Wait to Date Until You Can Marry
Wait to Date Until You Can Marry
Article by
Marshall Segal
When should young people begin to date?
Your answer probably hangs on why you think you (or anyone else) should date in the first place. Anyone can see that the costs are often high — crushing breakups, sexual sin, shocking betrayal, sudden rejection, devastating heartbreak — the pain of love that never walked the aisle.
So why do so many of us still dive so quickly into dating?
Well, in part, because Satan masks the risks so well (Revelation 12:9). He casts romance as a qualification for the good life, and projects anything else as empty, lonely, and purposeless by comparison. He capitalizes on our desires and convinces us we must “love” in order to truly live, that all the highest pleasures and fullest experiences are found in a relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend (or husband or wife). He brews heartbreak for breakfast, and sweetens every sexual sin with a beautiful, but poisonous glaze.
Satan and his influence in and through the world leads millions of us to date too much and too early, because he loves what that kind of dating does to us.
I had my first “girlfriend” in the sixth grade, my first kiss that summer (different girl), and then a new girlfriend almost every year through high school. From far too young, I was looking for affection, safety, and intimacy from girls instead of from God. I dated earlier than most, and more than most. My teenage years were one long string of relationships that were too serious for our age, went on too long, and therefore, ended too painfully. I said, “I love you” too soon, and to too many. And the devil sat front-and-center, loving every minute of my early dating history.
Why Should Anyone Date?
The spiritual war for our hearts is real, and the stakes are high, so it’s critical to ask why we think we should date in the first place. Why did I have a girlfriend when I was twelve (and thirteen, and fourteen, and even eighteen)?
For many of us, we just want to be happy, to belong, to be valued. We imagine our deepest needs being met in the intimacy of being with a special young man or woman.
We all want our hearts to soar for someone or something. The romance and mystery of marriage seems to hold the highest earthly peaks of pleasure and friendship. We long to be known and loved, to belong with someone, in someone else’s story. We also want someone to join us in ours. And we all want our lives to count for something. We want to contribute something significant to a meaningful cause. We want to make a difference. We don’t want to waste our lives.
Many of us date because we’re trying to fill those needs in love. If you asked us, we might say we’re “pursuing marriage,” but a lot of us aren’t even close to marriage — in age, finances, maturity, education, stage of life. We’re really in pursuit of the happiness, belonging, and significance we think we’ll find in romance.
What Would I Do Differently?
If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t have dated in the tenth grade (or the twelfth, or even my first couple years in college). I would have waited to date until I could marry.
The breakthrough came for me in beginning to understand the major differences between dating and marriage. A dating couple may feel married at times, but a dating couple is never a married couple. Understanding the distinctions between the relationships will protect us from all kinds of pain and failure in dating.
The greatest prize in any life, regardless of our relationship status, is to know Christ and be known by him, to love him and be loved by him. The great prize in marriage is Christ-centered intimacy with a spouse — knowing and being known, loving and being loved by a husband or wife. The great prize indating is Christ-centered clarity about marriage (or toward marriage). Romantic intimacy is safest in the context of marriage, and marriage is safest in the context of clarity. If we want to have and enjoy that kind of Christ-centered intimacy, we need to get married. And if we want to get married, we need to pursue clarity about whom to marry.
Wait to Date
Legally, at least in the United States, we can’t marry until we’re eighteen (except for Nebraska and Mississippi where it’s even older — nineteen and twenty-one, respectively).
Beyond mere age, though, we should have serious questions of maturity and stability. Has our boyfriend or girlfriend matured enough to have any idea what they might be like as a husband or wife for the next fifty years? Have wereally matured enough? Will one or both of us be able to provide for a family financially? Has his or her faith in Jesus been tested enough by trials to be confident it’s real?
Some, no doubt, will hate this advice — I’m sure I would have — but we all need to acknowledge that we can date long before we can marry — and that doesn’t mean we should. We cannot date toward marriage when marriage isn’t even on the radar yet. You may be dreaming about marriage already (I was), but is it realistic that the two of you could marry anytime soon?
Wait to date until you can marry each other. My advice — take it or leave it — is wait until you can reasonably marry him or her in the next eighteen months. It doesn’t mean you have to marry that quickly. The important part is that youcould, if God made it clear this was his will and his timing for you. You won’t find eighteen months anywhere in the Bible, and so you should not treat it as God’s law. But you can test — with the Lord, your parents, and close Christian friends — whether that seems wise and safe for you and your heart.
What to Do While We Wait
Just because we are waiting to date does not mean we are sitting around and waiting. Life is never only, or even mainly, about love and marriage. Our life is about Jesus now — his love for us and his plans for us — whether we’re single or married, sixteen or sixty.
God has so much more in store for you than any relationship can offer. He wants to say something spectacular through you and your young life. He wants to use you and your gifts to change other people’s lives. If he wills for you to be married, he wants to make you into a strong and caring future wife or husband. He wants to show the world where to find happiness through your joy.
You don’t need a boyfriend or girlfriend to experience any of God’s dreams for these early years. So, if not date, then what?
1. Set a courageous and faithful example for others.
Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12).
You may not be able to vote yet, or even drive, but you can live to say something about Jesus. Your speech — the language and attitude you use with your family and friends — says something about Jesus now. Your behavior — the decisions you make every day about what you will do or not do, the ways you fit in with the rest of the world or not — tells the world about your God. Your love — the way you treat the people in your life — says something about how you’ve been loved by God. Your purity — your commitment to trust God and his word, and to treasure him above every premature pleasure and experience — preaches the gospel to peers enslaved to their desires.
2. Live to serve, not to be served.
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 4:10–11)
Most young people are so consumed by their own needs and desires that they’re oblivious to the needs around them. But you are capable of so much more than social media, shopping, and video games. Look, for instance, at what teenagers accomplish at the Olympics, fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds winning gold against the best in the world.
What if you decided to use the gifts God has given you to make a difference in someone else’s life? You could serve in a ministry at church, mentor someone younger, or ask around about needs in your neighborhood. You are capable of far more than the world expects of you. Live in such a way “that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” through you.
3. Strive to become the future spouse God calls you to be.
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. . . . Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Ephesians 5:22–25).
Some of us might be born wanting to be married, but none of us are born ready to be married. The call to love a spouse is a call to live out the greatest story ever told — God himself coming in the flesh to die for his sinful bride, the Church. Our natural instincts are not to die to ourselves for the sake of someone else, even someone we like a whole lot.
Until you are ready to date, God will be preparing you to love well when you do, transforming you from one degree of readiness to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).
4. Stun everyone around you with joy while you wait.
We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may . . . walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy. (Colossians 1:9–11)
No one has to look far to find sour single people, young men and women bemoaning loneliness while everyone else is dating someone. It is much harder to find young people finding their identity, happiness, and security somewhere else.
Surprise your friends (and everyone else) by being content to wait to date until you can marry, because you already have everything you need in God.
When Altar Calls Don’t Work
How many times did I need to get saved before truly loving God?
Jonathan R. Bailey/ MARCH 18, 2016
Image: Justin Clemons
I grew up as a pastor’s kid, the third of four children. Or was it fourth? For years I believed I was born 30 seconds before my identical twin, Josh. But he recently challenged this 33-year-old fact, turning the Bailey family world order upside-down.
Josh and I were adventurous and independent twins who made the suburbs of North Dallas our playground. The flame of our adventurous spirit was fanned by our older brother, Jeremy. Together we wanted to take risks and experience them firsthand. I wasn’t content to just watch
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
. I had to be Indiana Jones. I needed to wade through the creeks behind my house, build rope swings, and explore sewers. And not with a flashlight, but by tying my shirt to a stick, dipping it in gasoline, and lighting it on fire.
As a boy, I listened intently to my dad recount some of the greatest adventure stories ever told: Noah and his ark, David defeating a giant, and Joshua shouting down walls. These men experienced wild adventure, and God, firsthand. My longing for intimacy with God was born from story time with my dad.
Dad pastored a nondenominational, charismatic—or, as he liked to say, Happy-Baptist—church. It was our family’s second home. BB gun shootouts commonly took place in the vacant sanctuary. Josh and I raced the petting-zoo miniature ponies around the parking lot after the fall carnival and learned how to do donuts in our youth pastor’s car before we could legally drive.
When I got a little older, I threw myself into the behind-the-scenes work of our youth group. My brother and I made announcement videos and hooked up lighting and fog machines for our Wednesday night services. I insisted on working the sound booth, because it allowed me to avoid worshiping and watch others worship instead.
As a teenager, I was pretty sure I believed God existed, but without firsthand experience of him, “Christianity,” whatever that meant, went in one ear and out the other. I knew facts and Bible verses and how to say, “Thank you, ma’am” to the old ladies who said they were praying for me.
Then there was my arch nemesis: the altar call. I had never experienced any meaningful or long-lasting change after raising my hand and repeating a prayer, so over time, I came to loathe phrases such as “walk the aisle,” “come forward,” “raise your hand,” and “repeat after me.” Each attempt at getting saved seemed to take life rather than give it. By high school, my belief system was that I didn’t want to go to hell but wasn’t too psyched about heaven, either.
As my contempt for all things Christian hardened, my church involvement actually ramped up. At age 22, I became a summer camp counselor alongside one of my best friends. We played sand volleyball, slung frogs into the lake, and pranked our youth pastor.
Each attempt at getting saved seemed to take life rather than give it.
The final night of summer camp, the guest pastor ended his sermon with an emotional altar call. Here we go again, I thought. I started to zone out, until out of the corner of my eye I saw my friend walk forward. More shocking than him walking the aisle was the later evidence that something had happened to him that night. He stopped drinking and partying. He started studying the Bible, voraciously reading Christian books, and attending church. Further, his behavior seemed to come not from obligation but from love. He seemed to want to know God and learn from him and be like him. His countenance said it all. He had joy.
This was the opposite of what I had experienced growing up. The cycle usually went something like this: get saved in a burst of emotion, commit to Jesus for a few days or weeks, then let the devotion fade away. Everyone in our church seemed to sputter out, digressing into their old way of life until the next camp or special church event.
But not my friend. Month after month, like a flower in spring, he grew. I spent the next five months closely watching him study and pray and seek Jesus. His commitment and love for God were unwavering, and soon, a waterfall of hope washed over me. The thought seized me: “Change is possible. It’s actually possible.” It gave me hope that Christianity could effect something real in my life.
One morning, an honest prayer began to spill out of me: “God, I don’t love you. But I want to.” I wasn’t mincing words anymore. I knew what love felt like because I loved my mom, dad, brothers, and sister. I felt nothing like that for God but wanted to. I shared that prayer with my dad, and he prayed with me, never judging, accepting me where I was.
I lived with that prayer for weeks, dragging it around with me everywhere I went, my dry heart soaking it in. Then one night everything changed.
It was early and still dark outside. I was in a deep sleep, when suddenly my eyes opened. I remember feeling confused about why I was awake at 5 a.m. I lay silently in the dark for a few seconds. Then I heard something in my mind, distinct and clear. It was like no other thought I had had. It didn’t shout and it didn’t whisper. I heard these words:
“Get up, pick up your Bible, and sit down at your desk.”
My eyes widened and my pulse sped up. I lay there paralyzed, and after a few moments, the rational side of my brain convinced me I was making it up. I closed my eyes, trying to get back to sleep, but I couldn’t. The silence in the room was deafening. The thought came again:
“Get up, pick up your Bible, and sit down at your desk.”
I had heard enough Bible stories and listened to enough sermons to know it was time to pay attention. I got up, embraced the early morning chill, and found my Bible, which had been collecting dust under a lamp on my nightstand. I grabbed it and sat down at my desk. I stared at it for some time. Unsure of what to do next, it seemed clear I needed to open it, so I picked a random spot.
In this instance, Bible roulette seemed to be God’s way of getting my attention. I peeled back the pages. There I was, my heart and the Scriptures wide open. In this moment everything around me blurred, and life seemed to come to a halt. I looked down to see the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, verse 37. I read:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Like the destruction of a great dam, the flood waters of God’s love crashed into me. In that moment, my secondhand spirituality became firsthand. My knowing about God was replaced with knowing God, and like my friend’s experience, the change was permanent.
Shortly after my rendezvous with God, I developed a new routine of waking up early to drink coffee and read. I was thumbing through some of my dad’s books when I opened Dallas Willard’s
The Spirit of the Disciplines
and read a line that pinpointed the pain and disconnect I had felt growing up in church: “Spirituality wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God.”
Yes. I had it all wrong. Christian faith wasn’t about going to church, being a morally good person, believing the right things, or having some emotional experience. It was about God’s love filling and freeing me.
Since that day 13 years ago, I’ve read everything written by Willard (eventually becoming board chair of Renovaré, which provides practical resources for cultivating a life that makes us like Jesus from the inside out) and have dedicated my life to apprenticeship with Jesus. That doesn’t mean faith has been easy, but it has been the most thrilling adventure of my life. Battling habits of pride, anger, lust, and gluttony has become an adventure, so much so that creeks and sewers pale in comparison. I have started successful businesses with my twin brother, always the risk-takers. I have a beautiful family; I have also buried a child. Through the joy and the pain, Jesus has shared his eternal life with me, filling and freeing me.
Today I not only feel the fierce and unflinching love of God but in some small measure, I’m making my own advance into love—becoming love, drawing ever closer to that sweet society we call the Trinity. That’s it. That’s what my life is about. That’s the adventure I’m on.
Jonathan R. Bailey is co-founder of Lightstock and board chair of Renovaré.
But, I love twitter and Facebook and Instagram….
Does this sound like you?
Your alarm goes off. You roll over and grab your phone and start scrolling through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. When you get out of bed to brush your teeth, you take your phone with you. You’re scrolling as you eat breakfast, as you go to the toilet, as you walk to the bus stop. You check your phone at every possible opportunity at school. You walk home staring at the screen and nearly get hit by a car.
So many teenagers are totally addicted to their phones. Phone addiction manifests itself much like other addictions – it can take over your life and change your daily routines.
Phone addiction is bad for so many reasons. Being constantly connected damages your social skills, prevents you from being present and able to respond quickly to situations, and distracts you from important things going on around you.
From a Christian perspective, phone addiction is really bad too. Being addicted to your phone might mean you don’t concentrate during sermons or Bible study, can’t focus on your quiet times or simply don’t invest time in meaningful relationships with others.
Anything that we put before God is an idol, and your phone might be an idol for you. If you think your phone is an idol and you want to defeat your addiction, here are some ways you can do it!
Pray
Whenever we try and do anything as Christians, we should pray about it. It is only through God’s strength that we will be able to battle against sin and win, so if you want to end your phone addiction, start with prayer. Pray that God will help you refocus your attention on him and living a life that pleases him. Thank him for his faithfulness.
Remove temptation
One of the best ways to overcome an addiction is to simply remove the temptation. Matthew 5:29 says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” If the Bible says that about eyes, imagine what it would say about phones!!
You could start small – put your phone on plane mode while you’re at school or church, or turn it off overnight. You could even delete the apps that are most addictive on your phone – maybe Facebook needs to go!
But if you need to ‘gouge out’ your phone even more, then consider ditching your smartphone. Older style phones without internet just aren’t as addictive as our smart devices, so sell your iPhone and go back to something you can only use for calling and texting.
Team up
If you’re addicted to your phone, you’re probably not the only one in your social group! Gather a group of friends (Christian friends are great!) and talk about the problem together. Make commitments to each other about what you’re going to do to fight against the addiction. Maybe you could all decide to turn your phones off for an hour each evening and you could keep each other accountable by discussing how you did the next day.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can fight against the things other than God that rule our lives. Don’t let your phone take over!