Bringing Sexy Back pt 1
Here are some of the insights I shared with our students last night at Generation 1:9 regarding marriage. Some may ask, “why are you teaching junior high and high school students about marriage?” Because statistics say that more than 50% of them have watched their parent’s marriages fall apart. If we don’t teach them otherwise, they will follow their parent’s example.
Plus, I refuse to spend 6 weeks teaching them rules for dating. We tried that in the 90′s. Rules don’t work. VISION works. Students won’t follow rules or set boundaries for their relationships unless they understand WHY the rules and boundaries are important. So last night I made my first attempt at a sermon about marriage. Here are some highlights:
1. Marriage is NOT easy. It takes COMMITMENT. Love is not a feeling, it is a decision. Marriage requires a decision to never quit, ever. In our society, dating has become more like “divorce practice” than “marriage practice.” The cultural expectations for your dating relationship are equal to a pretend marriage (in thought, emotion, and behavior). We’ve adopted a “drive before you buy” mindset. Then if you don’t like it, you quit. It starts around the age of 12, and you do this over and over again until you are finally at an acceptable age for marriage. By the time you get married (around age 26), you have already divorced numerous times. In today’s culture, people are entering marriage after having already been through multiple divorces. It’s no wonder the divorce rate is so high, you have been practicing how to separate and divorce since you were 12 years old!
2. Your marriage is the best sermon you’ll ever preach. Marriage is an illustration of the gospel. The Bible often refers to God’s relationship to the church as that of a groom and a bride. God is the groom, we are the bride. Marriage is a representation of that. Ephesians 5 says husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church. That means that husbands should be willing to lay down their lives for their bride. Marriage is a great picture of how Jesus loves us! I encourage all girls to go for a man who like Jesus. I tell them NOT to settle for a loser who isn’t even willing to lay down the video game controller (much less his life) for them. One of my goals over the next few years is to raise up a group of young men who understand how special our women are. I want to teach our young men how to be men like Jesus. I hope that 10 years from now I get to officiate the marriages of couples who grew up in this youth ministry. And my prayer for them is that they would have Godly marriages that are a clear picture of the gospel.
3. Catch the foxes. Song of Solomon 2:15 says “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards…” The fox represents decisions, vineyards represent your marriages. Some of you are making decisions right now that are ruining your future marriages. What are they? What decisions are you making that you might potentially be ashamed to tell your future wife or husband? If you catch the foxes now, you will have a healthier and more productive vineyard. I encourage you to make decisions today, with your future marriage in mind. The CHARACTER that you build NOW is the same character that you will take into your marriage. If you don’t catch the foxes now, you won’t catch them later. And the truth is, if you don’t make decisions now with your marriage in mind, you’ll end up as just another statistic.
