Boy Meets Girl / CRF / Douglas Wilson

so um i have a lot of random things that i'm just going to dump in front of you and and have you you can sort them out uh later but there is a thread that ties them all uh together in ephesians 5 it says therefore as the church is subject unto christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything husbands love your wives even as christ also loved the church and gave himself for it so the bible says that husbands are to love their wives and it says that wives are to respect their husbands be submissive to their husbands respect their husbands in uh one of the things we have to get on the table the first thing we have to get on the table is that i am really fairly certain that half of the people in this room have no idea what's going on in the other half of the room and vice versa all right um this is a same planet different worlds kind of situation god has made this is a divine sense of humor divine sense of humor thing uh where uh what if you if you're hanging out with a group and you say oh we're we're all friends and we're i'm confident that we're all interacting at a an asexual bipedal carbon unit level if you know what i'm talking oh we're just we're just friends we're we're just friends um that information is false right that's not true it does it doesn't work that way um god has made men a certain way and it and we all speak english so there's an optical illusion that's created where you think that when you're talking to the other person the same sort of thing is going on in their head as is going on in your head when you say these things so there are all sorts of opportunities for monstrous misunderstandings which people don't vocalize for years because they're afraid of looking stupid or blowing up a friendship or blowing up or you know a potential relationship or whatever so i'm going to begin i'm going to begin with certain principles that i'm i'm going to talk about how to navigate your way from these principles to an intelligent intelligent approach to courtship pairing off finding someone etcetera and without leaving a wake of damaged individuals in behind you that's not good so the text in the text i read we'll begin with this men and women are different and they don't understand the depth of the differences at all okay they're very different and they don't understand the depth of the differences at all god has intended these differences to be complementary they're supposed to be they're supposed to harmonize but because of sin because sin entered the world they don't harmonize right they don't readily harmonize think of it this way there are men sing one note when women sing another note and they're completely different notes one's a c one's a g but they they're part of the same chord if you're hitting your pitch then and the other person's hitting their pitch it harmonizes if you're going along singing sharp and she's going along singing flat or vice versa there's nothing worse okay nothing worse you've been at church have you not when someone three rows back launched into singing a harmony that wasn't really [Laughter] they they thought they knew it and they didn't know it and it's easy to sing unison all right so everybody ever if we sing in unison everybody sings the same note everybody goes along it's safe it's secure not risky and but it's it's relatively boring when someone sings harmony and they're hitting their notes it's beautiful it's wonderful if someone tries to sing harmony and they're missing and then the people all singing melody are missing it's really really bad in a bad marriage what happens is either a husband is requiring his wife to sing unison with him or the wife is requiring the husband to sing unison with her we're going to operate the same way and it just is dull all right sometimes these bad marriages are not horrendous they don't wind up in the counselor's office but they're but they're dull right god wants men and women together doing distinctively masculine and distinctively feminine things and he wants you to hit your pitch he wants you to be hitting your note the difficulty is and this is um the situation that you're in is that you have grown up most of you in christian homes where the pitch was established by your folks or your your family your your family had a certain uh pitch and and you you are out on your own at university or at the cal at new st andrews and you are figuring out what my voice what my pitch what how should i be what what what does the bible require of a godly man what does the bible require of a godly woman and then on top of that what does what do our cultural expectations require of a masculine man what do our cultural expectations require of a feminine woman and so on all of that is involved in hitting your pitch and you're learning how to do it now one of the problems is that when someone is first learning anything taking less driving lessons guitar lessons golf lessons um there will be all sorts of times when the instructor will say no don't hold the don't hold the club that way no don't do it that way no you don't shift that way no don't do that with the clutch no don't you know they said no no no that's what lessons are for the first year so no no not that not that no especially not that and you are you are in independence being an independent guy lesson right now and you are being you're living in being an independent woman lesson right now and you're and you're what do i do how do i respond how do i do i laugh at that do i respond to it do i take the initiative to invite people to a part what do i do what do i do and and then if someone is trying to be masculine there will be times when they miss and it can be kind of funny right and it's also funny the other way right if someone's trying to be feminine they're not but we should be um sympathetic with one another because this is something we're called to do you're you're called to learn how to sing so that it's in if i started here ephesians 5 24 therefore as the church is subject unto christ so wives let the wives be to their own husbands the bible does not teach that women should submit to men the bible does not teach women across the board submitting to men across the board it teaches wives be to their own husbands when a wife when a daughter is submissive to her father and when a wife is submissive submissive to her husband what that does is protects her from having to submit to all the other men in the world right it's be submissive to your own husband and husbands are to be devoted to one woman husbands love your wives as christ loved the church okay that's this that's the setup men and women run on different kinds of fuel they run it's like diesel and regular okay they run on different kinds of fuel and you can see this from this passage in ephesians five men run on respect women run on love men run on respect that's the that's what they that what's that's what runs their um their car women run on love now i'm not saying that men don't need to be loved or the women don't need don't need to be respected i'm talking about emphasis okay i'm talking about emphasis what when when paul turns to the husbands and wives of ephesus and he says now husbands remember to do this he tells them to love now when the bible tells when the bible tells the shepherds to feed the sheep you can infer from that that shepherds need to be told some from time to time to feed the sheep and you can also infer that sheep need food okay shepherds need to be reminded and sheep need food husbands love your wives well you can infer from that that husbands need to be told to do it right need to be reminded i remember eight years ago talking to a newly relatively newly married man and he stopped by in the bookstore where i was where i was and he bought some flowers for his wife and they were sitting on the table there before he went home and he was staring at the flowers and he said you know i don't have any idea why they like these things [Laughter] i'm just doing what i'm told a marriage counselor somebody told me to do this i'm just punching the clock here jesus well never mind so he he needs to be instructed he needs to be told love your wife love you do thoughtful things thoughtful things what are you talking about um and then on the other hand so so men need to be taught to love their wives but you can also infer from this that wives need to be loved husband husbands are being reminded to love their wives because they need to be reminded and the wives need to be loved you can also and that's that's diesel right women the women are told to respect and honor their husbands that's regular so what um you've probably seen this scenario maybe in your family maybe with a girlfriend from high school maybe you know there's let's say someone of your acquaintance is teamed up with some guy dirt bag some dirt bag who treats her like dirt okay she's been in this relationship with him for a year and a half and just kicks her in the head every chance he gets and finally finally finally she breaks up with him and all her friends and family are rejoicing [Music] they're having parties they're exchanging gifts finally finally and then six weeks go by and then she's back with him and everybody goes why and then you somebody goes to her and says why are you back with him he treats like treats you like dirty kicks you in the head what's the answer i love him now do you respect him she would say eyes would get white are you kidding me he's a jerk i'll cook meals for him i'll have i'll bear his children i'll marry him i will follow him to the ends of the world but he said he's a dope he's the word he's the worst now she does she respect him no not not even a little bit right this is because women are capable of loving someone they don't think anything of all they don't have a high opinion of at all but the bible doesn't tell you to love your husband there's not one place in the new testament where wives are told to love their husbands it's okay right not a sin there's one there's one place in titus where it says the older women are to teach the younger women to be husband lovers but it's a compound word in greek and the word is phileo the the word for love and it's i would render it as to be into husbands and into kids to be domestic but the verb here where the husbands are taken aside and told to love well women are taken aside and told to respect and that's because men are told love because they're generally speaking not very good at it and generally speaking the woman they're with needs it women are told to respect because generally speaking they're not very good at it and the man they're with needs it right because that's the kind of fuel he runs on so this means that when you're thinking about possible a possible future husband or wife one of the things you should be thinking of is do i respect him do i not do i like him not do i love him but do i respect him that's that's threshold number one if you don't respect him if you don't respect his love for god if you don't respect his worth work ethic if you don't respect his knowledge to the word if you don't respect him run just run save me a lot of counseling hours and if you keep my schedule clear flipped around men if if you are you you want to find a woman who is understands what the bible teaches about this and understands that she has a responsibility to respect you just as you have a responsibility to love her you can see you can see this natural tendency in men and women in boys and girls if you if if a little boy let's say a five-year-old boy five six-year-old boy um and a five or six year old girl let's say that things are rough at home um and the the kids are not getting the attention they need or or desire or whatever and so the kids are sort of running on fumes if you know what i mean by that what what starts to happen well little boys brag and little girls flirt little boys brag little girls flirt and and the boy gets on the high dive in the summer at the pool and he invites everybody for the three surrounding counties to look at me look at me why because he wants somebody to tell him he's so brave so strong so courageous such a good dive such a good diver right i've never seen better right thanks mom up again he what he's doing is he's wanting people to look at him because he's angling for what he's angling for respect he wants respect he wants to be tough he wants to be you know and this is remember what i said that you don't understand and i remember the pinnacle this is one of the high points of childhood one of the high points of boyhood not not the top thing but it was right up there when you could come in from the playground at school after recess with blood on you [Laughter] and then and then the girls say that's twisted that's twisted that makes it even better i should i tell you a story maybe maybe this will establish my ethos maybe it will maybe it will wreck it forever right so one time i was um fooling around in some old deserted buildings that um that i shouldn't have been playing there but but i was and i was climbing through a window it had an old rusty window frame in it and i sliced my thumb open you can probably still see the scar anyway i slice my thumb open uh on this and it was a beaut it was a beauty and i walked home i had blood all over all over my arm and i remember finding i remember on the way home finding a comic book on the road and so i stopped and read it and then i then i snuck into the house washed all the blood off it probably needed stitches anyway but i got a band-aid and did it did it myself i couldn't look it up on youtube but i but i so i i wrapped it up but then after a few days um it it kind of dried out but was still gnarly i remember taking the band-aid off at school and showing it to the girl in a destination we popped it open now what was i what was i didn't think any of this through but obviously but there was some but there was something i wanted i wanted to be tough i wanted to be strong i wanted to be not afraid of blood i wanted to be almost i wanted to be all those things right and there half the world thinks that that kind of thinking is demented but it's not it's normal and but then you then you go the other way you've got similar similar challenges similar issues of misunderstanding now having set the framework men and women are looking for different things men um are instructed to love because they are generally not good at it wives need love women are respected instructed to respect because they're generally not good at doing that and men need it and little boys and girls will angle for the kind of um attention they need so if if a stranger comes over to someone's house and the little girl is all over his lap then that tells you that she's got a blinking fuel gauge on her dashboard and mom and dad need to be pouring it on because she's starting to look for attention from random individuals who come into our life and at when she's a little girl she feels like she she's being a nuisance and she kind of knows it but she's enough of a needy bucket to not to just persist anyway and she feels like she's just being a total nuisance that makes her more insecure that makes her more needy and so she does it worse the next time and then when she becomes a young woman and when adolescence hits all of a sudden this person who's been starved for masculine attention for 13 years starts getting a bunch of it what could go wrong okay what could go wrong she uh all of a sudden guys are coming around voluntarily and whoa i'm i must be and then this uh twisted sort of i need i need respect and i need love sort of game starts uh being played and everybody winds up creamed everybody winds up damaged so how do you avoid that when you um oh there's several places i could go let me do this picture a zone here all the guys are over here all the girls are over here and there's a demilitarized zone in the middle okay and and we'll call i'm gonna call this the zone of vulnerability the zone of vulnerability when uh you're in the zone of vulnerability in a relationship when you can't get if if the relationship breaks up and you and it doesn't work out somebody gets hurt and depending on if it's devastated or mildly disappointed mildly disappointed isn't hurt but if there's devastation hurt i've got to process this i need i need to uh seek pastoral counsel i need to do something then you were in the zone and then out now god intends for men and women to live inside that zone of vulnerability it's not the place where you're not supposed to live it's a place that you're not supposed to live unless you're tied off with a covenant okay when when when a man or woman divorce they were inside that they were inside the zone of vulnerability and when they divorce everybody's and everybody's devastated that tells you they were inside the zone of vulnerability and god wants us to live there but he wants us to be secured and protected as much as is possible in a fallen world and that means covenants made in a church before witnesses get everybody all your friends together did you hear me say that yes i heard you say that until death do us part yes i promise and we mean it and then to live in a bible-believing subculture that holds you to those sorts of promises so it's okay to it's it's okay to live inside the zone right but it's not okay to wander in and inside and outside of the zone sort of on your own because that's the way you navigated junior high you decided to continue in high school and decided to continue in college you're in and out and in and out and you've got a one one heartbreak after another now there are different ways to understand this there's in the zone of vulnerability there are some people are very susceptible they get in the zone easily other people guard their do a better job guarding their heart and they don't get into the zone that all that easily but if you get into the zone without a covenant without a promise without some sort of commitment then you're you're engaging in risky uh uh emotionally risky behavior now you i want to distinguish between a um well let's say let's say a girl moves to town and joins the church youth group we'll call her susie lord's choice we can call her that because she's very attractive and she's all of a sudden the will of god for about five or six guys and they're all praying and they're praying fervently non-christians before non-christians ask a girl out or propose to a girl they take a couple of drinks um christian guys get the will of god so he asked susie well um well let's say she moves to town and uh the first sunday at church she smiled at one of the guys and said hi isn't that the worst it's just it's terrible when they do that in fact if we could sum the whole thing up don't do that [Laughter] just joking so let's say she smiles and says hi and this guy is in the zone okay that's not a relationship problem that's a personal problem the guy the guy who gets in the zone that way is the kind of guy who who falls in love with the models in a talbot's catalog right he he's his mom left it open oh look at her and so he's in the zone that's a personal problem he needs to grow up you know he needs to fix that but a relationship problem is where you are uh you're you well this is a courtship culture so we don't we're not dating we're just hanging out and then we find ourselves hanging out more and more and then we find ourselves gravitating toward each other and then after eight months you've got situations uh develop where both of both the guy and the girl are all emotionally tangled up with each other and they neither of them would answer this question the same way if you asked what's the status of your relationship neither one has any id any idea of what the other person would say because they haven't talked about it and they've just sort of drifted into the zone and that means and what you have in the and let's say this is um something we have to budget for even within the the church but it's especially the case outside the church let's say they are sexually active they're sexually involved then they break up what you have basically is a divorce without the attorney's fees no you don't have to pay attorneys but that's everything everything else is there okay everything else is there all the all the hurt all the baggage all the issues are there so you want to avoid you you want to avoid that and so you want clarity and clarity means that you shouldn't drift into relationships because i'll just put it this way if it's following the path of least resistance is not a good plan right because guys like being with girls they're attracted to girls like being with guys they're attracted to and it's easy just to let it ride it's easy just to drift into a situation and then all of a sudden you don't know where you are you don't know what this deal i remember years ago talking to a young man and he um he described to me the situation he was in he said i've have a girlfriend and as he laid it out for me i it was became very apparent to me that if he went home if he went and sought her out that evening and proposed she would say yes that's where she was but he said after having been at this place he asked me his question was how do you determine the will of god for how do you know some how do you know right well that's a question he should have asked way earlier because god has built men to initiate god has built women to respond that means that men initiate instinctively and it means that women respond instinctively and the men don't need a reason to initiate the women don't need a reason to respond it's just built in if a guy shows attention you there's a and he's at all attractive there's a tendency to want to respond and if a guy sees a girl who's at all attractive he wants to initiate especially if he thinks that other guys might be interested and he wants to get dibbies i know i'm not going to graduate for three years but she's cute and there's a lot of schmoes in this town i got post up under the basket and everybody stay away well you can't you can't do that so but there's a tendency the guy wants to initiate because god has built the man to initiate god has built the woman to respond but we do that reflexively and as christians we ought to do it thoughtfully we ought to do it bringing every thought captive we should be understanding what we're doing as we're as we're doing it in the um so this means well there's a lot of things it means one one of the things that you um if a guy if a guy is praying about a girl and he's thinking about her he so let's say a guy approaches a girl's dad and says can i get to know your daughter better let's say they're doing the courtship thing um the the guy needs to be well ahead of where the girl probably is because the girl has no responsibility at all to have been thinking about him in that way at all but he before he initiates really ought to have thought about it because otherwise he's like a dog chasing a fire truck he doesn't know what to do if he catches it it stops and there he is bite the tire what do i do so there are guys who initiate but there's they don't they've not followed through but if they're if they've thought about these things prayerfully if they they know that they're attracted to her they know the the her commitment to christ they they're in the same group a guy is in a position to navigate groups in such without looking creepy or obvious he's in a position to get a lot of his questions settled before he says anything okay she doesn't have to be in that position she can be starting from a standing stop on this and it's his job if he's if he knows his mind generally it's his job to win her and he gets the green light from her dad he's he says this is this is where i'm going he doesn't what he shouldn't do is be the kind of guy that um stands around you want to hang out sure and then i don't know what do you want to do if he wants to initiate he should initiate things he should decide things he should go somewhere we he should have plans and and he should have plans he should have thought out his intentions for her not with an absolute 100 certainty but enough um that he is not flabbergasted when the interest is the interest is returned all right one other thing and then i'll we can bring this in for questions in in first corinthians 11 it says oh where to go uh in first corinthians 11 11 8 it says for the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man neither was the man created for the woman but the woman for the man for this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels and we won't go into that but the man is not made for the woman but the woman was made for the man and the man was neither was man created for the woman but the woman for the man so uh paul here but remember where i started in ephesians um 524 it it's not saying here that the women were created for the men right it's a woman submits to her own husband it doesn't say the women are made for the men and deny that with the men for the women it's the woman is made for the man not the man for the woman so you can see this basic orientation when you picture envision picture a a a novel written by a man for a male audience okay written by man with a male readership in view what is the book about it could be this could be a louis lamour western or it could be uh classic literature homer's odyssey okay it could be so what's the book about well it's about the war or the battle or getting the cattle back or finding the gold it's about the mission okay it's about the mission and if a woman enters the novel and she enters it and what's her role besides decoration that's offensive well i don't care so what's her role well her role is to help get the gold back or to help win the battle or to help the the woman's cr god created adam and put him in the garden and then he created the to attend the garden and then he created eve to tend the gardener so the gardener was made to attend the garden and the woman was created to tend the gardener okay so the relationship is like this he's focused on the mission she's focused on him then picture a book written by a woman for a feminine audience it could be a harlequin romance it could be pride and prejudice okay the relationship is the plot so first they meet each other and they like each other kind of and then they don't like each other something comes between them and then it's resolved and they like each other again and that was wonderful and the guy is looking at this and where are the motorcycles where i need motorcycles and the perennial what movie shall we watch well this is all the heart part of this the the woman's orientation to the man is different than the man's orientation to the woman and necessarily that's one of the that and that difference is that one of the notes that you have to figure out how to hit the man has to learn how to sing that note in a godly way and the woman has to learn how to sing her note in a godly way but with the right man with the right woman because it's not going to work if you get someone who just isn't like that so lots more to say but let's uh try to let's chase some of the questions you might have okay so uh dating courtship so we have a lot of people that come to moscow from places where courtship is a foreign thing or dating is important thing and they might show this as a new new phenomenon um and sometimes dad's in the picture sometime uh not can you talk a little bit about just trying to learn some of the even moscow unique christchurch unique cultural cues yeah thank you one of the first things to realize is i think it's fair to say that the court courtship culture by and large has has taken root here so it's a set of cultural expectations it is not a set of rules we don't have we don't have church rules on courtship we don't it's more like a cultural a set of cultural expectations that's the first thing it's and if someone says what's the rule book say about how close you can sit to her on the third visit um then you're doing it wrong so that's that's the first thing the second thing is i define well there's different ways i define biblical not biblical courtship i've often defined courtship as opposed to recreational dating as a system of pairing off where you have six idiots involved instead of two so there you go um um and what is that well there i've seen courtships from hell i've seen you know people doing it wrong and i've seen people who do the recreational dating thing we're saying balance people and they get together and everything's and everything's fine so it's not there's not a rule but it's a general pattern one of the things i encourage and it's ideal if it's dad for the for you young ladies it's ideal if it's dad you need someone in your life who remember remember how i said that the young man the young man who's interested in you doesn't think the way you do at all and you need a wiser older guy who cares for you and loves you who remembers thinking like he's thinking okay and is prepared to chase him out of the house for thinking it so if oh dad he's just wonderful we had talk he talked he told me this and he told me that and so and dad remembers i remember what i know what's going on right he is that's a line right he's feeding her a line um and then he had takes billy aside and tells him that well that that kind of thing if you don't have if dad's checked out and is not involved then an uncle or an older brother or you know just someone that is in your life that can speak into your into the choices you're making from a masculine perspective that you can trust that's basically uh the active involved authority of the father and mother is basically the heart of courtship and when you don't have those ingredients then you make shift with what you've got yeah one of the other things we have as i say especially at new st andrews you have a lot of people that are living together roommates you do something everyone kind of knows about it or at least know about it can you talk about what it looks like to be a good friend sometimes you need to not spread rumors not gossip sometimes you need to confront someone who shouldn't be doing what they're doing you give a few principles there for what it looks like to be specifically these same-sex friendships yeah like watching out for each other so um when you whenever you go to confront someone about or admonish them exhort them whatever it is ambrose beerus defined exhort as putting the conscience of another upon the spit and roasting it to a nut brown discomfort so i mean biblical expectation not that kind of exhortation but whenever you're going to someone to admonish or or correct you're writing a check okay you're writing a check and you need to be more you need to know more than that it's your checkbook with your name in the upper left-hand corner you don't want to be the person who says how can i be out of money i still have checks left but it doesn't work like that if you're going to talk to someone about them being stupid or foolish you want to have deposits in that account you want them to know you and trust you and have the kind of relationship where you can write a check for 10 bucks and the check will clear right they will listen to you but if you've been fighting with somebody you know over the course of the term about where he leaves his breakfast bowl and he all of a sudden is interested in a girl and furthermore to complicate things you're interested in the same girl i can't tell you how many times i've had a conversation with a young man who's should i talk call her dad and i had the week before that same conversation with that guy's roommate about the same girl um this happens lots it happens lots so if if you are at all competitive or if there's any other envy issues going on make sure that you check you know get the beam out of your own eye before you try to do eye surgery and then make sure that you really do have your friend's best interest in mind when you uh when you're talking to them and don't have your filters on a on an ultra fine mesh you remember i said she said hi and smiled and the guy's in the zone well that's not good but neither is it good for her to smile and say hi and have all that guy's roommates rebuking him because she smile at you and you better call her dad i'm telling you as your pastor you better not you mentioned this needy bucket person and this can be the guy or the girl so let's say someone's hearing that and recognizing okay i think i my my love levels levels are lower my respect levels are low and how would you counsel that kind of person to be they're wanting to be married but are recognizing they have these deficiencies in themselves right this is going to sound like a jesus juke answer but i would really encourage you in that if you realize those deficiencies or insecurities in yourself to pursue christ give yourself to worship give yourself to reading of the word give yourself you want to be a disciple of christ and you want to ask him to be filling in those things that ultimately another human being can't fill in any way so if you if you go into a relationship or into a marriage and you're a needy bucket and oftentimes needy buckets marry needy buckets they just have different needs and they're both uh leaky needy buckets they are just it's like two swimmers both drowning and that clutch each other and go down and go down together so you want to make sure that you begin by asking god to restore you and to fill those things that that can be filled by him by as you just simply grow in the word now that's the basic spiritual identity component there's another component where there are certain things that can only be fulfilled by an earthly partner right companionship children sexual relationship friendship all of those things when god gives you that he is giving you something that's very good he who finds a wife finds a good thing it says in proverbs but it is a secondary or a tertiary good the fundamental good has to be you need to be walking with god if if you're walking with god basically you can't make a good omelet with rotten eggs and if there's something wrong with your egg if you're you want to get that fixed before you go into any any relationship all right last question i'll turn it over to the audience um you mentioned the guy who needs to know he needs to be farther along than the woman is before he approaches her what kind of advice would you give to a guy who's trying to how do you find out if you know kind of thing so um this is augustine once said love god and do as you please so um and there's a there's a world i could probably write an article or a book on this but this is basically how do you walk in the will of god uh generally picture uh picture this lectern this the surface area of this lectern as the will of god for all christians and off the lectern is not the will of god for any christian so you don't have to pray about whether to sell cocaine you don't have to pray about whether to break your contract you don't have to pray about whether to become a hitman for the mafia it's off the table so on the on the tape on the surface is anything that is permissible or lawful for any christian okay so uh sometimes it's not lawful to marry her as john the baptist said to her herod you can't have her it's off the table but if it were on the table let's say you're been praying about you know susie q and three different girls or let's say you're a girl and you've been approached by different guys and you're pr and all of them are seem to be stand up guys and okay what do i what do i do how do i decide um and because it'd be lawful to marry any of them okay so it'd be lawful so they're they're on the surface area they're within the as far as what the bible says any of them are okay but on the lectern on and off has to do with sin not sin or sin and righteousness decisions that you make within the revealed will of god can still be wise or unwise so you want to be making wise decisions that are lawful okay wise decisions that are lawful and there are three things that if you want to make a wise decision and this applies to actually anything job offers where you go to grad school uh how you make decisions about relationships that applies to everything there are three things that you need to ask and answer for yourself and the illustration i use as a odd mix metaphor is drill three holes in the surface area stick a dowel in each one of the holes then walk around on that surface area and when the three dowels line up go god doesn't steer parked cars you don't just sit there parked asking god to direct you or asking god to drop a woman out of this out of heaven um however many country songs say that that's how it happens anyway did it hurt when you felt yeah right so when you so when you those three things line up then you go and those three things are what are your abilities what are your opportunities and what are your desires what can you do what will they let you do and what do you want to do those are the three questions and love god and do as you please so psalm 37 4 says delight yourself in the lord and he will give you the desires of your heart that's love god and do as you please so you're you've surrendered the whole thing to god god i don't want to get out of your will at all but i want to be moving so that you can steer where i'm going and then the direction initial direction i pick has to do with abilities opportunities and desires so on abilities guys since you're the ones initiating one of the questions i've asked young men frequently is can your pickup truck pull that trailer do you have the horsepower all right remember i said it's not any woman and any man there are fine christian men who would be miserable husbands to certain women because let's say the woman's more educated or much more energy much you know quicker brighter more intelligent right and he's going to have a hard time leading her if that that's not a good he can be a good guy and it not be a good match right he can be a good guy and not be a good match he doesn't have the ability to do that and and that's where you need friends and family to say i don't i don't think so or of course opportunity she might fix that problem for you no let me think about it no let me pray about it no so what are your opportunities but if you know if if you say yeah i think i could lead her i think i could love her and lead her and i think i could do that and i think that if i pursued her i think there's a decent chance that she would respond and it would work out if i took the initiative i think this could happen and then so the third question is uh do you want to right what do you want to do and then and this is why christian men need to grow a backbone take a risk you you you cannot snivel your way into figuring out what she would say if you were to say you know if you were to indicate a hypothetical if i were you know we were supposed to and then and then go home and try to read the tea leaves and ask all your roommates about how how do we interpret this if you want to know if she's going to go with you to the mission field then ask ask her right all right questions asking for a friend all of these uh okay if if guys um i would say don't try because when when women try to make men be respectable it's just disrespect okay steer clear of them if don't feel sorry for them poor little buddies i mean but seriously um if the the biggest danger that christian women have that get get them dragged into sorry relationships is they try to be mom they try to supply all the encouragement that he should have gotten from his mom and his dad all the way through high school and he didn't and and her heart goes out to him and he and he he keeps failing and he keeps stumbling and you you the need is not the call you can see the need you can see the problem you can identify you could probably explain it all to him if you were in a position to but it's just going to make a mess if you try right if you have if you have a brother you know not um not a brother in christ but let's say a brother who's in the same circle and you're talking you could ask you know your brother or uncle or your dad you could ask someone to say something or encourage him in the ways that he needs but there is absolutely no way for you to do do that without miscommunicating absolutely everything about what you're doing run away all right other questions sean this isn't necessarily about like sexual husband-wife relationships with boys and girls in general do you have any special advice on what you should give a student that you're teaching males and females how to approach them if that makes sense like you know teaching style how you should address the males different than females what's it like when you address them all together so when you address students altogether it should be as surprised people right you you address the humans in your class but you i've noticed year years and years decades ago i noticed that feminine piety and i'm i'm going to stipulate godly girls and godly guys i've seen this at logos i've seen it nsa i've seen it so masculine piety and feminine piety look very different they just look different and you want to encourage both and in order to encourage both you have to recognize both and generally over the last century and a half christian institutions the church and schools and so forth have sort of ins latched onto feminine piety as the ultimate thing that they desire because feminine piety is institution friendly okay when when you have pious godly girls they don't want to break the rules they want to color inside the lines they want to do do what you asked and they want to be uh respectful and dutiful and that sort of thing and and of course the boys should be respectful and dutiful also but it looks different so um i know i first noticed this at logos one time we had a decades ago we had a girls basket the girls basketball team was dominated by a group of beautiful intelligent top scholar godly girls just and they they were godly and they looked like it and they were the kind of people who would write if somebody was a little down they would write an encouraging note leave it in their friend's locker with bubble letters you know the kind of and this they dot the eyes with a little circle um so you they i was thinking of you that you looked a little down i was praying for you how are you doing you know that sort of thing and the teacher sees that oh he's thinking faculty commendation time this is the sort of thing that we like to see and then he walks down the hall and while he's walking past a couple of guys one of them pops the others in the shoulders and knocks him in the locker and says you meathead and the teacher goes on and the idea of a faculty commendation never occurs to him right even though that was the godliest thing that happened on that campus that day because this guy the guy who popped him found out that his friend had asked a non-christian girl out the night before so he popped him you meet you meathead well that that doesn't look institution friendly it doesn't feel institution friendly and so i would just remember what you said earlier affirmation security love expressed generally to the girls respect discipline stand up straight for the guys and they're the guys uh wither under a certain kind of discipline and flourish under another kind so there are some guys who limped along who limp along you know fights with their parents all kinds of problems and then uh for years of all kinds of problems and then they join the marines and they go to boot camp and someone's right here yelling in their face about their ancestry and how much like a maggot they are um and they write these glowing letters from boot camp mom is just wonderful there's a certain kind of hard hard discipline that guys thrive under and you should be praying that god would show you what these guys need respect respect to the guys and uh considerate attention to the girls remembering that that's an emphasis not an exclusion other questions okay we expect zero problems please join me thank you pastor dad for coming [Applause]

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 26,632

Rating: 4.9444447 out of 5

Keywords: douglas wilson, canon press, doug wilson, Dating, Christian dating, Christian singles, Boy meets girl, CRF, Douglas Wilson talk, Douglas Wilson dating, Douglas Wilson marriage, marriage, christian marriage, men and women, boy, girl, romeo and juliet

Id: WoTGnJ373HA

Length: 56min 20sec (3380 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020