Christian dating advice i wish i knew sooner

Hey y'all, what's poppin', it's Najwa Iman, welcome or welcome back to Light the World, a podcast for young Christians on a mission to light the world. Today we're gonna be talking about Christian dating, something that I've been getting asked to talk about, so I'm finally talking about it because I feel like I can now. So song of the day is Give Me a Clean Heart by Fred Hammond, 90s gospel classic, if you don't know, now you know. Okay, let's get right into this episode. So y'all, I have a boyfriend, oh my gosh, I'm in a relationship. I call it courtship, but you know, since we live in the 21st century and like there are terms that are more common to say, let's just say that I've been dating a guy, okay, and I've been experiencing what it feels like to be in a Christian relationship. A few months ago one of you guys commented on one of my videos and asked me if I could do an episode about Christian dating or how to date as a Christian and to be so very honest, I didn't feel equipped at the time, so I just didn't even touch it. I was like, you know, I don't think I'm qualified to talk about dating as a single person. You know, I could give advice on how to navigate singleness and abstinence as a single Christian, but I can't tell you how to date as a single person. Like I can only give advice from my own experience. So now that I'm in a relationship, I do feel a little bit more equipped to talk about dating as a Christian. So that's what I'm going to be doing today. Life happens in stages and that stage when you're single, if God's plan is for you to be in partnership with someone and to get married and start a family and glorify him through a relationship with another person, that stage that you go through before you get into a relationship, that single season, it needs to be cherished because it is something so sacred and special that you were never going to get again. Like if God sends you your purpose partner, you're never going to experience singleness again. You're never going to experience time alone with God again, outside of a husband, a wife, family, kids, like your single season is so sacred and I want to preface this episode off by saying that your single season is so sacred. So whether or not, you know, you're in a relationship, you have to remember that that single season is so sacred. And if you're single watching this, let me re-emphasize this time of your life, you honestly should be soaking up the joy that comes from experiencing God by yourself alone in isolation and solitude. Like being single comes with its own rewards and its own benefits and yeah, I feel like when you're so focused on dating and like getting into a relationship, you know, sometimes that desire can blur your vision and cause you to become distracted and not see your present situation and only focus on the future. And in this period of time that I'm courting, that I'm being courted, I'm dating this guy, God has been showing me so many things just about how to navigate the dating period, the courtship period. And I know that most of the language that we hear as Christians, when people talk about like dating is heavily sex based. You know, the advice we hear is it's mainly about remaining abstinent, which is good because the Bible does emphasize the importance of purity and all of that. But I feel like when we focus so intently on just not having sex, we do ourselves a disservice because honoring God in a relationship, in a godly relationship, it's deeper than that. How do you honor God in a dating relationship? How do you do that? Because honestly, the way that Christian relationships look should be completely different from the way worldly relationships look. What God has been teaching me is that even though I'm a girlfriend, which by the way, girlfriend, boyfriend, none of that's in the Bible, dating's not in the Bible, like these are all very, very new modern concepts that society has created. So honestly, like I still feel weird about that language, but whatever. While I'm a girlfriend, while I'm being courted, while I'm dating, it's in my best interest to remember that until I'm married, I belong to God. Until there's a ring on my finger, this is my purity ring by the way, until I am in covenant with the guy that God has placed in my life, I don't belong to my partner and my partner does not belong to me. Up until that moment that I become joined in flesh, in covenant with my partner, I'm only linked to God. There's no link with the guy that I'm dating. You're not bonded through anything. Not through vows, not through spiritual energy, not through sexual energy. We are not linked at all. And that's something that God has been showing me, like undoing all of the ideas that like may have seeped into my brain while I was living in the world. Like, okay, once you become a girlfriend, now you're locked in. No, something that is a little bit harsh to say and think is that genuinely until there's a ring on your finger, until you are married, you are single, you do not belong to your partner and your partner does not belong to you. Your body doesn't belong to your partner. Their body doesn't belong to you. The only responsibility you have in a dating relationship, in a courting relationship is to treat that human being as a brother or sister in Christ. It's to love them. It's to be kind, compassionate, honest, be willing to hold them accountable. Treat them the same way that you would treat somebody in the church that you're friends with. A brother or sister in Christ. Of course, you should date with intention. That's so important. As a Christian, we want to live our lives with intention. We want to take every step with care and with thought, but we have to be so careful to not place this heightened level of importance on something that I believe God sees as kind of unimportant. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. It's a temple that the Holy Spirit lives in. It's your duty to honor him with your body, honor him with your life. So in a dating relationship, in a courtship, in order to court well, there has to be a mutual understanding between both the man and the woman in the courtship that our bodies belong to God. We do not belong to each other. We are not married, nor are we engaged even. We are dating and getting to know each other to see if this is a good fit for marriage. That's what courtship is in the Christian context. We don't just do things mindlessly like, oh, this guy's cute, so I want to get to know him. You know, it's, I see something deeper and I want to explore that, but I don't, I don't want to waste my time. In a Christian courtship context, not only is sex completely off the table, but I'd go a step further and say, seeing your partner as an object of your desire that has to be off the table, it has to be taken off the table. And God has been really like refining my mind because when you're in a relationship with someone, of course you're attracted to them. You love them. As you grow closer to them, you want to be intimate with them. You know, God created man and woman for each other, right? So when you're in a relationship, the closer you all get, the stronger the desire to be intimate with them becomes. But I want to just continue to reemphasize the fact that God created sex for husband and wife. He did not create sex for girlfriend and boyfriend, for fiance and fiance. It's for husband and wife. It's not sinful to want to be intimate with your partner. I think that's something that God has also been helping me through. It's like, you want to act on a natural desire that I've placed in you. There's nothing wrong with that. But stepping outside of the design that I've created for you, there's the issue. That's where the sin comes in and that's where you need to be checked. That's where we need to check ourselves. I saw this really good video on Instagram of this guy talking about how to manage your desire and when it comes to having desire, not seeing it as something that's sinful or bad or something that you need to be ashamed of, but really something that we should be thanking God for. But asking him to keep hold of it until it's time to unleash it or release it, if that makes sense. I'm trying to speak in the most PG terms right now because this is YouTube, but I don't know what I can say. Let's go to scripture because the Bible can say this way better than I can. Song of Solomon 8.4 says, promise me, O women of Jerusalem, not to awaken love until the time is right. Another version says, do not arouse or awaken love until it pleases. Do not stir up love before its time has come. So I truly see courtship as an endurance test. It's a test of faith. It's a test of patience, self-control. It's a test of so many things and in this period of time that you're courting, the fruits of the spirit are going to grow so, so, so, so much because we're existing with another person in that relationship. We should be displaying Jesus even more so than we do when we're by ourselves because it's two of us. So Song of Solomon 8.4, do not awaken love until it's time, until the time is right. So when choosing, you know, the person to even be with, the person to court, a person to date, even that process has to be so intentional. Taken to God in prayer, everyone's journey is different and if God has someone for you, they will come. Not because you rushed into something or because you went out looking for someone or anything like that. You won't have to have sex with them. You won't have to sleep with them to prove your worth. You won't have to awaken love before it's time. You won't have to awaken love too early to keep them around. Courtship is basically just like a glorified friendship and there are certain things that we have to make sure that we're doing in a courtship to make sure that we're not falling off and it's so easy to fall off. I'll be the first to say that my journey has not been perfect at all, but I thank God for his grace because it's very much sufficient. But in the context of a Christian relationship, you have to set boundaries. Proverbs 25, 28 says, a person without self-control is like a city with broken down walls. If you don't have any boundaries, you'll let anybody come in. If you don't set boundaries, how will you succeed in a Christian relationship? Navigating abstinence as a single Christian is one thing, but navigating abstinence in a dating relationship is completely different because you're now in the presence of the temptation. If you don't view your partner as a temple of the Holy Spirit and instead you view them as just a body or an object of sexual desire or whatever, it will be way easier to fall into that lust and that temptation instead of saying, I rebuke this in the name of Jesus, God, please take control of my desire until it's time, until I get married. Until that time happens, I'll be cool. You take care of it. I'm going to sit here. You sit over there. If you do not put boundaries up, anything can happen. For some people, kissing is completely off limits. They don't want to kiss until they get married and I know a lot of people on social media have told their testimony about that. I love that for them. More power to them. I know some people don't even hug and if that's what will keep you from falling into lust, then more power to you. Every single person's convictions and boundaries look different so we have to remember that when setting these boundaries for ourselves and coming to our partner and telling them like okay, this is a trigger for me and I want us to respect that and then you ask them to share their own boundaries with you. You guys come together to respect each other's boundaries and you just keep it PG, PG, PG. If you don't set that boundary, you're going to start off on a very rocky foundation and if you have started off that way, there's no condemnation for you if you repent. If your relationship starts off on that rocky foundation, you have to get up and fix something like lock in, set the boundary, go to your partner and say, you know, we haven't been doing this right. We haven't been doing this right. Let's go back and read 1 Corinthians. Well, 1 Corinthians has on purity. Let's go back and read what God says about husband and wife. Ephesians 5.22 says, wives, submit to your husband as you do to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. There's a verse that I've been thinking about lately when it comes to freedom as a Christian because you know, we are free in Christ. He's freed us from sin and death and the verse 1 Corinthians 10.23 it says, you have the freedom to do anything but not everything that's good for you. Or you say you can do anything, but not everything is beneficial for you. So this is a really good verse for setting your own boundaries because I know everyone's convictions are different, but there's certain things we shouldn't really be doing because of the temptations that Satan can present to us. Like sleeping over your partner's house, for example. This is something that is not wise and this is coming from someone that has done it in the past that gives the appearance of sin and it could lead to sin. And even living with them, certain things like that, making sure that you're putting up those safeguards so that you don't fall into sin. While in a courtship, time should not just be passing by. There needs to be intentional questions being asked. You're trying to figure out if this person's a match. Like you're not just having fun. Like obviously there should be an equal amount of intentionality, serious conversations and fun like going out on dates, having fun, hanging around their parents and their friends and just getting to know them, but making sure that it's intentional. You know, I feel like the difference between courting and dating is that courting is actually extremely intentional and there is an intention to get married. Like we date as Christians to marry, right? Succeeding in a courtship, you have to put God first and what does that look like? It just looks like honoring God with your relationship. I believe that if both partners are strong in their relationship with God, they show up every day, they have their own level of reverence for God and they worship God on their own. When you come together with a person like that, that's keeping God at the center of your relationship. Thinking of God before you make any decisions. And I said this earlier, like even praying before you decide to get into a relationship with someone like, God, is this the person for me? Should I enter this relationship? Give me clarity. Give me peace. If this is somebody that you want me to even entertain, like just giving everything to God before saying yes. Something that I've had to remember is that my partner is, he's my brother in Christ first. He is. And like, that might sound weird, but at the end of the day, that's the case. And because there's no covenant yet, I'm not going to make a false assumption in my head that we are going to end up getting married because I don't know that. And I don't want to put that expectation on him or create that false expectation in my head that like, this is my husband. This is my future husband. I feel like some of us do get confirmation, like that's the guy that you're supposed to marry. And that's amazing. But we don't know until we know. And because of that,