Valentine's Day: Q and A
We asked you on our Instagram stories what you wanted to hear about in our special Valentine’s Day Young Adults blog and these are some of our thoughts on your questions. Please do go away and read around these issues yourselves, ask some wise friends and check out what the Bible has to say!
This blog was written by Becky and Helen. Becky is 23 and currently single (and ready to mingle*) and Helen is 25 and has been married for just over six months. They are great friends and love working together.
*Helen wrote that bit…
Q: Where do babies come from?
H+B: That’s a really great question but I think you need to go and ask a friend or parent for the ‘birds and the bees’ conversation ASAP or have a look here…
Q: Why can’t I share a bed if I’m not going to have sex?
H: I would answer this in two ways…
Firstly, temptation. God gave sex to us as a gift and as part of that gift he made us attracted to each other sexually too which makes complete sense (have a look at Song of Songs if you want to check it out!). Aka, there’s no ‘on switch’ once you get married meaning that you suddenly become sexually attracted to your spouse. My experience (and most people I’ve spoken to) is that the sexual attraction happens long before you get married. So even if you have decided not have sex before you get married, it may well be the case that sharing a bed puts you in unnecessary temptation that is uncomfortable (physically uncomfortable for guys sometimes) and frustrating.
Secondly, your influence. If you have the self-restraint not to cross your boundaries while sharing a bed, other people might not! If you share a bed, it is likely that people will assume you are sleeping together even if you’re not and as much as we don’t want to set boundaries based on fear of man, the Bible talks clearly about not causing others to stumble (Mark 9:42) with our actions and also about leaders being beyond reproach (1 Timothy 3:2).
Q: How do you know what to look for in a guy or girl? Amazing doesn’t always equal right…
H: What a great question! It can be so hard to know who is right for you and who God is calling you to when so many people are so great!
The best bit of advice I was ever given (just before I broke up with someone!) was to ask the question ‘When I’m with this person, do I feel more like myself?’ i.e. does being around this person encourage me further into the person God has made me to be, do they encourage me in my gifts, do they challenge me to look more like Jesus?
There are loads of other questions we can ask ourselves about whether this is the person we should marry but I think this was super helpful for me!
Q: What does the Bible say about dating non-Christians?
B: The Bible doesn’t specifically say anything about dating a non-Christian, although there are verses that may shed some light on this.
However, the Bible gives us some clear guidance for how we should try and live our lives. Hebrews 12:1-2 says: ‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, and let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.’
We want to be a generation of people who run unswerving and wholeheartedly towards Jesus with our everything. And why make this more complicated and difficult that we need to? Running a race with someone who is running towards the same ultimate goal of Jesus is truly beautiful, but running with someone who is running towards something in a different direction is surely not going to further us in this.
Dating without an agenda to look ahead to the long term can be seen as pointless at times, as ultimately if you don’t see some kind of future with a person you are just causing unnecessary hurt to both yourself and the other person who you obviously care about. And when it comes to dating someone or choosing someone to be your partner, not only are you choosing yourself a wife/husband [delete accordingly], you are also choosing the person who will ultimately be the father/mother of your children. And if that person isn’t a Christian it may mean that you face some unexpected and painful challenges.
Q: Would you kiss on a first date?
H: I can’t say that I have kissed on a first date! For me, I didn’t want to set that expectation on a first date. I think first dates are getting to know each other without committing to a relationship. I personally wouldn’t kiss someone unless I was sure that I liked someone and wanted to pursue a relationship with them…
B: I think for a lot of people, what constitutes a ‘first date’ looks pretty different. It may be meeting someone you have met online, and to others it may be finally going on an ‘official first date’ with someone who have been seeing for quite a while. So, circumstances of what feels right may really vary. However, we want to be people who are all about honour, dignity and respect. Towards each other. Towards God. And towards the person. Romans 12:10 says: ‘Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourself.’
However, saying that, for myself personally it probably wouldn’t be something I would lean naturally towards!
How do we support and champion those who are single, dating or married better as the church?
H: As a married person, I think recognising that each of them has good and bad parts. The Bible sets a vision for marriage in Genesis 2 saying that it’s not good for man to be alone which a lot of us can focus on as the church. We can definitely idolise marriage (especially as young adults!) thinking that our lives will be complete and better if we can just find that perfect man or woman to complete us (bleurgh). But when we look later in the Bible at Paul’s letters, he basically says that if you can keep it in your pants then don’t bother getting married because you’ll be more effective for the gospel (1 Corinthians 7). It says that neither is better but that each of us needs to find contentment in Jesus no matter our relationship status.
As married people we need to be including single people and not be insensitive when people are finding single life harder and as single people we need to know that married life has its own challenges and married people need friends outside of their marriage.
B: True friendship is critical to our walk with Jesus, whether we are married or not, and something we, as the church, definitely don’t always get right. C.S. Lewis says: ‘Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…”’ Friendships are such a beautiful gift we have been given to champion, encourage and support one another in the everyday highs and lows of life.
Jonathan and David are a great biblical example of true friendship, where they had each other’s back, encouraged, loved and championed each other in all that they did. And they both were married.
I couldn’t recommend enough having those few safe people who have a way of encouraging you and empowering you, and who are just always there. And let’s all of us, single or married or busy in that exciting beginning phase of dating someone be inclusive, attentive and honouring to our friends wherever they are at.
Q: How do you get over someone who you know is definitely not the one God wants for you?
H: I think we’ve all been there! Either our feelings aren’t reciprocated or it’s obvious that the relationship isn’t going to work out and we know we need to get over them but our heart is taking a long time to catch up with our head.
A few things to try…
Give yourself space – The amount of times someone has chatted to me about wanting to get over someone and when I’ve asked how much contact they have with them they tell me that they still text 200 times a day and call every night! If we want to get over someone and see them in a different light, our actions have to match our mind not our heart. It might look like taking a break from a friendship for a while to gain perspective and allow our hearts to realign with God’s.
Speak to someone – Choose someone you love and respect and chat to them honestly about how you feel so that they can keep asking you about it and make sure your heart isn’t becoming hard. When our bodies get injured, if we don’t pay attention and look after them they can get infected and end up even worse of than they were to begin with! The same can happen to our hearts. If we get hurt and don’t deal with it we can start to develop unhealthy attitude that we then bring into future relationships. Having someone walk through the hard times with you can help stop this from happening.
B: That is excellent from Helen but I would just add that we have the absolute gift of prayer. It may sound like the most obvious, Sunday School answer there is, but the funny thing is that it actually works! Despite this, it may actually be the last thing we actually think of resorting to, perhaps as we think about God as our Father and no one really wants to talk to their Dad about relationships (#awkward). However, in reality God is our creator, our Father, he knows what is best for us and he is SO kind in how he guides us through the ups and downs.
So often, when we are in a really exciting relationship, and this can include friendships at times, we can place so much of our joy and value and identity in this. And this is not who we are. We are not single or married, whether this is something that may be true about our relationship status, we ARE dearly beloved children of God. That is our true identity. Either before, after or during any relationship. And that is so often something we can lose sight of who our first love is (Revelation 2:2–4) and what he says of us.
Q: What do you do when someone says ‘I think God is saying “you’re the one” or ‘“you’re not the one”’ and you haven’t felt anything?
B: So often in relationships as Christians when we are trying to pursue all God has for us we are trying to honour God with our relationships and so we may seek his insight or leading. Often, we might do this through listening for prophetic nudges or words of knowledge. This is beautiful and 100% always a healthy and wise approach to this. We absolutely believe that God is on the move today and really cares for us in every detail of our lives and of course we should invite him in to give us his wisdom and insight.
However, when we may feel that God is directing us in a certain way, we need to be really mindful in how we share/don’t share and follow God’s lead. We are all human, and as we are trying to discern what God is saying we can never fully 100% know ‘whether it was God or indigestion’ (to quote our friend Mike Pilavachi), so we never want to say to said boy/girl in question ‘God has told me ______.’
And again, we want to be really honouring and sensitive to one another. We should always reflect and consider carefully how we share what we feel God is saying. I had a friend who was seeing this boy and he told her ‘God has said you aren’t the one for me as you’re not good enough’ (or something along the lines of this, I can’t fully remember as this was a little while ago). My friend was so hurt by this, and to think that God considered her ‘Not good enough’ or that God hadn’t been speaking to her individually was really harmful in her relationship with Jesus and how she perceived relationships. (This could play out the other way round, too.)
So, let’s be wise and use the gift God has given us of the Holy Spirit and the gift of common sense!
If you are unsure how to phrase something when you’re sharing, check in with some friends who you really know, trust and respect – I am always pro getting some counsel from the saints!
H: I personally think that the concept of ‘the one’ is pretty unhelpful when we’re thinking about who we should date. If we’re waiting for the person who ticks all the boxes on our list of an ideal partner, loves Jesus, looks like Chris Hemsworth, never get tired and grumpy and always treats us like royalty, we might be waiting for the rest of our lives.
The truth is that none of us is perfect and we have to know that whomever we end up with will, in fact, be human too. Of course, I think we should have some ‘non-negotiables’ when it comes to choosing a partner. For me, it was the things like: loving Jesus, being kind, always being up for a laugh and loving coffee (half joking…). But I think there were probably a whole range of people who would have fitted this. For me, ‘the one’ was the one who I chose (important word!) would be the person I would commit to loving for the rest of my life. Love isn’t always easy and if we haven’t chosen the person, if we’ve deferred responsibility by just accepted they are the one because of a ‘sign’, it’s going to get hard years down the line when the inevitable happens and life is a bit bumpy. We need to know that we chose that person for thick or thin, and, yes, God steers us to them, but we are the one making the commitment, so we need to take ownership of that.
We hope you have a wonderful Valentine’s Day, no matter what you get up to! #Galentines #Brolentines
Love,
Helen and Becky xo