WYC 2010:  In His Image

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GYC West

Lifestyle of the Last Generation

Nicole Parker

But We’re Just Friends

Alan Parker

Wreck-creation or Re-creation

Grownups Playing Dress-up

iWorship

Allen Lloyd

Heavenly Music:  Starting Now

Health for Body, Mind, and Soul: Preparation for the End Time Crisis

How many of you have been enjoying WIC so far?

Father in Heaven, we're just so grateful that You have blessed us so much.

I know You have a plan for each of our lives, and I pray that You will empty me of self and fill me with Your Spirit, that I may be able to share something that will be a blessing to each person's heart here and that each person may be changed into your image more by the message that I share today.

My seminar is titled, but we're just friends.

Because this is 1 of the most common things that I hear as a person who spends a lot of time with young people.

My husband works at Southern, and I'm staying at home as a stay-at-home mom with 3 little kids.

But we have a lot of students that come funneling through our house.

And just kind of, I hear so many complicated situations that start out with, well, we're just friends, but.

So I decided a long time ago, this was a topic that I really thought needed to be addressed more.

And I actually am working on writing a book on this.

So whenever I have spare time between raising 3 little kids, 1 of these days you may be able to read this if you can't hear it.

Now what I want to share with you today comes from my heart and from my own experience because I had the same situation that many other people that I know had in growing up trying to follow God.

You know, I always heard you got to save yourself from the right 1, right?

And When I was younger, like up until I was about 16, I really thought that that was kind of a, you know, as long as you don't have sex, it's okay, right?

So I would play with all these guys, flirt around a lot.

But of course, I was going to save myself for the right 1 physically.

But emotionally I wasn't saving myself for anybody.

I was giving myself to anybody who seemed like they would be interested in me.

I remember going out walking with 1 of my friends.

We would go over and visit the academy campus nearby and go on man hunts.

Just walk around and try to find somebody to flirt with.

And then go away giggling, oh you were so cute.

It's insane the things that 14 year old girls do.

And then when I gave my life to Christ when I was 16, I decided, all right, now I'm going to do it right.

I'm going to give every area of my life to God, and that includes dating.

I dated several non-adventist guys and had some really messed up relationships.

And I didn't date again until I was out of college.

And that was a great decision, 1 of the best decisions I ever made.

It really helped me to be able to mature and to work through some of the things that I needed to work through before I started dating anybody.

And that decision also probably saved me from a lot of very bad situations.

Because even when I was 16, I remember just a few months before I really made that commitment to follow Christ, I was studying to be a lifeguard.

And my lifeguarding teacher sat down with me 1 day and she said, Nicole, if you keep acting the way that you're acting with guys, you're not going to be a virgin much longer.

And physically, I dressed in the kind of clothes that I thought would get attention.

It wasn't that I was trying to get guys to want to have sex with me.

But when you have a nice body and you dress in things that show it off, then everybody pays more attention to you.

And guys want to put their arm around you.

And I liked how I felt when I put on something that made my body look what I thought looked good.

So I wore those tight things, those short things, those things that didn't have any sleeves.

And I thought, wow, you know, this is the life.

But my lifeguarding teacher saw where it was going, even when I didn't.

And I'm so grateful that she had the courage to sit down and talk with a girl who wasn't really very spiritually minded in some ways, because she saw I had potential and that I did want to follow God and I needed somebody to warn me.

So she did help me to know what I was doing was desperately wrong.

And I came out of that conversation horrified and confused.

When I gave my life to Christ, I was attending Ouachita Hills Academy, which is a wonderful school.

And at Ouachita Hills, we weren't allowed to date.

And I found that really great because the other guys, when a guy would walk with me or sit next to me in class regularly, I didn't have to start worrying, oh, no, he's got a crush on me.

But it also meant that I became good friends with guys, not worrying about whether or not we were going to be interested in each other.

That can be a good thing and a bad thing because I thought, you know, we're just friends, right?

You want to stay just friends with everyone, right?

When you're out there in the world, you date around, you have a wild time, you decide what your boundaries are physically and then you go that far whenever you feel like it.

But as Christians we say, wait, we're supposed to save ourselves for marriage.

And that means physically and of course emotionally too.

We realize that as we mature spiritually.

We realize it's not okay to just throw yourself at everybody emotionally.

So you're supposed to stay just friends with people until you find somebody you think might be the right 1, right?

But practically, that often means that we're still confused.

What does it really mean to be just friends?

The Bible talks all the time about staying pure.

But it doesn't talk about what's the boundary.

How can a guy and a girl be friends and be just friends and stay pure?

We live in a culture where Movies tell you that you've got to have these intense emotional friendships.

And everything has to be intense and emotional.

And in an hour and a half, you go through all the emotions that somebody is supposed to go through in like 10 years, in this movie.

And wow, the hills and the valleys are amazing.

And when you get to real life, real life you've got to scrub floors.

In real life, when you drive somewhere in a car, you actually have to sit there for a while and drive.

Series

Lifestyle of the Last Generation

But We’re Just Friends

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Urgency

1h 25m

Overcoming Escapism: The Life and Death Battle For Your Mind

Overcoming Escapism- Part 2

50m

Eric Walsh: Must Be the Music

Culture, Sex, and the Fight for Purity

1h 20m

Stealing Lucifer's Playground

Snapchat, Selfies, and Salvation

54m

What Sort of People

What Sort of People- Part 2

1h 15m

Tech Transformation Part 4

1h 6m

Love and Marriage

1h 4m

Finding Peace in the Time of Chaos

02 Hollywood: The Devil’s Magic Wand

1h 3m

Tech Transformation Part 1

52m

Plenary

Our Connected Society

51m

Bible Weekend

02 Answering False Doctrines

43m

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 4

1h 13m

Sound Doctrine