Category Archives: Traps, Cycles and Excuses

How Do You View Sex?

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A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to be in an Old Testament class with a ridiculously brilliant professor.  I mean this guy might be the most knowledgeable guy I’ve ever met.  At one point we were talking about The Law and I decided to ask a fun question, just to stir the pot.

I asked him, “Does the Bible literally say that I can’t have sex outside of marriage?” Without flinching (have you ever noticed professors never flinch) and he said, “No it doesn’t.  But it does say that if you have sex with someone you have to marry them right then.”  We all laughed.

One of the things that is hardest about being single is not having sex.  I love when married people tell me that sexual temptation doesn’t go away when you get married.  I know that’s true but, it’s not the same thing. We have to choose between not satisfying the desire or sin – you have another option.

This is the one thing that the Church is for sure going to tell single people – Don’t have sex. But that is not enough.  And the way we tell people can often set us up to fail.  It’s shouldn’t be about “waiting for marriage“, making the act of sex unholy, twisting bible verses to make them about sex, making the desire for sex bad, or even pretending that somehow I can crush that desire. It’s about understanding what sex is – biblically speaking.

Our culture has separated sex from marriage.  It says the purpose of sex is pleasure and personal enjoyment.  It’s something that we do to make ourselves feel better.  Now there is some truth to this of course, sex does feel good.  God created it to be pleasurable, which is awesome.  But that is not the end result.

This view ultimately makes sex less powerful.  We’ve had it drilled in our heads over and over that it is just a physical act.  And when the Church runs around telling us not to do it, without telling us what TO do, then it just adds to the problem by basically keeping it as a physical act – just one we shouldn’t do.

The message can end up being that It’s just about pleasure and feeling good in marriage (if I get married I get pleasure) but it still sells sex short and could mess up married sex. Worst of all we sometimes paint sex in such a negative light that when people do get married they struggle to enjoy it.

But the Bible talks about sex as much more than a physical act to do or not do.

From the very beginning, right after He creates Adam and Eve, God says that they will leave father and mother and become one flesh.  Jesus echoes this later of course when he is asked about divorce.  He essentially says, “You don’t get it at all.  Marriage is permanent and sex is part of what makes it that way.”

Sex is not just physical.  It is meant to be a spiritual act.  It bonds two people together in very real, one flesh way.  This is why where ever sex is talked about all through scripture it is always either within the context of marriage or the context of sin. There is no in between.  But we can also know for sure that the desire for sex is from God.  We can’t just throw that out or pretend it away, just because we as singles are not in a position to have the desire met.

We are going to desire sex.  A lot actually. Probably even if I’m called to singleness.  In my opinion trying to kill that desire is crazy.  But here’s the thing, I have all sorts of desires.  I don’t get to do them all, I have to submit them to God.

What I can do is not feed it the wrong way.  Paul (while talking about this subject) uses food as and example.  I can’t just eat what I want all the time.  I want a cookie every day, and if I eat that cookie every day, I’ll want it even more the next day.  We are not to be controlled by our desires.

Also, as I mentioned briefly before, if I separate sex from marriage there is way less reason to get married.  As crazy as it sounds, one of the surest ways to stay single is to have sex outside of marriage.  
Our culture is at set up in opposition to the scripture.  This isn’t new of course, its always been so, but now we are inundated with it.  We have to walk with God and we have to own our view of sex.  What is your real view of sex – the one you practice?

Don’t Date Alone

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So the other day I was talking with a friend of mine, just catching up on life.  We ended up talking about when he was dating the woman who he is now married to.  Now my friend got married in his early 30s and he brought up a hilarious conversation he had at the time with one of our mentors.

This mentor pulled my friend aside at a gathering that he had brought this lady to.  He essentially said, “She is a beautiful girl.  You need to marry her.  If you think that someone better than her is going to come along, and be interested in you – you’re wrong – marry her.”  We both laughed.  Our mentor is nothing if not direct – he was also right, and my friend is still happily married years later.

This points to a very important thing that we need to do as singles.  We need to date in community.  

Now I don’t mean that we need to “community date” as it were.  We don’t have to “group date” like we are 16 or something.  But it is so easy to date in a vacuum.  Especially in today’s world of internet dating, long distance dating and frankly living so independently it is easy to date someone without involving others.

Throughout most of history this was not the way it worked.  As I’ve mentioned before most of the time in the past almost all marriages happened through arranged marriages.  Even if not officially, they happened in the context of community and families.  There were always other people involved.  You grew up in a community and then married someone from that community.  It’s just the way it was.

But in today’s world that usually doesn’t happen.  We grow up, leave our community for college, and then go “out on our own”.  Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that but it means that most often we have to intentionally create community – it isn’t just naturally provided.

This can leave us on own when it comes to dating – which is not where we need to be.

We need to involve others in our dating life.  One obvious reason is accountability.  We need people who know what the heck we are doing with the people we are dating or even that I went on a date.  For me there is something helpful about knowing that after a date, someone is going to ask me how it went, and what we did.  If I go on a long distance date, it is great to have someone who will say, “What did you do?” or “Where did you stay?” For example, if you spent the night, who would know?  We need people to know what we are doing.

But secondly, once we move from going on a date or two to “dating” someone seriously, we need people who know us well, to know this other person well. We need people who can tell us what they think and ask us hard questions, not just about how we are behaving so to speak, but about the relationship and where it is going.

People who know us can see not only who this person is but more importantly they can see the effect of this relationship on us as a person.

I always say that I can tell pretty quickly whether I feel good about a friend’s relationship just by how it affects them.  Does it seem to excite them?  Do they seem drawn closer to God or further away?  In other words does it make them better than they were without that person.  Is the relationship good for them?

The truth is that decisions made in a vacuum are dangerous.  But decisions made in community are much more affirming.  If I’m dating someone and my community is behind it – how much more am I sure.  If they aren’t behind it then something is off and one way or another it needs to be addressed – even if my community is wrong.

This can be hard.  Sometimes it might mean having some hard conversations.  We can get lost in it by ourselves.  It’s so easy to date someone longer than we should or for that matter break it off because of something going on inside of us when we should be sticking it out.

We need to involve others.  The best case scenario is I have people that are single and married speaking into my life that I invite to speak into my love life.  For some of us that involves our family but it has to involve our community.

So who knows your dating life?  Who is in that with you?  Would anyone tell you if something was not right?

Stop Looking At Her And Go Talk To Her

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From about 7th grade until I was in my mid 30’s (man I hate admitting this), I had a huge thought that ran through my head when it came to dating.  It was basically, “I can’t get the girl I really like to like me.”  Now granted in 7th grade, no girls (whether I liked them or not) liked me – ha.  But as I went into high school there was always THE girl that I wanted. Kind of adolescent version of THE ONE. If I could somehow be “good enough” then THE girl would like me and my world would be complete.

When I got to college this changed because I just dated people and wasn’t looking for THE ONE.  But after college it came back.  There would be someone that I liked that I couldn’t pursue, or more often that just wasn’t interested in me. There were other people who liked me – but not the “right” people so to speak.  So I wasn’t unlikeable, which I guess was good, but I couldn’t seem to get the girl I was all about.

I’ve had a lot of people tell me similar stories.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  Part of it is we are playing with a narrow field.  I mean you want to date someone you are actually attracted to and get along with, who also loves Jesus and has some sort of similar direction in life.  It’s a smaller target area to a degree than a lot of our culture.  Add to this that as believers we are not looking for the “hook up” (at least hopefully not) and the pressure mounts.

So as guys, what happens is when we finally see someone who seems to fit all the categories, we choke.  We end up thinking about this person way too much and give her this power over us that she should not have – and if we really got to know her that she would not have.  We stop being ourselves and become passive or nice.  Which is why these women are never attracted to us.  We end up thinking too much or strategizing for the right moment, or we become “friends” with them.  All of this makes me want to vomit, mainly because I spent so much time there.

If you are thinking that only the “wrong” women like you, then you are the problem.  

You are acting differently around the people you really like. The women you don’t like are attracted to you because around them, you are yourself.  You lead, and stand up for stuff. Women like that.  But when you get around someone you really like you can’t do it.

If you don’t change this, you will never get married because you probably won’t marry someone you are not attracted to and excited about, and you won’t be able to get the women who you are attracted to.

You have to get out of your head.  If you are having pretend conversations or thoughts about a person, you are done.  It’s over.  It’s not going to happen and certainly not the way you are pretending it will.  Worst of all, she is not the person you have made up in your head.  It’s not real.  Stop it.  Seriously.  Ask God to kill the pretend.

We build up the woman we like into something not real. But she’s an actual person who -as awesome as she is – sweats, bleeds and even poops just like you.  So stop being scared.  Look, if you think she is not going to be interested in you, she won’t be.

Stop looking at her and start talking to her.

You have to act.  The longer you delay, strategize, etc, the deeper hole you are digging for yourself.  My opinion is that you have only a one to one look at/talk to ratio.  In other words once you’ve made eye contact you have to act – ideally in about 30 seconds.  If you don’t, you send one of two messages – 1. you are not interested in meeting her or 2. you are scared of her – and worse, you’re now deeper in your own head.

Even if all you do is introduce yourself that’s great – in fact typically that’s better.  We are going to get into some technique stuff later, not so that we can all be Casanova but because no one in the church is helping us guys figure this out (I promise this is coming soon).  But the number one way to kill the pretend and/or stop being afraid of her, is to talk to her.  I promise, she’s a real person – who could actually like you.

So can you get the one you like to like you?  What goes through your head when you are attracted to someone?

Don’t Live Life Alone

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When I was in 7th grade my family moved from a suburb to a small town. Making new friends can be tough – especially as I was a pretty awkward middle schooler (hard to believe I know).  But I had two big things going for me.  1. My family was moving with me – we might be in a new house but the same five people were there every day, and 2. I had to sit in class for eight hours a day with all these new people.  In other words I had forced community.

After high school, I went to college.  Again, there was forced community.  I played football so I met 80 people before class even started.  I had a suite full of 8 other people that I was forced to share space with.  Many of these people became my friends.

What’s interesting is that when you are younger, whenever you take the next step, while it might be hard to leave some people, there’s a whole new group of people waiting.  You are almost forced to make friends.

Even as most of us start out in our early 20’s community is relatively easy.  Everyone is in the same boat.  For the first few years out of college, I always had roommates my age, people that were in the same place in life.

But as you get older and remain single, this becomes harder.  Every time you move, you start all over.  This became really apparent to me when I moved to St. Louis. If you are married and you move it can be tough, but you still have each other.  You wake up with the same friend every day.  As a single, you don’t have that.

In our culture, the older you get, the more you are alone.

Some people would say we choose this and there is some truth to that.  But if you think about it some of it is just reality.  We don’t have as many jobs where you work in large group anymore.  People also switch jobs more often and don’t even stay with the same company for 5 years let alone 20.

As a single person it is really easy to become more and more isolated.  Our peers are getting married and our roommates keep getting younger and younger.  Know what I’m saying?  I had a time where I was the only one in the office.  I went to work alone, I did ministry alone, I went to Church alone and I went home alone.  I remember one time my boss was saying we needed to make sure we had times of solitude.  I thought – yeah I’ve got that covered.

This is a dangerous situation for us as singles.

First of all it can lead to more time in our own head or what I call The Pretend.  I’ve written about this previously but it’s not good.  It can lead to us being disengaged and isolated. This, in turn, can make our interaction with others less full even when we are with people. All this is bad, not to mention it can decrease our ability to engage the opposite sex.  In fact as we have less and less engagement with the opposite sex, our ability to pursue a marriage relationship takes a beating. Finally, it also leads to more selfishness.  I can just do what I want, when I want.

We have to fight this.  There are no perfect answers but I want to give just a few practical ones.

  • Fight for community.  You can’t just hope it happens.  They don’t have to be like you or even your age.  Do what it takes, you have to do this.
  • Have a roommate or several.  I know, I know, you’re thirty something and the only option is a 25 year old – I say do it anyway.  It’s better than the alternative.  Take someone in who you mentor.  Buy a house and rent out a room.  Don’t go home alone.
  • Don’t lose your friends because they get married.  Your friends should be your friends no matter what.  I get that it might look different but if you are only going to have single friends you are in trouble.
  • Serve.  Even if it is in a small way this is one of the main places where community happens – around a common mission.
  • Listen to sermons and talk radio now and then – not just music.  Trust me on this – it makes you engage and helps keep you out of the pretend

Finally, as “Churchy” as this sounds, you have to engage God.  Learn to talk with God.  If we could take half the time we spent in our own heads and pray we would be changed forever.

So how do you keep from being isolated?  How do keep from being all alone?

Is There “The One”?

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If you’ve been single long, you’ve had this conversation about why you are single, and someone says these words, “Well I guess you just haven’t met THE ONE yet, but it’ll happen”.  Now if you are younger you might say this yourself, but usually the older you get the less you say it because you realize, 1. it might not happen – after all it hasn’t yet, and 2. there is not just one.

You read that right.  I’m declaring it right now, right here.  There is not THE ONE, at least not in the way we usually talk about.

Now I can hear some married people disagreeing with me (mostly women – no offense just being realistic) but I don’t think there is any biblical, empirical or any other ‘cal evidence that backs this up.

You could maybe, and I mean maybe, make the case before the fall that there was just one.  But even that is shaky.  Marriage is pre-sin, but I think THE ONE is a post sin way of coping.  What about when someone marries someone and then they die, and they remarry – did God have two “the one’s” for them?  This idea that God has chosen just one for us sounds very romantic, or very Oprah, but I don’t think we are promised it any where. Which I think is actually good news and good for us – which might be why God set it up that way.

THE ONE is killing us out there.

For starters, let’s realize what most of us mean when we say this is – the one who is everything I want, the perfect one, (or more religious sounding – the perfect one for me). This is not marriage or realistic.  Getting married is not about finding someone who meets all of my needs or fulfills me. That’s romanticism at it’s best and consumerism at it’s worst.

This stuff can lead us, sometimes for years, to think that if I can just meet THE ONE then everything will be alright.  No it won’t! Because even if you could, THE ONE gets old, or sick, or hurt, or is mean to you, or veers away from God, or breaks your heart, or lets you down.

When it comes to finding fulfillment there is only one THE ONE and that is Jesus.  I know it sounds cheesy but it is essential we keep this in mind.  If we get this wrong everything will be messed up.

If we don’t get ahold of this we will be continuing to make marriage and THE ONE an idol.  

But there are even more side problems, including but not limited to:

  • Getting married, being let down and being able to declare, “Oh I must have gotten this wrong.  There must be a different ONE for me.”
  • Searching for a person that we are 100% attracted to all the time.
  • Thinking I’ve found THE ONE and then messing it all up because of the weight I put on the relationship or living in fear of losing THE ONE – which leads to all sorts of mistakes.
  • Putting huge pressure on every dating relationship because I have to figure out if they are THE ONE. This is a crushing pressure that almost no one can stand under.  And for free – if they can, something is off – everyone messes up – everyone.
  • Waiting for God to bring me THE ONE instead of engaging others and getting to know people.
  • Thinking someone that got away is THE ONE and spending all my time and thoughts figuring out how to make something work that is long over.

I want to be clear that I’m not saying that we should just go marry whoever.  Not at all.  I’m also not saying that God doesn’t bring you someone.  He brings people into our lives all the time (and not just romantically). We need to choose wisely and with the Spirit because even though there is not THE ONE we will hopefully only do this one time.

So here are some practical helps.  Maybe start by fighting the idol of THE ONE.  Jesus is the only person who can fulfill us.  Next, when dating people maybe instead of asking God if this is THE ONE ask questions like, “Do you want me to marry THIS person?”  If I’m not dating, maybe ask God, “send me someone You’d like me to marry” instead of, “Send me THE ONE.”

Finally, don’t ask, “Is this person THE ONE for me?” but instead ask these big questions:

1. Am I good for this person?  Are they good for me?  Are we good together? and if yes, 2. Do I want to covenant to love and care for this person the rest of my life, no matter what?

Once you answer yes to those – you will have THE ONE.

Why Do You Want A Spouse

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One of the simplest stories in the Bible happens in Mark 10.  Jesus is leaving Jericho and there is a large crowd with Him.  I’m sure it was a crazy scene, with people all around wanting his attention.  But from the street, Bartimaeus the blind man cries out to Jesus.  At first the crowd dismisses him but he cries out all the louder.  Jesus stops and says bring him here.  Then He asks him the big question, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus says, “Lord I want to see.”  Jesus heals him, everyone celebrates and Bartimaeus follows Him down the road.

I love this story for a lot of reasons but I think the main reason is Jesus’ question.  I think about how at different times I’ve cried out to Jesus and I wonder what it would be like if He stood in front of me and said, “What do you want me to do for you?”

I’ve thought about this question and I’ve asked a whole lot of other people to think about it. What would my answer be?  Would I take the easy route, and toss out world peace or something like that for the answer – I mean I could say that but I wouldn’t mean it and Jesus would know.

What’s interesting is while we all know this story, if you go back a couple of paragraphs, Jesus asks the same question to James and John – yeah I’d never noticed it either.  Their answer is way more honest than mine would probably be.

What do you want?  It’s such a huge question.  For a long time (like 15 years long time) I think I would have answered, “Jesus I want a wife”.  But I would have been wrong.  I mean I did (and do) want a wife, but that isn’t what I was really seeking.  You see whatever your answer is to that question, you have to ask one more – why do you want that?

In other words “Why do you want a spouse?” That’s a question worth asking.

What we want, really I think, is the answer to our core question which is, “Am I loved?” This is asked all sorts of different ways.  Am I valuable? Am I good enough? Do I matter? Do I have what it takes? Am I beautiful? Do your eyes light up when I come in the room? Am I accepted?

We want to know that we are loved – not just know it in our head, but in our heart.

The first place we get that question answered in our lives is our parents.  But somewhere along the line, we start to seek the answer from the opposite sex, and while this is a bad idea if you are married, it can kill you as a single person, because the answer is always no. Do I have what it takes? Apparently not.  No one’s eyes light up for me.  Am I good enough (insert pretty enough, successful enough, thin enough, any other enough).  I guess not because I’m still here by myself.

Or maybe worse, I can be single and keep needing this question answered again and again by yet another new person.  One person seems to answer it but then it runs dry.  I break up and someone else seems to answer it for a while and then I repeat the cycle.

One of the traps of singleness is the thought that if I finally get the right person (who of course will be perfect and perfectly answer this question – no pressure though), then I will know I’m loved.  This can happen whether I never have a date or I’m constantly dating.

But here’s the good and bad news – Marriage doesn’t answer that question.  

Marriage does answer two big questions -“Will I get married?” and “Who will I spend the rest of my life with?” But it does not answer “Am I loved”, not at the core. Only Jesus can answer it and we have to take the question to Him not a spouse, or anyone else. Married people know this (at least hopefully) but if we can get this as a single person we have a huge leg up.

First, it means I can be a complete person in Christ as a single person – I don’t HAVE to get married.  Second, If we know this truth, we are automatically more attractive.  A loved person is hot!  Seriously!  Finally, if we do indeed get married, we will be able to love the other person way better.  Really, you can only love another person if you first know you are loved.  And if we get married that’s the whole point.

So, it’s you and Jesus in the road.  What do you want?  Why do you want it?

Do You Want To Get Married? Really?!

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One of my favorite scriptures is the story in John 5 of the man at the pool.  So here’s the story in a nutshell.  There was a pool near the sheep gate in Jerusalem where many disabled people went.  They were there because they believed that when the water was stirred, that the first person in would be healed.  Now there was a man (an invalid) who had been there 38 years.  Then Jesus shows up and learned his story.  Jesus then asks the man, “Do you want to get well?”

Now this seems like a very odd question.  I mean here is a guy who has been sitting by this pool (where people come hoping to get well) for 38 years.  I mean obviously he wants to get well right?  But maybe Jesus is on to something here.  Jesus realizes that maybe this guy has become comfortable. Maybe, even though originally he wanted to walk, now he had lived this particular way for a long, long time.  Walking would change everything in this man’s life.  Everything.  Jesus wants to make sure, “Do you still want that?”

The man’s response is classic.  Here is Jesus with all the ability to help him and he says essentially, “Hey yeah – I need to get into the water – could you help me do that?”  In other words, “Hey Jesus, help me heal my way”  He had become focussed on getting in the water, even to the point of missing out on being healed.  The means had become the end.

This has so many implications there’s not possibly room here to discuss them all.  

We are all wounded and we are all seeking to get well.  Most of all we all have things that we think will heal us, and often we end up asking for those instead of healing in any form Jesus wants.

One of the big traps we as singles can fall into is the idea that if I get married it will heal me (make life ok, fix my sexual problems, solve my loneliness, bring me happiness, fill my heart, etc).  I know for me there have been plenty of times where I feel like if Jesus would have asked me, “Do you want to get well?” I might as well have answered, “Yes, I want to get married.”  But marriage is not the answer to any of those type of questions. The questions that marriage answers are “Who will I marry?” or “Will I get married?” It doesn’t answer the big questions.  Only God can really do that.  And if I’m looking for marriage to do that I will screw up my search for someone to marry and/or I will have a really hard marriage.

However, as you stay single longer, there is another very real question here.  “Do you want to get married?”  You might say, “Jesus, seriously, I’ve been trying to do that for 20 years.  I mean I’ve been on good dates, bad dates, blind dates.  I’ve been on every dating site and been set up by everyone in my life.”  To which I think Jesus would still be smart to ask, “Yeah but do you want to get married?”

It’s a fair question.  After all if you are in your 30s or older, you’ve lived a certain way a long time, and marriage, changes everything.  The question is “Do you still want that?”  or maybe a better way of asking it, “Do you want that change now?”

I think it is extremely important that we ask this question because the answer changes things.

If your answer is no, you need to ask why.  There are some bad reasons.  For example, are you just being selfish or are you just really scared that after living a certain way that you won’t be able to do it.  It is legitimately scary, but that’s not a reason to say no.  But if the answer is no and you feel like Jesus agrees with that answer (it might be good to ask Jesus, “Do you want me to get married?”) then you’re going to need a new approach.  For one, quit dating.

But if the answer is yes, then you might need to change your approach as well.  You are going to need to be prepared for the fact that Jesus might actually give you what you want, in a way that you didn’t think of.  You need to be able to say, “Jesus I do and I will do it however, and with whoever you want me too.”

So, first, do you want to get well?  What is the “pool” you are counting on?  Is it marriage? Second question, “Do you want to get married?” And are you willing to do that any way Jesus wants?

Mourn The Losses Of Singleness

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So when I was single in my early 20s I just figured that I would meet someone in the next couple of years.  Then as I moved to my later 20s I still kind of thought, “Hey this will happen soon enough.”  When I was in my early 30s, it was time to hurry this thing up a little. HAHA.  But in my late 30s several interesting things have happened.  First, I realized for the first time, “This thing might not happen at all.”  That was fun.  During this same time (about age 35 or so) God really walked me through some hard stuff and at the end, I’ve ended up being a lot more comfortable with who I am and being single which has been great.

One of the other things I’ve realized is that no matter what happens there is some stuff that won’t happen.

If I get married, my wife and I will not get to start out life together.  Yes I know we will start a new life together, sort of – but thats not the same thing.  I will not enjoy the wife of my youth – because I won’t be in my youth.  I won’t get to share any of the moments of victory or defeat that I’ve had over the last 20 years of ministry.

I probably won’t have kids and if I do it will be different.  I was joking with a friend on the golf course today who asked if I still wanted kids.  I said, “Maybe, but I’m 40 this fall and let’s say I get married in the next year and had a kid within a year.  I’m 42 and changing diapers.  Then I’m 50 or so when they are really ready to play catch.  When they are a teenager I’m in my late 50s.”  I still remember the first time, the summer before my sophomore year, that I beat my dad one on one in hoops.  My kid might beat me at 12.

About a year ago, I started thinking about this stuff.  And you know what it kind of hurts. Now it’s all redeemable.  In fact God has redeemed so much of my story already.  For example after working with teenagers for a long time, I’m a father figure to a pretty large amount of people.  That’s awesome and means the world to me. I love those guys. But it’s not the same thing.

We all (single, married or other wise) face loss.

We need to mourn those losses appropriately.  It’s part of being emotionally healthy.  If we deny the losses then we aren’t living in reality, we are staying in the pretend.  That is not where we want to be.

This might be obvious when we have a big physical loss, like a death of a friend or family member.  But is the less obvious stuff that creeps up on us.  Loss can come from sin (like the loss of our virginity), it can come from wounds from our childhood, or from friends. Even just the common stuff in life, things like the loss of our dreams, our youth, a business loss.

Peter Scazzero points out that typically we insulate ourselves from the hurt through things like denial (It doesn’t bother me I’m not married yet), minimizing (It’s no big deal if I don’t get to be a mom), along with rationalizing, blaming, intellectualizing, and distracting (make a joke, change the subject).

But God invites us to more.  

He invites us to enter into loss with HIm. This doesn’t mean dwell on it.  This doesn’t mean make it bigger than it is.  My cat dying and a friend dying should elicit a different amount of mourning.  By the way over reaction to a minor loss is usually a sign that there is a bigger loss that hasn’t been grieved.

God isn’t asking us to deal with it so that we can stay there, but rather so that we can move through to freedom.  There’s not space in a blog post to go into all of the process of this but here are two key things.  First we have to take it to God.  We need to take our hurt and loss to the feet of Jesus and ask Him to heal us.  Jesus is fully capable of healing any loss – He came to heal the brokenhearted and put things right.  Secondly, it will go a lot better if you have other people you can trust in the mix.  We need people who walk with us in community.

Whatever we do we need to face our losses and honestly admit it hurts.  It’s hard but freedom is worth it – whether we stay single or get married, it will help us grow.

What losses have you grieved?  What losses are you avoiding dealing with?

Are You Afraid Of Choosing Wrong

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When I was a little kid I loved when my parents would take me to the toy store.  The huge toy store that I remember was called Children’s Palace.  It was AWESOME!  I mean it had every toy.  I could spend all day in the Star Wars and G.I. Joe aisles.  There were endless action figures and vehicles.  Now the vehicles were usually for the birthday or Christmas lists but most times we went, I got to pick out one, and only one, action figure.

When I got just a little older the stakes were as I was there to pick one to spend my own allowance money on.  While on the one hand this was cool, it was also kind of stressful. There were a lot of figures and I had to choose one, just one.  Usually I would narrow it down to two or three and I would spend a lot of time (or at least what seemed to be a lot of time) trying to decide.  I’d look at them both, considering all sorts of things about them. And finally I’d pick one.  Sometimes it was the best.  Other times I had little kid buyer’s remorse and thought, “I should have gotten the other guy”.  There is a lot great about this – it’s great parenting actually – you can’t have it all, you have to pick, but you get to.

As intense as it was, that was a toy.  Now choose someone to marry.  Yikes.  

And here in lies two of the things in our culture that has created more singles than ever before. The first is that we have more choices than ever before.  We get to choose if we marry, who we marry, and when we marry.  What’s crazy of course, is that until about 150 years ago, almost no one ever had one, let alone all three, of those choices.

I was talking to my dad about the breakdown of the family in America.  I asked him why he thought that happened?  He said, “I have a theory on that” (not surprising knowing my dad).  He went on,  “100 years ago you lived in rural America and you were 18 and you met a decent girl – You married that girl because you might not meet another one.”  As funny as it is, he’s exactly right.  But then there were big cities, cars, planes, and now the internet.  The choices are endless.

And then you add to that an extreme fear of buyers remorse.  My generation and younger are scared crapless of getting it wrong.  Half of our parents are divorced, some more than once.  In the Church we’ve been told how hard marriage is and how it has all these standards.  We don’t want to choose wrong.  We have friends who marriages are brutal or who are divorced already. People are scared.

We know intellectually that there is no perfect scenario but the fear can drive us to not marry.  It leads to all sorts of things I want to touch on more later.  Things like: serial dating, fear of commitment, looking for the perfect person, consumer dating (what can they do for me), cohabitation (I’ll live with you but I’m scared to marry you), looking for faults with everyone and much more.  All of these things get in the way of marriage and can lead us to stay single even when God has not called us there.

But guess what, we probably aren’t going back to arranged marriages, although I know some people who will do it for you, so that means you are going to have to choose.  And there’s a lot good about that.  It gives us some ownership in the process and it makes us responsible.  And at the end of the day when we are married we are responsible for that.

We are going to have to choose.  How will you do that?  

Look for a blog about that soon, but here are some things to consider.  Maybe we could use some help.  Number one we need to walk with God and ask Him a lot of questions. And, we need community.  I don’t think I could write enough blogs about that.  We need people in our life who know us and who can be in this stuff with us, people who would say, “I’m worried about this one and here’s why,” or, “quit being an idiot and marry this person already.”

Finally we need to face this fear and ask if it is one of the things keeping us single when we don’t feel called to be.  We need to ask what we are really afraid of and ask God to help us fight through.  Choosing wisely makes total sense – that is from God.  Being paralyzed by fear – that is not from God.

Unequally Yoked – What Does That Even Mean?

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One of the phrases we tell Christian single people all the time is to not be unequally yoked. But I think sometimes we take this to mean things that it doesn’t.  If we get this wrong it can lead to a lot of traps both as the person who is “further along” and as the person who is “not quite there” so to speak.

Now this saying comes straight from scripture.  Paul is writing to the Corinthian believers (2nd Cor. 6) who lived in an extremely pagan society.  They were a mess themselves and obviously still working out what it meant to be a believer in such a setting (kind of like us actually).  Paul is talking to them about being holy and set apart in lifestyle, thought, and deed.  He knew it would be easy for them to combine (yoke) pagan ways with their new found faith, and therefore fall away from true holiness.  So he says to them, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?”

Now you’ll notice of course that Paul did not say, don’t talk to, don’t love, or don’t have contact with unbelievers.  That would be impossible and it wouldn’t advance the kingdom. He is saying we shouldn’t be tied to or partnering in their ways with them.  We are set apart and we need to live that way, not taking on pagan ways.

It’s important to note that this particular scripture was not really talking about marriage. However, there is no way to pretend that this idea does not apply to the main partnership that many of us will have.  Paul says this in 1 Cor. 7 when he says that an unmarried is free to marry but it must be to someone who is in the Lord.

But here is where this gets tricky as a single person trying to navigate dating and the search for a spouse.  We can take unequally yoked to a whole other level.  We can take it to mean that we must be in the “Same Place Spiritually”.  In other words, at the same maturity level etc.  Here’s the problem – What the heck does that even mean?

First of all no two people are in the exact same place in their journey with the Lord. Everyone has a different story, different gifts, strengths and weaknesses and so on.  You are not going to find someone exactly equal to you.  Secondly, people have ups and downs in their journey.  Part of the advantage of having a partnership (marriage or even community) is that you can take turns helping each other when one is down and the other is up.  Finally, our view of ourselves comes into play here.  If I have too much self righteousness going on, I can unfairly judge another’s walk as inferior to mine.  Or if I view myself as bad or not very mature – guess who I will end up dating based on that (future blog on this).  The point is the idea Paul is talking about is not that I need to find someone exactly where I am at – because I’m not going to.

So what is Paul saying?  Really he is saying at it’s simplest form that we need to date (and therefore marry) people who are believers.  I’ll go out on a limb here and take this a step further.  It think it is about direction.  If you are going to make it in marriage, you need to be aiming for the same thing.  In order to be in it together you have to be going the same direction and hopefully pushing each other there.  You need to be good for each other’s walk with Jesus.

Our first call is to follow Jesus, period.  We need to date people that are serious about that call.  If we don’t we are setting ourselves up to be forever single (by the way some of us keep choosing people we know we can’t marry on purpose – even it is subconsciously) or worse, for a really tough marriage.

When you think of being equally yoked, what comes to mind first?  Do you date only people who are good for your walk with Jesus?