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Is God’s Spouse For Me On a Dating Website?

Singleness In The Technological Age

When we talk about romantic relationships today, there is now an added wrinkle in the conversation that comes with the onset of internet dating. This is a variable that simply didn’t exist for much of the time when I was single. We are just beginning to understand how this can be done in a healthy way, and how the Lord can work in the process. It brings into question the balance between our diligence and God’s sovereignty in a rather important way, similar to the way birth control did when it arrived on the scene.

How much responsibility do we have in this dating world, and how much responsibility belongs to God? Birth control brought this issue to the forefront by offering people control over when/if they wanted to conceive children. Many followers of Christ were (and still are) very much against it, and another large section of the Christian community embraces it.

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Are You Finding the Right Person or Becoming the Right Person?

Many conversations and debates take place among Christians regarding whether or not God has that one perfect person for everyone. There are varying opinions, of course, and the topic is probably on the mind of nearly every single Christian person on the planet. “Is there someone out there for me?” “Is it my responsibility to take the wheel from Jesus (sorry Carrie Underwood) and find my soul mate?”

Good thoughts. Important thoughts. And extremely relevant to a generation of singles who wonder how involved they should be in the process of finding a mate. Personally, I thought I had the answer figured out when I was a college student. Not necessarily because of my own personal experiences in the dating world (which were less than stellar), but because of how I viewed the young men I respected as they traveled the relationship road ahead of me.

As an underclassman, I watched a lot of godly men date, get engaged, get married, and start a family. I rejoiced with them, and took a lot of mental notes on how I needed to emulate the good practices they set forth in their relationships. Time marched on, and I approached the end of college. I saw many close friends find “the one” for them and get married to women who loved Jesus and wanted to glorify Him in their lives. It was great, and what I witnessed only reinforced my understanding that there is a perfect person for everyone who loves and genuinely follows Christ.

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How To Handle A Breakup Well

In light of how the digital age has influenced relationships and communication in the modern era, it has essentially transformed the way people break up as well. In light of that, allow me to give you my opinion on this: breaking up via a text message is cowardly.

This is not middle school, people. Important communication needs to happen face-to-face. Do not begin a relationship with a digital barrier between the two of you, and likewise, don’t end a relationship with a digital barrier between the two of you. Is it easier to send an email, text, or social media message, telling the other person that you want to break up? Of course it’s easier! No guy wants to see mascara mixed with tears streaming down a girl’s face, knowing he’s the one who made it happen. No girl wants to see a man reduced to a sobbing mess with his hands cupped over his face, knowing she’s the reason he’s crying for only the third time in his adult life. Looking at someone when you break up with them sucks…but it’s the adult thing to do.

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Don’t Over-Spiritualize Your Breakup

Christians have this habit of letting God take the blame for their dirty work when it comes to the end of dating relationships. Many Christian women and men have been on the receiving end of the phrase, “I just don’t feel called to you anymore,” or “I don’t think God is calling us to be together.” Myself included.

In my mid-twenties, I was dating a girl who essentially said this to me, nailing the proverbial coffin closed on our relationship, and I couldn’t help but think to myself after she said it, “But I feel that God is still calling us to be together…so who’s not hearing from God correctly?” Apparently it was me, because we weren’t dating anymore after that conversation.

And as sincere as I believe she was when she broke up with me, it kind of made me mad that she used The Creator as a scapegoat for what she actually wanted. There were many times in the weeks following our breakup when I wished she would have just told me what she felt straight-up, “I don’t like you anymore, and I think we should break up.” I know that probably would’ve stung more, but at least I’d have definitive closure without wondering why each of us was “hearing something” completely different from God.

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Is Going To a Movie a Bad First Date?…Yep!

Other than on social media, I don’t really keep up with many friends from high school. But if you asked anyone who knew me back then if I would be likely to publish a book on dating, they would no doubt pee their pants from laughing so hard. Why? Because I literally dated one girl in high school…and that “relationship” lasted for all of two weeks.

However, when I graduated from high school and went to college, I decided I should probably make up for lost time. I dated a lot of girls in college. Too many girls. And looking back, I now realize that I probably did this because girls finally took an interest in me, and it simply felt good to have the kind of attention and affection I craved all those years in high school. In college, I soaked up every drop of life those romantic feelings gave me, and went from one girl to the next to the next. 

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Dating Advice For Women

I wrote something just for the guys, so I figured the women needed a turn too. This is it. Proceed with caution, however, you may not like what you read here. Just know where my heart is as I say what I say—I want followers of Christ to bring glory to Jesus’ name in every way possible.

Recently I was driving to work, listening to a secular radio program, and the DJs were talking about the role social media plays in what they called “hook-ups and break-ups.” One of the interns there at the radio station had just been broken up with, so the DJs on the program were grilling her with questions about how it happened. They also wanted to know what kinds of things she did online after the break up occurred.

The newly single girl said she immediately went to social media and stalked him. She found a message he had posted, saying he was listening to a certain album all day after their breakup. She proceeded to look up the album and go through all the lyrics to every single song, line by line. Eventually, she found a song with references to heartbreak. What she wanted to know was whether the other DJs thought it meant something. Was he as heartbroken as she was? Everyone on the radio program agreed that it probably meant something, and the ex-boyfriend was mourning the breakup just as much as she was.

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Dating Advice For Men

I talk a lot about dating here on this site, but this time I’d like to take a moment and talk only to the men in relation to dating. Guys: Have face-to-face conversations with women you are interested in.

First, if your idea of asking a girl out is typing a text message to her that says, Hey, wanna hang out sometime this weekend?, you need to rethink your strategy. I have talked to many women who have said they wished that a guy would have enough guts to talk with her face-to-face, have a plan about what he’d like to do during an evening of encouragement, and ask her to join him.

Instead, women commonly get a series of lazy text messages from guys who passively hint at the idea they’d like to hang out, saying “maybe you should join me,” and the ladies are sick of it. Have a plan, have some guts, and talk to the girl eye-to-eye.

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Marriage Is Not The Solution

Singleness and Purity

In her book, Sex and the Single Christian Girl: Fighting for Purity in a Rom-Com World, Marion Jordan Ellis says, “A wedding ring does not make a woman immune to spiritual darkness.” And although we might read a quote like this and nod along with enthusiastic agreement, we still secretly think that marriage is the solution for the “purity problem.”

Yes, the Bible is clear on issues of lust and the need to resist it. It even goes as far to say: But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. (1 Corinthians 7:9)

But this is a calling for a specific problem. I’ve never said to a guy, “You struggled with internet pornography last night? You need to get married today to solve that problem!” 1 Corinthians 7 is addressing a pattern in someone’s life, not individualized solutions for broad-based sin.

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Are You Dating A Life-Taker?

3 Examples of Service In Dating

When we look to culture to tell us how to have a relationship, we get beer commercials, tabloid postings, and reality TV that scream at us, “This is the right way to do it!” And most of the time, we buy it. We pick up a magazine at the grocery store checkout line and see the cover exclaim to us the way to get the most pleasure out of sex, so we purchase it. We religiously watch every episode of The Bachelor and see a man claim to be in love with the final woman contestant who made it to the end, when just yesterday he was making out in a hot tub with the other two finalists he didn’t pick. Celebrity couples marry, and they get divorced…and this feels like the norm. We think that relationships are all about us and what the other person can do for us, but Jesus taught something radically different.

But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:26b-28)

We are called not to be takers in a dating relationship, but givers. Servants who model ourselves after Christ Himself instead of the predominant opinion of modern culture, begging us to fulfill our own needs and desires. Jesus came not to be served but to serve, and this should be our primary goal as we look toward dating. Before sin entered the picture, humanity was designed to give, serve, and love. Jesus lived this out as the perfect example, and the cool thing is we can do that now…even in our modern American approach to dating.

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Faith To Get In The Game

My Article on CMT

Campus Ministry Today picked up an article of mine that I thought you’d enjoy. It’s about the call to get in the game, and it involves softball, my father-in-law, and crazy storms…what’s not to enjoy?

Click on the picture above or this link to read it. Happy Monday!