Set Apart Has to Be Taught at Home Before It Is Tested Outside

Sermon outline

Dating should serve where God is taking you, so value yourself, learn at home that you are set apart, marry within the faith, and keep your parents, leaders and the Holy Spirit involved before a relationship pulls you off course.

1. What is the purpose of dating?

   Pastor Wesley contrasts the arranged marriages of the old days with dating today as a form of courtship: getting to know someone and seeing whether you are compatible. Others just want to be the playboy or playgirl, with no strings attached. It comes down to personal value: if you have no goal for your life you will go for anything, rather than someone who adds value where you are going. Pastor Thamie adds that dating cannot be trial and error, and that the media has made marriage look outdated.

   “At the end of the day, it all comes down to your personal value. How much do you value yourself?”

2. What is the right age to date?

   The culture says eleven or twelve is the age for a boyfriend, and teaches it directly. In a Christian home, parents have to instil the opposite first: that a child is set apart, has value and is being raised for a certain kind of life. Without that, the pressures of growing up lead to mistakes that are very hard to rectify. Pastor Thamie urges young people to focus on school and on knowing who they are in Christ, and to be comfortable being alone.

   Illustration: Pastor Thamie describes a young person thriving at school or in church who meets someone at the wrong time; it is nice at first, then turns toxic, and her emotions and her schoolwork suffer.

   “The parents need to be instilling those values into their child that you are set apart, you have value.”

3. Cycles start, and change, inside the home

   Where a father is a Casanova the son assumes the same role. The culture lets men sleep around and still expect to marry a virgin, and treats women as objects when each one is somebody's daughter, mother and sister. A teenage pregnancy can leave a young mother stuck, the grandparents raising the child and the child repeating the pattern. Those cycles need to change, and they start at home.

   Illustration: A fourteen-year-old girl goes to a house party and falls pregnant; she cannot stay at school, the boy carries on with his life, and years later her own child watches a string of boyfriends and repeats what she saw.

   “That's somebody's daughter. One day there's going to be somebody's mother, and that's somebody's sister as well.”

   • Genesis 2:18

4. Casual relationships deviate you from your calling

   Your parents have lived thirty or forty years and want to give you the best possible start, which is why they invest in your schooling and say not yet. 'My friends are doing it' is not the standard in a Christian home. The attachment and attraction you feel are real, but Satan may have sent that person to distract you from your call and purpose, and some mistakes you pay for a lifetime.

   “It deviates you from where God is already calling you.”

5. Do not be unequally yoked

   Pastor Thamie reads 2 Corinthians 6:14: God's word cannot be twisted to suit our situation, so do not take on a lifelong project hoping to change someone. Pastor Wesley explains that an unbeliever brings a different value system, and once you compromise on one thing you compromise on many, until you no longer know what you believe. Marry a Christian: you serve the same God, share values, and take your promises and advice from the same book.

   “Number one, if you're a Christian, marry a Christian individual.”

   • 2 Corinthians 6:14

6. Love yourself, and the next fifty years look different

   The two most important relationships are with God and with yourself. If you love who you are and where you are going, it is very hard for someone from outside to deceive you off your course. Your first twenty-five years turn on your education, the second twenty-five on the person you marry, and the third on the first two. The person you marry should fit your life like a glove, not uproot it.

   Illustration: Two Sallys meet the same young man. The first, raised with clear values, tells him at university that he is the kind of man her father warned her about, and goes on to qualify. The second, from a broken home, meets him at sixteen and falls pregnant. Same man, different value system.

   “The first 25 years of your life is based on your education. The second 25 years of your life is based on the person that you marry.”

7. Keep your parents, your leaders and the Holy Spirit involved

   Pastor Wesley says advice from those who have seen it all before is a crown on your head. Pastor Thamie warns that a man who will not come home to meet the family is a red flag, and that when someone shows you his true colours you should believe him. Engage the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth, and ask Him to reveal the motives of the person you are seeing.

   “Before you get into a relationship, keep your parents involved. Keep your youth leaders involved. Keep your church involved.”

   • John 16:13