Posted on

Buying God’s Favor

When I was about 15 years old, I went on a camping trip with my sister, my ex-Step Mom, and her current boyfriend, who later became her husband. (This is a story in and of itself, but I’m not going to go there right now.) It was approaching the end of a summertime trip of seeing most of my extended family in California and I decided to take this camping trip with the aforementioned group of people to a lake in Oregon before the vacation was over.

Now, once we got there, we weren’t really going to rough it in tents or anything like that, because we had a huge pop-up fifth wheel camper in tow, complete with kitchen, shower, and one of those toilets you have to hook up to a giant hose to empty when you exit the campsite (think cousin Eddie from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation). So this was a “camping” trip in the loosest of terms.

When we completed the drive up north and pulled into the campground, the beauty of the area literally took my breath away. There were cedar trees that seemed taller than skyscrapers and the lake was the clearest I had ever seen in my life. There were small fields of clover and wildflowers, populated by deer and birds that literally came up to humans and ate tiny scraps of bread from the hands of children. And the coolest thing of all to me were the hundreds of prairie dogs that skittered through the patches of flowers, dodging tree roots and diving into their subterranean homes.

Posted on

Cat Videos and Gospel Presentations

I’m old enough to remember a time when if you wanted to get someone’s phone number, you had to write it down. Can you imagine that? Writing it down! With a pen on a piece of paper and everything! I know—such archaic times I lived in as a youth.

Nowadays, it’s super simple to get someone’s contact information through various means of digital transfer because of the glorious invention of the smartphone. The smartphone is a product that nearly everyone in America has these days (especially the younger generation), and one of the major benefits of owning a device like this is that you’re able to share information with another person relatively fast. Phone numbers, email addresses, pictures, documents, and videos are all transferable at lightning speed in the palm of your hand. I’m so thankful that I live in a time when ease of use is on par with content quality…unless that content happens to be a three-minute recording of a cat playing the piano. Nobody needs that.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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. 

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.