So, Who Makes the First Move?

Dan Bacon is a Dating and Relationships Expert who has been supplying men with dating advice since 2005. He runs a popular website titled The Modern Man where guys who are striking out in the dating scene can read of his triumphs with the ladies and pick up some tips on how to step up their game.

So, what is Dan Bacon’s first step in getting women to fall head-over heels for you? Guys need to make the first move.

He argues – in the grand scheme of things – physique and fiscal affluence aren’t the “manly” characteristics that ultimately win the day.

It’s confidence. A confidence any guy can exude simply by making the first move, walking up to a woman, and starting a conversation.

So, does that mean that women are just passive players in the relationship game? That they’re stuck sitting on the sidelines until some guy notices them?

World renown relationship experts, Dr. John Gottman and his wife Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, don’t think so. In fact, they’d argue it’s quite the opposite.

While they say it’s true that women generally like being desired and pursued, that doesn’t mean women play a passive game in starting relationships. In fact, the Gottmans argue that women make the first move happen. Powerful non-verbals like making eye contact, smiling – and yes, even twirling your hair – are simple, yet scientifically proven effective ways of inviting that guy to make the ‘first move’. 

Either way, whether you tune in to the Gottmans or to Dan Bacon for relationship pointers, their advice for jumpstarting a relationship is – more or less – the same: you gotta do something.

You need to win their attention.

You need to showcase your qualities.

You need to initiate the relationship.

You need to make the first move.

Is that how it is with God? Are we like the girl at the club who twirls her hair in hopes that God will notice? Are we like the guy who must passionately pursue God first, like God is passively sitting on the other side of the bar? Do I need to do something or be something first for God to pursue me?

When it comes to a relationship with God, do we need to make the first move?

Love Out of Left Field

We might get that impression with stories like Genesis 12:1-9. I mean, God comes out of left field, and approaches a guy named Abram with a series of seriously amazing promises: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

So, let’s ask the obvious:

Why Abram?

Why is he the chosen receiver of such amazing blessings?

Was there some inherent quality to this 75-year-old nomad that made him a deserving recipient of such spectacular promises?

Was it his racial, ethnic profile?

Did he say or do something to warrant God’s affection?

Did Abram make the first move?

God has made you some seriously amazing promises, too. And you don’t have to take my word for it; God tells you so himself in his Word. He promises providence and protection in your life. He promises your guilt and shame fully taken away at the cross. He promises redemption from sin, salvation from death, deliverance from hell, and eternal life in heaven. The list goes on, and on, and on.

We know God makes these promises, but we get this idea that we still have to make the first move - that I’m the reason I believe - that I flung wide the door of my heart and let God come in - that I somehow warrant God to not only make but carry out such promises.

“I’ve cleaned up my act! I say all the right prayers. I go to church every Sunday. I’m a good person! Why wouldn’t God make me these kinds of promises? Why wouldn’t God want to bless someone like me?”

I Couldn’t Make the First Move

Make no mistake: God does desire to bless you.

But it’s not because of you.

I know. There’s a part of you that gets offended when we hear that, isn’t there?

Here’s the thing: we couldn’t make the first move.

In fact, we couldn’t make any move.

The Bible tells us that we were born spiritually blind, deaf, and dumb - born spiritually dead in sin - estranged from and enemies of God.

If we’re sold on ideas of winning or warranting God’s love and affection, the reality is – you and I had nothing but sin to bring to the table. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”

This dangerous fixation on ourselves will leave us either downplaying our desperate need of nothing short of a total gracious divine intervention, or we convince ourselves that when God moves it isn’t enough – that we’re too guilty to be forgiven, too broken to be fixed, too sick to be healed, too sinful to be saved.

God needed to make the first move. And he did. So that all people, all nations would be blessed.

God Made the First Move

This gracious promise that all nations would be blessed through Abraham’s offspring is not God stating how man must now fix his relationship with God, but how God would step in to fix it on mankind’s behalf!

It was God who reached down and pulled Abram and his family out of a pagan, idolatrous society to preserve their one true faith in the one true God.

It was God who gave Abram the name Abraham, “the father of many nations”.

It was God who miraculously enabled Abraham and Sarah to eventually have a son – even in their old age!

But not because of Abraham. Not even because of Abraham’s faith. But because of the object of his faith: Jesus, the promised descendant of Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed. It was because of God all nations would be blessed through Abraham’s family – including you.

It was God who reached down to you through his Word and brought you to faith.

It was God who, in the waters of your baptism, washed you clean and made you part of his family.

Not because of you, but in spite of you!

It is God who promises you that, in Christ, all of your sins are forgiven forever – that as far as the east is from the west, that’s how far he has taken your guilt and shame away in Jesus.

He promises you that nothing, not even death, can separate you from his undying love.

He promises that he, the same God who created you, the same God who died on a cross to save you, is the same God who is determined to carry you safely through this sin-stricken world: through heartache, through unemployment, through chronic pain and cancer, to the mansions of heaven where you in joy and peace will see your Savior Jesus, face to face.

When it came to your relationship with God, he made the first move – because of who he is: a God of grace, a God who loves with an unconditional love – a love we neither deserved nor earned, but a love he poured out on us all the same.

Abram was a sinner, just like you and me. But just as Abram was blessed by the descendant who would one day be born through his family, we are blessed too!

Jesus, the eternal Son of God, would be born through Abraham’s family, born to bear our sin, to bear our cross, our shame, our guilt – so we would be free.

So we would be his.

So he would be ours.

How can I be sure of all of this? Because God made the first move.