alone, there are dozens of different reactions to just the screen behind me. You heard that we're in a dating series, and some of you rolled up tonight because of it. You cannot wait for what's coming in the weeks ahead. You've already blocked off your calendar, because you don't know where we're going, but you want to be here for every single week.

Some of you did not roll up because of it; you've rolled your eyes, because it's just another dating series at The Porch. Others of you get the idea of "Man, I identify with that hopeless romantic. I'm hoping I can find the perfect person. Maybe they're down the aisle." Others of you are not hopelessly romantic; you're cautiously optimistic. Maybe there's something over the course of these weeks that you'll learn that you have not known before.

Regardless of where you fall within the spectrum on romantic relationships or finding love, we all go a different and dizzying direction whenever it comes to this specific topic. Some of you adopt traditional relationships. Others of you move into polyamorous dating. Some of you are "deep liking" somebody at the office, while others are sitting in a situationship where you're reaping all of the benefits but not actually making any of the commitment.

Others have downloaded whatever dating app there is this month, and you're scrolling your way along, trying to filter out who will and who will not earn your affection. We go a smattering of different ways when this thing comes up, yet the truth is we all have an intrinsic longing for this thing. You are like my roommates from school and me.

So, this series is meant to be a service to you. I'll be really clear. I'm not diving into this because I just want to generate a bunch of "likes" or clicks or approval. That's not our desire. We genuinely want to be helpful over the course of this series, and we think the way we've crafted it will be so for you.

We know that people want to find relationships. There is a deep desire within you individually, more than likely, to find love, no different than ourselves. The reason I know that is because the statistics back it up. I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of research. Trust me; I have done it. I did not want to stand on this stage and talk about this topic and not have any credibility in the conversation. But to spare you all the data, I'll share a couple of things just so you know this is something we broadly want together.

One survey found that 85 percent of young adults believe "I don't need a long-term relationship to find fulfillment in my life." That's the majority of this room, yet, within that same survey, 83 percent (so, virtually the exact same number) said, "You know what? I do anticipate tying the knot at some point in my future." That feels wildly confusing. What are we saying when we read that survey? What we realize is people are saying, "You know what? I don't need love, but it sure would be nice to snuggle up to someone every single night and spend the rest of my life with them."

Another survey told us, according to Tinder (which is the most downloaded dating app among young adults), that Gen Z signaled within their relationship goals on their profile, more than any other intent, that they wanted long-term relationships. Why is that surprising? Because Tinder is not the place where you look for long-term relationships. Their interface is all about "Hot or not?" You swipe depending upon what they look like and what their first line is. It is not the place to look for long-term relationships, yet even people on Tinder are saying, "No, that's what I want."

To bring it outside of the world and into this room, we surveyed you, and 70 percent of you identified as single. Not to out you like that. I don't know how it leaves you feeling. What you need to know is that you also said, "The one serious topic we want to learn about is romance and relationships." You put those things together, and what you realize is you're saying, "I'm single, and I want love. Help me figure out the way forward on this."

It's clear. We want relationships. We want to find love. Yet, as you observe the romantic landscape of our day, you see that although we want to be in a relationship, we are more romantically disconnected and discouraged than any other group in history. According to Pew Research, 42 percent of young adults, people like you, have never been in a committed relationship.

That excludes camp crushes and summer flings, because a committed relationship would be one that stands the test of time, that says, "I'm in this for the long haul." Roughly half have never found themselves in that spot. Despite the fact that that's true, we know that nearly half of those would say, "I would commit to a long-term relationship, upwards of driving three hours, if I could find love today." That's how deep the desire goes.

The U.S. Census Bureau… Maybe you've heard this before, because this is passed around a lot when it comes to your generation. What you hear is that the average age of first marriage has moved farther and farther down the timeline. At one time it was 23 or 25 years old. Now it's 28 (and some odd change) for girls and 30 for guys. Meaning, it has grown increasingly later in life.

Why is that? It begs the question…If we have a desire for marriage, but there is a delay in that commitment, what's the issue? What's the reason? Well, I think it's pretty plain. While we want to find love, we do not know where to look. That's the summary of those two ideas together. Let me just say that's not your fault. I'm not looking at you and pointing a finger, being like, "Man! Everybody in a bygone era figured this thing out. How come you haven't figured it out?" That's not what I'm saying.

You have been dealt an interesting hand. You live at a time amidst the advent of technology and the globalization of society, which has created a really sophisticated dating dynamic. It's interesting, particularly with Gen Z. I know we have Millennials in the room as well, but Gen Z is kind of being identified as the "contradictory generation," because the day in which we live is confusing. It's difficult.

Though that is true, and you can't change the circumstances of your life, what's going on in our world, it is helpful for us to discern "If I have a desire for romantic connection, why, then, is there a delay in my romantic commitment?" I want to share a few reasons with you that I think could be helpful.

The first reason is there's a tendency to set unrealistic expectations. We paint a picture in our minds and make a checklist of all of the different things we want to find in our perfect "somebody." "He'll be this tall. He'll have this hair. He'll look this good." We're often waiting for that person to magically appear in our lives.

For you ladies, you're looking for someone who is ruggedly handsome. You want him to be emotionally mature and charmingly convincing. You're looking for someone who looks like Glen Powell, talks like Harry Styles, and processes like Timothee Chalamet. I'll break it to you: you're not going to find him. That guy does not exist. He, for sure, is not in this room, nor is he in any room, because the truth of the matter is that is a unicorn, and those do not exist.

Guys, you're much easier. You're looking for a Christian Sydney Sweeney. That's kind of the thing you're hoping to find. You laugh because you know it's true. We have set unrealistic expectations, and the truth of the matter is we're holding people to standards that we're not willing to hold ourselves to the same standard of, and because of it, we are delaying our ability to commit in relationship. I see some guys out there patting each other on the shoulder, like, "Yeah, man. That's you."

The second reason, for others of us, is we're training for variety. We live in a day where, by just the pull of your phone, you can peruse through thousands of different romantic suitors with just the swipe of your hand, and the thing is you can do it at any time and in any place you want. You can do it in an Uber. You can do it first thing in the morning when you wake up. (I don't recommend that.) You can do it when you're at the gym or sitting at the office. (I don't recommend that one either.)

Or (and we know this has actually happened) you can do it here in this room. We have seen people match with people at The Porch on a Tuesday night whom they've passed by a hundred times before yet did not have the courage nor boldness to walk up to and actually ask them for their number.

I'm not pointing fingers, but the evidence would say long gone are the days of the dangers of walking up to someone because they might be worth initiating with face to face. Instead, we're worried that might be too cringe, so we choose to avail ourselves to all of the endless options. We swipe our way along, looking at different people and evaluating whether or not they're worth our time. We give power to our preferences over the "dateability" of someone, and ultimately, we never commit for fear of missing out on someone better.

These are just a couple of reasons. Another one would be that we're waiting until we're financially settled, which I get. Getting married, settling down, having kids, and buying a house are all expensive to do, and the reality is you're not unwise for wanting to be financially prepared for marriage. That's a good thing. You should be financially prepared, but the issue is we're not waiting to be financially prepared; we're waiting to be financially prominent.

So many of you are not making yourself romantically available because you want to get that job or be in that department or move into that neighborhood or have this kind of car or take those specific trips. While you want to be dating and married at some point, you think, "Man! That is really inconvenient to my ambitions in life, so I'm just going to wait."

Others of you are indulging sexual desire, and you're not doing it within the confines of marriage as God would ordain; instead, you're doing it outside. Now, let me be clear. You're not typically associated with the hookup generation. That was Gen Xers, and even Millennials dipped into that themselves. But what you need to know is you are still considered sexually positive.

One specific researcher quoted that Gen Z, specifically, is the kinkiest generation yet, from hentai pornography to paranormal romance novels to friends with benefits. Sex is as much on the rise as it has always been. People would say, "But there's a sex recession." There's not a lust recession. That is still as much an issue today as we have seen in decades past.

Others of you are living in a post-pandemic society. We all are. Can we just acknowledge? COVID changed things. I know it's weird to talk about, because that happened back then, and we don't really like to look in the rearview, but the truth is it changed everything about the way you live your day. It changed so much of what we do and where we work and where we live. Today, there are more remote work arrangements than ever before, hours spent gaming, and young adults living with their parents than in times past.

I'm not making an enemy out of any of that, to be abundantly clear, but I think it's important for us to acknowledge the fact that there is likely a correlation between the increase of those things and an increase we're also seeing of individualization, sexual dormancy, and friendlessness. We're seeing that as we find fewer and fewer opportunities to engage with other people and meaningfully connect, so, too, we are losing the skill set to socialize in a way that will lead to relationship.

Others of you are adopting alternative relationship structures. Things like poly dating, ethical non-monogamy, and open relationships are more prevalent now than ever, and while it seems to make logical sense…you get a fuller sexual experience, you're able to explore a variety of different forms of love, and you're less pressured to fulfill your partner…what happens is when people spread themselves between their social circle, they find that they are losing the ability to commit and care for an individual person and serve their soul.

These are just some of the reasons we're seeing a desire for romantic connection ultimately met with a delay in romantic commitment. I don't know how that leaves you feeling. I know that as I processed it…read all of the articles, looked at all the data, studied the statistics (and I did a lot of that)…I realized that while we're looking for a good and right thing, we are looking in a bad and wrong way.

So, tonight, before we dive into all of the hard questions that we're going to investigate in this series, things like, "Why am I still single?" and "Is dating supposed to be this hard?" and "Why does this keep happening to me?" and "How far is too far…?" I think that before we get into any of those questions, we need to answer a preliminary question first, and that question is "Will I ever find love?"

The reality is, as we look at the romantic landscape, it does not look encouraging. When you consider where people are seeking instead, it doesn't look like anyone is ultimately discovering. So, tonight, I want to help you find it. I want you to find love. I think it's possible, but we have to look in the right place. To help us figure out where that place is, you can turn with me to Genesis, chapter 2.

I know that was a lot of setup. We'll get into the Scripture now. I just want to make sure we make a really good case for this before we get in. While you're turning there, let me just say this. Fundamental to everything we just walked through, the myriads of reasons for why we're doing the things we're doing, is actually a fundamentally good reason to seek love. It's three things.

First, we have a desire for connection, and not just casual connection but meaningful connection to other people. We want to link arms with someone and journey through life with them through the highs and lows. We want to race forward and find great companionship.

Secondly, we want fulfillment. Not just that someone makes us happy, but we want someone who can come alongside us and help us achieve and develop and grow and succeed in the things we think we've been called to; if you're a believer, particularly the things God has called you to.

Thirdly, we want intimacy. We want someone to accept us, and not just us on our best day but us on our worst day. We want people to move near to us. We want people to know us. We want to be loved. These are good things to desire. More than that, they're not just good reasons to seek love; they are God reasons to seek love.

We see that at the very beginning of the Bible. As he starts talking to the very first relationship in human history, he unpacks for them the very reasons he has brought them together, and they're these reasons. This is what we're going to see. In that first relationship, as man and woman find love together, they particularly find a love with God.

So, here's what we'll do. We'll look at a handful of verses in Genesis 1 and 2. We'll start in chapter 2. You can kind of track with me as we go. We're going to look at Genesis 2:18 first. It says, "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'"

Don't you just feel so seen by God when you read that? "It's not good for man to be alone." "Thank you, God. I agree. Please send someone soon." This Scripture is certainly speaking to your longing for relationship. That's not a bad thing, but you need to know that in Genesis 2, what's in view here is actually bigger than marriage.

God is speaking to something more significant that's not just available for the select few who find themselves in covenantal relationship but for all of his people who find themselves in God's family, because that word man in Hebrew is the word human, which means it's not good for humans to be alone. God is not saying it isn't good for a guy to be single; he's saying it isn't good for a person to be lonely.

Many of you hear that, and you're like, "Yeah, man. I get that. That makes complete sense to me," because in this room right now, we are here for a smattering of different reasons. Some of you are here because you want to see your community, and others of you are here because you're serving here tonight. Others of you are here because you want to meet someone new.

Others of you are here because you want to meet that special person who's going to be new. You're trying to stoke the fire. You're trying to make moves in this space. The reality is, whatever your reasons may be, we are all here, more than likely, because we want to meet other people, to engage with other people. We want to connect to other people.

God says, "Hey, that's a good thing. You want meaningful connection to other people? I want you to have meaningful connection to other people." When you read this account, particularly when you go back to Genesis 1 and look at the creation account, what you see is God gets into kind of a rhythm for how he's creating the world.

He creates day one, day two, day three, and every single day it's good. He makes light and dark, and it's good. He makes sea and sky, and it's good. He makes land and vegetation, and it's good. But when you get to the end of his creation narrative, he looks upon Adam and says, for the very first time, "That's not good. It's not good that man is alone." Which begs the million-dollar question…What makes something good? It's relationship. It's togetherness.

The reason we know that is because as God creates (you can go and track this), he creates everything with a corresponding companion. He creates light and dark, and to them he gives sun, moon, and stars. He creates sea and sky, and to them he gives fish and birds of the air. To land and vegetation, he gives beasts of the field and humanity itself.

When you get to Genesis 2 and zoom in, you see that God looks upon Adam and realizes "There's something not good here," and it's the fact that there's no good companion for him, so he makes Eve. Have you ever thought about that? Why did God make Eve for Adam? There's a whole world of created beings, other creatures. Adam kind of swipes left all the way through, and he realizes, "None of these are suitable for me."

God could have set him up with a horse. You know, cowboys use horses. That's a good partner animal. Maybe he wasn't a dog person. I guess man's best friend wouldn't really work as a suitable helper. It begs the question…What was the reason he needed a companion? Well, we see it. In Genesis 1, we get the answer. Verse 26: "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.' […] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

It's interesting. When you read the creation account, you see God speaks everything into being, but then he slows down when he comes to man and actually makes man himself. To dignify the ladies in the room, everything is of voice or dust, but when he makes her, he fashions her from Adam.

You see, God desires an intentional relationship with us. The reason he brings us to one another is because he knows what we need to know, which is we reflect God's love when we connect to others. One person cannot reflect God alone. We need each other for that purpose. It's through a relationship to someone that this is possible.

If you think about it, God is three co-equal, co-eternal persons, yet he is one in essence all at the same time. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What he is doing as he brings Adam to Eve is he brings, not three in one, but two to one, and he says, "I want you to experience the same depth and meaning of relationship that I myself experience, the kind of loving union I have in my own person, because I want you to relate to me."

I stand at the altar of weddings all the time. I get the privilege of officiating different couples that are tying the knot, and it's one of my favorite things to say to them. "Hey, what you're doing today is so significant for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons it's so significant is, as the two of you come together, you're actually getting to taste a little piece of what God experiences within himself."

You see, God consists of deeply meaningful and intimately connected relationships, and that's what you get to be a part of when you find yourself in marriage. That's why, if you want to find love, you have to find God, because he made it. I don't know if you've thought of that, but he's actually the one who came up with the idea. It's not just that he created love; you read that God is love. Three times in the Scriptures you see that God identifies as something, that his very essence is something…love, light, and spirit.

When he says, "I am love," he's saying, "As I've created all things, I have woven love into the fabric of it all." So, if you want to find love in your life, you need to find him. If your car breaks down, you're probably not going to pop the hood and start tinkering around if you don't know what's going on. Why? Because that could be consequential. It could actually set you back more money than if you just opened the user's manual and asked the people who actually knew what was going on.

That's what we have to do with love. God has hardwired into your heart this longing for connection, and the reason he did is he wants you to experience what he experiences. Isn't that amazing? How kind of God is that? Now, as I say that, I know what some of you are wondering. "Kylen, but I'm single. So, are you telling me that I'm never going to be able to understand the love of God because I don't have a spouse?" No, that's not what I'm saying. This, again, is not just about marriage; it's about relationship.

In Christ, we have found not just a salvation from sin but a salvation to one another. We have been intimately acquainted to one another. We've been united by his blood to other people. He has given you relationship, meaningful connection to other believers, which means, as Paul says in Galatians 3:28, there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ. Yes, marriage is one way of being meaningfully connected to someone, but it's not the only way of being meaningfully connected to someone.

Listen to me. You don't have to lower your standards to feel accepted. You don't have to rush to the altar with the wrong person, which some of you are doing right now, just so you can feel loved. You don't need to move in with your boyfriend or girlfriend so you can feel like you're finally adulting. You certainly don't need to indulge a situationship just to get your emotional needs met. That's a proliferate problem in the church.

With Jesus, you're not alone. You have us. Jesus is gathering a people to himself, and we're diverse…different languages, different colors, different personalities, different occupations, and different backgrounds. He's pulling us together, not just so we can be with him but so we can be with one another. There's meaningful connection right here. You can relate to the love of God because you can relate to our love. You don't have to search for it in a spouse, because you can seek it right here.

That's the first thing, and it's an amazing thing, but God doesn't stop there. While we see God's plan for meaningful connection, we also see that he has a purpose for that connection. You see, Adam had a job to do, yet he couldn't do that job alone. He needed a partner, which he doesn't find without a fair bit of effort, mind you.

Again, God set that guy up, he who was single for less time than anybody else in all creation, and God was like, "Hey, you'd better get to work, man. Name all of these animals." And he did it. He seized the moment. He wasn't just pining away about what might be. He leveraged his singleness to do what God was asking.

He knew, "I have a purpose in my life right now, and I'm going to fulfill it." Yet as he did it, he realized, "But, God, I've searched everywhere, and she's not here. Please help me, God. There's no one to support me, to partner with me, to serve as my companion on this mission you've given me." So God ultimately brings him Eve.

Now, what does he bring him Eve for? Well, we learn in Genesis 1:28. It says, "And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'"

You see, not only did God make man and woman in his image, but he made man and woman with his mission. God wants us to relate to his love through our union to one another, but he also wants us to cultivate his love on mission to this world. That's what God has invited us to be a part of, but here's the thing: in order to achieve that mission, we need someone else. That's why it says Adam needed a helper fit for him.

He needed someone to help him not just experience God's love but express God's love, which is your second point. When we experience the love of God, we express the love of God. So, Adam gets a helper. Now, ladies, don't bristle at the idea of helper. I don't have time to unpack this in depth, but what you need to know is the Hebrew there, which is ezer kenegdo, is used 21 times in the Old Testament, 16 of which are used of God himself.

He's a rescuer, deliverer, a savior to his people, and he is a helper. So, you are on par with the Lord's own self-identification in this moment. Meaning, she is not above Adam nor below Adam; she is side by side with Adam, because she is equal in dignity yet distinct in nature or role. It's kind of like when you go and put up a tent.

Anytime you start the process of putting up a tent, what do you do? You pull all of the poles out, you put them together, and then you identify those first two crossbeams because you know those two beams together provide structure. If you didn't have them both, what would you have? Not a tent, probably a sail, which isn't useful for providing shelter or structure for anyone. You need both. You need not just one but two that are equally long and equally strong for the job at hand.

That's what God has done in giving Eve to Adam. He has given him someone who is opposite of him but equal to him, distinct yet equal, because the potential of one depends on the presence of the other. Adam's potential depends on the presence of Eve. Now, let me be clear. His potential depends on her not in the sense that she exists to fulfill him. That's a crazy idea, this thought that "I must find her so she will complete me." That is not at all what this is talking about, nor should it be any sort of expectation on your life, ladies.

If you have a man in your life who is looking at you and saying, "You must complete me. You must awaken all the dormant desire within my soul. You must curb every craving I have," get away from that guy, please, because that is an unbearable expectation to put on another person. You cannot bear it, so you will ultimately disappoint him. That's not what this is talking about. This is not talking about helping fulfill someone's being but helping fulfill someone's calling.

Adam has a calling on his life, so God gives him Eve so he can fulfill it. That's what she's doing, and that's what we do for one another, not just as husbands and wives but as brothers and sisters to each other in Christ. This is the amazing thing. This is not solely reserved for whenever you find love, whenever you say, "I do," whenever you hear the wedding bells and march forward into marriage. This is not reserved for that moment.

You see, we have received Christ's love, so now we can share that love with the world. We can continue the work of our first father and mother. We can cultivate the earth. We can take our classrooms and make them into environments where children flourish. We can make our nursing rounds, and as we go, we can carefully see the people we're taking care of.

We can hop on Zoom for that one-on-one or that team meeting, and we can make sure there's time not just for feedback but for encouragement. We can organize our teams, and we can make sure that within our team environments there's time for celebration as well. We want to be people who have received love and share love, who have experienced love and now express that love and bring forth flourishing into the rest of the world.

This is what God is calling you into, yet so many of us are waiting for that partner to come along into our lives so we can ultimately do what's fulfilling and feel fulfilled. God is saying you don't have to wait for that. You already have people around you who can help you in that work. You don't have to pair off with a person to feel fulfilled, because God has already united you into a purpose that is fulfilling. That's his story.

The world was absent of love, and Christ came to give that love, not just so we could hoard that love or keep that love but so we could extend that love, so we could share it to other people. That way, they would feel meaningfully connected to us the same way we are to one another, and they could begin to be a part of the mission which we ourselves have been assigned to.

Now, as I say all that, here's the thing. I know some of you are here, and you're like, "Brother, I thought this was a dating series. This feels like a bait and switch. I showed up expecting you to give me practical help on how to fix what's going on over here or quick solutions so I could find someone special. This isn't what I thought it would be.

Listen. I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I am somewhat discontent with this. Sure, meaningful connection with other people and not particularly with one only. For sure. I'm okay with that. You know what? Yeah, it is crazy for me to think that one person will ever fulfill me. God probably has a purpose for my life that is going to be more fulfilling.

I agree to that, but here's the thing, Kylen. Before you move to this third one and start talking to me about intimacy, what you need to realize is I don't just want that spiritually speaking; I want that romantically, please." God gets that, because that's where the passage ends. He's not diminishing your desire for love, your longing for romance.

As he continues, he actually shows you a picture of intimacy the likes of which we should all hope to be true of our lives. We see it in Genesis 2:24-25. After God creates Eve, he brings her down the aisle of that very first wedding and hands her over to the groom, Adam. The wedding bells sound, and they go on their merry way, and we read this.

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife…" That is romantic. "…and they shall become one flesh." More romantic. "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." That's about as intimate as it gets. They were naked and unashamed. What a beautiful picture. They're fully exposed to one another (they have nothing to hide), and they're fully embraced by the other (they have nothing to regret). Don't you want that?

It lasts about one page for this couple. They don't make it very far into the marriage before they realize they're not enough. Perfect relationship, perfect connection to each other, a perfect purpose to fulfill with one another, perfect intimacy to enjoy together, yet it ultimately falls to pieces around them. Why? Because they forgot God's love, and they found self-love. When they did, sin entered into the world, and it broke everything.

It took their connection and shattered it. It took their purpose, all the fulfillment they were going to find, and stole it. It took their intimacy, the beautiful picture of what we just read, and they lost it. If we don't find a love with God, then we will not find a love like we want. We have to start with him. That's where we have to begin, and that's why we've started here this evening.

I remember years ago, when I was working in a different young adult ministry, we would have these prayer and worship nights. There was one evening in specific where we looked at the room of about 500 people and said, "Hey, we want you to write down whatever you need to confess to the Lord, something you need to surrender to him tonight. Maybe you haven't told him. You can just write it down. You don't have to say it out loud; you can just say it to him, and you can leave it here and move forward. Maybe it's the first time of honest confession in your life."

So, we watched people write them down and leave these behind. As we took them and prayed and privately processed, what we found was heartbreaking, because what we saw written on these confession cards were sins of lost love, broken trust, lustful addiction, and hurting hearts. What was wild about it, so overwhelming to me, was it more than doubled the second-most confessed sin that people left behind. People had been hurt in their pursuit of love.

I don't want you to experience the same. The truth is many of you have, and the truth is many of you will, yet if you want to find love, you must find God. You have to find him yourself, and you have to find somebody who has found him too. We have to look for love where we forgot love. That's the final point: you find love where you forgot love. We forgot it in that we forgot God, the giver of it. We left him in the garden. We chose our own way. As we forgot him, we lost everything, yet God, in his gracious kindness, looks at us and says, "I'll come for you again."

I know this may not have been the start to the series that you were thinking it was going to be, but it's the place that we need to be. Don't worry, we're going to get to how to date and who to date and how to break up and how to move on. All of that stuff will come, and it will be easy if we get this right. We have to find love, and we find it by finding him. The reason we know that is because when we had forgotten about God before, God did not forget about us in that he sent Christ to come get us.

He sent our husband, our King, to come after us, to fight for us, to die for us, and to rise for us so we might not live a life where we're meaningfully disconnected but meaningfully connected, both to him and to one another; that we might step into a reality where our world is one filled with fulfillment because we live a life that is bigger than that of ourselves, where we're racing toward the things of God instead.

Because of Christ, we know we can find love again because love has found us. Have you found Christ? If you have not, then the rest of this is useless. You have to begin with him if you want to end with love. Let me pray that you would.

God, thank you for tonight, for your Word, the sufficiency of it, the truth of it, the fact that it meets us where we are but pushes us where we need be. That's how gracious you are, Jesus. You're full of compassion. You meet us right here in whatever sort of circumstance we walked in with tonight. You're not disappointed. You're not angry. You're not mad or upset.

You see us where we are, and in compassion you stoop to meet us, yet in your care, you take us from that place and into one that's better. You move us into your likeness. You lead us into your love. So it's to you, Jesus, that we say, before we do anything else… Before we pursue a relationship with someone else, we want to pursue a relationship with you.

We have to get this right if we're going to get anything else right. So, God, we humbly sit here and say it's you that we want. We have found our love again, and it's you we worship. We're grateful, God, that in you we have all we need, and we're expectant that in you we'll find more than we could ever want. It's in your name we pray, amen.