To follow up from what seemed to be a very popular series on dating, check out this video by Perry Noble from NewSpring Church in South Carolina.

[If you cannot see the embedded video, click here to view it]

This will conclude our 3-part series on dating. One of the pillars of The Project is “Relate“, promoting and encouraging healthy relationships. I’ll be drawing the material for this 3-part series from a great book called “The One” by Ben Young & Samuel Adams. Part 1: “LOOKING FOR THE ONE”, Part 2: “KNOWING WHEN YOU’VE FOUND THE ONE”, Part 3: “CHOOSING THE ONE.”

Are you in Love with the Wrong One?
Sometimes we just need to let go of the person we know isn’t the one. For some reason though, we hold on far too long. Here are some of our excuses:

“I know I can fix this one.”
“But I love him.”
“It’s better than being alone.”
“I’ve invested too much time and energy.”
“I’m scared of what the person might do.”
“I’m afraid I will hurt the person.”
“I need the financial security this relationship offers me.”
“God’s called me to carry His cross.”

8 Good Reasons This is Not The One

1. You are not in sync spiritually
We are so eager to fall in love that we tend to ignore the spiritual zone. If you aren’t in sync spiritually, you can’t connect with this person heart to heart.

2. You see major character flaws
If someone is dishonest, mean, angry, emotionally unstable or unfaithful, this is a sign. Don’t wait for a voice from on high to move on.

3. You are not romantically attracted
Don’t be spiritual about it, if you aren’t attracted to the person, there’s something wrong. Don’t think its important? Read Song of Solomon.

4. You are having to work too hard.
Don’t take this the wrong way, any good relationship takes hard work, but if you are trying too hard to have fun and experience unity, then its just not worth it.

5. You are constantly fighting
Fighting is normal, it happens. But if your relationship is characterised by unhealthy conflict, this is a sign of incompatibility.

6. You have been abused
If you have been physically or verbally abused by your dating partner, get out, move on – no questions asked.

7. You are not top priority in his or her life
Obviously God comes first, but if you are not a priority in his or her life today, you will never be.

8. You are constantly changing to please him or her
Change is inevitable in a relationship, but you want someone to be attracted to you for who you are, not the phony skin you are wearing to please the other person.

How do you break it off?
So, you decide that the person is not the one for you. What do you do next? Here are some helpful guidelines on how to break up:

1. Immediately
Don’t waste time by prolonging the inevitable. If you play games and hold on, all you are doing is enlarging the emotional wound.

2. Honestly
Be open, honest, direct, and sincere. Get to the point and don’t linger in the realm of ambiguity. Too many people do this.

3. Tactfully
This is not the time to get cruel about how you’ve felt wronged. Be honest, but tactful. Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth (Eph 4:29).

4. Courageously
Breaking up is one of the most difficult things, but courage is the ability to do something despite your fear.

5. Completely
Don’t have a fake break-up where you say its over, but you call the next week to see how he or she is doing. Don’t play games, end it and put space between you for a while.

How To Keep The One
So, you think you found the one? Well, that’s just the first step. Where do you go from here? Here are some “DONT’S” of keeping the one:

1. Don’t wait for a voice or sign from heaven
If you’ve dated for 2 years, you’ve finished uni and you’re working, and you’ve connected in all 3 love zones, don’t drag out the inevitable.

2. Don’t pressure your partner if you are within the two-year time frame
Don’t manipulate the other person if you “know” and they don’t. They have to figure it out in their own time, two years is healthy.

3. Don’t isolate yourselves
Isolation and ultra-privacy usually signifies a level of immaturity or a possible warning sign. Don’t exclude others from the process, they are vital to it.

4. Don’t experiment with living together
Cohabitation is a relational trend in the secular world, but statistics show that couples who live together before marriage are 48% more likely to divorce than those who don’t.

A Better Way to Close the Deal
So, avoiding those “donts”, here are four critical guidelines to help you prepare for a successful lifetime union:

1. Appoint an advisory board
One of the most important things you can do to enhance your odds of success is to surround yourself with a group of people who can support you and offer priceless feedback.

2. Define the relationship sooner than later
This is not about pressuring the other person, but a time to be open, honest and direct about your expectations for a future together. Somewhere around the 1-year mark is wise.

3. Seek relationship counselling
You train to get your drivers license, so why not do the same for marriage and ensure you are educated and responsible. There are tons of options for young couples.

4. Nurture the relationship
A relationship takes work, and it is only as good as you are willing to invest. Always be seeking to mature and develop your relationship and build your spiritual connection.

Are You Ready?
The divorce rate in the church is just as bad or worse than the divorce rate in society. One of the ways you can prevent this is to choose a person who fits all 3 zones (Relational, Character & Spiritual). Secondly, understand the reality of covenant marriage. Far too many couples breeze into marriage without a clear understanding of this. You must be ready for the following 3 realities:

1. Get ready for holiness
We have bought into the silly, yet dangerous, notion that marriage will make us happy. But what if God intended marriage not to make you happy, but to make you holy? Marriage is not about meeting your needs, it’s a 24/7/365 marathon designed by God himself to knock off your rough edges and reform your selfish nature in order to make you holy. It is about commitment, giving, serving, forgiving, and laying down your natural selfish desires to live for another person.

2. Get ready for sacrifice
Some married couples go into shock when they discover the undeniable truth that marriage is not about getting anything, but giving everything.

3. Get ready for commitment
The best word to sum up a successful marriage would be commitment. We have forgotten the meaning of this word in our culture, which has plunged into a commitment crisis.

This concludes the series on dating. I hope this has been helpful to you in some way. By now, you should at least be a little more clear about how best to work through that ‘make or break’ decision about finding, knowing and choosing, ‘The One.’

We continue on with our 3-part series on dating. One of the pillars of The Project is “Relate“, promoting and encouraging healthy relationships. I’ll be drawing the material for this 3-part series from a great book called “The One” by Ben Young & Samuel Adams. Part 1: “LOOKING FOR THE ONE”, Part 2: “KNOWING WHEN YOU’VE FOUND THE ONE”, Part 3: “CHOOSING THE ONE.”

THE LOVE TARGET

Finding a potential partner means connecting with someone in three essential “love” zones: relational compatibility, character and spirituality. These three zones make up what we call the “Love Target.” The Love Target is a model developed to give you the criteria and help you organise your priorities in selecting a soul mate. The idea is that you must connect on all three zones. Plus, the target is arranged in three concentric circles with the Spiritual zone at the core (most important), the Character zone circling around the middle (very important) and the Relational zone as the outer circle (important).

THE RELATIONAL ZONE
How do you know if you are relationally compatible? There are three components: Chemisty, Personality and Lifestyle.

Chemistry (Physical or Emotional Attraction): There are many aspects of a relationship that you can create, nurture and develop over time. This isn’t one of them. It’s mysterious and multifaceted, but either you have it or you don’t.

Personality Style: Personality is pretty stable over time. Sure, you can tweak it a little, but the basic tendencies won’t change. If it bugs you now, it’ll bug you forever. You have to ask yourself whether you can accept and adapt, even if they don’t change.

Lifestyle (Interests & Hobbies): There will be a huge relational mismatch if you don’t share the same interests. An individual’s lifestyle will tell you 3 things about that person: emotional self, inner self, and priorities. Are you ok with what you see?

THE CHARACTER ZONE
What you do matters. What you do is what you believe and at any given moment you always do as you believe in that moment. That’s what character is. Your next challenge is to discern whether or not the person you are dating has good character and whether it is compatible. Here are some questions you should ask:

1. Do you respect this person?
The foundation of any healthy relationship is respect and admiration.

2. How does this person handle money?
It is often heard that most couples divorce for one of two reasons. Money or sex.

3. Does this person have endurance?
Are they a wimp? When things get tough do they bail? Do they have staying power?

4. Does this person tell the truth?
A recent survey revealed that the number one thing people could tolerate the least was dishonesty.

5. Is this person responsible?
If people can’t take care of their own lives, then they certainly can’t take care of a relationship.

6. Do you like the person’s friends?
A person’s friends are a mirror image of his or her character.

7. How does this person relate to their family?
Does this person have a healthy relationship with their parents. The way love is expressed at home will be how it is in your relationship.

THE SPIRITUAL ZONE
What makes you tick? What about the person you desire to spend the rest of your life with? What is at their core? That’s the spiritual zone! Your spiritual zone affects everything you do: the way you view dating, marriage, divorce, money, work, sex and recreation. Your faith is your worldview, so it is vitally important that you connect on this level.

Are you ignoring your spiritual zone?
Here are three reasons why you might be…

1. You are hiding in the safety of the silence
This is when you both know you are Christians, but for some reason you never really talk about it. Or maybe you don’t know where he or she stands spiritually but you never talk about it. Not good.

2. You are content with swimming in the shallows
There is a great joy to be found in exploring each other’s deep spiritual convictions. Don’t be content with the shallow end of the pool forever, ask the big questions of each other: who am I, why am I here, what are my hopes and dreams?

3. You are satisfied with just having sex
Intimacy goes deeper than sex. Sex can often serve as a substitute for other forms of intimacy. Sex is a life-unifying act that must be coupled with a life-unifying commitment. Be willing to expose yourself emotionally and seek to penetrate the soul first.

Three things to look for in the spiritual zone:

1. Faith
You must be certain of two things. First, that you have a personal relationship with Jesus, and second, that the person you plan to marry for the rest of your life has had a genuine experience with Christ as well.

2. Fruit
There are a lot of posers out there who claim to be someone they are not and give lip-service to their faith. Consider the fruits of the spirit in their life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

3. Family
Church. Is the family of God important in their life? Are they committed to a local church where they are around other like-minded believers? Having the support of a healthy church family is vital to the success of your dating and marriage relationship.

Tomorrow: CHOOSING THE ONE

Today begins a 3-part series on dating. One of the pillars of The Project is “Relate“, promoting and encouraging healthy relationships. I’ll be drawing the material for this 3-part series from a great book called “The One” by Ben Young & Samuel Adams. Part 1: “LOOKING FOR THE ONE”, Part 2: “KNOWING WHEN YOU’VE FOUND THE ONE”, Part 3: “CHOOSING THE ONE.”

“The success or failure of an intimate relationship is strongly influenced by one’s choice of a mate. Selecting a person with the right characteristics is perhaps the most important prerequisite for attaining the ideal of a close, personal relationship.”

THE QUEST FOR THE ONE

Do you feel the pressure to find the one?
1. Family: Mum, Dad and the rest of the family usually have expectations that don’t fit your reality.
2. Married Friends: Don’t you just hate it when your married friends rub their bliss in your face?
3. Society: From early on, we are driven by an expectation to be married through our consumption of media.
4. Your Body: Seriously, the urge is there for some sexual healing, or the “urge to merge” if ya know what I mean.
5. Yourself: We are driven by an expectation and assumption that we should be married by a particular time.

Five Reckless Ways to Respond to the Pressure
1. Press the Panic Button: Freak out and try to unnaturally speed up the process.
2. Settle for Mr/Mrs Right Now: Lowering your standards, choosing for the sake of choosing.
3. Deny Your Heart’s Desire: Don’t lose heart, don’t deny the built in urge to be in a relationship.
4. Crawl Into a Cave: Don’t give up, turning inwards only lessens your chances.
5. Spiritualise Your Quest: Don’t take a super-spiritual approach and ask God to do the work for you.

Things You Can Do to De-Pressurise the Quest
1. Face the Truth: Accept the reality of where you are and what you are feeling.
2. Relax and Embrace the Process: Take a deep breath and enjoy the process of being single.
3. Never Compromise: Whatever you do, wherever you go, you must not compromise in the quest for love.
4. Change Your Approach: If you can’t change the direction of the wind, adjust your sails.

THE SEVEN MYTHS ABOUT THE ONE

Myth #1: There is just one special person
Wouldn’t it be nice? But this is an unrealistic expectation about the way God works in our lives.

Myth #2: If you love God enough, He will give you a soul mate
If you pray hard enough, seek His will long enough, you are guaranteed a mate. I wish. Balance personal responsibility with God’s leading and timing.

Myth #3: There is one, true Christian way to find your mate
The bible doesn’t stipulate any particular method of mate-selection. Be respectful, responsible, conscientious, and conform to God’s principles.

Myth #4: Follow your heart
What really counts is how you “feel.” This is a myth. Too much emphasis is placed on feelings and emotions. Place common sense alongside emotional appeal.

Myth #5: Don’t worry, you’ll just know
What a cop out. The process is tough, doubts are normal, you may never know with absolute certainty, but that doesn’t mean its not right.

Myth #6: All you need is God
You need more in common than just both being Christians. You must be compatible on a number of levels that are broad-based.

Myth #7: There is someone for everyone
You know what, maybe you just aren’t meant to get married. That’s totally ok, Jesus says its ok (Matt 19:11-12). Your life can be meaningful and fulfilling without a date.

WHERE TO FIND THE ONE

Worst places to meet The One
Bars: Its too loud, smoke it thick, and you’re likely drinking alcohol, which means your judgement is compromised.
Different Time Zones: Too hard.
Chat Rooms: Way too creepy. Too many people re-invent themselves and people get hurt.

Target Rich Environments
Church: Likely the best place to meet a mate. Low-key, friendly, safe and healthy.
Work: There are some rules to follow, but this is great place to find someone who shares interests and life aspirations.
Friends and Family: According to surveys, people consistently find partners through networking through friends and family.
Expand your circle of friends: Get out there and join a sports team, learn to dance, do some pilates, take a course, whatever, just get out there.

SINGLE FOR A REASON OR SINGLE FOR A SEASON?

Internal barriers to finding the one
1. Fear of Intimacy (Too Close for Comfort Syndrome): Intimacy is about having the courage to be your true self in the presence of another, this is hard.
2. Fear of Rejection (Play it Safe Syndrome): Rejection is always a possibility so get used to it. When you know who you are, you won’t be shaken by rejection.
3. Fear of Equality (The One Up/One Down Sydnrome): Nobody is “not good enough” for your or “out of your league.” This is stinkin’ thinkin’.
4. Fear of Commitment (Best of Both Worlds Syndrome): This is not so much about committing to someone as much as it is saying no to every other potential mate.

Overcoming these barriers
Face your fears head-on: The more you “do” the very thing you fear, the less fear you will have.
Get into safe relationships: Take a risk and allow yourself to be in a safe relationship where you can trust the other person.
Learn healthy self-talk: Pay attention to your inner dialogue, what are you saying about yourself?
Seek professional help: Maybe our insecurities and fears are more deeply rooted and we need some professional guidance.

Tomorrow: KNOWING WHEN YOU’VE FOUND THE ONE

Mark Driscoll getting fired up at the men in his church…

[If you cannot see the embedded video, click here to view it]

So, I’ve never actually consumed alcohol in my life. I mean, I think I remember tasting some of my Mum’s wine once when I was a kid or even possibly sipping a bit of my Dad’s beer to see what it tastes like, but I remember the taste repulsing me. A lot of people find it quite strange when I tell them, particularly those who aren’t a part of my community of believers. I once had to be breath-tested by a police officer and he didn’t believe me when I told him I had never drank alcohol, and I often get that response from people.

For me, it’s not entirely a faith decision, I only became a Christian when I was 19, and I had every opportunity to drink before then. After making a commitment to Christ, it only cemented my decision to never drink. I wholeheartedly disapprove of binge drinking, I believe that in any situation it is unhealthy and dangerous. Although I do believe the world would be a better place without alcohol, I don’t ever condemn anyone for having a drink. Basically every person I know drinks alcohol, so I’d lose friends pretty quickly.

That said, I think it’s negative effects (health, violence etc) far outweigh its positive effects. I don’t drink because I don’t think it will ever add anything to my life, it won’t make me happier, it won’t make me a better person, it won’t help me succeed and it certainly won’t help my financial situation.

I’ve always believed that alcohol represented delusion. It’s effects aren’t real, they are imagined. Alcohol doesn’t make you happy, or confident or relaxed, it gives you the illusion that those things are occurring, it tricks your mind, because the moment the alcohol leaves your system, you’re back in the same place you started. You haven’t become a confident person, you haven’t learnt how to relax and handle stress, you haven’t found any real joy, it’s all an illusion.

Becoming more confident, finding joy and peace are real things that can be found and learnt, but the truth is, you’ll never find them in a bottle. For me, alcohol has always been a counterfeit to the real thing. I find my joy, peace, confidence in Christ. It is within Him that each of us will find those things which our culture tries to counterfeit. Money, possessions, alcohol, they all offer things they can never give. I say give me truth, give me what’s real, give me what lasts. Don’t waste my time with anything else!

For all you boozers out there, the guys over at Life Education (remember Healthy Harold) are running a great event called Ocsober: an exciting fundraising program that challenges Australians to “Cut Out” alcohol for one month – during October – to help raise money and to educate children about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

Ocsober raises funds for Life Education’s drug and health education programs that support and strengthen primary and secondary schools drug and health initiatives. The money you raise will go directly to Life Education to teach more children the skills and the knowledge to say “no” to drugs and alcohol.

As Australia’s largest non government provider of drug and health education to children, Life Education works in partnership with more than 3,500 schools and reaches 700,000 children each year with important messages to help keep them safe. By becoming an Ocsober Legend, or sponsoring a Legend, you are giving more children the opportunity to live a safer, healthier life – free from the harmful effects of drug and alcohol misuse.

http://www.ocsober.com.au/

So, I just saw a TV commercial about Herpes, you can watch it here: http://www.thefacts.com.au/on-tv/

Basically, the commercial shows a whole bunch of different types of underwear while a voice-over claims that “Herpes doesn’t only affect one type of person, in fact, Herpes is so common that you can catch it even if you’ve only had a few sexual partners.”

So what does the commercial propose in order to see an end to this common and irritating sexually transmitted disease? “If you have recurring symptoms like redness, tingling, or itching anywhere inside your underwear, next time they appear, see a doctor.”

Wow!

Hey, so I have a crazy “out there” idea, how about not having so many sexual partners…

But then I realised, the commercial was commissioned by GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company. They don’t want to eradicate Herpes, they just want to sell Herpes medication!

Forget the rest, we live in the Breast-Obsessed West – Sydney Graffiti

On the return drive from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, and well, at numerous locations across Australia, you can see one of those massive bright yellow and red billboards from the Advanced Medical Institute (AMI) displaying the words: “WANT LONGER LASTING SEX?”

Recently however, the Advertising Standards Bureau, due to countless complaints (mostly from concerned parents about it being offensive), advised the AMI to reconsider the billboard and soften the ads’ visual impact. In response, the medical institute swapped the word “sex” for the word “censored” by plastering a stark black and white lettering over the old billboard’s red and yellow colour palette.

The ironic part about this whole scenario is that further down the road is an equally sized billboard for some sleazy men’s club in the Brisbane area with a girl in scantily clad lingerie. The image of the girl is so large that her upper body juts out of the top of the billboard. That billboard remains untouched. Now, my question is this. Why is the word “sex” more offensive than a picture of a large breasted stripper in her underwear advertising a sleazy men’s club?

The problem is this: sex has been hi-jacked from the bedroom and made to sell everything to every man and his dog. From the back of buses to the big screen, sex is everywhere in the Western world. The resulting saturation has tabooed any talk of “sex” and parents are afraid to discuss it. The distorted image of sex conveyed by a sex-saturated media has unfortunately replaced the healthy sex education that ought to occur between parent and child.

How is it distorted? Well, for example, 70% of the Internet is porn. With a few clicks of the mouse, a 14-year-old can be viewing images of bestiality, rape, and hardcore pornography. The images and expectations of sex in the minds of these children and the wider audience of these kinds of distorted representations in the media have created a culture of narcissism. The sexualized images of our culture have given men and women a distorted and unrealistic sense of entitlement and expectation in the bedroom.

What is the result of this great prostitution of intimacy and the seduction of innocence? The new portals of sexual “liberation” are ironically driving men and women further apart. Confusion reigns over our needs and roles, particularly when those roles are commercially subverted. The most intimate moments of couples are now public property, no longer secret or sacred, but flogged through the market. Sex has lost its purity and its sanctity, and commodified sex is distracting and diminishing healthy relationships as the merchants of sex offer overblown ideals, the impersonal, and the banal.

It seems that nobody is doing it as much as you think or see. Sex is all over the streets today; it’s just not in the bedroom. Husbands and wives are just not having that much sex anymore. There are statistics from the US that show that single men prefer to download pornography on the Internet and masturbate than have sex with their girlfriends. Sex is a dying art, and the sexless marriage is becoming ubiquitous in Western culture, due in no small part to how we’ve lost the soul of sex.

Parents are concerned with issues related to pornography and want the government to do something. However, there seems to be an unholy alliance between the right-wing libertarians who don’t want to constrain the market, and the left-wing libertarians who say all censorship is oppressive. It seems we’ve completely lost perspective on the notion of healthy, consecrated sex.

We have to create a culture where sex re-captures its mystery, where you wait to have it, at the right time, with the right person in the right context. We must stop demeaning and deprecating sex and stop using it to sell beer and magazines. Sex is like superglue; it’s the needle and thread that sews two halves into one unit. So long as we dilute that glue with so much water, the glue doesn’t work.

Sex ain’t a dirty word and ought to be discussed and understood in its proper context. The same parents who complained about the AMI billboards should stop being afraid of the word “sex”, and instead be more concerned about the ubiquitous sexualized images that their children are exposed to on a daily basis and the distorted understanding of sex that those images convey.

Then again, what the heck would I know…

To learn more about this issue and hear from people like Clive Hamilton and Rabbi Shmuley, watch the episode “Sex” from the six part SBS television documentary series: Decadence: The Meaninglessness of Modern Life, hosted by Pria Viswalingam. The series is now being made into a 90min documentary. Visit the website for more details.

Mark Driscoll has released a free ebook entitled “Porn Again Christian: A Frank Discussion on pornography and masturbation.” If you don’t know, Mark Driscoll is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA and is considered one of the most influential evangelicals in the United States. He’s known to be controversial at times mostly because he’s not afraid to talk about some hot potatoes that other pastors and leaders don’t want to touch. This book is a great resource for men dealing with sexual sin but is also a great read for men in general and young single men in particular. You can download or read it here: http://relit.org/porn_again_christian/