Tim Casteel

Thoughts on Leadership and College Ministry

Sex and Dating Talks

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“Not only is God pro-sex, he explicitly uses sexual union
as a metaphor for a believer’s union with God.

In a very daring way, the Bible says that sex was God’s invention,

to give us a sign of the Union that he built us for”

(paraphrase of Tim Keller)

I wish I could speak on Sex/Dating every week at Cru!  Such a critical topic for college students.  My prayer is that hundreds of future marriages will be affected as men and women learn to honor God in dating.

This month I gave two talks on sex/dating.  I got great feedback on both of them (though the Dating talk solicited more) and wanted to pass them along to hopefully save you some prep time in the future.  Feel free to use them for whatever purpose you need.

Today I’ll summarize and give downloadable notes/powerpoint from the Sex talk.
Tomorrow, the Dating Talk.

**Be sure to check out the phenomenal Matt Chandler clip at the bottom.  Amazingly good.**

Sex –

  • Main Idea= Sex is the #1 reason students don’t want anything to do with God in college.

From the book Souls in Transition: “One of the reasons why many emerging adults may want to distance themselves from religion is that religion in their minds conflicts with [their] lifestyle options.  Most of them want to party, to hook up and to have sex”

Major Premise — Serious religion says sex is bad

Minor Premise — I want to party and have sex

Conclusion — I am not interested in serious religion

  • But ironically Sex/Desire is one of the greatest proofs that there is a God.  The “inconsolable longing” is what brought CS Lewis to Christ.
  • Most college students would say:

“For right now I want to get a lot of that stuff out of my system, like messing around with girls and stuff, or partying.  You know, Get all that stuff out of your system before you get married.  Once you get married, you won’t be able to do all that stuff.”

  • The problem = that stuff doesn’t get out of your system.  Jesus says that “stuff”/sexual desire is internal and is a raging fire that will consumer your life
  • It’s not a switch you can turn off once you “Settle down”
  • This talk borrows heavily from Tim Keller’s two sermons (especially the former): Love, Lust and Liberation and Singleness
  • Some of the talk is verbatim from TIm Keller’s talk.  I type up many of my notes verbatim and then use them as jumping off points when I speak – using the ideas but putting them in my own words

I ended the talk with this powerful clip from Matt Chandler where he tells the story of a pastor who passed around a rose that represented someone’s sexuality — and as it’s “passed around” and “handled” by everyone — it comes back to the front it’s used and broken.  One girl e-mailed me after the talk: “I broke down in tears when the clip ‘Jesus Wants the Rose’ was played and I have watched it over and over again in my dorm room.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuGYh6QDNYY[/youtube]

Here’s my notes.

For the powerpoint slides backdrops, I used the incredible (and free!) artwork from Southeast Christian Church. Here’s my slides.

photo courtesy of steeljam