A Thorough and Biblical Roast of "Christian Dating"

This article articulated many things for me that God has been stirring in my heart for the past few months.  I have been guilty of some of the destructive mindsets he mentions; both toward myself and others.  Props to the author, Brian Kammerzelt of www.critiquebycreating.com.

Read the Article.

It's worth it to read the whole thing, though it's long.  Took me two sittings.

Credit for finding it first goes to this gal.

The Point Of No Return

There is no such thing.

I say this mainly in the context of situations going downhill that you have partial to no control over. Ones that are partly to completely your fault. Ones that you want to fix, but every attempt leads further down the path of separation.

You can never go so far, you can never screw up so much, you can never hurt someone enough to render the situation completely nonredeemable. Oh sure, you say. I know that.

Do you?

Have you prayed for love, wisdom, and hope in this situation? Have you prayed that God would redeem it all? Have you been praying for someone, and then your relationship with them starts to disintegrate?

Don't give up. Pray for brokenness, humility, love, wisdom... and keep going. We often give up on these situations and people and seek to avoid them, we seek to withdraw our efforts when things get bad, when it hurts to face it.

Pray, and face it. It will be the most liberating thing you can do, having your Father break the fear out of you and stepping out in faith and courage to witness, to mend, and to rebuild.

If it gets worse, just remember: the situation is never beyond redemption. It can never be so far gone that God can't repair it. There is no such thing as the point of no return.

A Couple Steps on the Journey

In the past few weeks, I have seen God actively fulfilling two really big things in my heart that have been taught/placed there recently. Namely, the sudden and complete removing of my fear of witnessing at the church retreat and my giving up of romantic desires to Him.

The removing of my fear of witnessing, my fear of alienation from my friends, was definitely some kind of psychological miracle. Normally to conquer a fear you need to have a journey of experiences and lessons to conquer it... I would have had to spend time to disassociate "talking about God to my friends" with "rejection". In worship on that Saturday, though, God just took the fear out of me, as simple as that.

When opportunities to talk about God appear, I still have to make a choice: to talk about Him or not to talk about Him; that won't change. What has changed is my response to that choice. There has been this new courage inside of me that drives me to always talk about Him. God and His Love come up in conversation a lot now because He pervades my whole life. I have been having pretty regular talks with some people about God now, people I would have been too nervous to witness to earlier; mainly people close to me. I've been opening many new doors in conversation with people and have had some pretty meaningful talks; I haven't led anyone all the way to Christ yet (in person) but many "seeds" have been planted. Those closest to me were the ones I feared the most, because they could do the most damage. Now I want to spread the love of God to them more than I want to stay curled in a safe inactive little ball.

The "giving up of romantic desire" has been realized now as "falling in love with God." I didn't stop wanting and desiring romance, but I redirected it at God. There was a Friday night when I was in my prayer spot that I frequent. I was in prayer, praising God, lifting up people, when I realized that I wanted to be in love with God. I wanted to focus my romantic desires on Him. It's a different dynamic, of course, as God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and has the natures of both genders, but I have fallen in love with Him nonetheless. I had loved him with all the other levels of love and that night I reached a new level: the slow dancing, my-heart-is-yours, candlelit dinner level.

I'll admit it seems kind of strange to talk about loving God like that, and it does if you thought that romantic love could only ever be focused on another human being. I'm not saying that I'll never fall in love with a woman now; in fact, I've taken a big step closer to being ready to do so. I'm in romantic love with someone who will never let me down. There will be tough times, and times I will feel lonely, but I know that He is always there and guiding me through obstacles that I can learn from.

But the proof is in the pudding. The Saturday night following that Friday, I attended a formal dance with some friends. I didn't have a date, but it didn't bother me (even before Friday night's beautiful moment). At the dance I was ridiculously happy and having a great time, and I realized why. I had no envy for the other couples. I was one-hundred-percent happy, satisfied, and fulfilled to be there without a date. I didn't want to be in love with anyone there, it didn't bother me at all that I was not having a romantic evening with a human being. All the couples and beautiful women around me just made me more aware of how deeply in love with God I was. I had a constant feeling of deep joy and happiness just flowed out of me. When I'm in that good of a mood, I dance like crazy... there were many eyewitnesses to my ridiculous dancing antics. Dancing to the music turned into a form of worship because I was so happy and so filled with the Spirit. I love dancing. People saw that Spirit-filled-love dance, but I don't think many of them traced the source of my awesome joy and sweet moves.

But I am far from the end of the road (and what a wonderful road it is!). There are always new lessons to be learned, more progress to be made, and God doesn't waste time. Some times we learn by waiting, and sometimes God throws us into the next lesson before we have time to think. Either way, it's wonderful and I love it.

I hope one of three things will happen to you after reading this: If you think I'm crazy and have an overactive imagination coupled with a unstable mind (it's either that or I'm right), you might dismiss me as such so you don't have to think about it. Or you will let the question dwell with you as you ask questions about the implications of a relationship with a God who is Love, who wants to love you and forgive you. If you are a Christian, or have even briefly considered the possibility, I hope you will be encouraged by in God's work in me. If you dedicate time to Him (spending time in the Word and in prayer, optimally every day) and focus on building a relationship with Him, He will do things in your life and in your heart you never dreamed possible. Fulfillment, purpose, passion, joy... God has put these things in me. I'm not perfect, I'm messing up, I'm learning, and I have no doubt that there Christians reading this who have more knowledge than I do. Whoever you are, I pray you'll listen to what God wants to say to you.

Letting Her Go

Monday afternoon I ran into my friend Michelle at lunch. She was on the church retreat mentioned in my last post, and she wanted to hear about my experiences that weekend. Conversation eventually veered to the topic of relationships; both of us had learned lessons in the past from wandering from God's will in that area, and now she is in a relationship with my friend Sam. Both of them are serious Jesus Freaks with huge hearts for God. She began to talk about how God is using their relationship in awesome ways, moving through it in the Spirit, affirming them and growing them.

I, being a very emotionally-based person, have always been in love with the idea of being in love. A few months ago I saw how I let that control me in some ways. While wanting to be in love with an awesome Godly woman is not a bad thing, it can distract from God's plan if I keep focusing on it. I even had a running "short list" of girls I knew who were serious about their faith and whom I connected with personality-wise. Basically, I was trying to do God's planning for Him.

As I heard my friend Michelle talk about how great God was being in her and Sam's relationship and how they were glorifying Him in it, God spoke to my heart. He said, "See, Zach, when you let me take over this part of your life I can do some awesome things. Give this up to me, Zach... let your will and heart conform to mine." As I heard the testimony of my two friends' relationship, God laid a peace upon my heart. I started to give those wants up to Him.

It wasn't an instant inner transformation, like at the retreat; I'm taking steps towards giving it completely up in my heart, that I might want God's plan over my plan. Sure, God's plan may include a woman, but I'm going to want it because it's God's plan, in His timing. Not my timing. That way I will be perfectly content in God's plan even when there is no woman present. I started off by reporting the "aching-romance" thoughts to my internal thought police: they were to be captured on sight and tossed out (a metaphor for taking thoughts captive for God). Wednesday, I gave it up to God again in the mid-week worship service on campus. My good friend Lucas prayed over me as I gave it up again, really affirming and encouraging me.

Breaking Free of Orbit

Every once in a while, when you really need it, God reveals something to your heart. Something that brings you a peace about whatever is bothering you. He provides you with a comfort and a confidence that He's watching out for you and has an awesome, perfect plan for you. In the past three weeks there have been two big ones that God put on me that I'd like to share, because they are definitely awesome witnesses to His provision. This is the first; the second will go up soon in a different post.

The first one harks back to what I wrote about a while ago: how God uses the broken people and their brokenness to glorify Himself in ways we could never imagine. The Spring of last year I had a learning experience (involving a relationship with a girl) that God used to cure my emotional naivety. I believe it was necessary to tame my very large and volatile heart, in a romantic way; to let me learn how to handle my emotions in that context. Then, in the Fall of last year, I had a time of wandering away from God that involved a relationship with girl. That one was different than the first, in that it was completely me making the wrong choice. I finally listened to God and got out of that... He used that experience to motivate me to a new standard of Christianity, to be in the Word every day for a significant portion of time, and to spend lots of time praying too. It was awesome to see God turn that around. I felt like Haley's Comet: I was traveling really fast in the wrong direction, but then the power of God, like the sun's gravity, slung me around to shoot back even faster in the other direction. He took something Satan was doing and made it backfire severely. I praise Him for that so much!

I had one hitch in my heart left from those two past relationships. I had learned that I was to wait again, for the right woman to come along, and then God would bring us together in His way and we would get married. I did that for the last three years of high school, and I finally got it into my head that I was going to be on God's time again. Not the timing of my heart; twice I listened to it and it only, messed up and hurt people and wished I hadn't done them wrong. I'm not condemning listen to your heart as it relates to romantic situations... I just had to learn to wait for the green light from God, when I could fully unleash all the love that's under such high pressure waiting in my heart. God's given me a peace about it, which is good, and wonderful, and helps me to wait for His time.

The hitch was this: that my past experiences might taint me and make me less worthy in the sight of that woman who is going to be perfect for me. I am still a virgin, but it was the emotional side of things that worried me, along with just the fact that I had wandered and had two girlfriends before. I felt flawed, imperfect and unworthy. We all are, I am, but God turns all of that around. I was talking to God and told Him that I thought my past experiences would get in the way, but then He told me (in thoughts and feelings): "Didn't you learn things from those experiences? You learned how to handle your heart, and then you learned how to pace a relationship. With those two lessons, you are now fully equipped for next time. You will use this knowledge to guide your next, ultimate, beautiful romantic relationship with your future wife, and it will be better than it could have been if you did not have those lessons with you. It's more perfect now. I have used Satan's plans against him again." That brought me a complete peace about the situation. I no longer felt unworthy. I felt prepared by and loved by God. Now, I'm just waiting and waiting... contentedly and unhurriedly.