GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

#RelationshipGoals: God's Edition

Christian Martin

Heidi Martin

01 Rock-Solid Love: Starting with Christ First

02 From Squad to Soulmate: The Power of Godly Friendship

03 Love Without Regrets: Boundaries that Bless

04 Talk it Out: God’s Way to Handle Love & Drama

05 From Dating to Destiny: Preparing for Forever

And today's seminar is entitled, From Dating to Destiny, Preparing Forever.

And so again, the purpose of this time is to explore...

Not preparing for forever, but preparing forever.

The purpose of this time is to explore how dating isn't just about fun and feelings.

It's also a season, a season for preparation.

It's a space where God shapes our hearts, our characters, our expectations for a lifelong commitment.

So let's begin with a word of prayer as we get started.

Father in heaven, thank you so much that you have been with us in this GYC experience.

Thank you that every step of the way you have literally led our steps and our path.

It hasn't been coincidence to run into the people that we've met and to sit with the people we've sat with and to experience and to listen to the sessions and the lectures and the preaching that has impressed and even convicted our hearts.

At our hearts, Lord this is all part of your design for us to be here and we pray that now as we begin this final session that once again the Holy Spirit would be present to bring clarity to our thoughts and to impress our minds with just not only practical information, but information that is truly crucial and very important for us to understand and apply.

So we thank you Lord for answering our prayers in Jesus' name, Amen.

So let's begin with the question, what is dating?

And you know, wouldn't you think it would be safe to pull a dictionary and say, all right, let's look up the word dating.

What does, how does the dictionary define dating?

I said I'm gonna look up the word dating in the dictionary and see what it says.

And I'm not gonna tell you I was shocked, but I was.

And This is what the dictionary defines dating as.

To go out with someone, so far so good, I mean I get it.

To go out with someone in whom 1 is romantically or sexually interested in.

That's the dictionary's definition of dating, all right?

Go out with someone that you're sexually interested in.

But what's interesting is this, is that I can appreciate my my Latin or Spanish background.

Again, I was born in Argentina and and and I know many countries speak Spanish and so many of you will know this, that the word for, you know what the word for boyfriend or girlfriend is?

But did you know what the word for groom and bride in the wedding ceremony is?

You go to a wedding, it's, oh, esta la novia, esta la novia.

Oh, el novio is, yeah, that's groom and bride.

That in the language itself, culturally speaking, or just the use of those words, our use of verb both, Dating or calling someone boyfriend or girlfriend, it's the same word, calling someone bride or groom.

And for me, that's very revealing because I think we can actually tap into that and discover a deep truth to that definition alone.

And as we unpack this, when we ask what is dating, it's a very loaded question, A question that has several layers to it, and we're going to unpack these layers 1 step at a time.

But in answering the question, what is dating, we would begin by simply saying that It's a phase in life that leads someone with emotional and physical maturity and preparation for a lifelong relationship with someone, namely husband and wife.

But Heidi, let's talk about the emotional and physical, for that matter, preparation, maturity that 1 would expect with our bodies.

So as we were talking about this, getting ready for this seminar, we told you guys a lot of stuff and we didn't want to repeat ourselves again.

So we're gonna get into some nitty-gritty stuff today.

We're gonna say some words that I hope no 1 feels uncomfortable with, but if you do, maybe you should feel uncomfortable with them so you can get used to not feeling uncomfortable with them.

But pretty much when you go through puberty, your sexual desires get turned on.

It's like a switch gets flipped and suddenly what you had 0 interest in, maybe like a year ago, becomes a driving force in your life.

Us adults who have been through this can see it happening.

It happens at different ages because everyone goes through puberty and the developmental phase from going from a child body into an adult body.

It happens to all of us at different ages, but starting from 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, all in that age is when this transition is happening.

I was reading some statistics or listening to some podcast.

I don't remember exactly what it was, but did you realize that between the ages of 14, 15, and like 18, the teen brain gets totally broken down and remade again.

It is a crazy level of transition time that is happening, and because of that, sometimes it's hard to think straight when we're in this phase.

So not only is our sexual desire, puberty kind of thing getting flipped on, but at the same time the brain is going through this whole transition.

And the key phrase was, at the same time.

So it makes for some really interesting, sometimes turbulent waters.

And so back to me, I was 11 years old when I went through this.

From that point forward, I have 0 memories of not having a liking for a guy in my life.

I mean, from there on, from then on forward, all the way until I got married.

I mean, we're just gonna break this down to the real facts.

But for some reason, when this happens, We get super embarrassed to talk about it or to ask any questions or to approach our parents.

No adult or many adults seem to want to not address this or even act like this exists.

It becomes in many ways like a hush-hush topic.

You're not allowed to have those kind of feelings.

If you haven't had this experience, if it was always positive for you, praise the Lord.

But for many people, there's a lot of shame surrounding normal sexual development.

And that's passed on from 1 generation to the other and there's that awkwardness, that uncomfortableness, that that hush-hush, like you're saying, that we just don't talk about that.

So nowadays, even the word sex in certain circles and certain, you know, even in the church, that word just causes people to, you know, and if that was not enough, I mean, how about words like ejaculation, intercourse, penis, vagina?

Back to Menu

Series

#RelationshipGoals: God's Edition

05 From Dating to Destiny: Preparing for Forever

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 Rock-Solid Love: Starting with Christ First

53m

02 From Squad to Soulmate: The Power of Godly Friendship

50m

03 Love Without Regrets: Boundaries that Bless

59m

04 Talk it Out: God’s Way to Handle Love & Drama

53m

05 From Dating to Destiny: Preparing for Forever

1h 1m

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