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Becoming godly men and women while dating

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I gave a message at the Journey Metro East a couple months ago about men, women, and dating. I spoke from 1 Peter 3 and sought to reverse engineer what the Bible has to say about successful marriages and apply it to dating (since the Bible is completely silent on the issue of dating).

I try to prepare every message with God's help (and if it weren't for him, I would have nothing of worth to offer - ever), but even so God doesn't tell me the topics to preach on very often.

That said, this was one of those sermons that I had to preach. I wasn't planning to - I had a great sermon on what it meant to be the covenant people of God ready to go - it was already outlined and submitted to the Journey teaching team for pre-preaching discussion. I was pretty happy with myself - for once, I was ahead of the game.

Then one morning, about a week before delivering that sermon, I woke up in a fog having a conversation with myself. The words followed me up out of mists of slumberland -

"That would be a great illustration for your message"

I was foggy. What would? What sermon?

"That joke you tell your kids about your fat stomach being a pillow top matress - firm on the inside but soft on the outside. You could use that when you talk about body image."

What? No way... wait, what? When am I talking about body image?

"When you preach on dating."

I was then fully awake. I wasn't planning on preaching on dating and had no intention about talking about my stomach fat ... but something about that thought continued to follow me throughout the day. And the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with that phantom-sleep-voice that the issue of dating and biblical manhood and womanhood was in fact what I should speak on.

So I did. I scrapped the message I had prepared and wrote a new one. It came together at the last minute and, honestly, was far from homiletic excellence. It was too long, rambled in places, and I said "dude" entirely too many times.

Even so, I have been amazed by the response to this message. I have received more emails and comments about it than any other message I have delivered. I trust that this is another example of God simply showing his power through my weakness - his glory pouring out of a broken vessel.

So, I share it here in the hope that it may be used by God to continue to call men to respectable manhood and women to strength and true beauty... and please let me know if God uses it in any way to encourage or challenge you.

http://www.journeyon.net/sermon/metro-east-dating-and-marriage-1-peter-31-7/
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