This weekend my husband (who is a high school pastor) preached part two of a series called, “God Calls It Love.” It is four part series to train our students to think and re-think guy-girl relationships and if they are living them out according to God’s Word.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Young people are always looking in their Bible for the words “dating” or “courtship” but neither of them are actually in there.  Sadly, many of them conclude that God must be silent on the topic of guy-girl relationships then, but He is not!  His Word is useful for teaching us to do every good thing.  A relationship that will lead to marriage is one of the “every good works” that His Word equips us to do.

People say that “dating” is how the world does relationships, “courting” is what Christians like to call it, but really it doesn’t matter what you call it.  God calls it love.  And the Bible has a lot to say about loving others!  Some of the most clarifying wisdom from this series is God’s 3-step plan for guy-girl relationships straight from Ephesians 5:31.

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

1) Leave parents, to be here you are not dependent on them for your life.  Even many college students think they have left their father and mother because they don’t live at home, but they are still entirely funded by their parents.

2)  Be joined to your husband or wife, be married.

3)  Grow together in marriage as one flesh.

When I hear a 16-year-old high school girl telling me she is going to date a guy it makes me ask, “Are you really in a place to think about marrying this person?”  Based on this plan in Ephesians, a high school student is on step zero.  They are in no place to be thinking about being independently married and are not even able to be providing for a new family of their own.

At this point young people need to make sure that they are putting a lot of thought and prayer into any dating relationship they enter.  Bobby encouraged them to take it first to the Lord, second to their parents and/or an older spiritual mentor before they ever acted on their feelings.  The point of dating is to be married, so a single person who desires to be married should prepare for the role of their life as husband or wife.

I hope you will listen to Part 1–Getting to the Heart of the Dating Confusion and Part 2–Keeping the Priority of Your First Relationship.

If you are married, this message will be beneficial because we all have single friends or family that we could use to share with about this.  And if you are a parent, especially if your children are dating or at the age where they are wanting to date, this will bring some helpful points to light.  No matter who you are, this series will give you wisdom from God’s Word about about guy/girl relationships.