Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts

Monday, January 30, 2012

Day 86


All men want is sex.

He’s a man, he only wants one thing.

The way to a man’s heart is through his pants.

Women have strong convictions about the male population, and we could go on and on and on about men and what’s wrong with them.

But tonight, I’m talking to us girls.

We can point fingers at men and blame them for who we believe them to be, or we can be first to take responsibility for what we have become.  Women ache to be loved.  We yearn to be known intimately.  And when this is left unfulfilled, we fill this void with what feels like the next best thing.

Sex.

Men look at us.  Men objectify us.  And we want it.  We ask for them to do it, because if it remotely feels like love—or even if we just feel like it could lead to it—we want that.

Resigning to our culture, to mask the desire for love, we embrace being sexual.  We use sex appeal to draw men in, and we use sex to suffice as a carbon copy of what we really want.  Andy Stanley says this:

If in your dating you get in the habit of being treated like a commodity, guess what's going to happen when you're married?  Your husband's going to do the same thing.  If he dated you like a commodity, he's going to treat you like a commodity.  You should have no tolerance for being treated like a commodity—none at all...and ladies, just a little tip from the world of fishing.  Do you know how a fisherman determines what to bait his hook with? What he's fishing for.  If you fish with your body, you're going to catch body snatchers.  Every.  Single.  Time!  And this is what you're going to say, 'All men are alike, all men are alike.'  And I'm going to tell you now what I tell young ladies when they tell me that, I say, 'No, not all men are alike, all the men YOU date are alike.'  Let's take the last ten guys you've dated, and let's look at those.  There was him and you, him and you, him and you, him and you, him and you...what is the common denominator on all those dates?  That would be you!  You are so much more than a body.  Save the body for later.

Do you really want a man who only keeps you because of the sex?

Do you really want a man whose “love” is invested in your looks?

What happens when he finds someone more beautiful?  What happens when another sexually provocative woman evokes him?  Then where do you stand?

Instead, don't you desire to be loved for who you are at your core?  And not a performance?  Not for a high?  But to be deeply and intimately loved?

We use sex to get love, but sex doesn’t get us love.  Sex takes from us the ability to love and instead fills us with a selfish desire, whether you’re concerned about satisfying your partner—which is a selfish act in trying to keep them wanting you—or whether you’re trying to fulfill yourself.

God made women to be relational, and because of this at the core of every woman is the desire to be loved.  And it’s a lie we believe that something is better than nothing.

Something is not better than nothing if you get that something by way of sex.  Because eventually, that something is bound to vanish, leaving you with nothing anyway.

And in the end we feel emptier than when we first began, and the search continues for the next high.  And when that high is over, we’ve created this cycle, where we rise higher, then fall deeper, and it keeps going—our lives driven by the desire to just be loved.

Let us protect our hearts by protecting our bodies.  A man will love you for more than just what is underneath your clothes.  And he will honor you.

But not before you honor yourself.

You need a sexual budget, you need a body budget.  You need to decide ahead of time what will I not do and what will I spend and not spend with my body when it comes to relationships.  You need to pre-decide, and when the temptation comes along, you say, 'I already decided that I don't do that, I don't go there...I don't spend the night, I don't sleep over.  I pre-decided.  And as big a sacrifice as that might feel like now...giving up something now for something better later, it's not a sacrifice...it's a what?  Listen, single people, when you decide to set sexual and moral standards, every time you apply those standards, you are investing in a future relationship.  Every single time you say no, you're saying yes.  Every time you feel like you're making a sacrifice, you're making an investment.  In whose future?  Your future.—Andy Stanley


Men: Listen to the second sermon – The Gentleman’s Code.
Women: Listen to the third sermon – Designer Sex.