Dating With Pure Passion
By Rob Eagar
Harvest House Publishers
Gorging on Chocolate Love
Have you ever gone a long time without eating and felt your stomach groan with hunger? In those situations, what was your body telling you? Obviously, it was crying out for some nutritious food. Yet, how often have you consumed chocolate candy out of desperation or convenience, just to get rid of those hunger pangs? I’ve done it several times. What happens?
Initially, feeding your empty stomach with chocolate feels great. The ache goes away, your hunger disappears, and all of the sugar and caffeine hitting your system gives you the sensation of feeling “high.” Buzzing with bliss, you wonder why you don’t eat chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
About thirty minutes later, however, everything changes. A sharper pain than the one before grips your stomach, and your head becomes dizzy. All of your pleasant feelings degenerate into discomfort worse than your original hunger.
What caused this pain to result? Was there something wrong with the chocolate? No. Chocolate candy is safe to eat, but it doesn’t contain the nutrients necessary for your body to survive. Therefore, when you are hungry, chocolate alone cannot help you. Instead, it makes you feel worse. For your body to thrive, it must receive a steady diet of nutritious food. Then you can enjoy chocolate as a fun dessert. However, you will get sick if you try to live solely on chocolate.
Unfortunately, many singles enter dating relationships by trying to “eat chocolate on an empty stomach.” They approach one another with hungry hearts, hoping that the other person will feed them. This condition can be especially acute when a man or woman feels lonely, rejected, or starved for acceptance. Without love, people become desperate for something to fill the void inside their hearts. A romance, with its potentially sweet taste and emotional highs, seems the likely solution to their hunger.
Consider my Great Dating Crusade. I was hungry for love and searched repeatedly to find a woman to fulfill me. Every new romance that I entered felt like a chocolate sugar high, with soaring emotions, exhilarating self-esteem boosts, and a sweet sense of security. In the headiness of romantic rapture, my heart thought that a woman could fulfill me forever. Nevertheless, the euphoria inevitably collapsed. Sometimes, it took weeks. Other times, it took months. My wife’s happiness vanished after a year of dating and seven months of marriage.
Regardless of how wonderful a new dating relationship feels, the romantic bliss will eventually wear off. Human affection may taste good, but, like chocolate, it cannot give our hearts what they need for survival. The true hunger of our hearts is to be accepted unconditionally. We need more than just attention, friendship, or sex. We long for someone to love us despite our faults, mistakes, and imperfections. Our hearts remain hollow when no one completely accepts us.
Humans, however, cannot give each other unconditional love. We get upset or impatient when someone fails to make us happy. Furthermore, we base our love for someone on how well they perform. The root of this problem is sin, which causes constant mistakes, conflicts, and disappointments. No one is accepting, patient, and forgiving all of the time. Therefore, human love is like chocolate because the pleasure doesn’t last. None of us have the ability to accept people unconditionally. The affection we give to each other may taste good initially, but the thrill disappears as our selfish motives demand performance. And this problem lasts from the cradle to the grave.
For instance, when you were younger, how often were you scorned for having acne, wearing braces, fumbling the football, or failing to meet your parents’ expectations? As a single adult, how much pressure do you feel to wear the right clothes, appear rich and successful, or socialize with the popular crowd? Looking ahead, how frequently do you see elderly people neglected because they think too slowly, can no longer drive, or pose a financial burden to their families?
I don’t mean to sound fatalistic, but we must acknowledge the reality that human love is performance-based. It always has been and always will be. You can date anyone in this world, but that person cannot give your heart the unconditional acceptance that it craves.
This truth also applies in marriage. Someone once asked a pastor, “What is your wife’s opinion of you?” He replied, “It depends on what day you ask her. Some days she loves me. Other days, I drive her crazy, and she wonders why she married me. My wife and I wish we could love each other perfectly, but it is impossible since we both sin and make choices that hurt each other. God is the only Person who loves us regardless of how we act.”
As Christians, many of us believe that romantic passion will fulfill us. We pray for God to send us a soulmate, then we date one person after another, trying to get him or her to love us. Our relationships start off well, but then rejection or disappointments tear them apart. Meanwhile, those singles who get married report that marriage isn’t what they thought it would be.
Consider those around you. How many of your married friends warn you that marriage is tougher than you think? Yet, how many of your single friends complain of feeling incomplete without a spouse?
All too often, we neglect what our hearts really need and attempt to satisfy ourselves with a cheap substitute called romance. In essence, we try to live on an unhealthy diet of chocolate. But our hearts cannot survive under the demands of performance-based love. We inevitably burn out, wear out, or drop out, from trying to please others.
In my case, I had to reach total exasperation before I grasped that dating and marriage would never fulfill me. I appeared successful to many people, because I’d had several girlfriends and reached my goal of marriage. Those romances, however, never fulfilled me. Either I required too much of a woman, or she expected too much of me. We were sincere in our desire for lasting love, but we couldn’t make it happen.
Some within the church advise that our hearts would be fulfilled if we simply changed our dating methods. They advocate going back to courtship, reinstituting arranged marriages, or embracing a new set of dating guidelines. Yet, they overlook the truth that no matter what style of dating you adopt, you still wind up dating a person whose love for you is tied to your performance.
Therefore, this book is not about subscribing to a new set of dating principles or techniques. It is an offer to pursue what your heart truly wants. A perfect love waits to delight you. This love, however, cannot soothe the ache within your heart until you stop chasing after romantic passion or passionate sex. Those shallow quests lead to emptiness. The hunger in your heart is for pure passion.
Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again.” (John 6:35 NLT).
Passion Awaits You
This book is an invitation to stop settling for less than what your heart truly desires. A higher love waits to take you beyond the jaded, cynical disappointments that result from most dating relationships. No longer does your heart have to survive on the cheap chocolate of empty romance. You were made to experience more than just manipulation, performance, or selfish indulgence. You were created by God to share in the ecstasy of real love, not just when you get to heaven but in life on earth as well.
Before you can truly love another person, however, you must first understand how much you are already loved. So open your heart, and prepare for the passion that awaits you.
This excerpt is from Rob Eagar's book, Dating With Pure Passion. Used with permission.
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