This first session is about dealing with struggles of attraction, interest, and liking someone. How do we manage attraction? What if I like someone who’s not good for me emotionally or spiritually? How do we lay a good foundation?

GYC 2016: When All Has Been Heard

<p>This first session is about dealing with struggles of attraction, interest, and liking someone. How do we manage attraction? What if I like someone who’s not good for me emotionally or spiritually? How do we lay a good foundation?</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Advising Love: From Attraction to Anniversaries

Candis Braxton

Sebastien Braxton

1. Advising Love’s Beginning: Attraction & Dating

This message was presented at the GYC 2016 conference, When All Has Been Heard, in Houston, Texas.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

So, first of all, I just want to say thank you guys for coming.

Just a real quick announcement, if you guys can press towards the middle, because apparently a lot of people are trying to get in, And if there are some extra seats somewhere, if you guys can just make sure you scoot towards the middle to make sure we maximize all the seats, that would be great.

So if there's empty seats next to you towards this middle aisle, move towards that way.

Everyone just make a shift so we can maximize the seats here.

Well, first of all, I just wanna say thank you for coming.

We're very humbled to see all you here for our seminar.

We are not by any means experts on the topic of relationships.

Every relationship is different because every individual is unique.

And the coming together of 2 unique individuals is something that no 1 can really foresee what's gonna come out of that.

And so our goal is really to accomplish 2 basic things in this seminar.

It's to talk about every phase of a relationship in terms of beginning, attraction, that initial interest, all the way down to parenting, anniversaries, and marriage, and all that stuff.

Because we have 3 and a kid on the way as well.

We also, I just want to make sure I acknowledge, my wife actually had surgery 8 days ago while she was 16 weeks pregnant.

She had appendicitis and then that was adhering to her fallopian tube.

They found out she had a hernia when they went in and yet she is still here.

So if you see me taking a little seat back here, you know why.

So let's go ahead and pray and get started.

Father in heaven, we just want to thank you for the gift of life and we also want to thank you for the gift of love.

Not just divine love but how that love can be expressed and represented in human relationships.

We pray, Father, that you would guide us through the presence of the Holy Spirit as we discuss love's beginning, as we look at the foundational pillars that we can set and how we approach this area of our lives that is so intriguing, that can be so passionate and bring a lot of energy and fervor to our lives.

We want you to be the author of our story.

And so we trust, Lord, that your spirit will do just that as Candace and I offer ourselves to be your tools this morning.

So first and foremost, I am Sebastian Braxton.

For those who may not know, I serve as the CEO for the New Life Challenge.

I do several other things, preaching, non-profit work and all that kind of stuff.

And I'm also a husband and a father of 3 kids.

My kids are not here, otherwise you would see them running to the front of the room.

And so my wife and I could actually have time to actually present and not be distracted.

My wife actually is almost done with her master's in marriage and family therapy.

I'm just providing the side stuff, I'm the sidekick.

And she also went to Tufts University in Boston.

She's very smart, very intelligent, but also very humble and very accessible.

So this is the time when you got to start praising your wife, so I'm already beginning the seminar So with that for this morning we wanted to start and we call this seminar advising loves beginning attraction and dating And my wife and I have a very unique story, which we'll get to later on in the seminar, but we wanted to at least begin by addressing some foundational pieces.

So the first thing is we need to define the terms that we are working with.

We're talking about attraction and dating.

We've got to make sure we're clear on what we are talking about and what we are discussing.

Because if we're not clear on that, we may not be clear on what's being endorsed, what's being encouraged, what we should be worried about, and what we should avoid.

So the first thing is, What exactly is attraction?

And so when we look at attraction, right, there's this very basic concept, as you see in this picture, right, of this magnetic, this draw, right?

So when there is attraction, that means that an individual is drawn to another individual.

That person just commands your attention.

And sometimes that comes for different reasons.

Attraction can be based on a lot of different things, but the very core principle of attraction is that you are drawn to a person's company.

And if we don't put this in its proper place, this is when attraction can kind of get out of control.

And so we look at the fact that attraction is kind of that first level and what Candice and I call essentially this kind of love step where you go from attraction, then you go to interest, which means, now that I'm attracted to a person, I start having a conversation with them, I become interested in them, right?

I wanna know more about you, I wanna know what you do, what do you like, what's your religious experience, where did you come from, what are you trying to do, what are your aspirations?

And in these particular elements, we build upon these points.

The third 1 is what we call liking, Right?

So you see that emoji there with the hearts and the eyes.

So when we talk about liking, right, Candice and I look at it and we say, this is basically the whole concept of preference.

When you begin to know a lot about a person and you say, you know what?

This is not just attraction, this is not just interest, this is at a point where it's an issue of preference.

And it's very important that we distinguish that.

Now, obviously after that we go into the issue of love.

And I don't know, babe, if you want to talk about this a little bit.

So first of all, you have initially we meet a person, we have attraction.

Then we go into the fact that we have interest, right?

You have to recognize where you are on this continuum in your relationship with that person, right?

And then you have liking a person, and then obviously you end at the point of love, which is very, very critical.

I just wanted to say that many times we use these terms interchangeably, right?

Oh, I like this person when really we mean we are attracted or I'm interested, but really you may be at the other end where you're like you really are in love with this person.

2. Advising Love’s Growth: A Holy vs. An Unholy Courtship

Our loving Father in heaven, we thank you for being a constant source of wisdom, strength, comfort, all the things that we need.

We pray, Father, for your spirit to be here with us, or to continue being here with us as we seek just to learn more about how heaven desires us to carry ourselves, especially in the realm of courtship.

This we ask and pray in Jesus' name, amen.

So our title of this next seminar, we went from advising love's beginning to advising love's growth, right?

So we're now moving into the question of a holy versus unholy courtship.

And obviously we talked about in the last seminar session at the end that 1 of the primary differences between a courtship and dating is that there's an aim towards marriage.

Right, when you're dating, you're just spending time with the opposite sex to have a good time.

But when you're courting, you're spending time with another individual to build a relationship, to draw their affections, because your goal is to get married.

You see the potential for that marriage to take place.

So here we want to talk about the whole idea of courtship.

And so when we look at the history of the word courtship, it goes all the way back to the mid 1500s when you had kings and queens and the king had a royal court.

And In that royal court, you had a court jester.

He has a court person who brings him his food, he has a court cook, he has all these different people in his court.

And 1 of the main issues was to court the attention of the king.

So people would come in and to entertain the king to try to draw his affections out toward them.

And so if you were engaged in trying to win the affections of the king, let's say you were a visiting nation, or let's say you were a nobleman who was looking for a promotion, you would go to the court of the king in front of him, his wife, the queen, and his kids, and all of his servants, and you were there to perform some great thing to win the affection of the king.

If you were doing that, you were engaged in courtship.

And this is why Ellen White makes the statement that we should have a thorough knowledge.

You should have a thorough knowledge of the individual upon whom you seek to bestow, what word?

And You should have a thorough knowledge of that person whom you seek to give your affections to.

You're not gonna go and say, here's my life savings, and just go give it to someone you just met.

But we will treat our affections as cheaper than our money.

You'll sit and do all your vetting to make sure, hey, no, no, I'm not going to give you all the money my dad just gave to me by inheritance just because you look good, just because you sound like it's a good investment.

But when it comes to our affections, we just give them away so freely without doing any investigation.

So when we're talking about courtship and playing court, we must recognize that a big part of that whole experience of bonding is in drawing the affections out of that other person.

Now as we go forward, we wanna focus on 3 key takeaways from this particular session.

Our first key takeaway is that the goal of courtship is not to avoid pain, but disobedience.

I know when you look at this, you're like, huh, not to avoid pain?

But many times when we are, when we are in a relationship or we're in the stage where we're recording, we're feeling like I want to do everything the right way, or I don't really want to cause, you know, ruffle any feathers, or we end up not being our true authentic selves.

And I know that as a female, sometimes you may think, oh, I'm a little too strong in this area, so I'm gonna temper that back a little bit, just so that I don't have to experience the pain of him seeing or having something to say about this, and it therefore causing things not to work out.

And so many times we hold back to avoid the pain.

And recognize that basically what you're doing to a person, they think they're marrying Rachel and they're waking up with Leah.

It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, she's so nice and she's so about ministry and I'm telling you the truth.

We told you in the introduction, we're gonna give you the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Right, and a big, big, big thing that, you know, I always appreciated about our courtship is that we were very honest with each other before we were even dating.

Right, I remember us having a very honest conversation about ministry.

And she's like, well, you're traveling a lot, and all the, I don't know if I want that life.

But we gotta have an honest and open conversation, right?

We can't just sit here and talk and pretend like, you know Sebastian is preaching, you know Sebastian's traveling in ministry, That's what he senses God is calling him to do.

You know you're interested in going to grad work and all these different things and being a mom.

How do we now have a conversation about this honestly rather than, oh, let's all look prim and proper, everybody on Sabbath sees us sitting together, matching sweaters, and we get to have all the benefits, like we're dating and courting, we're about to get married, and then once we get married, now all the honest stuff comes out.

So don't come crying to the preacher like, oh, you know, my husband this, my wife this.

Like, bro, did you check her out before you got married?

Marriage is more than being pretty and coming to a Bible study.

And even on the converse, he said, going to bed with thinking you married Rachel and waking up with Leah.

But on the converse, we can also end up not by holding back.

We can end up in a situation where a person thinks that, okay, well, maybe this is not the person that I really need to be in a relationship with, because the very things that you're hiding or you're holding back are the things that they're looking for.

And I think that's a critical point, babe, that you're bringing out.

Because 1 of the things that a lot of people, when Candice and I had expressed interest, a lot of people didn't know.

And so a lot of guys would come to me and they'd be like, yeah, man, I think I'm interested in Candice.

I think this is a bad deal you know it's like but when these guys were coming to me, their perception of Candice was different than who I knew she was.

They're like, oh, Candice is super nice, very supportive.

I'm not saying you're not supportive, babe.

And they looked at Candice as she's gonna be that, you know, Martha Stewart in the kitchen making hors d'oeuvres and Entertaining and super happy to sew your clothes from scratch But I said, you know Candice is a very strong mind and they were like, yeah But I feel like you know, I could be with a girl like this.

And I said, nah, bro, you don't know what you're getting into.

I was like, you have to recognize the fact that Candace is that way because you're not her boyfriend.

She'll be cool and calm and, yeah, that's cool.

But in her mind she's thinking, Sebastian will never do that.

You know, I remember 1 time we went to church and this guy came in, you know, and his tie was all jacked up and you know, his shirt was clearly not ironed and you know, my wife, she doesn't play that stuff.

4. Advising Love’s Experience: Married Life

Mighty God, as we approach you at this moment, we trust that you are able to again speak to our hearts as we make ourselves available to you.

Keep us faithful, keep us honest, and help us to remain true to you.

But also Lord, to honor the commitment that marriage represents before God.

We love you and we thank you for all these gifts and for the gifts of you speaking to our hearts just now.

So We looked at love's beginning, we looked at love's growth, and then we looked at love's commitment.

And in looking at love's commitment, we acknowledge that after engagement, we're crossing the line into this whole new experience.

And so we wanna talk about, as we said, the good, the bad, the ugly, and really give you a full picture of what it's really about from our perspective and what we can see from the Bible.

So we have some key takeaways, as usual, every session.

So the first thing is that the Bible says in Genesis 2.18 that God said, it is not good for man to be alone.

I want you to take your Bible and I want you to turn there to Genesis 2.18.

So in Genesis 2.18 the Bible says that it is not good for man to be alone.

Now this is a very unique statement in Genesis 2.18.

Okay, you guys sound like you had a long day.

So it says in verse 18 of Genesis chapter 2, And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone.

I will make him a helper comparable to him.

Verse 19, out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and did what to them?

So notice 2 groups of entities are interacting with Adam.

First of all, God is interacting with Adam.

He told him to tend and to keep the garden.

He said, of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat, but not this 1.

And so this whole idea that God is enough is not a biblical idea.

In God's ideal, before sin entered the world, God said, it is not good that man should be alone.

Now, he's talking about man having social needs, but as Ellen White articulates, marriage fulfills our social needs, which is why God created it.

So here is God talking to Adam, but he recognized Something would be missing from Adam's experience if Adam only had God to interact with and the animals in the garden.

You know, it's amazing how much we spend on pets every year in the world.

And you know, Every woman's greatest fear is to become the cat woman, right?

And in this same experience, Adam had plenty of animals in the garden.

And Even greater than that, if he had access to Jesus, then he also had access to angels.

So in each of these groups of people, Adam was interacting with the God of heaven personally.

Adam was interacting with every single animal God created under the sun, and he was personally naming them.

Adam was interacting with angels, but yet God said the man was alone.

What this tells you and I is that there is a certain experience that Adam could not find fulfillment through in his interaction with God, in his interaction with angels, in his interaction with animals that he could only find in his interaction with Eve.

After God would visit Adam in the garden and speak to him, teach him some amazing new truth, Adam could not come back to the parrot and say, did not your heart burn within you?

Talk to the parrots and the dolphins and, no, that's not, they can't relate to him in the same way.

In the same sense to angels, angels were there when Adam was created.

So they're like God doing, we know these things.

And then God himself, even God has the Trinity.

He has the Father and He also has the Spirit.

Because when Jesus comes to the Father, the Father shares Jesus' nature.

He feels the same exact way that Jesus feels.

So when God was creating this context of marriage, He was creating an experience for Adam where He was telling him, Listen, in this experience that you're going to have with this woman, she's going to be 1 that shares your nature.

Her physical body, She has hands like you.

Dogs don't have the same even body parts.

And even though you're fundamentally different by you're a man and she's a woman, but yet all the other similarities overcome those differences that lead you into unity.

So, in this experience, when we talk about marriage and love's experience, love's experience, according to God's creation and his order in Genesis 2, This inspires perfect happiness.

I want to quote something that Ellen White said.

She says, in commenting on this experience, she says, when God saw Adam in the garden before he made Eve, he knew that the current state of Adam's situation would never create perfect happiness.

I want you to think about what I just said.

He said it would not yield perfect happiness.

So when God is looking at Adam, Adam is content.

It wasn't until after he saw all the animals that he realized, you know what, I don't have a helper comparable to me.

Which is why God brought the animal to him in the first place, to help him recognize this.

But before that, Adam was content, it was God that was not satisfied.

When we think about the institution of marriage, marriage is representative of the very reality that when you are satisfied, God is not.

While you are happy, God says there's even better.

While you are content, God says I can take it even higher.

We have to realize that in the experience of marriage, God's goal for us is perfect happiness.

Marriage was not designed to bring woe and burden and weigh upon us.

And so when we talk about this seminar and all these different things, our goal is to try to carve out from the Bible and practical experience, how do we push towards Jesus' ideal of perfect happiness?

Even if we don't want it for ourselves, Jesus wants it for us.

Now, we start here by simply saying the fact that marriage is a beautiful thing.

I mean, after, when we think about the intention and the purpose behind it, what we just talked about.

5. Advising Love’s Giving: Parenting and Family Life

Well, we are here again, session number 5.

And then we'll finish off with our question and answer session tomorrow, as well as a couple just little things in terms of trends that may be coming up in recent times because of social media and things like that.

So we're gonna go ahead and have prayer and then just jump right in to our presentation for today.

Our Father, what a gift that it is to have life again this morning.

What a gift that it is to be here in Houston with so many different individuals whose hearts are towards the Lord.

Series

Advising Love: From Attraction to Anniversaries

1. Advising Love’s Beginning: Attraction & Dating

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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