Dear Christian, I will go trigger-happy on that ‘like’ button if you change your relationship status to ‘engaged’ or ‘married’ on Facebook. However I won’t touch that button if you change it to ‘in a relationship’. Here’s why:
We are called as Christians to honour marriage: Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral (Hebrews 13:4). In the last decade the church has been vigorously defending the institution of marriage. However, the institution of marriage (more…)
Most of us Christian women hopefully don’t get up on a Sunday morning and say to ourselves, ‘How can I look sexy, hot and seductive for church?’ We want to honour God through the way we dress (Romans 12, 1 Cor 6:19-20, 1 Tim 2:9). We don’t want to cause our brothers to stumble (Romans 14:21,15:1-7). (more…)
As Christians in a courtship, we want to avoid hurting one another and dishonoring Christ by “defrauding” (see NASB translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:6) our brothers and sisters in Christ by implying — through word or action — a higher level of commitment to that person than we have made before God. (more…)
One of the big questions hovering around the topic of courtship and dating is the role of friendship. How intimate of a friendship with someone of the opposite sex is OK? How do I move from friendship to dating? Won’t the friendship be ruined if one of us expresses romantic interest and the other doesn’t respond favorably? (more…)
If you’re reading this, you’re interested in courtship/dating. You’ve done it, you’re doing it, you’d like to do it, or you need to teach somebody else how to do it. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. In our society, dating has become something of an obsession. It is expected to be a universal phenomenon. It’s just something you do if you’re single and of age (and that age is quickly dropping) in America. (more…)
Have you ever thought about the belief system that underpins our girlfriend/boyfriend culture? There are many different ways people define and “do” boyfriend/girlfriend relationships but there seem to be at least 2 common beliefs that characterise what most women would mean if they said they had a boyfriend: (more…)
How important do you think chemistry is when it comes to choosing a marriage partner? What about emotional intimacy? Do we need to get deeply attached to a person before we can know if we should marry them? How can we know, before getting engaged, if we’re capable of experiencing great emotional intimacy in marriage (more…)