I started off to write some thoughts on dating for young men and young women in a couple of previous posts that ended up being focused not so much on dating, but much more on being.  As in, being the person God has called you to be, and the impact that has on your dating life.

Today I wanted to go back to the subject of dating and marriage.  I suggest you start with my previous posts, as this one is simply an extension of the idea that to have a healthy, God honoring dating relationship, you must first be a healthy, God honoring Christ follower.

So, why do we date?  Why do we want to get married?  The original goals in Genesis to have dominion over the world and populate the earth are pretty well completed.  So why the urgency to get married?  Maybe your life checklist looks something like this – graduate from college, get married, get a good paying job, buy a house, have a family, live happily ever after.  I’m betting you also have a few other things on your mental list.  Things like have a better marriage than your parents, be a better parent than your parents, find a job that gives me meaning and purpose, things like that.  On a side note, cut your parents some slack on how they parented you, it’s much harder than you will every imagine.  It’s interesting that so much of the way the frame our future life involves a spouse.  I believe that’s because God created us with a hole inside for marriage.  A hole that marriage fills.  That explains why marriage is such a universal, cross cultural, accepted “thing”.  I also believe God created us with a couple of other holes that need to be filled before marriage.  Let’s take a look.

As a Christ follower, you believe that God created this world, and then created you and I in His image.  When He did, He created a God shaped hole in our lives (or our soul, or heart, I don’t know exactly where, just somewhere in us).  The basis for you, or me, or anyone, to life a life worthy of our calling, is based on having God as our foundation.  Interestingly enough, every civilization in the history of the world had some form of religion.  Every single one.  The Greeks, the Romans, the American Indians, the Inca’s, the Medes, the Persians.  Every single one in every single corner of the world.  Why?  Because we have a God shaped hole in our live.  Only God fits perfectly.  It’s a bit like a puzzle, you can put other pieces in there, but they don’t fit exactly right.  The other pieces you can force in the hole can be anything, academic success, money, sex, drugs, power, adventure, whatever it is that drives the focus of your life.  But if it’s not God, it’s never enough.  This hole is all or nothing.  If we miss God as the foundation of our lives, we simply can’t fill the other holes.  Without God in His place, people will live a life of meaninglessness,  die, and go to hell.  As a Christ follower, we are to spend our lives showing, telling, and helping others find Christ and fill this life changing hole.

Second, God created a hole for family and/or community.  We were built to have parents that love us, and a community to help raise us.  I realize that many of you may not have a mom and/or dad, or may not have had ones that loved you well.  I believe that here, unlike the God hole, there is no one exclusive puzzle piece that fits.  There are many pieces that can fit.  Adoptive parents, grandparents, or relatives can fit.  And friends can fit.  We were not built to grow up and live alone, and God in His wisdom provides many different puzzle pieces that can fill this hole and fill it exactly right.  Which is one reason your parents were probably so picky about your friends.  Because they knew from experience that who you hang around can be a huge factor in shaping who you become, first short term (think stupid peer pressure decisions) and long term ( your calling to know Him and make Him known).  The good news about this second hole in our lives, is that you have the ability to fill this one.  The bad news is that you have the ability to fill this one.  So choose wisely.  Your friends matter, your peer group matters, your community matters.  The disciples and early Christ followers spent significant time together, praying, eating, worshiping.  They drew strength and encouragement from each other.  They did life together.  We are designed to do life together, so find your people and do life with them.  Side note, your people will most likely change over time, and that’s okay.  Some of my people in college are still my people, most are not.  But I have my people, and I’m much much better with them than without them.  So are you.

Third is the hole we have for a spouse.  It is not good for man (or woman) to be alone.  I’ve probably lost most of you by this point, as you were here to read about dating.  Stay tuned, it’s coming.  God created us to desire Him, family/community, and a mate.  And in that order actually.  In Genesis, the word that God used to describe Eve was “help mate”.  Much has been written about the roles of men and women and what we need and the differences and so on, so I won’t spend time there, except to draw your attention to “help mate”.  Before we get to the reason for dating, we need to understand the purpose of marriage.  The purpose of marriage is not to make us happy, it’s to make us more like Christ.  Not exactly what you expected I’m sure.  I grew up thinking that my life was going to be so amazing when I found my wife.  She would be crazy beautiful (she is), fun and adventurous (she is), and would make me incredibly happy all the time (she doesn’t).  I also knew in my head that we would have problems and issues, but all in all, marriage was the golden ticket to happiness.  Wrong.  As Elsa says in Frozen, let it go.  Marriage is designed primarily to make you more like Christ, not to make you happy.  Marriage teaches you daily to learn how to serve.  How to be humble.  How to put others first.  To be kind, gently, loving, full of mercy, full of grace.  To crucify your selfish heart.  To give sacrificially.  To be wronged and not retaliate.  To see the best, when the best is in short supply.  In short, marriage teaches us how to love others like Christ loves us.  How to love in the truest sense, not the romantic sense we see in the movies.

That means marriage is hard.  Very hard.  It’s far and away the single hardest thing I have ever done.  My wife is an amazing, godly woman.  She has so many stars in her crown for loving me well it will take years and years in heaven to count them all.  She has loved me countless times when I didn’t deserve it, and even times when I didn’t think I wanted to be loved.  She has shown me, and so many others, love in it’s purest form.  Love that says forever and always, around the world and back, and love that says, I choose you.  That’s what marriage can do.

There you go.  You want to know why your parents fought, maybe even why they divorced?  Because it’s hard.  Crazy, freaking, stupid hard.  Because the process of becoming more like Christ is hard.  Crazy, freaking, stupid hard.  See the correlation yet?  Marriage is the tool God created to teach us how to love and how to become more like Him.  Marriage teaches us how to love well.  In Ephesians 5 it says “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.  This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.”  Husband and wife is like Christ and His church.  Thinking like that can and should change your outlook on marriage.  Now you know why we shouldn’t be unequally yoked.  You want to go through all of that process of becoming holy and becoming Christ like with someone who doesn’t love God and doesn’t desire to follow Christ with all of his/her heart?  No way.

There is more.  Much more.  I believe that in a God honoring marriage, not only do you learn how be become more like Christ, but you have the privilege of having your best friend with you every day.  Together, you have a ministry to start, a world to change, a calling to fulfill, a kingdom to advance, lives to change, people to love.  You have someone to pick you up when you stumble, to kick you in the butt when you’re wallowing, and to celebrate with you when you get it right.  You also get to know you are never alone in the work He has called you to do.  And as hard as marriage can be, it’s also so sweet.  There is simply nothing like it in the world.  God knew what He was doing when He ordained marriage.

Now that you have a little better understanding of marriage, let’s take a look at dating as a Christ follower.  Because dating as a Christ follower is simply the search for a marriage partner.  It’s the process of seeing, meeting, and getting to know someone with an end goal in mind.  I know that sounds cold and calculating, but it is what it is.  If you’re not dating with the end goal of marriage in mind, it’s not called dating.  It’s called “looking for someone to have sex with eventually.”

Go back and take a look at the five pillars a good relationship is built on in my post to Young Women.  The five are physical, emotional, relational, intellectual, and spiritual.  If you’re dating someone, you probably have already checked off the physical pillar.  I really want to challenge you to think about the spiritual pillar.  If marriage is designed (or even partially designed) to make you more like Christ, then the spiritual pillar is critical.  And it’s usually the last one we focus on.  It’s also why so many marriages fail.  Don’t miss this.  Marriage is too hard and simply won’t work if you think marriage is a path to make you happy.  It will make you happy, for a while.  But only for a while.  Because it’s simply not designed to make you happy.  Think about it.  You will have someone know all your deepest secrets, all your fears, all your insecurities, all your issues.  Then think about knowing all the deep dark holes in your mate.  You will get past the facade your mate put on, and they will get past yours.  You will see that your mate is not only seriously flawed, but in all likelihood is also much less than he/she advertised.  You are not getting what you think you’re getting, and neither are they.  That’s not a recipe for happiness.  It’s a recipe for disaster.  Without God and without some understanding of why you’re doing this thing called marriage, it will fail.  God’s design for marriage is a plan that includes grace, mercy, and the fruits of the spirit on a daily basis.  God’s design is a recipe for showing the world the power of Christ in us.  The world says leave when it gets too hard.  Christ says love when it gets hard, just as He did.

So, when you find someone who loves God and is truly seeking to follow Christ, spend time with them.  Go out with them. Get to know their friends (it’s insight into them, just as your friends are insight into you), get to know their family, get to know what they like to do.  Dating should be an awesome adventure.  It should be fun and easy, especially at first.  As you know more about them, you should get small glimpses of the real them, and you should begin to give them real glimpses of the real you.  The process takes time.  If it seems to be moving to fast, it probably is. And the reason is most likely physical.  Don’t mistake physical intimacy for real intimacy.  They are nothing alike when you’re dating.  If I had to give you two rules to live by in dating, first would be invest all the time and energy you can in the spiritual pillar, and the second would be to invest as little time and energy as you can in the physical pillar.

In the end, you are looking for someone you can build a life with.  Not just a life, but a life worthy of the high calling of Christ.  Someone who desires to love God more than anything and anyone.  Someone you can see yourself doing ministry with.  Someone you can go to war with (not against), because we are at war with the enemy.  Someone who can see you as you are, flaws, shortcomings, issues and all, and love you fiercely and deeply.  Someone who can love you fully, just as you love them fiercely with their flaws, shortcomings, and issues.

I know it’s not romantic, and no one’s going to make a movie about love and marriage that talks about how it makes you more like Christ, but they should.  At the end of the day, if we truly believe we are here to know Him and to make Him known, should it surprise us that everything (truly everything) is for His glory and our good?  That means marriage is for His glory and our good.  His glory is shown to a lost world from a God ordained and love filled marriage, and our good is accomplished as we become more like Him, and our work to make Him known is amplified, encouraged, and enabled by our spouse.  Think about it.

Grace and peace.