How to choose a good boyfriend/girlfriend

Myth #1: Dating has nothing to do with eventual marriage. That one is easily answered: Look at who gets married. Do people get married to folks they haven't dated? Haven't hung out with? Get real.

Who you date or hang out with has everything to do with who you will eventually marry. Don't date someone that you absolutely could not imagine getting married to. Dating a total non-candidate is a waste of time for both of you, at best, and could be physically or spiritually dangerous to you.

Scripture has some things to say about the dating -----> marriage game. There's a passage that is way underquoted these days, yet speaks right to the issue:

2Co 6:14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, "I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you,
2Co 6:18 and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." 2Co 7:1 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. "

"Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers," it says. The closest relationship in this lifetime is marriage. If this passage isn't talking about marriage, it isn't talking about anything. Actually, not being "unequally yoked with unbelievers" goes beyond just marriage to any close relationship we allow to develop in our lives. The people we allow to get closest to us will be the people who influence us for Heaven or for Hell. "Mat 7:13-14 "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. " We need to recognize up front that the vast majority of people our age are not good dates and won't be good mates.

In our discussion about what we look for in a girlfriend/boyfriend, the boys spent a lot of emphasis on the above verses last week (May 24, 2006). We talked about how important it is to start a relationship with both the boy and the girl on the same page on religion. At some point going steady will become an engagement with some young lady. The boy and girl will need to have started off at a pace they could handle, and the Christian pace is the best one. There will be far fewer arguments about basic right and wrong and over money if both of them are Christians.

The girls' responses were really to the point. The adjectives they used are in the table below:

Ephesians 5: 3-12 speaks to most of these same things. Many of the above qualities are not just "desirable" qualities to look for in a boy, but essentials for being a Christian.

Young ladies need to realize that who they take for a husband will be the person who becomes their spiritual head (Ephesians 5: 23). This makes the choice of a date and eventually a mate especially scary. "Where will you take me?" and "Who else will I be with when we get there?" are but a few of the questions girls have to ask. Guys need to be spiritually "sure-footed" to be the leaders that will never lead their wives into sin.

A date is the testing ground, the proving ground, for all of these things. A date is a sample of what life would be like, married to a person. Don't you think it is anything less.

I Thessalonians 4: 3-8 talks about the way a person should go about his or her lovelife. Don't go about it in a heated passion like the people of the world do. Show some common sense, some deliberation. Take some time to look around. Never give in to a one-night stand. That's not the way a Christian gets a mate.

Donovan's Rule is not named as such in the Bible, but the concept is there. Basically every boy-girl relationship comes down to three forks in the road: get married, break up, or begin living in sin (fornication). In the younger grades, there is a lot of breaking up, and boyfriend-girlfriend relationships tend to not last very long. As they get a little older, the part of the road that is taken sometimes is fornication.

Fornication is two people going all the way with neither of them being married or married to each other. Adultery is a married person's sin, with the marriage covenant being broken. God doesn't like either one. Fornication is sin whether the girl gets pregnant or not. But getting a girl pregnant before she gets out of high school is about like puttting a loaded revolver to her temple and pulling the trigger. It can take away her future opportunities for education, for a career, and for a responsible mate. Guys who do that to girls don't love them nor do they understand girls. They don't have a clue.

Back to Donovan's rule: The way for a boy and a girl who like each other to be able to be friends but not butt up against the three forks in the road is to pace how often they see each other. They don't need to start car dating until about sixteen. Nobody needs to be car-dating three or four times a week unless they are engaged to that person and are getting married within about the next month. There are a lot of temptations. Pace it.

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