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What I'm Reading: The Man Comes Around (Johnny Cash biography) and Understanding God's Will by Kyle Lake What I'm Listening To: David Crowder Band - Sunsets & Sushi, Weezer - Maldaroit, Matt Redman - Where Angels Fear To Tread, The Music, Delerious, Rilo Kiley What I'm Viewing: The Motorcycle Diaries, Luther

Moral Boundaries Week Two This is week two of our series on Moral Boundaries where we are attempting to take a look at relationships through the lens of a Godly perspective. Last week Matt kind of set us up for where we are going with this by defining that relationships were God�s gift to us. And that it was not good for man to be alone. That relationships are integral and a necessary part of who we are supposed to be. When God says it is not good for man to be alone, He meant it. It�s good for man to be in the company of woman. And it�s good for woman to be in the company of man. The problem with this idea is that the world has subverted God�s intent for relationships by creating two extremes. These two extremes are characterized by two sets of people. The first is the group of people who are in relationships but are in them for all the wrong reasons. They are in it for themselves. They are in it for the sex. They are in it for what they can get out of it. The other extreme are those people who aren�t in relationships because they�ve been burned, hurt, or scarred to the point that they no longer want to take the risk that comes along with being in a relationship. The people who actually have healthy, mutually loving, and growing relationships are few and far between. I think we all know of examples where this is not the case. Maybe it�s our parents who have a struggling marriage that is falling apart or has fallen apart. Maybe it�s the couple where all they do is fight. Perhaps it�s the girl whose known at the school as the �one that sleeps with everybody� and is with a new guy each weekend. Or maybe it�s the guy who�s known as �the player� who jumps from girl to girl to girl trying to get out of them whatever he can for his own personal, selfish needs. Whatever the example may be, it�s apparent that many people have a warped idea of what relationships are supposed to look like, feel like, be like. And that relationships, as Matt talked about last week, as God created them to be are usually far from that in reality. So the question begs to be asked, why is that? Why do relationships look so drastically different from the way God intended? I believe there are two primary reasons as to why relationships look so differently in the world�s perspective as opposed to God�s perspective. I believe the world has two basic lies that it puts out there regarding relationships. The first being that relationships are more about the individual person than they are the couple. That relationships are not about the �two becoming one�, but more about the individuals �getting things�. I think that�s why so many relationships end up full of fighting and resentment. Because the individuals haven�t realized that the relationship does not revolve around them as individuals. That�s why you don�t see a lot of compromising or complimenting going on. CANDY COTTEN ILLUSTRATION In elementary and middle school everybody wanted to date Candy. Everybody. Guys (myself included) were always just telling her how hot she was and making fools of ourselves around her about the way she looked. Always yelling at her. Always acting like idiots. Needless to say we didn�t get a lot of attention in return. And maybe it was because we never showed her any respect. I wonder what it was like for Candy everyday to have 30 guys stand in a corner and yell at her and tell her she was hot. I wonder what it was like for her to have a bunch of guys constantly staring at her. Perhaps the reason we never got Candy�s attention is that we never stopped to be her friend. We never stopped to talk. We never did anything other than imagine what it would be like to sit with Candy at break and eat a popsicle. We only wanted to make each other jealous. I only cared about myself and how good I would look and how cool I would be to have Candy as my girlfriend. FRIENDS CLIP Somehow we�ve been brainwashed with the idea that it�s all about us. - Guys you think if a girl doesn�t look like Natalie Portman, model part time for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, love to play video games, and give you back massages all day, everyday, then she�s not a keeper. - Girls you think if a guy doesn�t look like Brad Pitt, have rock solid abs, doesn�t take you out to the nicest restaurants, or drives a ragged out hoopty car, then he�s not a keeper. But can I submit to you that there is more to relationships than what you can get out of it. God intended man and woman to compliment each other. Not to compete and drown each other out with their selfish desires. The second main lie of the world is that there are no consequences for poor moral decisions. And when I say moral, I�m talking specifically about sexuality. The world tells you that you can do whatever you want to, with whoever you want to, as often as you want to, and it not effect you. The world says take it to the limit. Go as far as you can. Experience as much as you can. But the world�s limits are way out there on what you should do. They are so far removed from where God�s heart is for you morally. Think about a show like Elimidate. Where people get kicked off because they don�t show enough skin or won�t be crazy enough. This is the world�s idea of relationships. ELIMIDATE APPLICATION But most people have moral limits. I think everybody in here has moral limits. I think all of you would say that there are just some things that you wouldn�t do. Whether those are self-imposed limits, or limits that culture has kind of set out there on the edge, or how you were raised that determined them. Regardless we all have moral limits. We have decided we�re not going to look at this. We�re not going to do this. We�re not going to go that far. That�s my moral limit. The real question for us is what limits will we adopt, the ones that culture force on us? Will we adopt the limits and standards that culture forces us and pressures us to adopt or will we adopt the limits that God has set? The question isn�t, are there limits, but the question is where are the limits? But culture sends us two messages. - The first says: o Go as far as you can go. Do as much as you can. Don�t miss out. Look at everything. Experience everything. - The second says: o You do that, but if you cross certain lines, we�re going to turn our back on you. Culture baits us to the very edge, but if we step off that edge we are chastised and punished. It�s a double edged sword. Think about this. Everything that you see on TV, on magazines, on your computer, everything is marketed towards you with sexual overtones or undertones. Marketing for high school students is rooted in sex. Sex sells for high school students. So culture baits you with sex in all of their marketing towards you. But what happens when a teenager gets pregnant? Or experiences sex? Culture turns on you and says, �you should have known better.� Its take it to the limit. Go to the edge. Experience as much as you can. Have as much sex as you can. Fool around as much as you want. But once you cross that line . . . there are consequences. Go as far as you want, but don�t get pregnant. Go far as you want, but don�t break the law. Go as far as you want, but don�t get a disease. Go as far as you want but don�t get addicted to pornography. The temptation is to live on the line. We want to know where the limit is. And we go there. That�s what we do with the speed limit. If the speed limit is 55, you don�t see people driving around at 35 mph. No, instead we�ll go 65 and constantly be checking to make sure a cop isn�t behind us. We say show me where the line is and I�m going to live right there on the line. If your curfew is at midnight, we don�t show up at 10. We push it to the limit. But there are no big consequences if you break the speed limit or miss your curfew. Yeah, you may get a ticket or your parents may ground you. But there are no consequences that stay with you for the rest of your life. But if you cross certain lines morally, you will pay for the rest of your life. If you go to far morally as a teenager, you will lose your self-esteem, you will lose your reputation, you might get pregnant. As an adult if you go to far morally, you will lose your family, your kids, your job. This isn�t something pipe dream idea that I�m talking about. There is no room for error. One night of temptation, one small mistake, and it makes all the difference in the world. 1 Corinthians 6:18 �Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.� Run. Flee. That�s the language that is used. Get as far away from the sexual immorality as you can. Get as far away from the possibility of it as you can. Get as far away from the temptation of sexual immorality as you can. I�m not telling you this as someone who is detached from it. I�ve met a lot of students in my 6 years of ministry. I�ve had a lot of friends since I�ve become a Christian. And I�ve never met anybody who regrets having moral boundaries. No adult in this room will tell you that they wish they would have done more and experimented more sexually as a teenager. Nobody ever says I wish my standard for women would have been lower. I wish my standard for a guy would have been lower. But time after time, student after student, I listen to stories of how they wish they would have had stronger standards. How they wish they wouldn�t have gone to Spring Break that year. How they wish they wouldn�t have gone to that party that night. How they wish they wouldn�t have dated that guy. Or dated that girl. Because nobody ever regrets having moral boundaries. Look back at that verse again. 1 Corinthians 6:18 �Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.� Notice the �all other sins�. That�s a bold statement that Paul just made. He said that all other sins are in a different category than sexual sin. That doesn�t mean that there is not forgiveness for sexual sins. That is not the case. But sexual sin carries with a different category of consequences. Sexual sin carries with it a scar, a memory, an attitude, a pain, a regret. Forgiveness is not the issue. God will and can forgive you. But you will always carry an emotional and a psychological scar with you. So here�s where it gets practical. Yes it�s going to look extreme. And yeah it might look foolish. And it might be tough to explain. But you have do it. You need to predecide how far you are going to go sexually. You already have limits. The question is are they going to be the limits that culture has pushed and forced you to. Or are they going to be limits that God has led you to. You need to predecide. The limit and standard that you set needs to be so far away from sex so that if you mess up it will not haunt you for the rest of your life. Yeah you will have a little bit of guilt. You�ll have a memory that you wish would go away. But it won�t destroy your life. Its called margin. If your line is back here. And you mess up, it�s not as big of a deal as if your line is on the edge and you mess up. There aren�t as many consequences. MTV (this isn�t some conservative Christian poll) did a survey 2 years ago. 56% of the high school students they interviewed wanted to abstain from sex until marriage. 56%! What that says is that more than half of your school wants to wait. More than half of your school has moral boundaries. But the reason it seems like everybody at your school is doing it is because nobody brags about waiting. You never hear anybody say, �Guess what we didn�t do last night! We�re waiting!� The only thing you�re going to hear about is the other 44%. And half of those stories aren�t true. And the other half are exaggerated stories. You�ve got to predecide. SEINFELD CLIP If you don�t predecide, you�re going to find yourself in situations where you end up justifying it. The world will tell you that sex is casual. You may not believe that now, but if your boundaries aren�t set up and aren�t firm, you will find yourself bending and compromising them in the heat of the situation. The world will tell you that sex has no consequences. You may not believe that now, but again, if your boundaries aren�t well defined, you will find yourself justifying things you never thought you would justify, doing things you always said you wouldn�t do. You�ve got to predecide. You can�t just say �I don�t want to have sex until I�m married.� That will lead you to the brink, to the edge of moral disaster. Because there are a whole lot of things between, �Hi what�s your name?� and sex. And somebody else�s lack of limits should not force you to compromise your limits. So the question begs to be asked, how far should I go? And my answer is this, as far as you would want the person you�re going to marry to go with the last person they dated before you married them. You go as far as you would want your future husband or your future wife to go. And you set your standard by that. You�re probably saying, �The person I marry I don�t want them to have done anything!� Well exactly. To set your standard any differently makes you a hypocrite. The other excuse is, �I�m only going to be a teenager once. These four years are so long.� Well, you�re going to be an adult a whole lot longer than your four years of high school. And you don�t want to live with the regret and the scars of poor decisions that you made for only four years. Or one night. Go ask anybody that has crossed the limits sexually and ask them, has sex outside of marriage made your life better and easier or more complicated? Nobody has a long line of people who they have been involved with sexually that have a huge smile on their face. Who can�t wait to run into them at school or at the mall. It complicates your life. If we could all just imagine ourselves in a bad sexual situation. Maybe it�s that you�ve gotten a girl pregnant. Maybe you are pregnant. Or maybe you were just messing around and you got busted by your parents. Imagine that for a minute. How far would you go to get yourself out of that mess, out of those consequences? I think we would all have some pretty desperate prayers in those situations. �God, please don�t let her be pregnant. If you do, I�ll be a missionary!� If we would go to such extremes and invite God in on the process to get out of the mess, why wouldn�t you invite God in and go to the extremes on the front end before you got into the mess? You have to decide that you�re going to make some decisions that predefine my moral boundaries. That predefine my limits. And more than likely, they are going to put me out of sync with society or the industry standard or with what my friends think. But you have to decide that you would rather take extreme measures on this side of the line than have to take extreme measures on the other side of the line.

Before I die I will ride the American Orient Express on their Western National Parks tour, their Los Angeles to Washington D.C. tour, and I will take the tour on the Orient Express across Scotland and the England tour if I have the time before I die.

& The Veils The Stills The Doves The Poastal Service The Vines The Hives And how could I forget The Shins and The Thrills? Red Cowboy for life.

I don't know what it is. Perhaps its the heritage and where the music can be traced to. But I've been obsessed with bands that have "The" in front of their name. I don't know if its because half of them just have an indie sound. Or a Brit-rock sound. Or that they all trace everything back to The Clash and The Cure. But I've decided to compile a list of every THE band I can think of that I've listened to in the past month to show my full appreciation for their superb lyrical and musical discharges. The Exies The Donnas The Strokes The Music The Von Bondines The Libertines The Clash The Cure The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs The Killers The Flaming Lips The Rentals Please send your THE "insert band name here" suggestions to me so I can discover more of the same great music. Its true. If you have THE in front of your name. You are good. I can't think of any band who has THE in front of their name who aren't good. I can't. I've tried.

On the Coming Soon to Stores but I might pee my pants first list . . . February 15 - David Crowder Band - Sunsets and Sushi March 1 - Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams March 28 - Coldplay's new album July 16 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

What I'm Listening To: Rilo Kiley, The Music, Razorlight, The Strokes, Delirious, Jimmy Eat World What I'm Reading: Absolutely nothing for I am to busy designing junk out the wazoo