Chick Flicks & Real Life

[The following is an excerpt from the upcoming FMU Success Prep Study Guide, TOP10 Marriage Tips For Smart Singles: Part 2, due out in January. However, Part 1 is already out and available

here.]

Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. - Col 3:2-4 (ESV)

I love that verse: “When Christ, who is our life…”

So many cheese-eating chick flicks have the guy tell the girl, something along the lines of…

“You are my life!” “You make life make sense!” “You’re my everything!” “You complete me!” “You are the breath that I breath!” “You make me come alive!” “You’re my reason for living!”

In the words of Marty McFly to his future wife, in Back to the Future, “You are my density… I mean, my destiny!” HOGWASH!

Your destiny is to share all of eternity with Christ in heaven (where, according to Jesus, no one gets married, by the way). Christ is your life. Only He can make your life make sense. He’s your everything. Only He can complete you, give you breath and make you come alive. He is your reason for living. And in a sense, he’s probably your density too.

Look, I’m not trying to get super-spiritual on you here (then again this is a Bible study), but all of these “heart-felt” Hollywood lines are really saying the same thing: “You are my idol!” And really, when you consider how stinkin’ hot the chick is, to whom these lines are addressed, who can blame the guy?

But that’s just it. The lines may be trite, but the temptation to put the girl or guy in front of God is titanic. That’s why I don’t think it’s super-spiritual to shoot these movie lines down. Even the wisest man of all time, Solomon, son of David, had just one harmless little Achilles heel – women. And it gutted his life. (Check out 1 Kings 11:1-13 if you think I’m exaggerating.)

It’s not that women are bad, guys. Ladies, it’s not that men are the devil.

It’s that looking for life from another human being is an exercise in futility. Sure it feels good to experience that chemistry; that passion that’s part and parcel to being in love; and I hope when you’re married in the not-so-distant future you enjoy that more days than you do not; that you celebrate it; that you breath it in.

But your beloved will run dry eventually unless they’re being renewed by the well that never runs dry. And that’s the same source from which you should be getting your life as well.

Well, how about you? Did you know that Christ is your life? Do you think about him that way? What things on earth are you setting your mind on? Are they really giving you the life you thought they would or are they actually sapping your life away?

[Check back weekly for more excerpts of the FMU Success Prep Study Guide, TOP10 Marriage Tips For Smart Singles: Part 2, or check out Part 1 right here.]

My Mom’s Rose-Colored Stained Glass Dating Advice

[The following is an excerpt from the upcoming FMU Success Prep Study Guide, TOP10 Marriage Tips For Smart Singles: Part 2, due out in January. However, Part 1 is already out and available here.]

Compared to the average bear, I was given a lot more to go on when it came to marriage preparation. My mom was intensely intentional about providing direction and admonishment on the topic of relationships in general and romance in particular. All relational issues were up for discussion; and from her life experience and extensive Biblical knowledge she often shared great advice.

Her only consistently weak spot was in discerning the feelings of the girl I was currently into. In my mom’s mind, every girl I ever fell in love with was probably in love with me too. Unfortunately, the girls I asked out were so good at suppressing their passions they didn’t even know their true feelings; just my Mom. We'd have conversations that went like this...

Me: “But Mom, I’ve asked her out seventeen times now.”

Mom: “Well, college is busy. You did say she was in a sorority, right?”

Me: “Yes! And she’s taking some other guy to her sorority dance.”

Mom: “She’s probably playing hard-to-get.”

Me: “If she is. She’s winning.”

Mom: “I remember when I was that age. I didn’t want to ask the guy I really liked. I would want to protect myself from getting hurt. What was her last reason for not going out with you?”

Me: “Ah. She said she didn’t like me.”

In reality, the first girl to like me back was Julie. And so I married her. That’s not the strategy we recommend at FMU, but by God’s grace, the first girl to like me back turned out to be a real winner. On the plus side, we had already been close friends for over 2 years before we even started dating, and that is something we recommend at FMU.

[end of excerpt]

Well, how about you? How have your parents helped (or not helped) you prepare for your future marriage? Feel like you'd like more to go on? DON'T WAIT FOR PREMARITAL COUNSELING! You can check out our podcast on The Boundless Show, the young adult outreach of Focus On The Family.

[Check back weekly for more excerpts of the FMU Success Prep Study Guide, TOP10 Marriage Tips For Smart Singles: Part 2, or check out Part 1 right here.]

But You Still Got To Live A Little, Right?

[The following is an excerpt from the upcoming FMU Success Prep Study Guide, TOP10 Marriage Tips For Smart Singles: Part 2, due out in January. However, Part 1 is already out and available here.]

Some think that being a Christian is all well and good, but you still got to live a little, right? What does this sentiment say about the perception of where life comes from?

The world says that life comes from sin. The partying lifestyle of binge drinking, uninhibited sexuality and recreational drugs – this is life. Buying things you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like– this is life. No rules, no restrictions, no consequences – this is life. Breaking all the rules, taking all you can, faking all you have to – this is life.

The Bible, on the other hand, says sin brings death. Who’s right? Who are you going to believe?

The irrefutable fact is, sin can make you feel alive. It can give you a rush; a high; a sense of invulnerability. In the face of temptation your heart races, your head spins and your palms sweat as you wonder, “Can I get away with this?” That’s part of the fun. Indeed, the very first sin was supposed to bring death, but Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit and kept on living. They got away with it! For a little while.

And that’s the rub. The theoretical “life” that sin offers you is fleeting; it’s life in the moment, and guilt (or denial) in perpetuity. There’s a logical reason sin is this way, it has to be or no one would sin.

If you haven’t discovered quite yet, someday you will –Satan wants to destroy you. That’s his end game, so to entice you into destroying yourself he has to offer you something that offers immediate gratification, so he appeals to your pride, your greed, your lust, your selfishness; whatever carrot he needs at the end of the stick.

God has a different end game in mind. He wants to make you whole; complete; mature, but no one becomes whole through pride, no one finds completion in lust and no one matures through selfishness. That being true, God can’t “lure” you into righteousness by offering the kind of trinkets and baubles that Satan can. So the world says, “take everything you can get” and “the one who dies with the most toys wins” (to which I think, “wins what?”), but in reality when I grasp for all that “life” I get death.

On some level we’ve all experienced this. We fought so hard to get the job, or the car or the recognition or the vacation or the promotion or the affections of that special someone; and then we get it. Then what? Was our life made complete? Now, it seems completely counterintuitive to think that if we stop fighting for all those things we want that we’ll find life without those “toys,” but at some point you got to figure “Plan A” hasn’t been working. It might be time to try “Plan B.”

[Check back weekly for more excerpts of the FMU Success Prep Study Guide, TOP10 Marriage Tips For Smart Singles: Part 2, or check out Part 1 right here.]

Do Hard Things

[The following is an excerpt from the upcoming FMU Success Prep Study Guide, TOP10 Marriage Tips For Smart Singles: Part 1]

I don’t know if Zac Sunderland ever went to one of Alex and Brett Harris’ Rebelution seminars or read their book, Do Hard Things, but on June 14, 2008, at 16 years of age, he determined to do something formidably hard. That’s when he embarked on a 28,000 mile/13 month solo-sailing trip around the globe in a 36-foot boat.

By the time you’re reading this, his record (of becoming the youngest individual to sail around the world) may have already been beaten by another younger sailor that set out shortly after Zac, but in a faster vessel. It couldn’t be that hard to beat Zac’s time, seeing as how, sailing barely 70 miles a day, he maintained an average cruising speed of less than 3 MPH!!

Zac good-naturedly said the other boy’s boat was built for speed, but his was built for adventure. Whether you would consider 13 months at sea adventure or torture, everyone could probably agree it was a very hard thing!

But do you know what is one of the hardest things you can do? Think.

No – I’m not asking you to think about what the answer might be. “Thinking” is the answer! Thinking is one of the hardest things you can do. Have you ever thought about it? (Pun intended.) Oftentimes doing things is hard, but many a person has attempted something difficult without really thinking about it ahead of time.

I have. And then I think, “What was I thinking?!” (Of course, that’s an ironic question to ask in those circumstances.)

In this lesson I want to encourage you to grow in a special kind of thinking the Bible calls discernment. The KJV dictionary defines discernment as follows: to examine, prove or test; scrutinize.

I realize that in light of preparing for marriage, this doesn’t sound very sexy or romantic, but here’s the deal: if you are not very discerning in dating and courtship, you are flirting with far more than you realize. Follow this train of logic (all aboard!):

• If you’re not very discerning you will not make very good decisions.
• Poor decisions hurt yourself and damage relationships.
• The more important the decisions, the more critical the need for discernment.
• The more significant the relationship, the more devastating the impact of poor discernment.

[Is discernment a problem for you? TOP10 Marriage Tips For Smart Singles: Part 1 will help you learn to make smarter decisions by discerning patterns of failure, discerning the impact of consumption, and discerning the difference between the problem and the symptoms.]

MJ