Darren and Nichole have been friends since their sophomore year. Darren has had some very physical relationships in the past, but his sophomore year was a shift for him. After a nasty breakup with a girl he had been sexual with, Darren decided to back off all dating until he could figure out how to do this whole relationship thing right. So he took some time to get really focused on growing in his faith, and he’s made a huge effort to make sure that his beliefs don’t just show up at church but are seen by everyone else in his life.
Nichole has always been focused on doing a lot of service projects and has never really had time for a bf/gf relationship. She has lots of guy and girl friends and enjoys hanging out with them. She has a real passion for God and is always looking for ways to live that out.
They’re in the same youth group. Nichole is part of an outreach team that tutors kids at a nearby apartment complex and often shares her faith with some children in very bad situations. Darren is on the baseball team at school and leads a Bible study with some of the guys from his team.
Nichole has watched Darren go through some tough times with the divorce of his parents and his brother’s difficulty in dealing with the whole thing. She’s been a great support to Darren, praying for him and offering well-timed encouragement.
They are great friends, but lately they’ve been wondering if there’s something else. They’ve been having some “feelings” for each other, and they’re not sure exactly what to do with them. They don’t want to push something that may not be there. But then again, if something is there, they don’t want to miss out on that either.
What do you do when you’ve lived out this revolution and now you have these emotions, these feelings for another person, and you just aren’t sure what to do?
You know in your heart that sex is sacred and serious—and you live it out. You’ve made this revolution a priority in your own life by working on your inward character, outward modesty, and upward devotion.
You’ve decided to relate to the opposite sex not Hollywood’s way but God’s sex180 way. You see sex as selfless and that relationships are not all about you. You take your relationships slow. You put in the effort to get to know others. You start out as friends. See them as your brother or sister. And you make the spiritual growth of others a top priority.
You’re living out the revolution. You walk through the process of getting to know the other person and respecting him or her. You find out the individual behind the great smile or body.
You may make some mistakes along the way; you may get some things out of order or be a little too focused in one area and not enough in another. But when you get off track, you stop, look where you are, make the necessary adjustments to your life, and jump back in.
But what now? What if there’s something else happening? How do you know what’s next?
Here are some FAQs for those living out this sex180.
If I’m supposed to relate to the opposite sex as friends, treat them as a brother/sister, and be concerned with their spiritual growth, then how do I know when we’re more than friends or brother/sister? The friendship doesn’t have an expiration date, and neither does the brother/sister label. Just because you’re interested in or attracted to someone doesn’t mean that none of these truths apply anymore. Your girlfriend is still your sister in Christ. Your boyfriend is still your friend. And if you keep that in mind the whole time, you’ll bring much more to each other’s lives than just the fact that you have achieved coupledom or have someone to hang out with on the weekends. You’re always friends. You’re always brother and sister in Christ. And you should always be concerned that the other person is growing spiritually—even to the point of removing yourself from the relationship if you feel like that’s the only way he or she can grow.
Then when can we date (or court, go out, or be a couple)? Before you ask us, you need to sit down and bring your parents into the loop. Share your heart. Share with them how you are doing relationships and why. Ask for their counsel and be willing to really listen to them. Even if that means they say “wait” on dating. Even if that means listening to some stuff that may be hard to hear—like their major concerns about you that they feel you need to address before they let you move on. You can’t live all this out in obedience to God if you disregard the authorities God has placed in your life.
Ephesians 6:2–3 says, “‘Honor your father and mother’—which is the first commandment with a promise—‘that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.’” If you want to get the most out of this revolution, if you want to not only live but get the best out of life, then part of living all of this out is obeying. And that obeying starts first with God. Then with your parents. Anything less will not “go well with you.”
If your parents don’t believe in Jesus Christ, does that mean you can skip this step? No way. In fact, God has just given you a huge opportunity for you to pass on all he’s been teaching you. Let them know about the 180 God’s been doing in your life. And if what they think about what you and your bf/gf should be doing doesn’t line up to how God views relationships, then respect them, love them, but walk in obedience to God first.
Like we mentioned before, we don’t have many great examples of this 180. The generations that have come before you have made a mess of relationships. Maybe you have a mom or dad who’s on their third or fourth marriage. Maybe your mom spends more time online chatting with other men than she does talking to your dad. Maybe your dad has withdrawn from everyone in your family and seems to be looking for connections elsewhere. If that’s your life (or close to it), your mom and/or dad may not be all that thrilled about what you’re doing or even understand it. That’s okay. Line up your life with what God says, respect your parents, and when they see that you’re pursuing God’s best while honoring their authority, they may start to do their own 180. You could be the example they need to find a better way to do relationships and think about their sexuality. Ironic, huh?
If you get the green light from your parents that you’re ready to date, hold up one more minute. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re completely ready to date. You need to make sure you’re ready—that your heart, mind, and soul are ready for a relationship.
“When I’m in a relationship, I need to make sure I’m spiritually ready and spiritually mature,” Mike says. “You can’t go into a relationship without being spiritually toned in your walk. The best thing about not having that relationship in my life now is that I can focus all of my energy and all my time on my walk with God.
“I wouldn’t be able to give the girl I’m dating enough of the time she needs or the spiritual growth that she needs because I’m swamped right now. I feel like there are seasons. There are seasons when you should be with someone from the opposite sex to help you grow. And there are seasons where you need to sit back and be like, ‘Where am I at in my relationship with God? Am I pleased? If I’m not pleased, what can I do? What strategic things can I do to get myself to the level where I need to be at this point in my walk?’”
Amy and Bo agree. “Not everyone who has a boyfriend is going to be sexually impure,” Amy says. “Having a boyfriend is not always a bad thing. I’m sure in some aspects it would be easier not to have a boyfriend, but it can also make your relationship with God stronger as you grow with the other person.”
Bo adds, “Before my relationship with Amy, I wasn’t motivated in my faith at all. I’ve really gotten to see inside her life, and I’m amazed by it. It’s got me more motivated about God. I really didn’t read much of the Bible. I wasn’t really into it until I saw Amy’s life and how it affected her.”
Deciding to enter into a relationship is a matter of being honest enough with yourself to ask, “Will a relationship hinder my walk with God at this time, or am I grounded enough spiritually to handle it and handle the relationship in a revolutionary way?” If you’re not sure, seek godly counsel from your parents, youth pastor, youth leader, and close friends. People whose spiritual lives are clearly on track. People who know you very well and will tell you the truth, not just what you want to hear. They may see some neediness in your life that needs to be brought to God and not brought on a date.
Annie offered these great questions to ask yourself to make sure you’re ready for a relationship:
Audrey summed it up best: “I think the people who can handle relationships are the people who are fine without one—who are content without a boyfriend or any significant other.”
So when is it okay to kiss someone? The physical should be last on your list. And by that we mean you should draw the line far away from anything sexual. Your view of relationships should be built first around the revolution of one and seeing sex as sacred and serious. You should be striving for inward character, outward modesty, and upward devotion. For some that may mean kissing is off limits. For others it may mean that it’s okay.
But don’t bring the physical into the relationship until you’ve walked through the other four stages—spiritual, psychological, social, and emotional. You need to know this person so well that you know where he or she stands on the whole kissing thing. If the other person thinks that a kiss is just something you do at the end of the date, then you definitely don’t want to go there. But if the other person believes that a kiss is something that you had better back up with some true, God-centered love, not just infatuation, then that’s okay.
Keep in mind that you don’t want to trip anyone up in their walk with God. And remember that the more you bring the physical into the relationship now, the harder it is to slow things down. The kind of kissing you do can really push things forward too. In other words, if you kiss, keep your mouth closed.
How do you know when someone is more than a buddy? How do you know when you’re really in love? How can you tell if your love is true or if you’ve come down with a bad case of infatuation? How do you know the difference?
Take this quiz.[1] Read through each question to determine what’s really going on beyond the rapid heartbeat and warm feelings. After reading each point, you should know whether you’re in love or infatuated in that area. Write an I for infatuation next to each number if you think infatuation describes your relationship and an L if you think you’re in love. (If you’re someone who hates to write in books, grab a separate sheet of paper and write them down.)
When you’re done, add up your I’s and L’s and take a look at your totals to see if you’re crazy in love or just crazy.
_____ #1 Love takes time to grow. Infatuation explodes in an instant. You usually think, “Boom! I’m in love.” Truthfully, we think someone should just delete the words “falling in love” from our vocabulary. You can fall into infatuation, you can fall into lust, but you usually grow into love. Love develops out of relationship and caring and core personal character traits, not our first impression of another person. We’re wise not to declare love until a significant amount of time has passed. If some guy or girl says they’re in love right away, they’re not. They’re infatuated.
Are you in a rush to label certain feelings “love,” or do you have other words to describe those feelings? How much time do you think needs to pass before love can be clearly identified? If you find yourself “falling in love” often and early, only to be disappointed later, remember that loves takes time to grow—it will save you some heartache.
_____ #2 Love grows out of knowing all that you can about the other person—good or bad. Infatuation is happy to know very little about someone so it can leave the rest to the imagination. Infatuation lives in a make-believe world where the object of our affection is perfect, flawless, and completely devoted to us.
True love longs to know all about someone—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Love wants to study the other person’s needs, dreams, and hopes because it wants to do everything possible to make them a reality. Infatuation quickly decides it knows everything it needs to know about someone.
_____ #3 True love focuses on the other person. Infatuation is self-centered. You know what infatuated people are all about? Themselves. I (Chip) watched a roommate in college discover the power of infatuation.
When it all started, I was happy for him because he was shy and didn’t have many relationships. I was surprised to hear him say, “Oh, Chip, she’s just amazing. I’ve never been in love like this before.”
About the tenth time he said some version of that statement, I asked, “So, what’s her name? Is it somebody I know?”
He smiled, “Oh, I haven’t actually met her yet. I’m still working up the courage to find out her name.”
“Well, how do you know you’re in love?” I asked.
He answered, “Man, when she walks across campus, you wouldn’t believe the feelings I get just watching her.”
I won’t bore you with the details, but this went on for days. He eventually managed an introduction; then our conversation took on a new urgency. He would stand half-dressed in our dorm room, asking somewhat confused questions: “Chip, what do you think looks better, this shirt or that one? What about these shoes? I’ve got my basketball shoes—I could wear them. I might see her today.”
Every time we talked, it was about how he was going to look, what kind of impression he was going to make. What was his focus? Himself. I’m not saying that looking your best isn’t important, but my roommate was missing the point.
A person in love thinks less about how he or she is going to look and feel in the relationship and more about what he or she can do to make the other person look and feel great. It’s not all about you.
_____ #4 An infatuated individual may be “in love” with two or more people at the same time. True love is focused only on one person. Just after I (Chip) graduated from college, I was dating a girl still in school at another college. Most of what we had was infatuation. I didn’t know her very well, but we were building a quasi-relationship. We weren’t even seriously dating, but I was beginning to think that maybe she was “the one” because I was having these feelings.
Meanwhile, I ended up on a Christian basketball team that traveled all over South America. At our first stop in Puerto Rico, we played a good team in a big stadium. After the game I met this really nice girl who was a missionary there, and we ended up going on a very romantic picnic together. I can still remember the color of her dress. I also remember that I had feelings. I found myself attracted to her. My response caught me by surprise because the feelings were similar to those I was having toward “my girl at home.”
Then we flew to Peru, where our missionary host had a daughter a year or two younger than me. She was cute in a “you just have to look twice” way. I fell instantly in love with her. Suddenly I couldn’t remember what “my girl at home” looked like.
When we got to Santiago, Chile, we were welcomed with a huge dinner. I don’t remember the food, but I do recall the girl who sat across from me with dark brown eyes, a sparkling smile, and beautiful, long, dark hair. Her laughter made up for the fact that I couldn’t understand anything she said to me in Spanish. I did my own translations, believing that everything she said to me was highly complimentary of my skills and appearance. She never saw it, but I handed my heart across the table to her about halfway through the meal.
We visited five countries in a few weeks and I ended up in love with five different girls plus the girl from back home. Do you know what I learned? I learned that what I felt had practically nothing to do with love. It was all about chemicals. I could be attracted to a lot of different people, but that wasn’t love. My infatuation switch was simply stuck in the “on” position.
_____ #5 Genuine love creates a sense of security and feelings of trust. An infatuated person often feels jealous because he or she doesn’t trust the other person. Security grows and flows out of deep awareness of the other person’s character, values, and track record. You know who they really are. And when you know who they really are, you trust them. You are not jealous because you know their heart is yours. Jealousy is often a sign of a lack of trust, and a lack of trust is a sign of infatuation.
_____ #6 Someone who’s infatuated loses his or her ambition and interests in everyday things and daydreams of unrealistic ideals that won’t ever really happen. A person in love works hard to better him- or herself for the other person’s benefit. People in infatuation only think of their own misery. They often daydream of unrealistic objectives and ideals that neither person could ever actually attain.
Have you ever been around someone who’s terminally infatuated? The things they used to be involved in—youth group, clubs, sports, whatever—seem to have been affected by their “love bug.” They’re suddenly living in la-la land. That’s not love—that’s brain damage.
If you’re in a relationship and the other person is so glassyeyed all the time that he or she can’t get anything done, suspect infatuation. Infatuation feeds off the relationship; love builds into the relationship.
_____ #7 A couple in love openly faces problems and tries to solve them. Infatuated people sweep problems under the rug and try to pretend they don’t exist. Have you ever had this scenario played out in real life?
You run into a friend at the mall whom you haven’t seen since her family moved across town and she started going to a different church. She’s holding some guy’s hand and the two of them are walking into walls and the “You are here” mall signs because they can’t take their eyes off each other.
She sees you and, after the customary squeal and hug, starts telling you about her guy. “We’re in love,” she says, as he wanders off to sample freebies from the food court. “We met yesterday (or last week or two weeks ago). God showed us we’re meant to be together. It’s just so amazing!”
“Wow,” you say, both skeptical and curious. “How exactly did you two meet?”
“Well,” she sighs. “I dropped my purse at the gas station and he picked it up and our eyes met. Then I found out that his last name starts with an S, and I had been praying for someone whose last name starts with S, so there—we know it’s from God.”
Before you can express your amazement, she babbles on, “What’s so incredible is that even though he’s not a Christian, he’s just this really great guy. He’s been out of high school a couple of years and he has a kid. I like kids. I graduate in June and we’re hoping to get married then. God has made it so clear that he’s the one. He doesn’t have a job, but I know he’ll find something soon. We’re going to live with his parents until he can find steady work, and I’ll stay home and take care of the baby. The baby’s mom lives there too—something about a house arrest. I don’t know the whole story, but I’m sure it will work out.”
Okay, that’s extreme. But if you’re letting every warning sign smack you in the face and you still keep going, you’re probably not in love—just infatuated. God wants us to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (see Mark 12:30). Don’t you think that he would expect us to love each other the same way too? Love doesn’t mean shutting down your brain, and it doesn’t mean ignoring all the problems and warning signs. Instead, in love you face the challenges together and work through them together, seeking wisdom and strength from God.
_____ #8 Love understands that giving someone space is a good thing. Infatuation imagines that love means intense closeness 24/7. If circumstances require you to be separated from the one you love, that will teach you a lot about the quality of your relationship. If you’ve been going out for a while and you call each other three, four, or five times a day or you just have to see each other every day, that’s not a good sign. That means you’re trying to keep the feelings alive. If you both don’t have lives and you don’t have some away time, you probably have a lot more infatuation than love going on.
_____ #9 Physical attraction is part of true love, but it only plays a minor role. It’s the central focus of infatuation. Physical attraction is an important part of relationships, but it’s not the most important. We’ve been effectively brainwashed to believe that attraction is the surest test of whether or not we’re in love. Actually, being attracted to someone doesn’t mean that we are in love at all. It simply means that the person we’re attracted to is good looking.
Don’t read “small part” to mean “no part.” If your heart doesn’t skip a beat now and then and you don’t feel real attraction to the object of your affection, that’s a problem. But physical attraction takes a relatively smaller role when a couple is building a healthy relationship. It may be what captures someone’s attention at first, but it’s not what keeps him or her there long enough to develop a love relationship. Infatuation, however, makes physical attraction the sole test of love.
_____ #10 A couple in love usually expresses physical affection later in a relationship. In infatuation, affection is expressed earlier, sometimes in the very beginning. Maybe the first date starts out with a kiss, maybe more. But without the genuine love to back it up, affection ignites and consumes the relationship quickly. It makes you think the relationship is “close,” but the closeness is artificial and fragile. When affection grows out of deep understanding and growing friendship, it gains in meaning and value.
_____ #11 Love tends to endure. Infatuation may change suddenly and unpredictably. Real love is stable. The best way to test stability in a new relationship comes through knowing that person in the context of his or her other relationships. How does he or she relate to parents, friends, and siblings? How stable are his or her relationships? Does he or she genuinely work at relationships, or use people? What’s his or her track record? Is there a pattern that sets off any warning signals?
_____ #12 A couple in love cares about when they’re getting married, but they don’t feel an irresistible drive toward it. Infatuated couples can’t wait to tie the knot. We see this one a lot with some Christians. They get to a point where they’re not sure what they’re going to do next (or they’re just scared to take the next step), so they think marriage is the best solution. They meet someone and get in a huge rush to plan the wedding. Postponing it is out of the question.
What’s up with that? Why wouldn’t a couple wait and do it at the right time in the right way? Why wouldn’t a couple want to deal with the real issues so they could have a solid marriage?
Love vs. infatuation—how did you do? Love takes effort, doesn’t it? It takes time to get to know someone. If you want to love someone in a revolutionary way, you have to work at getting to know him or her. You have to live out the friendship. You have to respect the brother/sister boundaries. And you have to make his or her spiritual growth a top priority.
When you do those things, you show love. You show stability. And you are more sure about what you think and feel because you understand this person on a whole new level than just the butterflies in your stomach. Those feelings are great, but let’s just call them what they are. They’re not true love—those ooey-gooey feelings are pure infatuation.
Maybe you can see why so many marriages, even Christian marriages, end in divorce. When people think infatuation is love, they often make tragic, life-altering decisions with huge consequences. That’s why God says, “Walk in love” (Ephesians 5:2 NASB), not feelings. And that’s why sex180 is about getting God’s best and not settling for anything less.
“But what if the relationship doesn’t work out? What if we break up?” If you do the relationship this revolutionary way, a breakup isn’t going to devastate your life. You haven’t crossed any physical boundaries. You have a friendship that’s solid. And instead of walking away with a lot of baggage or scars, you walk away having grown spiritually. It may hurt. It may sting. You may be sad that the relationship didn’t work out. But if you’ve lived out the revolution, even your breakups are going to look so different from your friends’. Your life will be enriched by others’ lives, and you will have had the chance to enrich theirs as well.
In talking about her boyfriend, Krista said, “Even if we do break up and it does hurt, I’m going to grow through this. This is part of what makes me who I am. Having a boyfriend has taught me how to deal with people better. And I will grow and work through the breakup, if and when it happens.”
[ you’re ready ]
So we’ve walked through the revolution of one.
We’ve seen what it looks like when you add one + one.
And that’s all good, but there’s a world out there dying that needs something revolutionary. They need a sex180. They need a second sexual revolution.
And they need you to bring it to them.
Even if you don’t think you are part of the revolution, you are. You can do this.
It’s time to launch a revolution.