DATING: Why Your Checklist Is Worthless - Ben Stuart

let me do you hey passion students I'm so excited to be a part of group week with you grant asked me to come talk about dating which makes perfect sense because I'm an expert and it's a the ladies love your uncle Benny to be quite honest with you but that's actually maybe not true I think if you look at my dating experience in high school in college it more readily looked like a dumpster fire there was a lot of confusion a lot of Tears I remember at one point a girl and I broke up and then had our first kiss in that order all in one night which you would say then that doesn't make sense and I would say I know I know a lot of confusion lots of pain but that's the reality about love I mean love is that as a powerful force and it can be exhilarating or it can be intensely painful and the reality is the reason I love that these videos are happening is because I think grant and the team are trying to help us navigate around those really painful moments I mean you look at Adele and Taylor Swift there's a reason why those women are millionaires and it's not just because they're talented it's that they sing about pain and everybody knows that pain and I think it's a beautiful thing to want to help you navigate around that that's possible and the good news is the desire to pair off is good it's from God but the coupling and decoupling can be painful but there's a way to do this that that is really good for us and so for my part I want to warn you against a mentality and then call you to a mentality and I want to warn you against a consumer mentality a consumer mentality you go what do you mean by that well I think a lot of modern dating today has a consumer mentality of when I think about who I want to end up with I go well I want him to be tall but not too tall and I want him to be strong but not like pro-wrestler strong just like a six-pack then I want him to be funny and smart and I wanted to be sensitive and love romantic comedies but you know not like a wienie I want to be tough and we just kind of come up with a that when I find the man or the woman that fits my list then I found the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with but there's a problem with that mentality it's actually a couple the first problem is it's unrealistic the reality is when you start a checklist like that you sound like you're assembling a sandwich or curating a playlist but you don't get to do that to a human because you don't get to create them you don't get to make people they come pre-made and the reality is you don't get to pick all their attributes and so when you compare a real human being to your list you set an unrealistic expectation because we never put their flaws on our list but every human has it and so if you take the best from all these people and say I want a human that looks like that you set that person up to be a disappointment and you wouldn't want someone to do that to you you would want them to accept you as you are and so it's not a realistic way to come at other human beings and the worst part is not just that it's unrealistic its unsuccessful it actually doesn't work it's interesting match.com was one of the first online dating sites and they used to have a long checklist of all the things you could put in you want from somebody physical characteristics personality interests job choice you could do all of this and then they had an algorithm where they would match you with your compatible person but the problem they found was the people they matched rarely made it past the first date and so they brought in an expert to analyze their algorithm like what's going wrong with this and after study the guy said the problems not your algorithm the problem is human beings he said when we look at what people say they want and then we look at who they actually marry there is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between what people say they want and who they end up with and that was amazing to read that and but I've seen that of my own life like my best friend in college he said man I want a girl that's kind of wild and has tattoos and he married a sweet little girl that had never dated or kissed a boy great I married the crazy girl tattoo and so you just don't know what you're going to end up with we don't really know who's going to be the best fit for us so it's not realistic and it's not successful to do that and really it's dehumanizing to a human being to say you know what I am NOT going to accept you with the image of God as you have I'm going to try to fit you into a box doesn't really work and here's the other thing it's not stable its unstable the reality is the proverbs say charm is deceitful and beauty is vain but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised what he's saying is these two characteristics of charming I can be funny I can be witty I can be smart and beauty physical beauty are the two characteristics that are going to fade in somebody charm can be faked anybody can sound cool or smart or funny over the course of an hour and beauty fades it does and a lot of our modern consumer dating says I want their charm and I want their beauty but those are the most unstable characteristics you want to build your relationships on sterner stuff than that and so what would I call you - if it's not a consumer mentality what is it well I want to call you to a companion mentality and you know what do you mean by that well a companion is someone who joins you on the journey you go what's the journey well Paul told young Timothy to flee youthful lust and pursue righteousness joy love and peace along with those who call out to God out of a pure heart and so what I want you to do is I want you to chase after God that's what you were made for Colossians says all things are made by God and for God you will be most alive when you chase after God so you get that right in your life as a young person I'm going to chase after the things of God what I hope will happen is as you're fleeing youthful lust pursuing love and joy and peace these beautiful things of God as you're running after him what's going to happen is you're going to look around and other people are going to want him as much as you do and in that race you're going to see people running alongside of you and some of them are going to become your good friends and over time you'll look and someone will look cute and you'll say we should run together and then get married right and that's what you want someone that runs with you together after the things of God that's where you're going to be most alive that's where they're going to be most alive if you look at why a lot of relationships break up what do they say they say our lives went different directions you know what do they mean by that they don't mean well I was a plumber and she was a lawyer and plumbers and lawyers don't hang out they're not talking career they're talking about ultimate allegiance and life that the big Allegiance of our life determines our decisions and determines our directions and so if you just marry someone because they're cute or smart or pretty but they're chasing anything else if you want to walk with God your lives are going to go different directions and so you don't want a checklist of what they're like because you don't know where that person is headed and that's not fair to do to a human being but you want to decide with your life I'm going to chase after God and as I do that God's going to bring a companion someone on that journey with me that has the same Allegiance I do and is running the same direction and once you get someone like that they're chasing the same cause then you just look for chemistry do we encourage each other do we like each other do we make each other better and it can we run this race together we had good fit you do that like it's fun so for me honestly at high school and in college every dating experience I was in was in some varying degree a train wreck because I was trying to pursue a girl or pursue some kind of dating cultural narratives that just didn't work but I got to a point where I said you know what I need to figure out what Ben's about and when I figured that out I was like I exist to know God and I want to know him and as I began to chase him over time I met a girl that loved God as much as I did and as we got to know each other she was really different than me in some ways and we were alike in some ways I would have never guessed how those fit but they did and the two of us have been able to run after the most important things in life together and I want that for you it's possible for you God built it to be that way and it's beautiful when you embrace his purposes so ditch the consumer mentality get a companion one I'm going to chase after God and in his timing he's going to bring the people around me to run with have a great time in your groups I hope this spurred some conversation and excited to see what God does with passion students we love you guys thanks for joining us if you're a high school student in or around Atlanta we would love to get you plugged in to one of our family groups at passion students email us or head to our website for more information

Channel: Passion Students

Views: 110,228

Rating: 4.9648032 out of 5

Keywords: ben stuart, dating, married, single, engaged, single dating engaged married, passion, passion students, passion city church

Id: BjB8CUVA4_c

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2017