A Four Letter Word

 

Not That Four Letter Word

Why do we date? What drives us to seek out someone of the opposite sex and spend exorbitant amounts of our time, emotions, and money getting to know them? Different people will have different answers to these questions, but there should really only be one answer. Some people seek out dating just to be in a relationship with someone. They yearn for a deep connection but don’t want the commitment that goes with a truly deep connection, so instead, they settle for a cheap imitation. Sometimes this dating relationship leads to living together without being married. Still unable to make the commitment that leads to true oneness, they will always have an essential part missing. There will always be a hollow part in their relationship that they won’t be able to fill. So if the reason we date is not just for the dating relationship, why then do we date? Dating is supposed to be a necessary evil on the path to marriage. It is not supposed to be the goal. We date then, not for the sake of dating but for the ultimate goal of marriage. This is sometimes aptly called dating with a purpose. Everything we do should be with purpose, especially something as important and as powerful as a relationship with another human being on the deep level that marriage is. 

For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t sit down first and compute the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish the tower, all who see it will begin to make fun of him. They will say, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish!’

Luke 14:28‭-‬30 NET

When we are looking to start a relationship with someone, we should always be willing to count the cost and look to the future to see if this will lead to marriage. If the answer is no, don’t enter the relationship! Better to not build at all than to build and abandon. We must take the other person’s heart into consideration. Every time we date someone, we leave a bit of our heart and take a bit of theirs. This “baggage” will take away from our ultimate marriage. 

At this point, we once again run into differences in definitions. Earlier I called dating a necessary evil. Let’s take a look at a couple of definitions and see if it really is.

Dating: The process of a romantic relationship to assess someone’s suitability for marriage.

Not to be confused with,

Going on a date: A romantic activity one on one with another person to assess their suitability for a relationship. Often a one-time experience that quite often ends with a one-night stand.

Dates can happen during the “dating” process, but they are typically pre-dating assessment tools. Here we run into a problem, however. Most of the activities engaged in during dating or going on a date, such as holding hands, kissing, and romantic or emotional attachment beyond regular friendship, are things that are only supposed to happen within the confines of the marriage relationship¹. Romantic and emotional attachment is a bit different because these can start with the commitment of engagement. Dating often involves and is nearly rendered impossible without physical and emotional connection because that is how society has trained us. In movies, books, and music, society has conditioned us to expect kissing, holding hands, and deep emotional connections to go hand in hand with falling in love and are necessary to get to know someone. Even the phrase falling in love is misguided, for it implies that you have no control over who you attach your emotions to, and even worse, it implies that there is also a falling out of love. Can you start to see the problem with society's idea of dating and love? 

I Fell In Love, And All I Got Was This Lousy Heartache

Pro 4:23 NLT Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. 

The idea that we should fall in love is directly contrary to scripture! We must protect our hearts, for they determine the course of our lives, and what is more, they determine our spiritual life! We must not allow our hearts to rule our minds. 

Jer 17:9 NKJV "The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

Doesn’t allowing the desperately wicked member of our body to govern our choices in life seem like a bad idea? It should. As for the idea that we can “fall out of love,” what does scripture have to say about that? 

Mal 2:14-16 NLT You cry out, "Why doesn't the LORD accept my worship?" I'll tell you why! Because the LORD witnessed the vows you and your wife made when you were young. But you have been unfaithful to her, though she remained your faithful partner, the wife of your marriage vows. 

15 Didn't the LORD make you one with your wife? In body and spirit you are his. And what does he want? Godly children from your union. So guard your heart; remain loyal to the wife of your youth. 

16 "For I hate divorce!" says the LORD, the God of Israel. "To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty," says the LORD of Heaven's Armies. "So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife."

You don’t fall out of love! It’s a choice we make whether we realize it or not. We must guard our hearts to keep them loyal to our spouses certainly, and that starts before marriage. It starts while we are looking for a spouse. Should we even be hunting for a spouse? Certainly, we can be analyzing and see whether people match our idea of who we want to marry but ultimately, if we are trusting in God and seeking Him first, He will bring us to the one who will be best for us and inspire the most growth.

Mat 6:33 NKJV "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

How many marriage stories have you heard where the couple found each other when they weren’t even looking? God brought them together. I have heard countless stories like this. Psalm 23 is an excellent example of allowing God to lead us and trusting in Him to know what is best for us. 

Psa 23:3 NKJV He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake.

The rest of the Psalm is just as meaningful, but this verse is especially significant to our topic today. He will lead us on the paths of righteousness, and that includes leading us to marriage if that is His will for us. Sometimes that is not His will for us, and we must be ready to accept that. What if we don’t allow Him to lead us? 

Pro 12:28 NET In the path of righteousness there is life, but another path leads to death.  

Getting back to the idea of falling in love, we must be self-controlled. We must be masters of self in all aspects of our lives. This includes how we dress and how we form relationships. We must always have the other person’s interests at heart. We are dealing with someone else’s future spouse. Love is a choice day in and day out, not a fuzzy feeling.

This all brings us back to the statement I made earlier that dating is a necessary evil. Is it? Is it really a “necessary” evil? Is there perhaps a better way to do things so that our hearts are not chipped away at piece by piece and adultery after adultery?

Who Released The Hounds?

Is it necessary for us to “date” someone for us to be able to figure out if they are compatible with us? Is it necessary for us to connect emotionally and physically with someone in order for us to get to know them? Emotional connection on this level is releasing a tidal wave that is supposed to only lead to marriage. You are playing Russian roulette with someone’s heart and your own. In a way, you are also preparing for divorce with every break-up and every broken heart. Guys, you are supposed to be the leader in the relationship and make direct the path it takes. All too often, we allow the girls to determine the boundaries and the path it takes. No! Be strong! You don’t need an emotional, let alone physical, connection to get to know her! There is a better way!

Enter: Courtship

Friendship must be the foundation you build upon. Get to know each other as friends before you even consider starting any sort of process towards getting married. If you didn’t get to know each other without all of the emotions of a relationship attached, how can you possibly make a logical decision regarding your compatibility? The answer is that you can’t. So get to know each other as much as possible before you even consider any sort of relationship. Once you are considering one and you are relatively certain that this is the one, stop. Talk to your and her parents, or at the very least your parents, to see if they are seeing the same things that you are. Surprisingly, your parents usually are wiser than you are. Close friends work too, although siblings are better and will be bluntly honest with you. Then finally, talk to her and make sure that you are both on the same page about your level of commitment in working toward marriage and that it is something that both of you see as the only outcome of starting a process of figuring out the nitty-gritty details. Even through this process, protect your heart as much as possible. At this point, it would be good to mention today’s sponsor. Fathers with shotguns. Fathers with shotguns is a non-profit organization committed to making sure their daughters marry respectful young men. They would like all potential husbands of their daughters to know that this respect begins with asking the father’s permission to be in a relationship with their daughter. Fathers with shotguns is not to be confused with brothers with blankets. Back to our regularly scheduled content. 

The process from friendship to engagement and later marriage is known as courtship and implies purpose. You are only talking to this person with one intention: marriage. 

Love, True Wuv

True love is not found in dating, sex, or even marriage. True love is learned and is a choice. There are going to be things about anyone, no matter who it is, and how sparkly the feelings of infatuation are at the beginning, that will irritate us. We will have to learn how to love everyone no matter who it is that we marry. Love goes way beyond a feeling, as we see in 1st Corinthians 13.

1Co 13:4-8 NKJV Love suffers long [and] is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 

5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 

7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

8 Love never fails. But whether [there are] prophecies, they will fail; whether [there are] tongues, they will cease; whether [there is] knowledge, it will vanish away.      

True love never fails. Even when the ones we love hurt us and themselves, we still love them and pray for them. Ask any mother whose child has gone astray if she does not pray for them every day to come back to God. A mother's love is very much like the love Christ has for us. Unconditional love. It is a choice and is not always easy, but it is most definitely not something that you fall into.

Deu 14:2 NKJV "For you [are] a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who [are] on the face of the earth. 

1Pe 2:9 NKJV But you [are] a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;  

God chose to love us. We are His chosen people. When we are looking for marriage (and that should be the only thing we are looking for in a relationship), we should reflect on that. Not just in courtship but in marriage as well. God teaches us how to love. It’s not something we can do properly without His spirit perfecting us. We ought to be a reflection of the love God shows for us.

“It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

There is a better way to get to know to know someone than “going on dates.” There is a better way to find “the one” than dating, and there is a better way to get married than falling in love. How we go about this is a reflection of God and His love for us. 

Christ And The Church

Our marriage process ought to reflect the marriage process of Christ and the Church. He got to know us as friends.

John 15:15-16 "No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. 

16 "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and [that] your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.

Next, He proposed and gave His life for all mankind.

Luk 22:17 NKJV Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, "Take this and divide [it] among yourselves;

Then He left to prepare a place for His bride and seek her Father’s permission.

John 14:2 NKJV "In My Father's house are many mansions; if [it were] not [so], I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Finally, in the last part of the story, the most beautiful love story of all time, He returns to make the Church His bride and save her from the dragon. Our literal knight in shining armor. 

Rev 19:7-8 NET Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, because the wedding celebration of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. 

8 She was permitted to be dressed in bright, clean, fine linen" (for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints).

His example is perfect. This is the example we should follow. No more giving away our hearts to multiple people, no more adultery. 'Date' is certainly a four-letter word, and as I hope I have shown, in more ways than one.

¹See: How I Committed Adultery for more information