Matt Chandler On the Discipline of Marriage
The purpose of dating and courtship is to have an ever-increasing friendship that is moving more and more and more to intimacy while keeping the boarders of physical intimacy in place so you don't cut the legs out from underneath the type if intimacy that will transcend us long term in the way the physical simply won't.
So if the relationship is a long term relationship with all the benefits of covenant and no covenant [and] you simply put your soul on the line, there can be a lot of damage done to you as a person and you're giving people things that don't belong to them. So what I mean by that is there's some things that God has for me from my wife Lauren that Lauren shouldn't give to other men before she gives them to me and vice-versa. And so if you're in relationships where you're trying things out, I think ultimately you're practicing divorce.
