Love Is In The Air

Well, love is in the air. How about a different intro song? This is Deep Dive with Dana. I'm Dana. [music] Well, happy Valentine's Day to all you love birds out there. And as you guessed it, we're going to talk about love, dating, marriage, all the stuff that goes with that. Something that I don't think is talked about quite enough in relation to our faith, our pursuit of God. And so I want to try to bring those two worlds together because I think our culture is kind of trying to segregate them and we're not allowing our faith to play as much of a vital role or key role in this realm of our lives. And just to be transparent and upfront with you, this is a part of life in my late, mid-late teens into my early 20s that I will say probably I compromised the most. And as I said, I was one that did not allow my faith or even my relationship with Christ to have as much of a bearing or influence in this particular sector or portion of my life. And so I just want to speak into it. But let me start with this. Let me start by talking to all the single people out there that are listening. First off, I want to say to you, don't get caught up. Don't get caught up in this race or this proverbial cultural timeline. I know days like this, it's Valentine's Day, come along and make you feel like you're missing out on something. And I'm here to tell you that you just need to be patient and take time. Let it take time. Let it let God run that timeline for you. Because I know you start looking at all the posts on social media and you got to go to another family event, somebody's going to ask, well, when are you or how long is it going to be to your married or are you seeing anybody that's serious or you got to answer that for the 700th time? And what happens is you start to believe the lie that this is a resemblance of your value or maybe even your love ability. And it is not. Either are true. If we were to be honest about Valentine's Day, it's made up, hallmarked, made it up and it's a marketing ploy. I hate to say it that way, but it is a marketing ploy. Flower sales go up, restaurant visits go up, you name it candy. I don't know what else. What else are we buying? Our loved ones. Yes, I, you know, it's easy to think, well, man, this guy. What a way to be married to him. I probably doesn't do anything. And I do. I celebrate. We celebrate Valentine's Day. It doesn't. It's not anything over the top, but, you know, I just got a firm belief that if you have to be reminded to love the person you're dating or married to, to go out of your way to make them feel special one day out of the year, then maybe you're missing something or doing something wrong. And then it comes off that you ought to do it so frequently through the year and I am far from perfect on this. But you ought to do it so frequently or so consistently. Maybe that's a better way to say it. Throughout the year, going out of your way to do something special, going out of your way to make sure you're the person you're dating or the person you love or person you're married to, feels loved, that they feel special and served and appreciated consistently through the year. That when you're all around the days like this, it's just normal. Like, it's just a normal another day. And yeah, you can do stuff, go out to eat or, but, you know, this isn't the make or break day of the year because you consistently have done it well for the rest of the year. So that's just my take on it. So for you that are single and you're looking at all the post and you know, your friends are in the only one that's done that plans for tonight and what does it mean about me? It means nothing. Nothing. You are not of lesser value. You are not less lovable. It's just that you're on a different timeline. And that timeline, maybe, you know, maybe for you, you made some poor choices in dating. And so that timeline is running a little bit slower right now because you're in the process of healing. You made some poor choices. Things didn't work out. Maybe you've got serious and still didn't work out. And so here you find yourself in a season of singleness. It's fine. You're going to be fine or, and I hate to even have to bring it up, but there's some of you that got into a relationship and you found out that that person was manipulative and unfortunately maybe possibly even abusive. And it just caught you off guard. And so now you're in a season of healing. And then that's going to take time. And you should give that healing the time it needs. And so I just want to encourage you. Don't look around you today and allow the season of singleness to play any role in how you feel about yourself or the value you feel like you have or the love ability you have because you're going to be just fine. And so you just keep your eyes focused to your heart, focused really on the one who created you and he'll take care of all the rest. And he'll take care of all the plans. So just let it take its time. So I just want to talk to you. Maybe you're single, maybe you're dating, maybe you're hoping it's on the cusp of something going to the next level, the next phase, maybe a little more serious. Maybe some of you are in the process of planning weddings here in the next year or two. I think we can encompass everyone. What I want to say, I have to be honest with you, upfront may cause some tension. It may cause some conflict internally in your hearts and your minds because I'm going to challenge you to think and look at this in a different way than I think we are teaching. You may have people that love you very much in your life that are telling you something quite contrary to what I'm about to say. But I think we're looking at love in kind of the wrong perspective through the wrong filters. I think we're looking at our dating marriages, the potential being married. We're looking at it in a whole different perspective that I think we're missing some key components, one specific key component that I'm going to talk about today that I think needs to be elevated in this position. What I want to talk about today is just like, who do you date? Why we date? Let's just jump in here. I know it's going to sound like I'm jumping everywhere. I've got notes in front of me. I've just got so much swirling around in my head that I'm just kind of, you know, I want to make sure I cover it all, but I want it to hopefully it'll make sense. Hopefully you'll feel encouraged, but I'm going to be honest with you. I hope you feel a little bit challenged too. One of the biggest issues I've got with today's cultural climate of dating, and I'm just going to specifically say the love area of things is that we treat it too casually. The reason I got a problem with that is that when you look at the genuine depth of what love is, how it ought to act, there is nothing casual about it. Like we'll say, it's just a, what we call them now, situationships. We're even creating creative words or creative ways, coming up with creative ways to even describe, because we don't want it to be portrayed or, you know, as too serious. And so that leads you to believe, well, it's just a casual approach to this. It's a situation ship. I mean, we even honestly will just say, like, well, it's, it's just casual sex. Right? There's nothing casual about love. There's nothing casual. If I were to be honest with you, there's nothing casual about it. sex. Like there's an elevated standard that if you are a person who genuinely professes Christ, there's nothing casual about it. The physical side of it, the emotional side of it, it's not casual. It's a very deliberate, intentional process. But the problem is, is when you treat it casually, listen to me, you will ignore red flags because it's just casual, so I don't need to point those things out. It's just casual, so I will justify them for the other people, for the other person. It's just casual, so there's no real need to address some of these red flags that I'm seeing in this individual, and so we just go along to get along. That's dangerous. It's very, very dangerous. And so what happens is so many times because we've treated this process of dating and engagement, even if you've gotten into a physical side of your relationship, we treated it as casual. What happens is then you ignore all these red flags, and ultimately that that relationship moves or escalates or goes to that next level, whether it be to engagement or even into marriage. And then what happens is all the red flags that we ignored for so long because we treated it casually now become an issue. And the person standing across the table or across the hallway or across the living room, listening to your grievances of the red flags, they are quite literally looking at you going, "Well, wait a minute, these were issues in my life." When we were dating and you never once said a thing about it, so why is it a problem now? And so this is why we cannot approach whether it's dating, falling in love, engagement, marriage. We have to take these things serious, and we have to treat them as such, because let's ultimately think about this. If we're treating this every stage of this as casual, you're wasting your time and you're wasting somebody else's time. Right? If I'm treating a relationship, let's just say we're just in the dating phase of things, and if I'm treating that casual, you know what I'm telling that other person? I don't say this out loud, but you know what I'm doing is I'm telling this person like this is fun and this is fine until something else or someone else who may be a better option comes along. And since this isn't so serious, and I've treated it casually, it's easy for me to walk out and go chase that other person. We ignore red flags. Not only do we ignore red flags, but then because we're treating it casually, we'll have people that we care about, who care about us, who we trust, who we've confided in, who will come to us and say, "Hey, I just need you to know there's some red flags that I'm seeing, and you're going to call them crazy, and you're going to begin to distance them yourself from those folks instead of paying attention to what they have to say." And then all too often I have people that will end up in a relationship, married usually, who will say, "I wish I'd just paid attention to the people that told me about these red flags." But I ignored it. I ignored it. And so it just opens up a whole another deal. So we have to view this, dating ultimately. And this is a difficult subject to talk to teenagers about because we don't see this far ahead in life when we're in our teenage years. It's even a difficult thing to talk about maybe in the early 20, to people who just even in their own minds may not even have marriage on their brains or in their hearts right now. They just think that's such a far off distance. I've got to get this degree or I've got to get this certain job. I'm waiting to get a promotion. We have all these other things. And then I'll think about but in the meantime, I'm going to find a companion. I'm going to find somebody to date to kind of fill that loneliness void. And so I just want to give you some caution here that you would begin to look at the dating phase that a process has been put in place for us by the creator of all things. That that dating phase is an opportunity to begin to evaluate whether it's someone we feel like we can move forward to the next level of relationships. So from dating to engagement, from engagement to marriage, right? Usually by the time you get to engaged, you already know the answer of the marriage part. But sometimes there are folks that thankfully find some things out or discover some things or learn some things that puts a halt to it. And before they get to the marriage part, they're like, oh, thank goodness, right? We found that out before we said I do. But I just want to kind of put some caution here and maybe just try to elevate your hearts and your minds that the sole purpose of dating and engagement really is for no for no better way to say it's a vetting process of ultimately do I want to end up in a marriage with this person. And that's hard, right? That's hard when you are maybe in your late teens and you it's not even on your mind. You just got your first scholarship to go do something in college. Or you just landed your first real job that you know that you're pretty happy with and excited about and you're not even thinking about it. And I get the different phases of love and relationship right. There's a kind of a mutual attraction. Like I can't even fathom being in a culture where I have to swipe right or swipe up or double tap a picture. Like that's just my brain doesn't work in that realm. I don't know that as a dad, I want my daughters, you know, operating in that realm. I'm just, you know, being honest, it's a difficult thing to understand. But there's a mutual attraction that somehow sparks a conversation of, hey, let's try this. Let's put our toes into water, right? Let's test the water. And let's just kind of see how this goes. And so there's some dates and you're not even thinking about love and falling in love. You're just kind of trying to see if we can even move in that direction. And then ultimately you will or maybe you do. And then it begins to be get serious, right? You spend more time, more hours, more days. And most of your time begins to be consumed with what you do or spend with this person. And then escalates or elevates to know the next phases, like I said, engagement and marriage. But I'm just going to be honest with you. Let's just talk about this phase here of just finding someone. And here's what I encourage everybody to do. I encourage you to get out your piece of paper or I don't know your notes app, whatever it is, you write down thoughts or think about some of you guys are after going, oh, wait a minute, you're supposed to write down your thoughts? Well, I mean, it's, it might be a good practice. You might want to consider, right? It helps process some things. Anyway, you write out, you want to write out a list of things, right? And some of you are so detailed oriented. This list is probably going to end up be 100 points. But I usually encourage no matter how long it is, you come up with at least 10, the 10 top 10 things that are most important. Right. What do I want in someone? Listen, that I would want to marry. And so what makes that difficult and is that you have to think about the end in mind, right? Where do I want to be relationally or what do I want a marriage to look like when I get there? Who is the person? What person or ideal person? What personalities? What hobbies? What thing? What what am I looking for in that person? And what happens is oftentimes that when we make that list, listen, it turns out to be things like, I want him to be six foot four, blonde hair, blue eyes, right? I want him to enjoy fishing or the outdoors. I want her to enjoy golfing. I want her to, you know, enjoy filling the blank, whatever it is. And what happens is that, and let me say, I will encourage you to make that list sooner rather than later. Because here's what begins to happen. That list tends to be made of things that are very shallow. In its initial phase, the rough draft phase, what I would call, it's very shallow. It's a lot of it's based on exterior, right? Hobbies, attributes, looks, education. I like them to be educated. I want them to be well read. I want them to be hardworking discipline. You know, those are all well and good. Those are fine. There's nothing necessarily bad about them. Let me give you this. some pointers on that. Because as you get older and you begin to mature, let me tell you some things that are going to start to become important to you. It isn't going to be whether they got blonde hair or blue highs. It isn't going to be their height. But we'll tell you what begins to elevate itself in importance is I want them to be someone that values family. I want them to be somebody that's teachable. I want them to be somebody that is honest. I want them to be somebody that is emotionally mature. Right. These things now become elevated in importance the more you mature. And so I promise you, if you were someone that you say, man, I made this list when I was 16, 17 years old. And then I made a new one now that I'm 22, 21, 22, 23 years old. Look how different these lists are. Look at the focus of how different they are. But here's what I want you to do is, and this is the part that I'm getting to, the issue that I have with a lot of our lists that we make, a person that we would hopefully end up with one day. And I don't know why it's this way. But far too often what doesn't make the list is the element of faith. I want them to be a good athlete. I want them to be educated. I want them to be good looking. I want them to be hot. I want them to be filling the blank. And even when you start to write out a list that's focused on more things that are more in depth, you know, family, love, honesty, those things, more in depth things. You start to look at both these lists and very rarely, even those that call themselves genuine followers of Christ, very rarely do we see faith placed on that list. It's almost like an assumption. It's either an assumption or it's really not important to us. Those are the only two things it can be. And so we have to be careful. Because if our pursuit of Christ is important for us, then it ought to be important to the people we put in our lives and it ought to be important, especially to the one that we may potentially look at as a potential candidate of being married to. And it can't just be on the list. It needs to start the list. And what happens is that that usually doesn't elevate to its number one spot in the list for someone that we may potentially marry until it's become the number one spot in our own hearts. And so far too often we have people who are in their 20s who claim to love God, want to follow Christ up until the point that it becomes dating. And what happens is we would rather compromise in dating someone who has no interest or very little interest in Christ. We would rather compromise that then be lonely. Because all of my friends are starting to get married. Because I'm tired of going to weddings of my friends single. Because I'm tired of going to family events and having them ask me when am I going to be seeing someone? When will I get married? And I just don't want to do that. And so rather than be lonely, I will lower my standard in the realm of who I date potentially marry when it comes to faith. They check off all the boxes. They got all the right looks. They got the right height. They got the honesty, the integrity. May they may be very good people, very successful people, very kind people have great families. But man, they don't really follow Christ. Oh well, I'll just compromise there. It'll be no big deal. And I'm here to tell you that this is a massive, massive deal. It's a huge deal. And I'm going to tell you why. Let me read you this verse. And second Corinthians, chapter six says this. Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. So what does that mean? Yoked together. In the particular times that this passage was written, they would use team of oxen, a team of oxen, two oxen would pull a plow kind of behind them. And you would yoke them together with it's kind of a, I don't know how I was to explain, but a massive piece of wood carved out that would kind of hump over the shoulders or the backs of the oxen up near the neck. And that would tie them together. You would yoke them together. But you would never take a older, larger ox and yoke it with a younger, smaller ox because the larger ox pulls at a greater power. And so you would ultimately just be walking in circles because the two that are yoke together are not quite same. And so when we talk about not being yoke together with unbelievers, right, this is not elevating someone. Oh, you love Jesus. You're better. No, you're not better. But what it is is that when you start talking about serious relationships and then ultimately heading towards the direction of marriage, your lives begin to yoke together. And when you yoke your life, you are heart to someone who does not want to pursue Christ, you're heading in different directions. And so the scripture warns us to this, do not be yoke together with unbelievers for what do righteousness and wickedness have in common or what fellowship can light have with darkness. What harmony is there between Christ and Belaile? That's the Greek word for the devil. Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement can what agreement is there between the temple of God and idols for we are the temple of the living God, meaning that as believers, God resides inside of us. It's called the Holy Spirit. So we are the temple of Christ. So let me read it to you in a different version. Do living translation says it's this way. Don't team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? And what union can there be between God's temple and idols for we are the temple of the living God? And so we see throughout scripture there's this elevation of standard when it comes to faith, especially in the realm of who we date. But here's what happens and here's listen, here's where the tension starts. Okay? Because you're going to meet somebody that checks off all the boxes and they're going to check off all the boxes that your family has for them. Right, ladies, your dad does he work hard? Is he disciplined? Does he treat my daughter kind? Is he nice to her? Right? Boms? Does he for my daughter? Or does she for my son? Do they seem to get along with the family? Are they funny or personable? Do they carry on intelligent conversation? Right? Like there's all these boxes that not just you, but now your family has and they come over for the first time of dinner and or maybe an extended, you know, Christmas or some kind of holiday and they get to meet and shake hands with everybody and they check off all the boxes for everyone. And with attention begins when when someone teaches this this level of standard and who you date, you'll have family members say, Oh, it don't matter. Right? So what if you didn't go church? So what if he's not pursuing his relationship with Christ? He's a nice guy. You guys look so cute together. You get along so well. And yet in your heart, there's this tug, but we're not headed in the same direction because I want to chase after Christ. I don't do it perfectly, but I want to chase him. I want to pursue him. And man, I know she checks off all the boxes, but there's this one and it's an important one. It's a big one. What I wish I could do is have someone sit across from me and just have conversation with them who've made this decision into marriage because I talk and speak with these folks all the time. And it's attention. It's a point of tension in their marriages now. And I'm going to tell you what escalated the point of tension was not just when they got married, but then when they begin to have kids. And we want to talk about why this is important. It's important that you elevate the standard of faith, not just in your own life, but in the life of the person that you potentially want to have a relationship with. Because when you don't, you have two lives that are on different pages that view life differently that are starting to be yoke together. And that will create tension just like two oxen who are not evenly sized or evenly aged creates tension and pulling a plow. Let me give you three specific areas that this affects. The first one is your boundaries and standards will be different. When you get into a relationship with someone who has no interest or very little interest in Christ, your boundaries and standards will be different. They will not understand or be able to comprehend why you strive to remain sexually pure. And you should, it's scriptural, it's not dance opinion, it's scriptural. That the physical intimate side of any relationship is reserved and saved for marriage, not before. And so when you get into a relationship with someone that does has no interest in setting or pursuing Christ or life, the boundaries and standards will be different for the both of you. That's just one area, the sexual purity side of things. They will not understand why it is you want to wait. And I will and I'll tell you this, I have seen instances where the one who does not hold that standard gets frustrated and it becomes a point of argument and tension in just their dating relationship. Because they don't understand why that's your boundary and why that's a standard. They don't understand boundary and standards when it comes to how you navigate decision-making. Because you as a believer are filtering decisions, short term long term decisions through the standard by which God's Word has given you and through your relationship with Him. And so your boundaries and standards will be different. The next thing that this affects is that you will navigate hardship and success differently. And I will tell you if there's two areas that you want to be on the same page, it is in these two areas. So why do I bring up success? Those are the good times, right? Those are when we achieve dreams. Those are when we achieve promotions or when we get that degree or when we, right, when things are clicking and things are going out, we buy our first home. We build our first home. And these are good days. Why would we have to navigate? Because listen, if you aren't navigating your successes on the same page or through the same boundaries, the same standard, the same lens, listen, you will give credit to different people. One of you will give the credit of success to yourself. Look what we've done. Look what we have achieved. Look at all that we have strived and accomplished. And then the other of it is that one of you will understand the value of getting credit, giving credit to God. And so you will navigate those successes quite differently. And so here's why is that important? Because here's the thing. Oftentimes those who take all the credit first that's forced the success in their life are often the first people to blame God when the success stops or goes away. All right, we didn't want to acknowledge him in the success part of it when things were moving up, but by golly, we will surely blame him very quickly when things are headed downward. And for those that depend on God through the success will be the same ones that depend on him when things get hard. You will navigate success differently. First leads me to the next part. You will navigate hardship differently. I'll tell you this. In the first week of my wife and I dating, seven days to the day, her father passed away. Fast forward in 2002, we get married in June in one month to the day. My dad passes away. And to tell you how extremely hard and difficult those seasons were. But because we both had our hearts, listen, we're not perfect, but because we had both of our hearts as individuals, we're centered and founded on Christ and pursuing him, we were able to navigate those hardships together. One at the same pace. And if you know the process of grief, there's like four or five different stages. And sometimes a lot of times not even on the same step or process of grief, but we were able to navigate that hardship in our relationship, both those hardships and our relationship through the presence of God in our hearts. And when you're unequally yoked, you will navigate those hardships and successes quite differently. And it will oftentimes cause division when you navigate them differently. And then at least just to the last one, when you are unequally yoked, the priorities of life will be quite different. How you raise your kids, what you want for your kids, what lens or view, what worldview you look at everything through. Those priorities will be quite different, right? Do my wife and I do we have dreams and goals and things that we want to achieve? Absolutely, we do. We absolutely do. We have dreams and goals we'd love to see in our own children's lives achieved. But ultimately at the end of the day, our number one priority is to live with an eternal mindset. To serve Christ and to honor him, we are on the same page. We set boundaries and standards according to that. We navigate success and hardship. We view and chase after success with that in mind, first and foremost, to honor Christ first and then to honor one another. That's our priorities. Those are the priorities of our life. And when you are unequally yoked, your priorities of life will be quite different. And here's the danger. We get into a dating relationship and because we treat it casually, we say, "Well, that's no big deal. It's no big deal. It's not a big problem." And then the relationship elevates and moves to the next phase and we still continue to tell our thoughts, "Oh, it's no big deal. It'll get better. It'll change." And then it moves to marriage. And then it starts to matter. And you'll think, "Man, I wish that was a bigger priority back when we were dating." What do I do now? "Man, I really want my children to be raised knowing Christ, but my spouse has no desire to instill that in him." And it's a big deal. And I had people tell me that was a red flag. I just ignored it because I didn't think it would ever get this serious. And now here you are. Man, the priorities of our lives are so far distant. This is important. And I think when we talk about dating or the potential of wanting to be married someday, our culture has convinced us that this is the one thing that we can just lower the standard or expectation of. And I'm here to just be a voice to say, "I think it needs to be elevated in priority." Now listen, let me give you some words of caution here. The question that you ask someone is not, "This is the wrong question. Do you believe in God?" Because you'll do that. You'll find someone you like. They're charming. You like spending time with them. And you'll ask them because, "Well, I'll ask it just to say I can, I asked it." And they'll give me some, right, do you believe in God? See, that's such a vague question, and especially in today's culture, it's such an easy question to answer with such a vague answer. Do you believe in God? Yeah. Right. And we treat it like some imaginative, make-believe figure that sits in the sky somewhere. Yeah, I believe there's God. I believe there's a higher power. These are answers that are cloaked in the right words, but have nothing to do with what the right question really is. So what's the right question? The right question is this. Have you trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and are you actively pursuing Him in your life? That's the question. That's the question. Because anybody in today's world can claim to be a Christian because we've watered down the definition of that so much. And so we just pick a Hodgepodge and we create this buffet salad or this salad buffet form of religion in our life. And I like a little bit of that one and I like a little bit of this one and I don't really care for that one and so I want a little bit of this one and I like this one but I don't like that part and so I'll just kind of piece my own religion together and then I'll tell people yeah I believe there's a God no you do not you do not you believe in a false imagine of idol that you've created to fit your every need and every want and every desire that's all you believe in. Do you and have you trust to Jesus Christ your personal Lord and Savior and are you actively pursuing him in your life and what evidence do I see that proves that statement. That's the question and they may say yes and they may have absolute proof that they're doing that. Now listen you ready and they may still not be a fit for you. Right because all of that other list is important too. Right don't get caught up in the only question that I need to be worried about is are you a believer of Jesus Christ. Yes okay let's get married tomorrow right like that is just as dangerous and we have just as many quote unquote Christian couples who have fallen into that trap and end up divorced too because that was the only thing they was worried about right. All he's a believer in Jesus he goes to church and he love and he sings really good so let's get married tomorrow and they do and then they find out they have nothing else in common and that's just as detrimental and just as dangerous right. You've got to let that grow but you you really like we need to be talking about more of this honestly and that that's me that this has to be an elevated standard by which we are asking people who we potentially date who are potentially interested in who we may potentially escalate a relationship into engagement marriage because I'm gonna tell you if we don't these three things will be affected the way you set boundaries and standards the way you navigate hardship and success and the way that you set the priorities of your life will be greatly affected if this is not escalated in importance in priority in standard at the beginning stages of a relationship that may potentially get serious. So let me get you to where I want you to get to where I'm headed. So with all this said here's what I want you to consider pursue Christ first and expect the same. The teacher of the law asked Jesus what is the greatest commandment in all of the world what is the greatest one and Jesus said the first and the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and with all your strength and then the second is to love the neighbor as yourself. Pursue Christ first and expect the same. And so if you want to put that standard onto someone that you want to potentially date get involved with it ought to be a standard that you are actively living out in your own life. And I pray that it is. And I pray that if you're in a serious dating relationship right now and that's not anywhere near this I pray that you'll just slow it down until you will go in pursuit Christ first. Does this mean you need to end the relationship? I don't know. I don't know. I can't answer that. But what I can tell you is that at bare minimum ought to at least cause you to stop, pause, slow down so that you can go pursue Christ first. And I think that in that pursuit you'll know where this other person lies. Because that will have the potential to either draw a closeness and a stability in that relationship or it will create distance and that will be your answer on whether or not you should stay in this relationship or move on. If you're married you stick it out and you actively pursue Christ and you start praying for your spouse. That's biblical. You pray for them. Men if you're dating and you're engaged. Listen, there is an obligation that lies solely on our shoulders to lead to lead our own lives in faith in our pursuit of Christ and then to lead those that God puts in our lives to Christ. And I pray that you'll do that. Ladies, don't put an unrealistic expectation on these guys. Well, they don't, right, they don't pray 12 hours a day and they don't have the the Bible memorized from Genesis to the book of Malachi. And I just don't think they're like get real, right? Like grow up. That's an unrealistic expectation. But what do you see? Do you see a serious pursuit of wanting to grow in that? Not passive, but they're actively attempting to be in relationship with friends or people that will help them grow, right? And listen to me both men and ladies listen, right, you don't get to a place that why I just didn't know. I just don't know. I don't know how I don't know, right? Because that doesn't work in any other area of your life, right? You've got a job or you went and got a job or maybe you went off to college for the first time. Well, I don't know where that class is. I don't know where that room number is. I don't know where my dorm is. I don't know where to clock in. I don't know where to clock out. I don't know who my manager is. And yet what what did you do? You went and asked someone who knew that information and taught you how to do all that. Because the wrong response was to show up one day when I say, well, I don't know how to do it. So I just not gonna do it. Right? But when we get to faith and when we get to a relationship with Christ, we simply believe that simply saying, well, I don't know how to do it. I didn't know how to do it. Like that's the excuse we used to not do it. And so I just encourage you to put people in your life, surround yourself. You will actively pursue out people who will sit with you at lunch or sit with you once a week or once a month and say, hey, let's grow in our relationship with Christ together. Let's do that. Is there an active pursuit of wanting to grow in a desire to do so? That's what I would look for. Don't put an unrealistic expectations on one another. Have grace for each other and grow together. That's where I would challenge you. And the love of someone special in your life can be invaluable. But I want to tell you the level at which it rises when Christ becomes the chief pursuit of both of your hearts is the level that I can't even describe to you. God says in the book of Genesis about Adam and Eve, the very first marriage that a man and a woman will leave their father and mother and the two will become they will become one. And that is only done when you have two hearts solely focused on their pursuit of Christ and allowing him to meld their hearts together in a way that only he can do. I don't know if that's all I've got to say about the subject, but that's all I've got to say for now. I would love to hear your comments, your inputs or your questions. You can leave those down below this podcast. I really do appreciate that you listen. This is Deep Dive with Dano. I'm Dano and that's all I've got for now. See ya.