Finding faith filled love that lasts a lifetime | What your best friend may not tell you

Love is God’s ultimate and most life-fulfilling gift to us. It brings us gratitude, hope, joy and meaning.

His love for us is also our pattern for loving each other, and especially for loving our spouse or future spouse. But we can’t even come close to this kind of love with our own strength.

This kind of love is only possible when we also have faith in God and trust Him with our choices, our relationships and our lives.

We all want love and friendship in our lives. And for most of us, a life-long marriage in which both partners are fully committed to loving each other for the long haul, is one of our greatest desires and hopes.

But finding the love of your life and growing a meaningful and intimate relationship won’t happen by chance.

The good news and the bad news about Christian dating

For Christians, finding a partner with the right chemistry, compatibility and shared faith in God, is in some ways easier, because the shared faith part does a lot to narrow the field.

But in other ways it’s more challenging. Partly, because the stakes are higher.

For non-Christians a failed marriage can be devastating, but they can come back from it, and marry again. It’s true that divorced Christians also remarry, but the cost to their faith-held beliefs can be much higher.

So there’s a stronger sense of needing to get it right the first time.

TL;DR - How to find your Christian partner for life

First remind yourself that God loves you unconditionally, and that He has a plan for your life.

Then pray about it. Ask God to provide the man or woman He wants you to be with for the rest of your life on earth. And ask Him to prepare you for your future mate.

Keep praying, every day.

And trust Him. Jesus has told us that God the Father will give good things to us when we ask.

How to Let God Prepare You

Pray everyday. In praying, you open your heart to Him, and that makes it easier to understand His directions for your life.

Pray

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He shall direct your paths.” Proverbs 3:5

Ask Him what you need to do now to prepare, in your spiritual life, in your schooling, your work, your finances and your living situation.

Read your Bible

Study and meditate on the written Word of God. Let it remind you of the foundations of your faith so you’ll better understand what you share or don’t share with the person you date.

Get counsel

Listen to your spiritual mentors and brothers and sisters in Christ. We were never meant to live out our Christian lives alone. The church we belong to is the body of Jesus Christ on earth. It’s a critical part of our faith journey.

You don’t have to wait until you're ready to get married to get counseling from your spiritual leaders. The earlier you start, the more opportunities you give God to help you get it right.

Be patient

Wait for God’s timing. Maybe you just really want to get married right away, and you’ve found someone who also wants to marry you.

But if you make it happen without listening to and waiting for God, if you don’t have confirmation from the word and from your spiritual mentors, then it’s your plan and not God’s plan.

God has a plan for you!

Dating as a Christian

What is dating?

Dating is all about getting to know someone you’re attracted to, having fun together, enjoying each other’s company and sharing experiences.

Depending on how it goes, the first date may be the only date. Or, one date may lead to more dates, which eventually may lead to an exclusive relationship and even marriage.

Is it okay to date as a Christian?

Of course. But understand your purpose for dating. And understand and respect your boundaries.

The guy-gal dynamic is a powerful mix. Enjoying each other’s company can easily lead to emotional attachment and unplanned physical enjoyment of each other.

As a Christian, you want to find out if your date is a good match for you, before you form strong emotional and physical bonds.

If you meet through a Christian dating site, such as ChristianCafe you can screen your future dates for shared Christian values and commitment before you even meet.

Do non-Christian dating norms influence you?

For non-Christians, dating may be an end to itself. And for many, the natural progression of dating leads to sharing sexual intimacy, which may or may not lead to long-term relationships.

Today’s hookup culture may also influence Christians who date. There’s a strong tempatation to fall in love with someone you’re attracted to and even to cross boundaries into sexual intimacy before marriage.

This is not God's will for you.

Falling in love, falling in marriage?

The right mix of sexual attraction, compatibility of personalities and emotional receptiveness easily leads to falling in love, a nearly irresistible feeling that you can’t live without the other.

For many men and women that’s reason enough to marry, but being in love rarely lasts, and is not enough to ensure that real love develops or to keep a marriage healthy for a lifetime.

The Christian take

Christians looking for faith-based love that will last for a lifetime need to approach dating more carefully.

That means not looking for a mate first, then asking for God’s blessing after you've decided on him or her. Instead, it means seeking God first, and trusting Him to add everything else that you need in your life.

Christian priorities

As Christians, Jesus spelled out pretty clearly what our priorities must be. First to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And, second, to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

None of us are perfect in loving God or other people, but the more we learn to love, the easier it becomes to put God first in every situation, including dating.

Compatible personalities, chemistry and even physical attraction will still play a role in Christian dating. After all, God didn’t make a mistake in the way He created us to be men and women.

The critical difference for Christian dating is that when we recognize them we need to give those feelings of compatibility, chemistry, attraction and neediness to God, and ask for His direction, before we just run with them on our own.

Because God knows each of us like we don’t even know ourselves, and He has a plan for each of our lives.

The temptation

You might be tempted to test your compatibility with someone as soon as you feel an attraction to them. But that would be playing with fire.

Why would you intentionally put yourself at risk of “falling in love” with a potential partner before you even know if you share a foundation of life values and faith with him or her, or that they are as committed to putting God first as you are?

So what should we do?

God wants us to use our minds as well as our hearts. That means asking honest questions up front about your date’s spiritual and life priorities. Before investing your heart in a new relationship.

It also means staying in prayer on your own. And praying with and asking for honest counsel from your spiritual mentors and other brothers and sisters in Christ. At each step of a new dating relationship that could lead to marriage.

Recognizing God’s answers to your prayers

You’ve been asking God to help you find a lifelong love match that is rooted in a shared Christian faith. And now you’re dating someone you think might be the one God has for you.

But how will you know when your choice is also God’s choice for you?

You might just have a strong feeling that this is God’s will for you. That’s great, but that shouldn’t be the final word. It’s just the first ingredient.

Here’s the full recipe:

God gave you a conscience for a reason. If you’re unsettled or something is nagging at you inside, that’s a clue that God still has work to do.

You have peace in your heart

You want God’s will more than your own

This is a big one. When you’re in love, your feelings want to be in charge. You don’t think you can live without the other. You’re even willing to ignore possible red flags. It’s more about your will than God’s will.

If you can give these feelings to God and be willing to accept no for an answer if that’s God’s will, then you’re in the right place.

This understanding usually comes with waiting on God. It may also mean taking a closer look at those possible red flags.

The answer you’re waiting for only comes in God’s timing.

You’re in agreement about your spiritual priorities

For a healthy Christian marriage it’s essential to share the same foundation in faith. Don’t expect to be able to “fix” disagreements after you’re married over beliefs that you hold dear.

Understand that your potential mate may tell you what you want to hear when you talk about your beliefs and your commitment to God’s will in your life. Or they may idealize their faith as something a lot shinier than the way they actually live their lives.

To really understand how their faith influences their lives takes time, as you get to know them and see how they handle life’s challenges. No one is perfect, but you need to understand where their heart is. It may also be helpful to talk to and get to know the people closest to them.

You’re together with your life priorities

There’s room for many disagreements in a marriage. But some, like whether to have children, or living with an addiction, or being financially responsible can become deal-breakers.

Your spiritual family blessing

When your doctor says you have a life-threatening condition, it’s always a good idea to get a second opinion.

By comparison, consider the potential consequences of committing your whole being to another person for the rest of your life. That’s about as serious as it gets.

Your pastor, elder, spiritual mentors or other brothers and sisters in Christ are your best sounding boards and counselors. They also pray to and listen to God. And God also speaks through them. They may very well be your best second opinion.

When all of these considerations line up, then you can be confident that you have God’s answer for finding your mate. And with it, the promise of a successful marriage that He will bless as you continue in faith.

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