My First "Sermon"

Earlier this semester, I was asked by the campus chaplain to, for lack of better terms, "preach" a "sermon" for campus chapel. The topic of the ongoing series that he asked me to speak on was dating and relationships. I'm finally getting around to sharing it with you. Enjoy!

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So, when Jim asked me if I’d like to share in chapel the “women’s perspective” for the dating and relationships series, I was intrigued. You really want to ask me? As a perpetually single twenty-something year-old woman who’s struggled on and off with the ideas of relationships and marriage since I can remember, I’m just not sure that I’d be my first choice. And bouncing around topics was a fun game because, well, I couldn’t really talk about roles of a husbands and wives in marriage since I’ve never been married, and I couldn’t really talk about how to approach a long-term or serious relationship since I’ve never really been in one. What in the world am I going to talk about regarding relationships and dating? Well, how about the heart.

Now, just as a disclaimer before we get started, this talk is probably going to be primarily geared toward the young women today. Guys, that’s not to say that this isn’t good stuff for you to hear, so don’t take off on me, but just know that I’m usually in conversation with women when things like this come up.

So, let’s get to it, let’s talk about your heart. You know it as that place that flutters when you see someone you like or love, that thing that can shatter like glass when you’ve been disappointed. Your heart is central to who you are and how you operate. And God created us this way, with hearts that are important to Him and are the core of our very being. And because of this, we’re called to guard them closely. Proverbs 4:23 says, Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. 

But what does that even mean? What is it that we’re guarding our hearts from? How are we supposed to guard them and to what end? Are the rules for this heart-guarding?

Well, since this series is about relationships…when you enter into a relationship, be it romantic or otherwise, you begin to share pieces of your heart with another person. It usually starts small as you navigate the unsure path of new relationships, sharing a personal detail here and there, exposing something about yourself every now and then. But it doesn’t take long, and you’re sharing more personal things, becoming more exposed, all the while sharing bigger pieces of your heart with others.

Sharing personal and emotional details of our lives with another person is not in and of itself necessarily a bad thing, but sharing these things too soon after beginning a relationship is one way that we often neglect to guard our hearts. And for women, in particular, this is really easy to do, if for no other reason than we really like to talk. We talk when we’re nervous. We talk when we’re happy. We talk when we’re upset, frustrated, excited. For many of us, it is very easy to share about our lives, but the mistake we often make is entrusting huge pieces of our hearts to anyone and everyone who will listen. And there is a danger in doing this because, frankly, not everyone can be trusted.

And although God is the true keeper of your heart, the one who can make it whole over and over again no matter how many pieces you throw out there, the pieces of your heart that you share with others never can be taken back. They’re out there, just like a photo on the internet or a status on facebook, forever. The more pieces that you give away, the more people have a piece of your heart just floating around out there. Can you imagine saying to your significant other or your new spouse on your wedding day, I really want to give you my whole heart. Just so you know, I’ve given pieces of it away to 27 other people, but now you can have it too. How would you feel knowing that your girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife had little pieces of themselves floating around out there with so many other people? If you decide to enter into a life-long marriage with another person, it’s because you want to share their heart, just you and them. Not you, them, and 27 other people.

And there’s another way that we often fail to guard our hearts, by neglecting to include God’s desires for our relationships into our plans altogether. We have to remember that God has a good and beautiful plan for relationships, but sometimes our own desires, intentions, and priorities get relationships all jumbled up and they end up far from God’s intents. God gives us great examples in the Bible of how relationships should be designed. Ephesians 5, which we don’t have time to dig into today, is filled with wonderful imagery of modeling our relationships after how Christ loves the church, a selfless, patient, gentle relationship. If we are not seeking God’s heart and this plan in our relationships first and foremost, then we are not guarding our own hearts or the hearts of those we are in relationship with. Relationships look less and less like Christ loving the church.

And what’s one of the biggest dangers that can creep in when we are not guarding our hearts? Lust. Now, I must confess that lust was not even on the original potential topic list of things I wanted to talk about today, but it is something that cannot be ignored. So what is it? Where does it start? You know that second glance you just gave that attractive individual that just pasted by? That flirtatious grin you send to someone across the room? That’s where it can start. As simple as that. And it builds from there, into thoughts of desire that may have nothing to do with building a God-centered relationship. Thoughts of physical contact, wanting to share extremely personal details, finding ways to be near or involved with someone, or even desiring that someone may develop these types of feelings for you...

The Bible warns us against the dangers of lust, and there’s not much dancing around the issue either. Matthew 5:28 says, But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Woah. Why such strong words of warning about this? Lust is a tricky, sneaky sin that finds its way into unsuspecting hearts. What starts out innocent enough can quickly become corrupt. Boundaries of personal commitments and decisions get quietly pushed farther and farther from where you wanted them to be. And you can end up way off track from God’s intentions for how relationships should be built. We must guard our hearts from the dangers of lust by keeping God at the center of our intentions.

Look, the truth is that I can’t, despite my best efforts, give you a list of dos and don’ts, the proverbial rule book, for how to avoid lust or even how best to guard your heart. I can’t tell you exactly how to protect yourself from getting hurt or from hurting others, when you can start sharing more of your life with another person, or even specifically what guarding your heart may look like on a day-to-day basis. And believe me, I wish I could. There are so many days that I’ve asked myself why the world of dating and relationships isn’t more black and white, but it’s not. It’s grey and messy and confusing. But it is especially convoluted when you try to go it alone, without God’s input. God wants to work with us, so He’s not going to just hand us all the answers. Here you go. How to guard your heart and avoid lust in ten easy steps. Not going to happen. But God does desire for us to work with Him, for us to seek Him out, in order to figure it all out.

Okay, now I want to make the not-to-distant leap from guarding your heart to the topic of modesty. I can already see some of you tensing up in your seats, looking for the nearest exit. Modesty is one of those words that elicits ideas of nuns dressed in their habits or middle eastern women covered from head to toe in draping tents, one piece swim suites, and, well, the entire Duggar family for those of you who watch TLC. Ugh… nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody even think about that. It’s completely counter-cultural to want to cover up. But that’s exactly the point.

Our society paints a picture of fashion trends and the norm of how to dress that is, well, fake. Ads in magazines, larger-than-life billboards and bus panels, tv, movies…all of it is feeding us the same ideas of “normal” that none of us can live up to because it’s not real. What you see in magazines and on tv is nothing more than extraordinary PhotoShop and fine-grain editing. By the time images get to our eyes, they’re no longer even human.

These are the images we see every day, that we strive to live up to because it’s what society calls “normal”. More leg, lower cuts, bigger muscles, tighter everything. Do you understand what all of this does to us? It turns our bodies, that we know are created in the image of God, into nothing more than objects modeled after a false reality. How do I know we were created in the image of God? At the very beginning of the story, in the story of God creating the world, the first chapter of Genesis says that God created the earth, water, sky, and land, night and day, and it was good. He created plants, trees, fish, birds, and animals of all kinds, and it was good. And then in Genesis 1:27 it says, So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And it goes on to say that it was very good. How dare we take bodies, modeled after God Himself, and choose to model them after the world’s idea of proper image instead.

And there’s one other thing about modesty that I want to point out, that will hopefully bring my few minutes with you full circle. If we’re truly interested in guarding and protecting our hearts, then not only should the protection of our own hearts be important to us, but the protection of others’ hearts should also hold value. By choosing to dress in a modest manner, you’re actually helping those around you in protecting their hearts. By dressing in a way that doesn’t provoke looks of desire and lust your direction, you’re sheltering hearts, both others’ and your own.

And not only that, when you strip away all the flashy, tight, distracting clothing, what people are then able to see is God’s presence in our lives. 1 Timothy 2:9-10 says, I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. When people look at you, they shouldn’t first view your clothing and think, Wow, what’s he wearing? Or Why all the leg? They should be able to look at you and see the observable Christian lifestyle of good deeds as an expression of our faith in Christ.

Now again, there’s no written rule book here. What’s too tight, too short, too low, too exposed, too flashy? What’s appropriate or inappropriate to wear? I don’t know that I can define that. And does this mean we all should just wear gray tents so as to fade into the background? I don’t think that has so much to do with God’s image either. All I can say is that you’ve got to seek God for those answers.

So, out of all of this, if I had to give you just a few words to walk out of here remembering it would be to guard your heart…guard your heart from being too exposed, from neglecting God’s intentions for relationships, and from lustful thoughts and actions that can so easily slip in. Remember that God made you in His beautiful image and that the world’s expectations of you are plastic and fake. And although there’s no rule book, God wants to work with us to establish proper ideas of relationships and how we should live out our lives. Seeking Him out is the only way we can begin to establish those rules for ourselves. Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.