How Do You Know They Are The “ONE”
Gary and I are entering month nine of going live with God of the Romantique Presentations. The learning curve is huge for us at this age. We are learning a lot about the condition of single ministry in the church today. It’s not great. We have been researching like ministries to understand what singles are hearing from single christian ministries outside of the Sunday church platform.
The majority of these ministries give clean dating advice, how to heal from bad dating advice, and how to measure compatibility to determine who would be a good spouse for you. Honestly, it’s overwhelming. Something my friend Paula and I like to call “hard math”. So many positive and negative fractions crossing over multiple reasonings you’ll need to reference a checklist to get ALL your bases covered. I frequently get disappointed when they bait the question everyone wants to be answered: how do you they are the one? I have yet to hear the simplest of answers: when God reveals it.
Having lunch with a young friend late last year, she commented on how there are so many respectable people whose advice she cherishes but it ultimately comes from their own personal experience. She’s right for the most part. A member of our board commented last week how struck he was by the wisdom Gary wrote from in his book God of the Romantique because he wrote it from a lack of experience. As a single he studied the Bible back and forth looking for God’s ways in the romantic. He found them and they were nothing like the American way. No, they were much more profound, challenging, intimate, and rewarding.
The Bible is silent on dating. I believe there is a significant reason this is so. It’s an American invention, not a biblical one. There is instruction on parents not exasperating their children and children obeying their parents. There are instructions for wives and husbands, leaders and followers, and then there are instructions for the rest of us; brothers with sisters - sisters with brothers. I believe the silence on dating is purposed by God to draw us close to Him while we are alone first before we awaken romantic love because it is so powerful.
When we are growing up our parents lead us. When we are married husbands are charged to take the lead. In between is where Christ has us to know Him as the perfect leader for us. Our parents will miss the mark. Our spouses will miss the mark. Without an undistracted time of intimate relationship alone with Christ taking the lead our capacity to trust Him in our future marriages will be so small. Singleness is the gift of time given to every human to love the leadership of Christ over our lives while we are alone. We learn His voice, His character, His ways, whom He made us to become, the cracks in our faith, His word that fills them, our giftings, our purposes, and in due time who our spouse should be. It’s the sweetest time of the greatest inter-relational experience will get with Him alone this side of Heaven.
How do you know they are the “One”? Know the ONE and you’ll know the “One”. Simple math.
