Matt Fradd - Dating 101 (2019 Steubenville Main Campus 3)

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] make some noise for mr. Matt friend hello ello ello ello it is really great to have you here thank you so much for trusting me with this topic and for coming here for this how was the concert so I'm I know Bob righteous be alright and whenever we travel is he here whenever we travel together and I'm with him I feel like one of those lame scooters next to a Harley so that makes sense because he's super cool and I'm like hey Gowen I appreciate you're not laughing so much cuz that would have hurt that means that means a lot I'm gonna rub my belly alright let's pray and then let's start okay in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen Heavenly Father you are good and we can trust you and you are for us not against us and we belong to you we thank you for your love we thank you for our desire to love and to be loved we pray that you would on the lies that we have believed about love and sex and relationships reveal the truth to us so that we can be happy in Jesus name Amen Father Son Holy Spirit amen I want to share a story that some of you may have heard before some of you may have maybe haven't but I'll just share it as everyone's coming in I met my wife serving with net ministries in Ireland we were the first team that went to Ireland there's 12 of us we trained in Canada got into a van [Applause] [Music] super annoying I'm just joking okay I got us now gonna speak to you here's the deal with Canadians alright I feel like whenever you look at things like there's always this inferiority complex Canada USA New Zealand Australia so New Zealanders like we hate Australia and we're like we think you guys are cute what's the problem that's been my experience of Canadians Canadians are like we don't like Americans Americans like you guys are beautiful I've just offended all of you okay let's talk about sex now so my wife and I part of this team in Canada I lived in Ottawa for over a year it is amazingly beautiful I know I'm not gonna be able to rebuild your trust as quickly but it is amazingly beautiful in Canada one of the things I love so much about the Northern States and Canada is the idea of ice fishing where you essentially sit in what looks like a little closet on the ice and drink alcohol and and his is what I love because you see at home if I sit in a closet and drink vodka I have a problem all right calm your socks if I sit in a cause I think were cheering for vodka I thought that was weird stop stop being creative up there and if I sit and drink vodka in a closet in my home in Georgia I have a problem but if I do it in Canada I'm an athlete that's that's really cool okay all right listen so I met my wife and she wasn't my wife at the time but she was super cute so I was working on it we got into a plane we flew to Ireland we drove up to the northeast area and we were about to run our very first retreat now in Ireland they use words differently to Americans and Canadians and Australians one of the words they say is craic what's the craic is something they'll say and crack is Gaelic for fun I didn't know that so people would come up to you and say what's the craic and you're supposed to say not much but you I didn't know that I just thought it was a weird question so anyway um my wife was getting to know these like teenagers Irish teenagers before the retreat and one of them asked her is there gonna be any crack on the retreat today and my wife thought that they were making fun of her right she thought they meant cocaine so she's like no there will be no crack on the retreat today and one of the girls said this is a true story she said but you guys seem like you're full of crack right and my wife said I know we might seem like we're full of crack but what you're witnessing is the joy of Jesus say no to drugs and one of the girls tried to clarify but no no no no no you don't understand crack is fun no it's not it might seem like fun now but later on it'll get you you know so this is actually how the conversation went my wife and I been married for 13 years when I first met her just I mean all right when I met her for the first time at net training she was wearing this bright orange chastity shirt now I had become a Catholic in the year 2000 I had began to accept the teachings of the Catholic Church it was now 2002 and just for the first time I'm hearing about this virtue of chastity hey and so on the back of her shirt it had this list of things that said like call me a prude call me frigid call me uptight a bunch of other stuff and then at the bottom it said just don't call me for sex until you call me your wife so I did not in a creepy way necessarily but just in a the point was I remember being like super impressed I'm like wow that's a lot of confidence for someone to wear that and I said like tell me more about this not so much because I was interested in chastity but I was really interested in her honestly if she had a shirt that had to do with knitting I'd be like explain this to me so she gave me a CD of Jason Everett's chastity talk for those who don't know Jason Everett is another middle-aged Caucasian man like me who speaks about sex and but he's just a lot better at it and not sex well maybe but the point is okay sure I'm so glad this is on YouTube hi Jason um so anyway I went and I laid in my bed that night in my little dorm room and I started listening to this talk on chastity and for the first time in my life it made sense to me up until this point I got told things like you shouldn't have sex till marriage and things like that but I never really knew why right I knew what I didn't know why and as I listened to this talk I finally understood why the Church teaches what it did and it really changed my life I saw the beauty of it and that's what I hope will happen today my plan is this I'd like to speak for about 10 to 15 more minutes that's it and then I would like us to do some Q&A all right and I want us to be serious in this because I think there's a lot of questions that you have that you would like me to kind of address and I want to go where you want to go does that make sense let me begin by sharing perhaps three things we're not talking about when we talk about chastity because I think when people hear the word chastity or when the world hears about the church's views on sex they think or maybe you think that this is something auntie sex right this is repressive this is anti desire and things like this but this isn't true so before we do anything else let's say let's say these three things that hopefully you know because you're good Christians but you may not all right at the problem right with things like fornication having sex before marriage right that the problem with oral sex the problem with pornography the problem with masturbation of these things it's not sex it's not sexual desire and it's not the body the problem isn't sex the problem isn't sexual desire the problem isn't the body all right so sex right is good it's God's idea it's not al James's idea who wrote fifty Shades of stupid Cosmo didn't come up with it right sex is God's idea the orgasm is God's idea if you have a problem with that you can talk to him about it but when you look at the very first commandment in the Bible - from God to humanity the very first you know what it is Genesis chapter 1 verse 28 well what does God say to humanity he says be fruitful and multiply when he says be fruitful and multiply he does not mean grow oranges and invent calculators and multiply no he means like have sex have babies and fill the world right sex is good you know if sex wasn't good you couldn't make it bad if sex this is a quite a philosophical argument but I think it's true if sex wasn't in some way beautiful you couldn't make it ugly does that make sense you can't like to the degree something is beautiful can it be made ugly if something is not beautiful it can't be made ugly if there was a pile of trash here and I'm like now look at it so much uglier he can't really make trash ugly you know sex is very beautiful and the fact that it can be made very ugly is evidence of that next sexual desire is good sexual desire is a god-given gift that ought to propel us to make a gift of ourselves according to the demands of love and prudence it is not synonymous with lust okay lust is not the same thing as strong sexual desire right so perhaps up until now you haven't realized that perhaps you thought that sexual desire was the same thing as lust if that's what you think no wonder you think it's so difficult to quote-unquote be pure but I saw what it means I hope you have sexual desires I'm not trying to be flippant but if you're here today and you're like I don't know what you're talking about I don't experience sexual desire I bathe in holy water so it's not an issue for me all right an absence of sexual desire is not a sign of sanctity but death so if you don't have sexual desire check your pulse right that's probably not a good thing right so sexual desire is good now we could say that sexual desire in the proper context says this is my body given up for you like in Luke 22 19 Christ says this at the Last Supper the reason lust is so yuck so ugly is that it's a perversion of sexual desire so if if sexual desire in the proper context says this is my body given up for you lust says the opposite it says this is your body taken by me I like how Jason Everett puts it in regards to men right as men we are called to give of our strength not to rob the strength of another for our own selfish gratification so he says that things like pornography and masturbation end up emasculating a man because they robbed him of the ability to be masculine but unfortunately we've spoken far too much about men's struggling with things like porn and masturbation and we don't speak a lot about women struggle with porn and masturbation so let me just set the record straight if you're in here today as a youth minister or as a priest or a younger person if you've said guys struggle with porn girls aren't really struggle with that stop it for the love of God stop it you can clap you should clap that was like that Jeb Bush remember clap please clap no but you should clap for that you should clap for that because it's it's really insulting to say to somebody you shouldn't struggle with this because porn is a shameful enough thing without having people tell you like you shouldn't struggle with this like no I I speak to about 50 to 70 thousand people every year a lot of what I talk about is pornography I've never given a talk never where a woman hasn't come up to me went thank you for saying that isn't just a guy's issue Audrey Assad has a lovely talk on Soundcloud soundcloud that orange one yeah you should look her up Audrey Assad look up her personal story she shares how she was addicted to porn and how she overcome it its glorious it'll set you free one of the things she said that I loved was when it comes to men struggling with impurity porn and masturbation yeah she says yeah you're enslaved you're in a prison cell but at least you're all in there together kind of encouraging each other she's like for us women it's like we're in solitary confinement and we have no idea that other women struggle with this thing and we feel like complete freaks and losers so if you're a woman today he struggles with porn masturbation no doubt that there's a number of women who do you're not a freak there's nothing wrong with you you're a beautiful daughter of God and I think what's so important when we begin to struggle with these things is that we begin to journey alongside somebody so if you're a dude struggling with porn find another dude that you can confide in if you're a lady who started with porn finding another lady that you can confide in had a woman come up to me and she's like how do I know who I can trust fair question this is a pretty sensitive issue and I just said something very obvious and maybe unhelpful I said you know who you can trust isn't that true like you already know you know the people who love you who aren't going to judge you or shame you the people who can be confidential keep a secret go to and I've had women come back to me and they're like Matt you have no idea what happened I just shared with this girl that I was struggling with the stuff and she looked at me and she said what you - I thought I was the only one and both of us taste a bit of a bit of freedom that day alright so the problem with porn isn't sex it's not sexual desire nor is it the body I think there is this there's this this belief that the problem with porn is that it shows too much or something that's not true at all the problem with porn is not that it shows too much but that it shows too little of the human person it reduces the beauty and mystery of femininity and masculinity to a two-dimensional object for my consumption yeah and so I no longer know to treat this person as someone made in the image and likeness of God but I use them as a tool for my own selfish gratification right so this is why like I'm a fan of naked art we have paintings in our house of the breastfeeding Madonna it's glorious I love taking my kids to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and I'm like behold and there's just boobs and penises and it's lovely right when you go to the Sistine Chapel lots of boobs okay lots of boobs lots of willies lots of testicles okay and this makes us feel uncomfortable because we've been hurt like there might be a youth minister who's kind of angry that I just did that and I think that the reason we feel a little angry or a little like okay don't is because we've been hurt you see like we've had someone betray us we've had someone use us you know no doubt this people who have been sexually abused or have been raped and I'm so sorry and so when we hear sex spoken about rightly like it's good it's God's idea it can be like abrasive to us you know but the problem isn't with God and the problem isn't with those statements necessarily but it might be something we need to bring to the Father all right a lot to talk about where should we begin let's just begin with questions here's what I want to do I want to some of you have sent in your questions through the app so what I'll do is I'll go through some of these and respond and is it Tim hey Tim doesn't Tim have the best hair ever what about my hair see what about my hair let's see how it goes all the way back shut up alright so here we go sorry what we're gonna do is uh I'll take some of these questions and then I'll invite somebody if you have a question to come to Tim he's got a microphone maybe what we'll do we won't be able to answer a lot of questions obviously but we'll start at we could start a small line maybe no more than five people at a time up here next to Tim and then Tim will give you the mic okay so if at any point throughout this you feel like you'd like to walk over there alright okay so here are some of your questions and I want to thank you for asking them I want to thank you somebody asks what is your definition of love that's a very good question because sometimes we say things like does he love me or shall I tell her I love her but we don't ever stop to ask what do I mean by the word love what does love mean and I think this is a word that's been really demented in our society as we use it for everything you know I love sushi and Jesus and my children and playing the cello I don't know like what does love mean well I like the definition given by Aristotle and Aquinas and it's this listen love is to want the good of the other and to do what I can to bring that about so when I tell my daughter say Chiara Chiara I love you what I mean is I want your good like what is good for you this is what I want and I don't want to hurt you and I don't want bad things to happen I want good things for you and sometimes it'll mean telling her the truth you know these sorts of things that she may not want to hear she's very fast to my daughter I feel like if Wonder Woman met Chiara she'd be like I found my people she's very ferociously feminine and glorious but yeah you know like I love you means to want the good of the other for their sake you know it's not like I want your good for my sake right so it's not like hey why don't you work out so I can find you hotter so I can last after you well it would be a good thing for you to work out maybe it's a good thing to be healthy but if I want that for like my selfish gratification this isn't love so it's not just that I want your good it's that I want your good for your sake so I don't want the good of my daughter for for my sake I want the good for her sake that this is love so if you're in a relationship with somebody right now you might be thinking well how far is too far that's a question sometimes people have whereas I think a better question is what is the good for this person and how can I bring that about and Jason Everett has that excuse me has that great analogy where he says none of us guys would ever take a girl that we loved the Grand Canyon pick her up in our arms and say how far can I get before I drop her we wouldn't do that and yet sometimes we say well how far can I go before I sin mortally with this person but of course if we're in a relationship with somebody we should want the purity of their soul and the good of them which could mean not putting him in a place where they would sin great grievously so rather than asking how far can I go we could perhaps ask how far can I go in loving this person that might be a better question let's say one more and then we'll go over here can teenagers fall in love yeah so what do we mean by that I think um I think we've we have such a shallow and superficial understanding of attraction in our society that we think that attraction necessarily means sexual attraction right like Jimmy Mitchell who gave the men's talk I'm super attracted to him like he's not only like good-looking and he's also like manly and and he's really insightful and wise and when I asked him questions he's got like a very unique take on things he's very humble and I find myself attracted to him right that's why you make friends because you're attracted to them and yet in this overly sexualized society like everything has to be sexualized but I think we can become enamored with another person you know so if you if you mean can a person sort of become like overcome almost infatuated with another person I would say of course can a person love another person as a high school yeah can I say something really unpopular that you're not gonna like me for and I don't even think Steubenville wants me to say I think if you're a teenager you shouldn't date I think you should you should wait did you hear what I said Wow if you date you'll probably fornicate how's that for a line if you're not all right if you're not ready to get married I don't know why it why would you be dating like I just I just so I think it's I think it's okay to have friendships with people and they kind of go out in groups with people and things like that but to have an intimate exclusive romantic relationship with another person we're probably just you're not in a place to get married so what do you really think is gonna happen here I think what's probably going to happen is you'll end up like hurting each other right so anyway that's kind of what I think and I think I'm right actually all right let's let's take a question you're allowed to disagree with me of course and you're welcome to come up and tell me that I'd be like that's fun yeah quit as soon no I'm kidding I'm kidding I do not know a lot allotted anyway so you already ruined one of my questions so I have another one for luck okay I get some water over here keep going so I've heard from different people different arguments that some say that you shouldn't flirt period some say that is should have what float float flood FL IRT okay flood something you shouldn't float period some say it's okay some say it's encouraged because a shows that you'll light-hearted yes I'm not sure I not sure I stand on you tell me what do you think flirt means give me a definition so what I've come to give me a definition what is fluid mean blood is to show attraction to someone but not boy well this is what I've read on Google I don't trust Google anyway so what is that a missile it is to show attraction to another person but not with society but for entertainment oh for not for what sincerity no okay okay so if that's your definition now maybe you that's not mine that's just what I've have some friends say this alright well I asked you for yours so let's run with this one thing is this is the popular view on my rack fingers so this is what one means by flirt to show like romantic interest for the sake of entertainment and not sincerity then I would say yeah that that's a that's a deep that is a grave sin because you're lying it's a way it's a kind of it's a way of tricking the other person to make yourself feel better so I think in that instance it would be inappropriate yeah buts but like what if you all union relationship knowing someone and they know you already love them but like you say you just do it for fun so like to keep the relationship light-hearted not so serious because you're afraid if it gets serious again I'm gonna need a definition of flirting so you know your definition so my definition is flirting is - well according to that definition I don't flirt but my definition of flirting when I say is flirting is showing a woman that you truly care about someone in verbal acts and words but in a romantic way obviously of course yeah well that's going of course you should do that okay but like also the fact that like and this also would come to pact of you don't think dating in high schools right so like should you not flirt in high school I think there's a difference between it well I mean again you can disagree with me on that I'm okay if you disagree with me that's just my opinion so let's say you disagree with me okay maybe I'm wrong okay and then you say well I can date in high school and I'm sure and it's a good thing so I'm gonna show my physical I'm gonna show my interest in a physical way in an appropriate physical way yeah so that she knows that I'm interested I think that that's okay so long as you then be a man and ask her out and don't just perpetually stringer on I think boys the deepest recesses of health boys ah reserved for men who do that of course all right let's let's do the next question thank you so much for your time thank you so much I love your accent by the way I've been working on it since I was a boy thank you [Music] okay so I don't know if you believe in true love I feel like God believes in true love do you think that true love has been twisted by humanity what do you think true love means you're one person you stay with for the rest of your life ah good yeah that's lovely right so is it possible to fall in love with somebody to marry them and to be in love with them for the rest of your life that kind of thing yeah it's a great question and I think the reason you might find it or y'all might find it difficult to believe is that maybe when you look around you really can't name a lot of couples that you see who are kind of deeply in love and that's really sad and that was kind of my experience as well I thankfully I grew up in a family where my dad is super affectionate to my mom almost like calm down and so I I had a really good example of a loving father you know and he loves my mom I remember one day we were driving to the outback where I had this job as a lab technician it was like a five-hour drive into the heart of Australia and he said out of nowhere we were silent for like 20 minutes he just said she's a bloody good woman your mother and I just thought that is lovely you know he really likes her loves her he'll thing we'll say things like your mother and I are going away for the weekend if you know what I'm saying shut up shut your face and I've brought that into my marriage like I am madly in love with my wife we fight we were just in the car the other day yelling at each other not like cute yelling like no Cameron no that's ridiculous that yelling that's not cool but we kind of that's just it we're very loud we're very have you noticed we're very intense but I am deeply in love with her and committed to her so yes yes love exists but if you take your advice on how to love from Cosmo you will have a very miserable life yeah or porn or fifty Shades or the culture in general I think that's a great way to ruin old upcoming relationships thank you [Applause] all right um I can I got the same dad as you do but um what'd you say okay I kind of got the same guys you do all this also I totally disagree with not dating in high school okay cuz you know high school sweethearts and everything I'm gonna ask on behalf of every guy in here they like [Applause] I'm gonna ask you got any advice on how to get a girl alright yes I do I do have advice on how to get a girl so yes thank you III would say that I think that a man should find himself in Christ before he pursues someone for marriage and what I mean is if okay all right easy to say let me say what I mean okay what I think I mean by that is I need to know who I am as a beloved son right if I Know Who I am because the father has told me then I don't need to look or anxiously to you as a girl to tell me who I am does that make sense so it's like it's like yeah I know who I am and I'm comfortable with who I am because the father's told me and he likes me and he loves me once that question is beginning to be settled in me I I can then offer my strength to you and that strength will be apparent if I'm not going to the Father then I think there'll be this perpetual anxiety within me that'll be very unattractive so I think as men I think women would like us to give of our strength and that strength is something that's very attractive and I think we begin by finding that in in the Father's love for us yeah thank you thank you [Applause] what do you think about marrying at a very young age like right out of high school or in the beginning of college yeah okay so I was 22 when I got married is that young I don't know I think I think it's probably going to depend on the quite you heard the question I think it's going to depend on the situation the people at hand it's going to depend on financial factors and maturity factors and things like this when I got married to my wife I think like for the first seven or eight years of our marriage we lived beneath the poverty line but we had lots of sex and we're happy so you tell me we were super joyful so I mean I think sometimes like the world might tell us like you have to have it all together and have enough money and everything's secure and then you can begin and I think that we should swap that temptation away because I still don't feel ready to be married I still don't feel ready to have kids and yet the father called me to it so I'm very much open to people if they're if they're mature and being like 18 and 19 and 20 being married I think if they have good support and guidance from people around them who love them then that's a good idea so in the church my understanding is you have to wait about five or six months before being married and so you know our parish for example had some great people in our lives who you know poured into us and loved on us and taught us and that was certainly helpful so it's going to depend on the circumstance but I'm open to it in theory yeah awesome thank you [Applause] thanks man hello there yep hey sorry III cuz I'm not in front of the speaker I can't hear you well so if you could just speak clearly and quickly okay I will the a few months ago my school sponsored a they call it an I can trip and half of it is a spirituality thing and they talked about chastity you're not cool and the lady that was there she recounted a time where she where she was in a relationship with somebody and that person wanted to have sex well the other person wanted to stay jace so how could would you suggest staying chaste in a relationship how can you prevent that from ever happening like a situation where the other person might want to have sex or how do you deal with that if you ever get into that situation right so it's difficult right and I'm not saying this to be abrasive but I mean when I was dating my wife I wanted to have sex all the time like she's gorgeous I want to give myself to her it would be weird if you were dating somebody and they were like do you kind of wanna have sex like no oh yeah you know like so it's a natural thing right um but you know if I I think if you're dating someone currently who's fully against saving sexual marriage in fact this would make me happy it would make me very happy if before the end of this conference at least a dozen of you came up to me and told me that you break it broke up with who you're with yeah I mean it because I can just settle down let me answer let me sell them in such some of you some of you are in toxic relationships people who guilt trip you who yell at you who are addicted to pornography who've cheated on you who've looked disrespectfully at you or others for the love of God and as a brother in Christ I say break up with them before the day is done text them tell your friend I will not go back to this person I'm done and then what I'd like you to do is to come and tell me and that you would make me happy you don't have to but if you wanted to and I would I would pray I would love to pray with you because I think you already know that as you encounter these relationships of joy as you hear what people have to say about love you're like yeah that's not it and it's gonna be awkward right because we don't wanna be alone you know and sometimes we take our identity and those that were with it's just not worth it so break up with him but I would say if I was in a relationship with my wife and she was persistently saying like mocking my Catholic faith mocking my desire to save sex till marriage there would have been a good idea for me to break up with her and by God's grace I can say in all honesty we saved sex till marriage and it was just a beautiful thing it was a beautiful thing and I've known people who've like lived with their boyfriends live with their girlfriends and then they get married and they go to bed early so they can go scuba diving the next morning I'm like are you crazy like it's this beautiful gift of the marital embrace which we got to experience together not because the two of us were perfect up until marriage right both of us had had made mistakes or have had had things happen to us that were tough and painful but by God's grace you know we were able to save sexual marriage and it was glorious so I hope that's the beginning of an answer thank you thank you [Applause] okay um my question is what do you think about gay dating gay what dating gay dating mmm-hmm huh what do you think dating is like going out with someone or like hanging out with them fine were than that tell them you love them like falling in love with them yeah okay yeah so the reason I ask these questions is I think it's you notice I've been doing this it's probably been very annoying what you mean by love what you mean by flirt what do you mean by date but the reason I do that is because words matter sometimes I'm saying a word you're hearing something different or you're saying something me and I'm hearing something different and so that's why I think it's important to understand so for example are the the church does not think we should call people who have same-sex attraction gay and the reason the church doesn't think we should do that is because our identity is not fundamentally grounded in who we are attracted to but that we are beloved children of God mother Teresa in Calcutta was being interviewed and the interviewer was trying to prod her a bit she said what do you think of the gay people in Calcutta and she said you mean the beloved children of God and he went yes she's like okay continue okay well regarding the gay beloved children of God I think like that's the place that we have to begin with because you know our my attractions sometimes change from day to day not in the sense of being attracted to men I haven't had I haven't had that but you know this times were all beaten I'll meet a woman who's not my wife and I find myself really sexually attracted to her that doesn't define me I'm not in it let's say God forbid I was to act that out I would not therefore be an adulterer or sexual or something like that you know I'd still be a beloved children of God who has desires so the first thing I would want to clarify and you can disagree with me but this is just I think where the church is willing to come from that we shouldn't call people heterosexual or gay rather you're a child of God who might may have same-sex attraction now to have an attraction to somebody the same-sex is disordered but not sinful to engage in sodomy or same sex acts is sinful there you go I would rather tell you the truth and tell you something you would like to hear so this is something the church has always taught and will always continue to teach because the Church believes sex means something sex has at least two ends the good of those coming together and an openness to life when you thought one of those ends you pervert the act just like eating has an end namely nutrition if I was to make myself throw up every time I ate this would be disordered because I would be 14 the end of the act of eating so this is why when the church teaches about sex it says masturbating is disordered right / nagpur no graphic sex is disordered homosexual sex is disordered adulterous sex is disordered in a different sense right so this is what the Church teaches so I would be I wouldn't like the idea of dating per se because I think that implies a romantic relationship but let me point you to two one thing I had a good friend of mine his name's Dan Matson and ever since Dan can remember he's had same-sex attraction when he was like four years old I think was four or five he remembered having same-sex attraction and this is something that he embraced he bought into what the world had to say he lived a homosexual lifestyle for years he was living with different men and then at one point he came to accept Christ and the church I interviewed him for three hours on my youtube channel and you might be interested in checking that out because he's somebody who shows tremendous amount of love and understanding to those who are experiencing same-sex attraction and so finds that balance between loving but then also speaking the truth and so his name's Dan Matson if you go to youtube and type in Fred one of those long chats of the Dan Matson that that you might find more there thank you you're welcome [Applause] um I was just wondering what is courting and what's the difference between courting and dating great what's the question what's the difference been dating and courting that's a good point so I think when people used to talk about that romantic interaction that led to marriage they may have called it courting and I think that that's what dating ought to be why would I as a beloved child of God enter into a romantic relationship with somebody who I do not wish to be my spouse one day it seems to me that I'm just opening the gate to sin to hurt them and to hurt me and to put my soul in jeopardy of a of eternal hell and so that's why I say unless you're in a place that you could potentially marry that datings not a good idea so I think when we say date we should mean court because I think to just date for the sake of dating is not a good thing not appropriate but I think that dating should mean courting in that it may it should mean that is the father calling us to have children together is he is he calling us into this sacred relationship of marriage so I think that's the attitude that we ought to have I think that's the difference [Applause] so regarding relationships in general whether it be in high school college in your career life and further on on the road what are some good pointers and like in looking out for a toxic relationship and how do you stop the toxic relationship before you get more in delved oh you're a good woman that's a very intelligent question yeah so I think um yeah so the we avoid toxic relationships and if we are in one how do we escape it how do we recognize it if we don't come back to what love means right like love is to want your good and I think you can discover somewhat quickly if someone has that intention not always but if I'm in like a work relationship with somebody or if you're a friend of mine I can generally tell whether or not you want what's best for me so here might be an interesting way to put it what I mean by to love somebody is this if I were to switch my brain off say and just be in a kind of a sleepwalking state at the end of that sleepwalking would I be in a better place or not because you were with me you know I'm saying like it's like that like if my wife was with me and and and and you know she just kind of she could shut her brain off I would want the good for her I would want to take care of her I would want to feed her I would want to like clean her love her right I would look out for her interests right now flip that around if there's someone in your life who doesn't really care about your interests they seem self-seeking right I want something from you but I'm not necessarily for your good I think this is a sight sign of a toxic relationship especially if it's perpetual here's another great way to discover if somebody's maybe not a good person to be with ask I'll just speak to the ladies because I'm a dude so I'm speaking for a particular vantage point ladies if you're with a guy notice how he treats the women in his life who mean who he can get nothing from so notice how he treats the waitress does he look at her in the eye to see does he say hi you know is he is he gentle is he patient is he loving how do I treat people who can give me nothing if I treat them with love and respect that promise is all about me if I'm irritated short with them uninterested in them then this is how I will treat you when I've got from you what I'm out to get so that might also be a sign of a toxic relationship and so if you feel like you're in one of those break up with them and tell me okay thanks so much how much time do we have left here two minutes three more questions three more minutes okay let's do either one or two more questions because we're to wrap up yep how did you know when she would like when you realize you wanted to spend the rest of your life with her mmm with your wife the rest of your life with your wife my wife is the feistiest strongest woman I have ever met she has a podcast called among the lilies and those of you who listen to it know she's feisty man she's like she's a warrior and I love her I remember the moment I fell in love with her because she annoyed me at first cuz she's loud and she spoke too much pretty sure I found that you're attending cuz I was exactly the same but the moment I is when I saw her soul be touched by something something happened and she teared up and in that moment of vulnerability when I loved you forever as beautiful now for her she read a quote from CS Lewis which said this if you remember nothing else from this talk will you remember this love is friendship caught on fire say it with me love is friendship caught on fire right so my wife and I had this deep friendship I liked her I'd like to spend time with her I found her funny she's one of the few women that can really make me belly laugh I enjoy her I enjoy her I find her insightful right for her she and I were struggling as to whether we were just friends or not we couldn't tell cuz we like our fear was like okay we want to be in love because that would be super convenient cuz we're really good friends but maybe there's nothing here maybe there's no chemistry here we went and spoke to my bishop who's a dear friend of mine and he asked if he could pray over us and he did and she said in that moment her heart ignited and and she knew that she would marry me I on the other hand we just like man my bomb itches I I felt I in other words I didn't feel anything supernatural or beautiful but for her that's that's what happened and so if you can look at somebody and say you would be a good mother to my children that's someone you should date if you can look at a man and say you would be a good father to my children that's someone you should date if you're currently dating someone you like there's no way she'd make a good mother break up with her today if you're currently dating somebody and you're like there's no way at all this person will make a good dad break up with him today and then come and tell me thank you one more question thank you one more question okay so let's say that you're in a relationship and it was a really good one to start off yeah but like for some reason it turned toxic like whether it was sin or like whatever how do you redeem that you break up with them but like yeah alright okay sorry sorry that was very dismissive of me and I suppose the reason I say it's so blanketly like that is it would probably take some time for me to ask you about what you mean and I don't know if you feel comfortable sharing that so I don't want to put you on the spot it's not like I'm in this situation like what do you mean by toxic what do you envision that to mean I guess like you both like fall into sin or like things like but good I guess like you don't really know how to like stop it how do you redeem this so that's good see isn't it important that we clarify terms I thought she meant something else by toxic but I think what you're saying is like what if we're both like falling into sin maybe we're both like in porn or we hook up or we you know we're not sure yeah so that's okay so my wife and I went to confession together when we dated on a regular basis two weeks month things like that and so when we would mess up we would apologize to each other like we never had sex but there were things that we regret doing actually his dating couple and we would go to confession and that would be a reminder to us that I am NOT hers yet she is not mine and we saw growth from that now suppose her and I were to go to confession and yet she would then immediately kind of pressure me because I'm super hot to do stuff right like I would like that would be it that would might be a sign that this person does not have my best interests at heart and then I might have to break up with him so I suppose that with the answer okay okay I want to conclude by suggesting a couple of resources I'd really like you to check out because it's really difficult to do justice to these excellent questions that you have so let me suggest a couple number one Jason Everett has a website called chastity project.com chastity project comm if you're a youth minister write that down check out that website buy his books that he has for women and men in bulk him and Kristalina produced these books really cheaply they've got a lot of great content videos articles that you can check out and then finally I know I plugged this before but let me do it again my book the porn myth is a non-religious response to pro porn arguments in which I share with you the data coming out of academia from neurology psychology sociology all of the science is saying that if you're Pro love you ought to be anti porn because if you want to ruin your marriage before it begins you should look at porn if you want to remain sexually frustrated forever you should keep looking at porn we don't want these things nor should we and so that's why I share in this book just the science behind pornography so you could give this to a friend who's not a Christian because it says nothing of sin or Jesus or God in it and it would bless them and again not a pitch because it all goes to help those women in San Diego they're called children of the Immaculate Heart that group who helped those women there bless you thank you so much you

Channel: Steubenville Youth Conferences

Views: 24,786

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Keywords: Catholic, Charismatic, Youth Conference, Youth, Conference, Evangelization, Steubenville Conferences, Steubenville

Id: ejHhn6Q_gms

Length: 48min 46sec (2926 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2019