IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 1 I KissedDating G o o d b y e a Jo s h u a H a r r i s IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 2 I KISSED DATING GOODBYE published by Multnomah Publishers, Inc. © 1997, 2003 by Joshua Harris International Standard Book Number: 978-1-59052-135-9 Cover design by The Office of Bill Chiaravalle Cover image by Getty Images / Stephanie Rausser Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from: The Holy Bible,New International Version © 1973, 1984 by International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House Other Scripture quotations are from: The Holy Bible,King James Version (KJV) The Holy Bible,New King James Version (NKJV) © 1984 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Message© 1993 by Eugene H. Peterson Holy Bible,New Living Translation (NLT) © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York. MULTNOMAHand its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc. Printed in the United States of America ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission. For information: MULTNOMAH BOOKS 12265 ORACLE BOULEVARD, SUITE 200 COLORADO SPRINGS, CO 80921 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Harris, Joshua. I kissed dating goodbye/by Joshua Harris. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-59052-135-8 (revision) ISBN 1-57673-036-0 (alk. Paper) 1. Dating (Social customs) 2. Dating (Social customs)—religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Man-woman relationships. I. Title. HQ801.H329 1997 306.73–dc21 96-51843 CIP 10—39 IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 3 To my parents, Gregg and Sono Harris IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 5 Contents I Gave Josh Harris a Chance by Sam Torode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Part One Isn’t There a Better Way? 1. So This Is Love? Beyond What Feels Good, Back to What IsGood . . . . . . . . . . .13 2. The Little Relationship Principle (That Leads to Big Change) The Joy of Intimacy Is the Reward of Commitment . . . . . . . . .25 3. The Seven Habits of Highly Defective Dating Recognizing Dating’s Negative Tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 4. Counterculture Romance Five Attitude Changes to Help You Avoid Defective Dating . . .49 Part Two The Heart of the Matter 5. Looking Up “Love”in God’s Dictionary Learning the True Definition of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 6. The Right Thing at the Wrong Time Is the Wrong Thing How to Keep Impatience from Robbing You of the Gift of Singleness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 7. The Direction of Purity How to Get on the Road to Righteousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87 8. A Cleansed Past: The Room How Jesus Can Redeem Your Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Part Three Building a New Lifestyle 9. Starting with a Clean Slate Five Important Steps for Getting on Track with God’s Plan . .111 IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 6 10. Just Friends in a Just-Do-It World Keys for Keeping Your Relationships with the Opposite Sex out of the “Romantic Zone” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 11. Guard Your Heart How to Fight the Pollutants of Lust, Infatuation, and Self-Pity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137 12. Redeeming the Time Making the Most of Your Singleness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151 Part Four Looking Ahead 13. Ready for the Sack but Not for the Sacrifice How to Have a Biblical and Realistic Vision of Marriage . . . .165 14. What Matters at Fifty? Character Qualities and Attitudes That Matter Most in a Life Partner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 15. Principled Romance Principles That Can Guide You from Friendship to Matrimony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187 16. Someday I’ll Have a Story to Tell Writing a Love Story You’ll Feel Proud to Tell . . . . . . . . . . . . .203 Epilogue Boy Meets Girl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209 Letter from the Author Not Even a Hint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215 Thanks… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .218 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219 IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 7 (cid:2) I Gave Josh Harris a Chance by Sam Torode I WASACOLLEGESENIOR,making a late-night run to Wal-Mart and Taco Bell with my friends. As we walked into Wal-Mart, my eyes were drawn to a book sitting on a rack right inside the door. The cover had a black and white photo of some suave guy—like a young Cary Grant—holding a fedora over his face. I picked it up and started reading the back cover. “Hey,” one of my friends said, “that’s the guy all the girls are talking about. The one that says you shouldn’t date.” Once, a girl turned me down because I hadn’t met her father and gotten his permission to ask her out. This book must be the source of all the lunacy among girls on our campus, I decided. “He doesn’t want us to date because he wants all the babes for himself!” I said. “What an arrogant jerk.” Little did I know, at that very moment, five hundred miles away, a beautiful young woman—the sort I hoped to marry some- day—was hanging on every word of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. After reading the book, she promised that she would save her first kiss for marriage. A couple years later, she even wrote a magazine article 7 IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 8 a 8 Joshua Harris about her decision called “(Don’t) Kiss Me.” Somehow, I stumbled onto Bethany’s article. Still annoyed that all these young women were being led astray by Josh Harris, I wrote a letter to the editor arguing that not kissing until marriage was just too extreme. (I hadn’t kissed anyone before either—but I hoped I wouldn’t have to wait many more years.) Not willing to let me have the last word, the author wrote back to me. One thing led to another, and a few months later, on a cold January day, we met for the first time. I admired Bethany’s principled approach to romance—even if I still hated Josh Harris’s book (which I’d never actually read). During a visit with Bethany’s family several months later, I found myself alone for an hour and—in a moment of desperate boredom— I pulled her copy of I Kissed Dating Goodbye off the shelf and started thumbing through it. I was expecting to find a long list of rules for “courtship God’s way.” After a few chapters, I started impatiently skimming ahead. The rules must be in here somewhere! To my surprise, I discovered I Kissed Dating Goodbye isn’t really about dating at all. Instead, it’s a book about following Christ and what that means for all of our relation- ships with others—whether romantic or not. Joshua writes, “Every relationship for a Christian is an opportu- nity to love another person as God has loved us.” That sums up the book’s message. Once we embrace this principle, the rest is just details. Indeed, my own story proves that foregoing casual dating (and even kissing) just might be the thing that brings you and your spouse together. About the time Joshua came out with his second book, Boy Meets Girl, Bethany and I shared our first kiss—at the altar. In the end—in a roundabout way—Josh Harris brought my wife and me together. And now that I’ve read his books, I admire and rec- ommend them. Thank you, Josh—my hat’s off to you. Sam Torode IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 9 (cid:2) Introduction T HANKSFORPICKINGup this book. Some people never get past the title. “My friends won’t touch it,” one girl told me. “They hear the title and say, ‘There’s no way I would ever do that.’” One guy urged me to change the title. “More people would read it,” he said. Maybe he’s right. I heard the story of a confused book- store customer who asked the owner for a copy of I Kissed My Date Goodbye. Now there’s a book with a message people would read! I decided to call this book I Kissed Dating Goodbyebecause I want to be up front with you—there are some radical ideas on these pages. Most other books on dating will tell you how to make dating work for you. This book tells you how to make your life pleasing to God— even if that means taking a break from dating. So let me make a simple request. Just read the first chapter. If nothing in it grabs you, that’s fine. But I think you’ll discover that something in this book could help you. You see, I don’t want to argue with you about whether or not you should date. Yes, I’ll be honest about the problems I see in the 9 IKissedDatingGoodbye_PB_int.qxp:IKDG PB int 3/22/10 10:43 AM Page 10 a 10 Joshua Harris way most people date today. But ultimately my goal isn’t to convince you to stop dating. I want to help you examine the aspects of your life that dating touches—the way you treat others, the way you prepare for your future mate, your personal purity—and look at what it means to bring these areas in line with God’s Word. So even though in one sense this book is about dating, in another sense dating isn’t really the point. The point is what God wants. Discussing if or how to date isn’t an end in itself. Talking about it serves a purpose only when we view it in terms of its relation to God’s overall plan for our lives. You may not agree with some of the things I write. That’s okay. My hope is that you’ll stick around to see what I have to say. If you at least walk away from this book with a little more wisdom, my mis- sion will have been accomplished—and your life could be enhanced. I pray that the ideas shared here will bring you a little closer to God’s desire for your life. So thanks again for picking up the book. Thanks for reading more than the title. Joshua Harris