SINGLE BLACK FEMALE seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I’m a very good looking girl who loves to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping, and fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. Rub me in the right way and watch me respond. I’ll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me. Kiss me and I’m yours. Call XXX-XXXX and ask for Daisy.

Over 15,000 men responded to this personal ad in the Atlanta Journal and found themselves talking to the local Humane Society about an eight-week-old black Labrador retriever.

There you have it: just talk about love, romance, and sexuality, and you have people’s attention!

Our keen interest level regarding matters of the heart extends to even the most committed Christ-follower.

It’s a very spiritual topic, one critical to everyone’s future, but sin has left its mark on this as on other God-given realities intended for our good and His glory.

“This is a fallen world,” J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son, Michael. “The dislocation of the sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favorite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives as through baser or more animal ones.” 

The entertainment industry as embodied in Hollywood has been effective at hijacking people’s understanding of love, romance, sexuality and relationships.

The romance industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise which promotes the lie that without some kind of romantic relationship you are never fully alive, as evidenced by the lives of so-called celebrities.

Really, were we shocked the wedding of Kris Humphries to Kim Kardashian lasted all of 72 days?

Complete narcissism seldom makes an enduring marriage. That calls for self-sacrifice.

Our RQ, or Romance Quotient, is critical to successful living – beyond measuring the familiar intelligence quotient (IQ) or even emotional quotient (EQ, also important, as it is the ability to control and evaluate emotions).

Proverbs 18:22 gives us a secret: “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.” Here we see that divine favor is linked to our romantic lives.

Proverbs 24:3-4 also says: “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.”

Wisdom is skillful living. People must learn to think biblically about love, romance, relationships, sexuality and marriage if they are to develop their RQ.

The soul mate myth, foisted a naïve public largely by the media, says that in a world populated with 7 billion people, there is one special person just for you – the guy or girl of your dreams, the one special piece of the puzzle that completes you. That may sound romantic, but it’s not true.

The soul mate fantasy is very damaging to people’s RQ, and contributes to abysmal post-marriage decisions as inevitable marital difficulties are faced.

Marriage over the long haul requires hard work. But the soul mate fantasy says you can avoid all the sacrifice and investment by simply filing for divorce, because obviously he/she wasn’t “the one.”

Because this not my soul mate. I know that because I’ve already found my soul mate, who is much younger.

Flawed RQ thinks that affection is the glue that holds the marriage together, when it is in fact your commitment to marriage that safeguards the affection.

As we read the story of Jacob and Laban we find that when people forget and forsake God, they tend to look to the romantic solution (sex and romance) to fill the void.

Our whole culture has bought into this idea that, as the song says, “You’re nobody till somebody loves you.”

Jacob runs away from his family whom he has deceived and manipulated and finds refuge with Uncle Laban. Here he encounters The Dream: Rachel, who is drop dead gorgeous. He offers 7 years of wages for her, which even then, was an enormous price.

All of the longings of his heart for meaning and affirmation are fixed solely on this girl. Love is all you need...

But after The Dream comes The Disillusionment. Uncle Laban pulls a “bait and switch” in Genesis 29:23-25: “But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her... and in the morning, behold it was Leah!”

Why? How? Don’t even begin to ask me. But Jacob was snookered, big time, and it probably reminded him of his own actions at home. Finally, he thought, I’ve got happiness. I’ve got Rachel.

But let verse 25 echo in your mind: “and in the morning it was Leah.”

If we are seeking happiness without God in the equation, we will always be disappointed.

But the good news is God wants to help us, and He does this with a fundamental work of sanctification in our lives.

Romans 12:1-2 says: “Here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him” (The Message).

Zachary Scribner and Hilary Hagoski put two pictures on their wedding invitation: the first showed them as ring-bearer and flower girl at a wedding, and the second was a recent shot of them as an engaged couple.

Together the photos communicate the wisdom that a Christ-follower must cultivate in developing a healthy RQ to transition from the first picture to the second.

After shepherding people for over forty years I have arrived at the 8 C’s which form the criteria for a well-founded, biblical RQ. (I share these in detail on my blog at: thedoorcfc/about/blogs).

They are: the Cornerstone, recognizing marriage as God’s plan for love; Christ as the center of your life and marriage; Compatiblity in likeminded faith and commitment to Jesus; Character (the heart; the real person you marry); Chastity, keeping sex as God’s gift within the boundaries of committed marriage; Church, where you find the best spouse and can serve God together; Counsel solicited from people you respect; and Choice, the action needed on your part to set things in motion.

Listen up, men. It is up to you to make every effort to see the foundations and fulfillment of a marriage covenant. As Kevin DeYoung said: “Men, if you want to be married, find a godly girl, treat her right, talk to her parents, pop the question, and tie the knot.”

No, we’re never going to get this perfectly right this side of eternity.

You will work on yourself and your marriage for the rest of your life, and we never arrive (trust me, I know).

We must continue to grow and change.

Thankfully, Jesus is still in the transformation business.

From your relationships to your career, from your family to your ministry and your dreams, He’s still turning water into wine!

Live with this posture and things will never be the same: “Whatever He says to you, do it.”