QUESTION BOX #2

We continue to just get great questions each week in our Question Box. In case you missed the announcements, here's our gameplan on answering your questions:

1) We will feature a fun video to "answer" a question at the beginning of each week's service.
2)I will post a weekly blog post here answering some of the more serious questions.
3) We will add a week to the end of our series to wrap up and field some of the key questions from the Question Box.

Now for this week's topic...

Last week we answered what continues to be the most common theme of questions. This week I will attempt to answer the second most common: RELATIONSHIPS!

Here are some of the questions we've received:

WHEN SHOULD I ASK MY GIRLFRIEND TO MARRY ME?
WHY DO PARENTS THINK THEY CAN CONTROL WHO YOU DATE?

ANSWER:

I'm a YouTube junkie and one of the channels I frequent is juliansmith87. This video of his I believe speaks to us all.



Don't we all wish we could go back with wisdom and insight and redo some of our decisions. Or at the very least we wish that "future us" would come back and tell us what to do! But alas it is not that easy.

The Bible talks alot about relationships. There's all of the purity stuff. Don't have sexual contact with anyone other than your spouse in a marriage covenant relationship. And if you have to ask if it's sexual contact, IT IS! And then there's Jesus challenge in the Sermon on the Mount that if we even think about sex with someone it's the same thing as doing it, so there's a pretty high moral standard that is expected of us in relationships. And in my experience, there are few young people - even Bible-believing, good-intentioned young people - who can avoid the temptation of sexual sin when they spend a lot of alone time together and/or don't set up safeguards and accountability.

Then there's all of the talk about whether or not it's good to get married. Gen 1 obviously tells us that we should get married and have babies ("Be fruitful and multiply") but then the Apostle Paul challenges us in 1 Corinthians 7 to stay single if you can (but only if you can exercise self-control and not burn with passion, which is probably not many of us).

But that still doesn't tell us when or to who to get married. In 2 Corinthians 6 we are challenged to not be yoked together with an unbeliever, so that leads us to believe we should have biblical character in mind when looking for a spouse. In 1 Timothy 5:8 we are told that if we don't care for the needs of the members of our household then we are worse than an unbeliever and are denying Jesus! So that would lead us to think that we should be ready and able to provide for ourselves and a spouse before we think about getting married.

And as for the parent part of it, I want you to know that they are the closest think you have to a "future you" coming back and telling you what to do. They have your best interests in mind when they try to guide your dating life. And, after all, Ephesians 6:1 tells us to obey our parents because IT IS RIGHT!

But ultimately I believe this issue is one of commitment. Hebrews 13:4 says, "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous." Marriage is no light matter. And most of us know people who have tried it and failed. I believe it is largely because we haven't learned to take seriously our commitments and put others needs above our own.

Until you are willing to do those things and provide for you and your spouse, you really have no business being in a serious relationship, let alone considering getting married.

I would love to hear your questions and responses to this!