Recreational Dating

Young guys listen to me. There is no such thing as biblical dating. If you're dating, I don't care who you're dating, you're out of God's will. If you're a young man and you're dating, you're out of God's will. Period. You can come talk to me about it later, you can be mad if you want. But that's just the truth. There's no such thing as recreational dating. There is biblical courtship, there is no recreational dating. Number 1.

Number 2, guys ask me, 'When can I start thinking about someone of the opposite sex?' Well you can start thinking whenever the thought comes to you, the question is when you can start acting... When then can we start even courtship? I said, first of all, the only time you ever think about being with a girl is because you feel like the Lord is leading you into marriage with that girl.

Number 1, Recreational dating is unbiblical... Another thing. This is when you can first begin to initiate the dealings that lead to a relationship. This is when you can begin: When as a young man you can biblically lead a girl as a spiritual leader. Until that moment, you cannot be with anyone of the opposite sex.

Number 2. Emotionally you can care for her - that means you're willing to make a life-long commitment and not test the waters with any other person. Financially you can care for her: if dad's still paying the insurance on your car, forget about it.... And physically protect her - that doesn't mean you can whoop every guy in the county, but it does mean you will be whooped by every guy in the county before you allow anyone to pass, that you have enough moral fortitude and courage to draw a line in the sand and say, 'Over my cold, dead, blue, deformed body will you do that.'

...I love hunting and...I have some Wikki(sp?) Eskimo broad-heads at home. They're very, very sharp, they're two-bladed, so they have to be very, very sharp. And I have a little wrench that I use to put those broad-heads onto the arrow shaft, because you don't even want to put your hand on the side of them because if you slip, they'll slice your finger off. Now, I have a 3 year old boy and I built a hickory bow for him. He's got a little arrow that he shoots and it has a blunt, wooden tip on the end of it - wont penetrate much. Except his little brother's eye, but... Sometimes I'll be those arrow-heads off and on and my little boy Ian will come up there and he'll want to touch the arrows, and I'll say, No son, you can't. These arrows that your dad can handle - they'll kill you. Now one day, son, you'll be man enough to handle these arrows, and you can hunt like a big boy. You can hunt like a man. But you've got a lot of growing before you can do that. One of the greatest problems, young men, that we have today, is that a lot of young men are wanting to play with big boy toys. And yet they're still little boys.
You see, we don't want to pay the price of becoming a man in order to do men things. The bible says, Become a man, and God will lead you into the ways of a man.

-Paul Washer

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