You’re trying to make the headlines — exciting and discouraging — feel real for your boyfriend or girlfriend, but as much as they care about you, they aren’t there. Now they are in a marriage where she feels trapped in that covenant relationship, and so she tries to “fix” her husband. That’s not working, so she hopes maybe having children will fix their marriage. They have children, and now the father is discipling their children not toward the Lord, but away from him. Yes, a boyfriend should lead his girlfriend in some ways, but definitely not to the degree that a husband leads his wife. So, what I possess, when it comes to the covenant I am in with Lauren in marriage, is headship.
With this “more,” we can say to the watching world, Don’t settle for artificial and thin loyalty, affection, security, and sexual experimentation when God intends and promises so much more through a Christian union. And a Christian union can only be found through Christian dating. It’s not that this new line of thinking is necessarily untrue today, or that it’s not the current and corrupt trend of our culture. One of our most precious pursuits, that of a lifelong partner for all of life, is tragically being relegated to tweets, texts, and snaps, to ambiguous flirtation and fooling around.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism — and a billion different dating tips. Modern dating philosophy assumes that there will be several intimate romantic relationships in a person’s life before marriage. In fact, it advocates “playing the field” in order to determine “what one wants” in a mate. Biblical dating has as its goal to be emotionally and physically intimate with only one member of the opposite sex … your spouse. If marriage only offered us these things, though, it really wouldn’t be worth it.
While the principles supporting biblical dating have their beginnings with the very structure of the family, modern dating has its origins with the sexual revolution of the 1960s. It is brand new, and yet, seemingly, it is all we know. If the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is true, then God’s Word does have authoritative guidance for us about how we might best glorify God in this area of our lives.
What I saw in the comments was people saying, Well, you’re married; you don’t understand the pain that I’m experiencing, so I’m not going to listen to you. I think if you make your shared experience of suffering the bar for which you will listen to somebody, you’re going to cut yourself off from all kinds of ways that God will speak to you. In fact, I would say most of the ways that God will speak to you. We all suffer in various ways with trials of various kinds. Often, even single people who are experiencing similar things will talk to each other and say, You don’t really understand what I’m going through. So we can’t make our suffering the bar of who we’re going to listen to for counsel.
Know what makes a marriage worth having.
We’re not planning to put it as a law in our house, but that’s the kind of thing we want to encourage our son and daughter. That’s the kind of way we want them to think in terms of wisdom about dating. So we hope to train up our children to think in terms of I want to start dating when I can actually marry. In most cases, these relationships have marriage as their goal. A godly dating relationship is one that includes two people who’ve decided to love the Lord and respect His values above all else.
When we set clear standards and expectations in dating, and then fulfill those standards and expectations, we say we will do the same in marriage. That’s true in sexual purity and in a hundred other ways. Boundaries are important in any not-yet-married relationship, because God loves you and wants what’s best for you. He did not create you to recklessly give away your heart without a covenant.
Question 6: Should a Boyfriend “Lead” His Girlfriend?
Currently, the popular trend among evangelical Christians is to prepare and pray for their future spouse. This is especially popular among Christian girls and women who are encouraged to prepare, pray, and dream about their future husbands. Dating is not discouraged but is rather pushed into strict seriousness by requiring Christians to date with the intention of marrying. Among modern evangelical Christians, there have been multiple books, movements, and rules presented as the “biblical” approach or method to dating. From Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye in the early 2000s to the many rules for dating in contemporary Christian circles, there is no end to supposed scriptural views on dating.
Now, I could say a lot more on the second half of that lesson (“postpone intimacy”) — and I have elsewhere — but here I want to press on the first half. What does it mean to pursue clarity in dating — and particularly as a Christian? To answer those questions, I want to give you something of a three-dimensional map. The second reason Dateyou is that I’ve been married for seven years, and I see it all — dating, romance, marriage — so much differently now. Eight years ago, I knew marriage a little like my 6-year-old knows Narnia. I knew a lot about marriage — from the Bible, from other books, from watching couples in my life — and I was enchanted by the idea of marriage.
Night and day were not just needed, but good. Mountains and oceans were not just enormous, but good. The bushes, flowers, and trees were not just fertile and productive, but good. The birds and fish and beasts of the field were all intentional, unique, and captivating in their own ways.
Jennifer began sharing positive encouragement for marriage through UnveiledWife.com in March 2011. She shares vulnerable stories from her marriage and things she is learning to inspire other wives along the way. Jennifer is grateful to be used by God in an extraordinary way to bring hope and the power of the Gospel to wives around the world. God has purposed your remarkable, romantic, and redemptive relationship to be a powerful light to a dark and hurting world. This is your invitation to marriage as God intended–a life-saving, hope-inspiring, and transforming force of God’s love.
These three elements will help you to make wise choices concerning who you date and how you date. Even more so, our relationships can add joy to our lives as we find partners who lead us closer to God. Our relationships should never be a hindrance to our relationship with Him. Instead, we can have vibrant God-ordained dating lives. And on that basis, a woman justifies getting into a relationship with a man — a man who will not lead, who doesn’t really love the Lord, but who does come to church.