Courting: (From the book� Of Knights and Fair Maidens.� By Jeff and Danielle Myers.) �Is a guy/girl relationship that leads to marriage. It focuses on three primary things. 1.Accountability to parents and other trusted adults. 2.Building each other�s character rather than focusing on physical attraction. 3.Waiting to develop serious relationships until you are really ready to get married.�
1. When growth in Christ is most important, should we not look to God rather than a weak, short relationship?
2. When these relationships start, you are excited, but this feeling, often mistaken as love, slowly fades and almost all dating before 18 is useless and does more damage than good.
3. Most of these relationships are based on emotion, rather than prayer and God�s will, thus causing them to crumble.
4. In the Bible it says, �Do all things to the glory of God�. How do these relationships bring glory unto God? Such relationships bring glory to man rather than God through the fulfillment of lust, or maybe just the status increase dating may bring. You bring glory to yourself through the exaltation of the flesh.
5. �For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son�� Biblical Love is based on benefiting others, and not ones self. God did not give us Love so that it could be abused. The devil has counterfeited many things, and Love is something he knows is a wonderful thing. In today�s society, you can �love� someone, and when you get sick of them or have a problem with them, forget, dump, and hurt them.
6. Such relationships are fleshly in nature and in no way further the growth of the spirit. Matthew 16:26, �And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?� Should we not then search for spiritual advances rather than for physical and worldly advancements.
7. Most missionaries and other godly men, never dated from a young age, and if they did, no wife was ever attained. Most godly men courted or met a woman, and knew it was God�s will to marry that person. You can learn this for yourself through reading about different missionaries, a prime example would be Rochunga Pudante, in the book �God�s Tribesman.�
8. In today�s society, many people have been made to think that if you like a person of the other gender, you should let them know by dating. So many people today think that dating is a way to show that you like that person of the other gender. Yet this train of thought can be damaging, for dating has only the purpose of physical or mental pleasure through the use of someone of the opposing gender, and often becomes a hurtful situation, either through problems with whom you are dating, or through the excluding of other friends. To often people look for a date, rather than a friend. Where a date is temporary and is just the statement of like, rather than love, or the intent to marry, a friendship is not only liking someone, but getting to know them, trying to help them, and will not exclude anyone. According to 1 Timothy 5:1-2, �Never speak harshly to an older man, but appeal to him respectfully as though he were your own father. Talk to the younger men as you would to your own brothers. Treat the older women as you would your mother, and treat the younger women with all purity as your own sister.�
9. The only exception to not dating would be in the process of courtship. Where by the both your parents and the parents of the date would be in aggrement with the time, location, and company. Having parents involved and being accountable to them will help to avoid a lot of the problems many couples find themselves in.
10. At any age before 18, a mind is quite fickle and moody, due to not only hormonal changes, but also due to development of spiritual, mental, and physical aspects of changes in your youth. These are the years of maturing and change in many ways including personality changes. You may make a cute couple now, but you are still maturing and changing, and often, as two people mature, you may grow away from each other and break up, as where previously you fit together so nicely.
11. Often, two people make good friends, and so they try dating. When things go wrong, they not only break up their relationship, but they also put a wretched end to a good friendship.
23 Theses Continued...
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