How Far is Too Far?

All right, Porch. How are we doing tonight? Are you doing okay? It's great to see you. Everybody in the front, are y'all doing good? Everybody in the top, are you doing all right? It's amazing to be here. I'm so glad y'all would choose to join us as we're continuing through our dating series We Need to Talk.

I'm so excited for where we're going, but we need to say hello to a couple of people who are joining us here tonight. First, we want to say hello to everybody who's joining us in the Chapel. We're so grateful that y'all would make the time and stay steadfast to the cause and not give up on the evening, though you may not have gotten a seat in this room. We're so glad you would be here with us.

Then, we're so grateful that the work God is doing in Dallas is a work he's doing in other cities all over our nation, particularly those cities where we have Porch.Live locations just like this one. So, shout-out to all of you guys, but very particularly Porch.Live Greater Lafayette, Porch.Live Fresno, and Porch.Live Scottsdale.

Porch, there was a moment early in Brooke's and my dating experience that to this day is still the stuff of hot debate. So, I wanted to let you into the chat and see if you could help us settle the dispute. Does that sound okay? Are you up for that? So, it was at this time in our relationship where we weren't even officially dating yet.

You see, we'd spent a lot of time around each other, and we had even piqued one another's interest, but, for a variety of reasons (namely, I had some commitment issues), we had not gone out on a date yet. Yet that was all going to change. I had finally run my course and had my fill, and I was ready to ask her out. I knew it was all going to finally change at the annual organizational Christmas party. This was the moment I was waiting for.

I knew this was the time when we would have the perfect moment in the perfect place to be able to look one another in the eyes and say that we were going to go out together. So, I'd made up my mind coming into that evening. By the end of the night, I was going to ask her out. Simultaneously to that, she had made up her mind, completely separate of me, that if I didn't ask her out, she was going to move on.

So, the evening came. I was in leadership of this kind of club thing we were involved in, so I had some duties to the people. By the end of the evening, after I'd said goodbye to all of our guests, made sure to say hello to some friends, and kind of closed the event down, I knew that perfect moment in that perfect place had finally arrived.

As I was making my way to ask her, "Hey, will you go on a date with me?" it was right in that moment that I got sidelined by another person (a girl, at that), which required a long conversation of me, because there was something really big happening in her life, and she wanted to be able to process it. It certainly didn't help optics that I was talking to her and wasn't talking to Brooke.

I concluded that conversation swiftly, and I started searching, trying to find where Brooke was. She'd already left. I was gutted. Like, this was that moment…perfect time, perfect place. It was Christmas. Merriment was in the air. The lights were twinkling above. The night sky was cool and refreshing to be out in. Not to be deterred, I decided I was going to call her.

Now, we'd hung out a lot, but I had never given her a call. There had never been a good reason to, yet now I had the perfect reason to. So, I decided, "You know what? A call is not exactly the picture-perfect scenario, but she's going to see my name pop up. That's going to be surprising to her, like, 'Why might he be calling? I'm sure he'll have a good reason,' and she'll pick up, and we'll pick right back up where we would have been."

So, I dialed her number. It rang and rang and rang, and then it went straight to voicemail. "For the love of God, why is this so hard?" So, I decided to hang up, and I would just wait by the phone until she called me back. Only, she never did. Herein lies the dispute I need your help with. Should I have left a voicemail or not?

In my estimation, having never called her before, knowing that when you see someone who you know in your call log, the natural response is to call them back. Yes? Yet, in her opinion, if you don't get a voicemail, then you don't get a call back. Now, the verdict is still out on what we actually think of this situation. You see, there's a lot that could be argued about both sides. If I really laid my case before you, I have no doubt I'd get a grandstand of applause and you would all side with me, but that's neither here nor there.

You see, good cases could be made either way. The reason for that is because in dating, there's always room to debate whether someone went far enough. That was the issue in our moment. I thought I had gone far enough, but she was looking at me and saying, "You definitely did not go far enough." It's in those moments in dating where we can really debate the specifics, but you cannot debate when you've gone too far.

You can always look at one another and wonder if you should or shouldn't bring flowers on the first date. Is it good for you to make sure you buy all of the meals whenever you're together? (Sidebar, guys. If it's a date, then you definitely should be picking up the tab.) When is the right time for you to start unpacking all of your past romantic history? When does that happen? You see, there's a lot of debate that can happen here.

When it comes to those areas of our romantic relationships, we know that in the spots where we've gone too far, we often feel that there's not much to discuss. We're pretty conclusively convinced when those moments come. The reason we are is because they're associated with negative feelings, things like shame and regret and embarrassment and guilt, things we don't like to feel, those moments that feel like a dark cloud in the midst of a sunny sky over your romantic relationship. We're all familiar with those.

It's convincing when you've gone too far, when you started fooling around and maybe found yourself farther physically than you thought you'd ever be, or you experimented with the same sex, and at first it was just innocent, but then you found yourself catching feelings in a way that you never anticipated happening. Maybe you met someone at a really low point in your life, and at that moment, you became so emotionally entangled that codependency began to creep in, or you slept with one another even though you swore in this relationship, this time, it was going to be different.

You see, the reality is going too far is a feeling many of us are very familiar with. It's a feeling our society is very familiar with, too, which is why we've seen the advent of consent culture, this idea where two people, so long as they're under a verbal agreement, can have emotionless, boundaryless, and commitment-less sex, because in a materialist culture, like we have here in America, you can disassociate what happens to your body from what happens to your mind and your soul.

Yet, according to one author and journalist out of the Washington Post, a woman by the name of Christine Emba… She argues that couldn't be farther from the truth. She wrote an article, and I would commend it to you. It's called "Consent is not enough. We need a new sexual ethic." In there, she makes the case that the primary argument around consent today is not what's legally correct but what's ethically correct. The debate really revolves around not whether we can do X, Y, or Z but whether we should do X, Y, or Z.

She says in that article, "Making the standard of consent our sole criterion for good sex punts on the question of how to conduct a relationship that affirms our fundamental personhood and human dignity." What's she saying? In her estimation, it's impossible to separate one's body from their emotions. It's not possible to engage in physical intimacy and not develop an emotional connection with someone else.

That's a point that her peers within scholarship agree on. I could share with you several, but I'll just give you one. Peggy Orenstein in her book Girls & Sex was doing a variety of interviews on college campuses. As she was talking to young college women, she found that they perceived hooking up (sober, mind you) to be awkward.

As one freshman girl put it to Peggy, "Being sober makes it seem like you want to be in a relationship. It's really uncomfortable." What are those college students saying to Peggy as she's concluding her data? They're saying, "I want to experience the physical pleasure of physical intimacy, but I don't want the emotional pain that comes with a real connection." The same is true for us. That's what happens whenever we go too far. We don't like the feeling.

What the world has done is given you two solutions. Hey, if you don't like the feeling you get whenever you go too far, whenever you cross boundaries you shouldn't cross, whenever you slip into places you know you shouldn't go, what you have to support your conscience is you can be appeased by way of consent or you can avoid those feelings by way of alcohol, neither of which are very good options. I think there's a better way.

Rather than regretting going too far, what if we just knew how far is too far? That's what I want to talk with you about today. I want to talk to you about how far is too far, which is a really interesting question when you think about it, because when people ask this question, it may be one inquisition, but it's actually two lines of logic. People want to know where the line is. "Tell me. Where's the line at, and then how close to the line can I actually get?"

That's what people really want to know, which is a really dumb way of thinking about it. Why would you want to get as close to the ledge as physically possible, knowing that one wrong movement might lead you slipping over the side and falling to your romantic doom? Why would you ever want to do that? Because it's a thrill? Actually, yes. That's why many young adults want to know where the line is. They want to know so they can avoid messing up but also avoid missing out.

Here's the thing: if you're operating in a romantic context within a dating relationship to someone else with that mentality, "I don't want to miss out," the truth is you've already missed out. What we know is that contrary to what most people think, the goal of purity is not just to avoid moving too fast or going too far; the goal of purity is also, and actually more so, about seeing God as too good. That's really what we want, which is why boundaries are really helpful.

Now, if we're going to talk about boundaries, it's useful to have a common definition that we all agree upon when we're talking about this idea. So, here's the idea of boundaries. A boundary is a line that guards against temptation for the sake of personal flourishing. It's often a line that you yourself set. Many people think of boundaries as trying to box you in, but really, what boundaries are trying to do is to build you up.

A fire can both burn down a home and bring warmth to a house. The same is true in a dating relationship. The difference, though, depends on the boundary that fire is contained within. In a dating relationship, the two of you can go up in flames…you can be burnt by wrong behavior…or your relationship can become a source of life. It can be a cause for warmth as you date in a way that is both befitting of Christ and blessing to one another.

So then, it begs the question…What kinds of boundaries should we have? Well, the apostle Paul begins to unpack that idea for us in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. Let me just give you a little bit of brief context. Paul is writing to a group of young believers in this bustling metropolis known as Thessalonica. Thessalonica was a highly diversified and highly sexualized city. Within its streets, things like pagan worship, temple prostitution, and serial adultery were rampant.

It was so common for there to be not a one-woman man but a many-woman man. One Athenian orator by the name of Demosthenes articulates this context we're reading into by saying this. This was from his day. He said, "We keep prostitutes for pleasure, we keep mistresses for the day-to-day needs of the body, and we keep wives for the begetting of children and for the faithful guardianship of our homes."

What's he saying? "We live in a Greco-Roman society that is sexually charged." It's into that society that the apostle Paul is writing to this young community of believers, and he's trying to tell them, "Hey, there's a way to order your life so that you do what is appropriate and avoid what is inappropriate. There are boundaries you should follow."

My hope over the course of our time is to help you see the same, that within our context, there's a way to live appropriately, to order your life with boundaries so that your relationships can flourish and not fail. The way I want to do it is I want to give you four ways to know when you've gone too far, the first of which we read about in the opening verses. As we do so, we're just going to take verse by verse by verse. We'll talk about them a little bit until we get to the very end.

So here it goes. First Thessalonians 4, starting in verse 1: "Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus."

1. Your Christianity looks compromised. That's the first way you know you've gone too far. It's when your Christianity looks compromised, when your behaviors in life don't match the beliefs you claim, which interestingly, is not the case for the Thessalonians. Paul just described them. He said, "Hey, we've become convinced of your faith by way of not only your words but your deeds.

You're not just in the business of learning a lot of things about Jesus; you are in the business of living those things yourself. You want to follow Christ in a way where your life looks like his own." Why is that? What was the cause for them to have this kind of allegiance? He tells us. They saw that Jesus was an authority. It says they learned from his instruction.

I'll put it to you like this. If you were to go to driver's ed, and a 16-year-old was sitting there trying to teach you how to drive a car, that would not be very good instruction, but if you showed up to driver's ed and Lewis Hamilton was sitting behind the wheel, you'd better take some notes. That guy knows his way. He has understood the rules of the road, and you will be served well to learn the things he has to teach you. You see, the credibility of your teacher impacts the quality of your learning.

These Thessalonians are looking at Jesus, and they're like, "Man, there's no one more credible than him. He's one who can teach me things, not just for some things in life but for everything in life, even the areas in which I engage romantically with other people. He's my authority, so I listen to him."

Porch, let me ask you. When it comes to dating and relationships, who's your authority? Who are you learning from? Whose instruction are you sitting underneath? Who is discipling you when it comes to the realm of romance? Is it your buddies, the way they talk about women? Maybe it's your girlfriends. It could be TikTok or a significant other.

Maybe it's none of those. Maybe it's your favorite romance author…Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca Yarros. Maybe it's a podcast you listen to, something on YouTube, like Whatever or Call Her Daddy on Spotify. I don't know what it is, but there's a good chance you're subscribing to someone else's authority. The issue is when you start to do that, you start to go too far.

Why is it that our Christianity becomes compromised? Our Christianity becomes compromised when we stop listening to God and start listening to other people. It doesn't even mean they're bad people. It doesn't mean they have an evil agenda, but there's a difference between listening to good teachers and listening to a godly teacher. Jesus wants to teach you the ways of God himself. He wants to spare you from a Christianity that looks compromised.

So, how is it that our Christianity can look compromised? Well, I want to share with you a couple of different examples, because I know this is not just pertinent to physical compromise, though that's true. When our Christianity becomes compromised, we know we have encroached a boundary in not only physical places but emotional places and spiritual places too.

Your Christianity can look compromised physically, for sure. I talk to people all the time, and they look at me and say things like, "Well, how else are you supposed to know it's going to work unless you move in with each other?" Look. I'll tell you how you know it's going to work. Your relationship is going to work because you're committed to making it work. You do not have to cohabit in order to figure out whether or not you're a compatible couple.

In fact, if you look at the data, you realize cohabiting is not a determiner of marriage material; it might actually be one that exposes the opposite. According to the research, cohabiting increases the likelihood of divorce, decreases overall marital satisfaction, and is directly linked to negative psychological and emotional outcomes for children.

Meaning, a relationship does not last in your life because, "Oh my gosh! He's house trained. I never would have thought. He picks up after himself." That's not why it's going to last. It's not going to work because, "Dude, she loves to cook, and I love to eat." That's not why it's going to work out. You're not looking for a roommate; you're looking for a spouse.

Now, let me be abundantly clear. These aren't bad things to look for. When you get married and rightly enter a home under the proper covenantal union that God has established, man and wife, you should work through some of these details. You don't want your home to feel like a never-ending season of Survivor where you're constantly fighting for your life with this other person on the same island. That's not what you want.

You need to make sure you're valuing the right things first, that you're looking at them and trying to discern, "Are you someone I can build a life with without pretending we're already in that life together right now?" You need to look at them, and you need to see Jesus in them, someone who will serve you even at cost to themselves, who will seek your good because they care about you, who will sacrifice because they want your well-being. You want someone who looks like Jesus. If you find someone like that, I promise you'll work it out.

"But how do we know if we're sexually compatible?" What do you mean? Are you a guy? Is she a girl? It's going to work. We're laughing, but this is the great question facing our culture. We so often look at one another and wonder, "But hold on. I have to know that there's good sexual chemistry here."

Oh, so you're not wondering if your parts fit, because your parts will. What you're actually wondering is "Can he strike the right positions?" or "Do they know the proper technique?" That's really what you want to know. "Is this thing going to be good for me?" That is selfish. That's so selfish. That's not valuing the life of another person; that is valuing your life in their place instead.

Here's what I want you to know: you're not supposed to know if you have sexual chemistry or compatibility before you get married. That's why you get married. You spend the first few years of your marriage figuring this out together. That's the beauty of marriage. Sex is meant to be explored between a husband and a wife, not experimented with other people before you ever get there.

I love it. In the book of Song of Solomon (which I'm committed to teaching at some point here at The Porch), what I love is you get to chapter 4, and you see Solomon and the Shulammite on their wedding night. As you enter the bridal chamber with the both of them, you see Solomon admire his bride's beauty. He explores her body, and he does so in a way that dignifies her. It says he starts with her eyes behind her veil, and then he moves and looks at the way her hair falls over her shoulders.

He sees the whiteness of her smile. He describes the scarlet redness of her lips. He sees the blush in her cheeks. He sees the dignity in her neck. I'll stop there because it gets pretty steamy as he continues to make his way down. You see, what you have to know is that sex is meant to be explored. Solomon didn't enter into that bridal chamber wondering, "Are we sexually compatible?" Let me tell you how he figured it out. He took one look at her and said, "I think this is going to work." The same will be true for you.

So, you will compromise your Christianity physically if you fall prey to some line of question like this, but you'll also compromise your Christianity emotionally if you fall prey to questions like, "Well, how do I lead my girlfriend?" What are you talking about? That is a ridiculous question. Now, I know most guys who ask that question are not trying to be ridiculous; they're trying to be noble. They want to do well at the job.

The truth is, though the Bible has a lot to say about the way men sacrificially love and lead their wives and provide for their homes, it doesn't say a lick about the way boyfriends are supposed to lead their girlfriends. Here's the truth: stop trying to lead her like she's yours when you haven't done what it takes to make her yours.

When Brooke and I were dating, there came a moment in our relationship, after we'd been together for a considerable time… After that time, there came a moment where she was getting different job opportunities in different cities, and it looked like the severing of our relationship was at hand. I looked at her and said, "Hey, I know we've talked about this, but you don't belong to me. You're not mine. We're not married. You follow God. He's the leader of your life. I trust that he's going to work this thing out if he wants it to be. He leads my life. He leads your life."

The same is true for you. God is the leader of your life. Yes, some of those things change whenever you enter into the marriage union, but only then do you start to see leadership roles shift. For now, you lead you and she leads her. I could get into the whole point of, "Well, aren't I supposed to guard her heart?" No, you're not supposed to guard her heart. She's supposed to guard her heart. That's her job. You're supposed to guard your heart. You think about yourselves as you think about one another. That's the way this thing works.

Then, you compromise your Christianity spiritually when you find yourself in spots where you're trying to get your significant other to be a part of church or Christianity alongside you. I get this question all the time. I'll stand up here, and people will come talk to me, and they'll be like, "How do I get my boyfriend to come to church with me?" How do you get them to? You shouldn't have to. The Bible is very clear. Second Corinthians 6:14 tells us, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?"

Your partner should love God before you ever enter the picture, not because you entered the picture. "But they're such a nice guy." That's great. Send him a "thank you" card. You're not looking for a good person; you're looking for a godly person. That's what you're after. You want to link up with someone where, as my friend and the director of discipleship here at The Porch, Tyler Moffett, says, your "of courses" match their "of courses." That's what you want. And their "of courses" need to match yours on the biggest issue in the cosmos, which is what you do with the person of Jesus. You need to agree about the claims of Christ.

Now, I could go on, but the bottom line here is if you feel like you're bending your Christian integrity or suppressing your spirituality just to be with someone, then you've gone too far. Jesus never compromised. He never compromised when he came for us. He was faithful to you in the past, in the present, and he will be for all time. So, you don't compromise yourself for someone else. He has shown you the way to love, so you follow his way.

The second way we pick up is in verses 3-5. It says, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God…"

2. Your behavior becomes disrespectful. It's interesting. Paul tells us very clearly what God's will is for our lives. If you've ever wondered, here it is. He tells you. It's not first and foremost studying the Scripture. It's not first and foremost serving the poor. It's not first and foremost sharing the gospel. It's not first and foremost seeking the lost. He tells you the will of God for your life is your sanctification, and that comes by way of abstaining from sexual immorality. That's interesting. Right? No one would have guessed.

What is it about abstaining from sexual immorality that particularly looks like Jesus? Well, Paul tells us. He says that when we abstain from sexual immorality, it teaches us how to control our bodies in holiness and honor in a way that considers God and others. I think Ben Stuart put this most profoundly. He said that we conduct our lives in a way that reflects God and respects others. That's the idea Paul is getting at here. When we don't, that's when we've gone too far. That's when we become lost in the passion of lust, which is what Paul says here.

That is a pretty intense idea. No one wants to be lost in the passion of lust, yet the truth is this often happens to us more frequently than we care to admit. The reason for that is because we don't take abstaining from sexual immorality as seriously as we should. That idea for abstaining can also be interpreted as fleeing. Meaning, you're trying to create as much distance as humanly possible as fast as humanly possible between yourself and the object of your dread.

Hypothetically, if you're fleeing the scene of a crime, you're not sticking around to shake hands and kiss babies. You're not trying to see, "Hey, who's really working up the case?" No, you're hitting the road. You're getting out as fast as possible. You're running for the hills. Why? Because there are consequences to your actions, and you don't want them to come to bear. You flee the scene as fast as possible. If we don't flee sexual immorality, there are consequences too, and we will pay them if we're not careful.

First Peter 2:11 says, "Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles [people who are not of this world but of a different world] to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul." Peter is saying, "Hey, your soul is under attack, so you should flee sexual immorality. You should create as much distance from it as possible."

Yet here's the thing: rather than flee sexual immorality, we often choose to flirt with it. That's what we do. We often find ourselves not fleeing but flirting. Like, we watch porn, even though we know Pornhub profits off of filming rape, sexual assault, and child sex trafficking. Or we indulge sexting, not because we're actually romantically interested in that person but just because it feels good to be wanted.

Or we find ourselves listening to erotic romance on audiobook, and the reason for it is "I could read it, but it's so much better to hear not one, but two voice actors tell every spicy detail to one another and let my imagination run wild." Or it's the fact that we'll hit up OnlyFans, and we have no consideration for the cycle of sexual solicitation those girls are trapped within, just because it helps us to scratch the itch and get off.

You see, even though we don't go as far as we could, we so often go farther than we should. The reason is because we're like my roommate who never cleaned his room. Sure, we'll tidy the place up a bit. We'll hang up our clothes, put our shoes away, and make sure our towel is hung up and drying. We will give the appearance of cleanliness, but deep down, if you peel through the layers, what you'll actually find is filth. This is too often what we do when we don't flee but flirt with sexual immorality.

The thing is this is not just talking to us about the ways we're sexually deviant or disrespectful. It also has something to say about the way we're emotionally deviant or disrespectful, something that's rampant in our day. Ladies, that little voice in your head that makes you question everything he does or assumes nothing is ever right or interprets every minor move as a major declaration of love…that is not honoring to your man.

When he looks at you and says, "Hey, I'm sorry. I'd love to, but I'm busy tonight. How about tomorrow?" it is respectful to take him at his word and not infer something that isn't true. "Well, who's he going to see then? Is it that girl he was talking to at the coffee shop, that redhead who stood out from the rest of the crowd? Maybe it's not who he's seeing. Maybe he's not seeing anyone. Maybe he doesn't want to be with me. Maybe I did something.

What did I do? Did I come across too clingy? Was it the fact that I wanted to see him on Thursday even though we had plans on Friday? Maybe it's not something he's going to see. Maybe it's not something I did. Maybe it's no one. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe he just wants to chill, and he can't chill with me. But I'm chill. I'm so chill. I'll chill all night. I'll eat an entire gallon of ice cream because I'm that kind of chill. I'll prove him."

Maybe it's none of that. Maybe he just means what he's saying. Maybe he's just telling you, "I'd love to. I can't. How about tomorrow?" It's honorable to take him at his word and not assume something else. You see, you know you've gone too far when your behavior becomes disrespectful. So, here's what we have to do, Porch. We have to take control of our bodies. We have to take captive our thoughts. We have to subdue our flesh.

The reason we do is Jesus did all of that for us. Jesus controlled his own body. He took captive his own thoughts. He subdued and mastered his flesh for you, so we should do so for him and for other people too. Paul keeps going. He says in verses 6 and 7, "…that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness."

3. Your partner feels violated. That's what Paul means when he says we should not transgress or wrong our brother or sister. It's the same idea of we should not overstep, and we should not overreach into someone's life. Overstep is the idea of going someplace you don't belong. If you trespass on private property, you're overstepping. Overreaching is the idea of taking from someone something that does not belong to you.

My son does this all the time. We sit next to each other at dinner every night. For whatever reason, he likes what's on my plate more than his, so he's constantly reaching. He'll kick, squirm, and fuss until he gets hold of what I have, yet he can never reach it. Why? Because it's not his. It's not within his grasp. If it was his, I would put it within his reach, but it isn't. Yet he will overreach trying to get what is not his. We will do the same thing in dating.

Paul is making a case that we hurt people whenever we overstep and whenever we overreach. There's a whole volume of violation when we go against the will of another person and try to take from them what isn't ours and try to go someplace that isn't ours to go. That's why boundaries are important, and it's why boundaries are a really good prover of potential romantic partnerships.

Henry Cloud says it like this in his book Boundaries: "We can't manipulate people into swallowing our boundaries by sugarcoating them. Boundaries are a 'litmus test' for the quality of our relationships. Those people in our lives who can respect our boundaries will love our wills, our opinions, our separateness. Those who can't respect our boundaries are telling us that they don't love our nos. They only love our yeses, our compliance. 'I only like it when you do what I want.'" In other words, bad partnerships are characterized by overstepping and overreaching.

This is a rampant issue in our culture where people take what isn't theirs and go someplace that isn't theirs. It's rampant in our day. I could have pulled out so many different examples. I had a bunch. I had to strip those away because time is of the essence. I wanted to share one of them with you, because I thought it was startling.

According to Pew Research, 56 percent of women under the age of 50, which covers everyone in this room, report having been sent unwanted sexually explicit images or messages. Unwanted. Of college-aged women (that being 18 to 22), 84 percent claim to have received the same thing: unwanted sexually explicit images or messages from strangers online. That is startling, isn't it? It's startling because that covers far beyond more than half of the women in this room. That has been your experience, ladies.

It's also startling because this has been unwanted, and it is totally unwarranted. The crazy thing about it is while I know, in our current liberated sexual day, every solicitor of these images or messages in this moment is not necessarily a male, by and large, this is typically characterized of the male population, those whom God has dignified with the purpose of providing and protecting his daughters, not preying upon and propositioning them for their own benefit.

We live in a day where we overstep and overreach. It's more common in our culture than we often realize. So, how do you know when it's happening in your relationship? Well, I'm going to give you four categories to consider. I could rush these, but I think these are important, so I want to take our time, because I want to make sure you hear them.

A. They're pressuring you sexually. If someone in your relationship is constantly guilting you to do more…"I've got sexual needs, baby; I need you to help me out with these things"…what they're proving to you is that they don't need more of you; they need less of you. If there's someone in your relationship who's always asking for another picture…"It's not like we're having sex. We're just kind of fooling around a little bit. We're just messing with one another"…what they're proving to you is that they can make excuses for their sins and cannot find solutions for their godliness.

If they're always insisting, "Hey, you should come stay the night. We're not going to do anything. We'll just sleep right next to each other," that person is deceiving you. They don't want to sleep next to you. If they do, you have a different problem on your hands. You have to be careful. Hebrews 13:4 says, "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous."

Do you know what that tells you if you're being pressured sexually? That verse tells you that your partner does not fear God, because sexual immorality and adultery are judged by God. Now, to be very clear, it is forgiven by Christ, but we do not sin all the more that grace may abound. That's not why we do it.

No, we relish in the free gift of grace Jesus gives to those who are genuinely repentant, not just remorseful. You want someone who is not trying to defile you but honor you, someone who will look at you and say, "Hey, you're with me for now, but I don't know how long we'll have. But you will be with someone forever, and I want to honor them as well as you. I want to set you up for success."

B. They're demeaning you verbally. Listen, ladies. If he's belittling your body, if he is constantly comparing you physically, if he's tearing down your confidence, then get away from him, because if he's quick to judge you on the externals, then he won't be slow to judge you on the internals whenever they become known.

Guys, you need to know if your girl is quick to critique you. Like, if you bring her flowers and she mocks you because you got her daisies and those are so cheap, or if she chooses to make a joke about some romantic advance you make…you wrote her poetry, you planned a date, you came with questions, and she thinks this is so cheesy or cliché…then get away from that. You don't want someone who's going to critique you. You want a woman who is going to celebrate your effort, not criticize your results.

I love this. Proverbs 26:24-25 tells us about the dangers of emotionally oversharing. You know, that situation where some woman shares with you the deepest longings in her heart even though she has no business giving you her heart. This is what Proverbs 26:24-25 would say: "Enemies disguise themselves with their lips, but in their hearts they harbor deceit. Though their speech is charming, do not believe them…"

I have seen so many couples suffer under unnecessary emotional manipulation because there's this deep fear that "This is the best it's ever going to get. I will silently suffer so long as it keeps us together." Yet what happens in that situation is you don't walk into a thriving, healthy relationship; instead, you fall down into a toxic one. Do not allow for that. You deserve more. Christ has died and risen so that you might have it.

C. They may be controlling you physically. If you're just dating, and that person, your boyfriend or girlfriend, gets mad because "We're supposed to spend the weekends together…" Again, we've talked about this. You don't belong to them. They have no right to get frustrated unless you made a commitment and now you're going against it. They have no reason to be frustrated with you. Instead, they need to look at you and honor the fact there's separation between the two of you. You have genuine autonomy. You're independent persons.

I have seen both guys and girls do things like track their boyfriend or girlfriend's location, monitor their transaction history, and share their social media because they want to know who they're talking to and when they're talking to them. They're controlling them physically. If someone is doing that in your life, you need to run. You have to get away from that. That's not safe.

Listen. Jesus is not someone who confirms that kind of control in your life, though people have used his name to substantiate such. Jesus is not someone who will side with that person and say, "Yeah, my Word authorizes all of this." No. Jesus' Word does not authorize any of this. Jesus lives to uplift people, to bring them into a place of flourishing, yet often, those who try to physically control us have other things in mind.

D. They're manipulating you emotionally. I mentioned the way she or he may emotionally overshare in the hope of reeling you in, though they have no intent. You also need to know that there are people who will always try to make things seem like your fault. They'll try to invalidate your feelings. They'll never take ownership when conflict arises. They will constantly question your judgment rather than seeking to understand, and you should be careful of them.

I need to keep going, but here's the point: God has called us to holiness, and because he has, we don't go where we don't belong, and we don't take what isn't ours. We do the opposite. We go where Jesus went. Where did Jesus go? He moved toward his beloved. Then we do what Jesus did. He didn't take; he gave. We're willing to give of ourselves that our boyfriend or girlfriend, and eventually our husband or wife, might have life. That's the thought here. The very last thing you need to see is in verse 8. It says, "Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you."

4. Your conscience has grown cold. That's what Paul says in the final verses of this section. He looks at the Thessalonians and says, "Hey, there's one more final issue. There's one more final warning I need to issue you when it comes to your romantic relationships." He says if you disregard any of the above, any of the other three things we've talked about, then you not only disregard man but you disregard God. The only way that happens in your life and in your dating is when your conscience has grown cold.

Hear me on this, because this is certainly some of you. Some of you are in a relationship tonight where, at some point in the past, you knew you'd gone too far. I don't know what it was, and I don't know how long ago it may have been, but you know, "We went too far at that point back then," and now you feel like it's too late to do anything about it. "It doesn't matter. What point is there?"

Like, you've been sleeping together for so long now, it just feels normal. Or pornography. "It has been his addiction, and he has brought that into our relationship, and though I've begged him to get over it, he's never going to get over it." Or you've seen, "Man, she has cheated, but I don't know that I can do any better. When we're together, it's good. Even if she goes unfaithful and does things with other guys, I'm not willing to give up on this."

Or maybe it's masturbation. You think about that, and you're like, "You know what? I know I'm not supposed to, but it's really kind of the lesser of all evils, and I need a sexual outlet." Or maybe you so desperately need to be needed by a guy, so you'll do whatever it takes. You'll wear as little as possible, you'll do as much as possible, and you will go however far is needed so you can get his attention.

I don't know what it is for you, but here's the thing. If you're thinking, "You know what? We crossed the line way back then. We're way too far gone now. It doesn't really matter," it does matter. It matters because you matter. God is looking at you and saying, "Hey, it's not just that you've disregarded man; don't disregard me. I care about you. I want you to keep fighting. I don't want you to give up already. You may feel like you're too far gone, but here's the thing: no one has gone too far that I cannot reach them."

That is the gospel. The long arm of God extends to any and every person. No person can outrun his redemption. No person can outpace his pursuit. He is a God who reaches for the very worst of us, even those who feel like they could not go any deeper. So, if you're here, and you're thinking, "It just doesn't matter," you need to know it desperately does, because it matters to him. You can't outrun him. It doesn't matter how far gone you feel. He can still go farther.

When we'd compromised our Christianity, Jesus never compromised us. He pursued us anyway. When we'd disrespected God by way of going astray in our sin, Jesus never lost sight of us. He considered us even still. When sin had absolutely violated you, Jesus stepped in and rescued you. Not only that; he restored you. Not only that; he redeemed you for all time, should you place your faith in him. When our conscience had grown cold, so cold as dead in the grave, Jesus brought us to life. Jesus looked at us and made us like himself. He made us alive.

So, here's the thing. If you want to order your relationship in a way that not only avoids the bad but pursues the good, then you need to look at Jesus, who has ordered his relationship to you in a way that absolutely dealt with the bad but now is advocating for your good. He took your sin, and he condemned it on the cross. He bore it in his body, but he rose forth so that not only would you be forgiven but you'd have forever, should you place your faith in him. Look to Jesus and see one who pursues us no matter how far we've gone or how far we feel we've fallen. Let me pray that you would.

Lord, we love you, and we're grateful for tonight. We thank you for this time. I know, God, this talk can feel heavy, because even as we're walking through some of these details, there's a weight, not just in the ideas but in the experiences of them ourselves. We see, God, in our own lives that we've lived through some of this stuff. God, I pray that what people would hear is not condemnation, for such is not the future of those in Christ.

I pray instead they would hear redemption, that though their past may be checkered, their future can be white as snow. Would you meet with us now? Would you minister to our hearts? Would you call back to mind something we've said that we need to know? God, would you work in us not just to be better people but to become like you? We love you, and we're grateful for tonight. It's in your name we pray, amen.