How should I approach relationships?

Personally, I've had so much grief in the area of relationships that I really want to post something about what I've learnt (the hard way). I wrote yesterday about the importance of Christians not going out with non-Christians -I can testify that this never helps your faith, and leads you down some very sticky paths. But there has to be more to a Christian perspective on relationships than this 'don't go out with a non-Christian' principle. And there is!

We have such an opportunity in our romantic relationships to show the world how different we are, now that Jesus has changed our lives. Our most important relationship in the world is with Him, and He is always faithful and will never break our hearts! Hooray for that!

If you really want to treasure Christ above all other things, then whoever you go out with needs to help you love Jesus more. The only thing that really matters when you consider whether to go out with someone or not, is this: Do they love Jesus? Could I love them?

God is amazing. He created chemistry, and He brings people together for marriage who complement each other perfectly and completely click. I'm not saying that anyone should simply pick a Christian, any Christian, and ignore their attraction (or lack of it) to that person. What I'm saying is that it's a mistake to prioritize physical attraction above how much a person loves God and wants to please Him.

There are some great books on Christian relationships out there which I have read (see bottom of page for recommendations), and three principles have emerged from all of them:

1. Don’t date for fun.
The common idea in our culture that you need to ‘have fun’ while you’re young and have one-night stands, or kiss random people in clubs, or just go out with someone ‘casually’, is all extremely opposite to God’s standards in the Bible. God cares deeply about all people, and wants us to do the same. We should never ‘use’ people for physical pleasure, or to look good to our friends, or just to combat loneliness. 1 Corinthians 16:14 says ‘Do everything in love’, and chapter 13 defines love as patient, kind, not envying, not boasting, not proud, not rude, not self-seeking, forgiving, not delighting in evil but in the truth, protective, trusting, hopeful and persevering. Therefore if Christians do have relationships, they are not to be shallow, but should follow the Bible’s definition of what real love is.

2. Guard your heart.
Proverbs 4:23 says: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” There is a powerful demonstration of the impact of relationships on a person’s life. Whenever you have a close romantic relationship, it’s like gluing two pieces of paper together. When the relationship breaks up, it’s like trying to tear those pieces of paper apart. It’s messy, and in real life, it’s a painful experience. This is why the world’s idea about having lots of relationships before finally ‘settling down’ is a bad one. It means that by the time they finish university, the majority of people have slept with a number of people, and had several romantic involvements. This gives people a lot of emotional ‘baggage’ which then creates issues when you do want to get married.

For Christian teenagers who are nowhere near ready to get married, it’s often wisest to guard your heart and not let yourself get too involved romantically with anyone. Be careful not to spend too much time alone with someone of the opposite sex, if they are not seeking to honour God in the way that they treat you.

If you really like someone, bring it to God in prayer and talk about it with someone at church. It’s always good to get wise advice about such things.

3. Be pure
'Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.' Philippians 4:8
In the way that you think about members of the opposite sex, be pure.
In the way that you act around members of the opposite sex, be pure.
In the way that you speak to members of the opposite sex, be pure.
Whether you're in a relationship or not, your thoughts and behaviour matter! God wants you to be absolutely spotless, and He has cleansed you through the blood of Jesus from all of your sins. Don't defy your new status as purified by God, by returning to the mud again.

Lust- wanting something that does not belong to you (usually in a sexual sense)- is a very pervasive sin. It can manifest itself in X-rated thoughts, in addictions to pornography, or in hungry kissing that leads on to more.

Do what Joseph did- run away from it! Don't give yourself any opportunity to fall. Don't have an internet connection in your bedroom. Don't be alone with your boyfriend/girlfriend in a room together with the door closed.

Do what Job did- make a covenant (promise) with your eyes, not to linger on people and treat them as objects. Avoid parts of a supermarket which stock men's magazines. Bounce your eyes away from unhelpful billboards. Look away from a cinema screen if there's an unexpected sex scene.

Pray and depend on God for strength to fight this sin in your life. It CAN be beaten through the power of the Holy Spirit.

If you're not accountable to anyone in your church, find a trusted Christian there who will ask you candid questions about how you're doing in this area, and ask them to pray for you. Don't think you're the only one who struggles with this. Everyone has some form of struggle with lust in their lifetime.

Below are some books I recommend which deal with this whole area:

Christians and non-Christians: NOT a match made in heaven

Relationships are funny things. They can dominate our thoughts and desires, they can bring us joy and companionship, they can destroy us. The quest for 'true love' for the Christian can be a bit of a minefield, with lots of casualties if wrong choices are made.

It's easy to feel that the Bible is very out-of-date on the whole issue of relationships, given that in Bible times, arranged marriage was the norm. Whilst arranged marriages are still happening today, mostly in Western culture we go about finding ourselves a spouse very differently. The 'dating game'.

How should Christians approach relationships? My main point for this post is:
Christians should desire to glorify God in their romantic relationships.

This may involve pain and heartache, it may mean walking away from someone you really care about. But the Bible makes one thing clear:
A Christian should not marry a non-Christian.

‘A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord.’ 1 Corinthians 7:39

Paul in this chapter of Corinthians deals with some tricky marital situations. What do you do if you’re married, then you become a Christian? Paul says you should stay married. But if, as these verses show, that unbelieving spouse dies, the widow is free to marry, but this time it must be a Christian.

This principle therefore applies to all Christians who have a choice about who they marry (ie. They aren’t already married). It is wrong for a Christian to choose to marry a non-Christian.

Following logically on from this, it makes sense then that Christians should not go out with non-believers. You don’t just get married in our culture, you go out with someone first. If you want your spouse to be a Christian, then you need to make sure any potential spouse (ie. Girlfriend or boyfriend) is a Christian.

Why is this important?

1.Christians and non-Christians are fundamentally different.
The reason God says Christians and non-Christians should not marry is because marriage makes two people ‘one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24). A Christian is a new creation in Jesus Christ, and a non-Christian is still dead in their sins (see Ephesians 2 and Colossians 2). That doesn’t make for a good combination! 2 Corinthians 6:14 says “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” In a relationship, whether you get married or not, you are saying ‘I want to be closer to this person than to my friends and family. I want to spend time with them, sharing who I am with them.’ That makes you vulnerable, as my next point discusses.

2.Christians are fighting a constant battle against sin.
There are many temptations in life (pride, selfishness, greed) which Christians have to constantly fight against. We’re in spiritual warfare (see Ephesians 6)! Therefore if you’re sharing your life intimately with someone, it needs to be someone who’s going to help you in that battle. Someone who will pray with you and for you to be the person God wants you to be. Someone who shares your faith and values. Someone who won’t be an added temptation, particularly in the area of lust. Even if the person you’re going out with agrees that they won’t have sex with you, they will not be looking to avoid temptation in the same way, and they will not have the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome temptation. Lust is a problem not just of physically messing up, but of mentally dwelling on unhelpful images, and you need to be ruthless in cutting it out of your mind. It is also worth saying that in the Christian life, is something isn’t actively helping you grow in faith and holiness, it is a hindrance. There’s no neutral ground. Even if your girlfriend isn’t pressuring you to go too far, if she isn’t pointing you towards Jesus, she’s holding you back. Hebrews 12:1 says ‘let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.’

FAQ: Surely I can help my non-Christian girlfriend to become a Christian by going out with her?
This is such a disaster zone. The Bible never never advocates this: it is the work of the Holy Spirit alone to convert people, and it’s our job to tell them the good news. You don’t need to be going out with someone to do this! In fact, it actually becomes a hindrance, because you are a better witness for Jesus when you show to someone that you value Him more than any other living being –more than a girl you really like who likes you back. However good your intentions are, that person will always be aware of the fact that you wish they were a Christian. They are not ‘good enough’. And more often than not, going out with a non-Christian makes the Christian get lukewarm and tepid rather than firing up the unbeliever into faith. Even if the unbeliever declares their faith, it is often more to do with their believing partner than with them and God. When someone’s faith is dependent upon a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend, this is not a solid foundation and when something goes wrong with the relationship, their faith often does not stand up to the pressure.
If you go out with someone who isn’t a Christian, what do you do when they don’t convert? How long do you wait for this to happen? By then you may be so involved with them that you end up marrying them. In the everyday intimacy of marriage, life becomes extremely difficult if you do not have the same foundation of faith to live by. Put two sinners together and you’re always going to have problems. Two Christians who are married at least have the Holy Spirit to help them through, and have placed their ultimate satisfaction in Jesus rather than each other. This is the greatest basis for a successful marriage.

Avoiding the spiritual barometer (Review of Terry Virgo's 'God's Lavish Grace')

Ever had a week like this:
Sunday- go to church, sing joyful songs of praise, hear an encouraging and challenging sermon about fighting sin, leave with renewed resolution to obey God and beat temptation.
Monday- make time to read the Bible and pray, fight with sin going well, feel close to God.
Tuesday- managed to scan over a Bible passage before running for the bus, feel flustered but still trying to live whole-heartedly for God.
Wednesday- busy day, no time to pray, feeling weak.
Thursday- give in to temptation, feel like a rubbish Christian.

And so it goes on.

In this commentary, the person constantly measures their spiritual success by their own achievements or failures. If they made time to pray, they feel good about where they stand with God. If they mess up, they feel ashamed. To them, the way God sees them fluctuates like a spiritual barometer. When they're doing well, He's smiling. When they're not, He's angry.

Terry Virgo's book 'God's Lavish Grace' is a fantastic smash-down to this way of thinking, which ensnares so many Christians today.

Virgo's main point is that Jesus has obtained a place for us to stand in grace, a place of total acceptance and security. He goes through the book of Romans to demonstrate that
'they which receive abundance of grace... shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.' Rom 5:17

Therefore your daily walk with God is not about your spirituality or performance, but about your position in Christ.

Christ's unchanging righteousness is yours every day and is not in the least dependent on your feelings or your performance!

God has not called us to a life of slavery but one of overcoming. We need to KNOW that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cleanse us from every sin (past, present and future); the cross is ENOUGH for us to be forgiven. We can't earn God's approval by our 'good deeds'. On the cross, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' (John 19:30) He dealt with our sin completely. All that is left for us to do is to rejoice in the fact that we are totally accepted by God through Jesus, and then live a life liberated to serve Him, with the empowering help of the Spirit to fight sin.

Virgo's conversational style is engaging and uplifting as he opens up the life-changing truth of God's Word in this book. He shows us how susceptible we are to rely on our own amazingness rather than God's amazingness. He calls us to stop making excuses about human nature and start beating sin out of our lives, because Jesus has given us the freedom NOT to sin. As Christians, we have to believe in that freedom. We can't be fatalistic. We need to sort out sin so that we can properly live up to our status as God's children, and get out there to spread the message of God's lavish grace to a world that desperately needs to hear it.

How salty are you? (Matt 5)

'You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.' Matt 5:13

Every day we make decisions to either share God's light or not. Every missed opportunity is like the salt without its taste; in choosing to sin instead of to do good, we take the goodness out of the salt. We will never have the opportunity to re-live that decision. Once salt has lost its flavour, it doesn't regain it.

Moreover, sin makes us vulnerable to be trampled on. Salt preserves, just as the Spirit within us keeps the Word strong in our hearts. When we sin, we reject the Spirit and the barriers have broken down so Satan can get at us. We may lose our passion for God.

But the good news is that the Holy Spirit is constantly renewing us. Every time we confess our sins and ask for forgiveness, God gives us another chance and we are a new creation, full of life and flavour. We just need to work on staying salty for as long as possible.

'God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.' Rom 5:5

Godless life... as a Christian? (Phil 3)

'Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.' Phil 3:19

Here is the absolute antithesis of what we, as Christians, should be. And yet we are so often guilty of thinking in that very same mindset. Paul here writes four phrases about the ungodly. Here is how we can fall into the same traps:

1. Destiny of destruction. We often fear what we do not need to fear- death and destruction. How you view death provides a good reflection of your faith. If our faith is strong, we need not fear death ('Where, O death, is thy sting?'- 1 Cor 15). Jesus is risen, and we have the gift of eternal life.
On the other hand, we must not become complacent about those who have not accepted Jesus. Paul reminds us here that their destiny is one of destruction. It is very tempting at times to mince the Word so that it is more palatable, more acceptable to our views of what a merciful, loving God should be. Instead, we are called to accept the truth of God's Word -after all, it is by this Word that we know we are saved- and endeavour to spread the Gospel and explain it to those who need it most- non-believers.

2. Their god is their stomach. Marlowe's play Dr Faustus contains this profound statement: 'The god thou serv'st is the god of thine own appetite.' I don't think this phrase applies merely to gluttony. It describes the ungodly as those who follow their own desires above God's desires for them. They do what they want to do without considering God's expectations of them. How much worse is this for a believer, who knows what God expects of them, and still deliberately follows his own desires? Sometimes we even try to justify ourselves before God: 'God wouldn't want me to be unhappy.' We need to be on our guard that we don't try and cover up self-indulgence with the label of God's will.

3. Glory in shame. The ungodly revel in doing the forbidden, in rebelling against morality and taking their own independent stand. Surely we as Christians cannot be guilty of this? Unfortunately we probably are. We all commit sin due to our fallen nature, and every time we do it, it always seems more attractive than the reality. But the phrase 'glory in shame' doesn't just mean sinning, it means glorying in sin. Perhaps that is harder for us as Christians to apply to ourselves- we usually have that nagging voice in our head reminding us that what we're doing is wrong, and we usually experience guilt as soon as we err. But some sins actually glory in shame itself, like gossip.
Gossip is not only a sin in itself, but it also involves us revelling in other people's sins. We are then glorifying shame. Perhaps sometimes we don't take a strong stand against things that God's Word proclaims to be wrong, because we don't want to offend people or be controversial. But silence is often construed as agreement. If we don't add a Christian input to a conversation, not only does it look like we agree with any non-Christian sentiments that are being expressed, but we are denying the Holy Spirit within us who calls us to witness whenever we can. A recent survey revealed that many people are disillusioned with the Church, not because it takes a controversial stand on contemporary issues, but because (in their view) it takes no stand at all. Are we, as the voice of the Church and of Christ on earth, fully representing our faith? Or do we leave this to the ministers, or for when we're not around people who are hostile to our views?

4. Mind on earthly things. This is perhaps the easiest one of all to relate to ourselves. We worry about bills, money, our homes, cars, studies, work... So many things preoccupy our minds when we're supposed to be keeping our eyes on Jesus. Paul writes about staying focussed in order to win the race he is running as a Christian. You'll never finish the race if you don't stay focussed. And the more and more focus we have on God, the more and more our perspective widens and we understand how irrelevant our earthly preoccupations are, in comparison to God's plan for us and our eternity with Him.

Are evangelicals 'fundamentalists'? Review of JI Packer

Post 9-11, the word 'fundamentalism' gives people a new sense of fear. To modern morality, any version of religious fundamentalism MUST be a bad thing. When evangelicals claim to believe the words of the Bible as the truth, the word 'fundamentalists' is frequently flung our way. So how should we respond?

J.I. Packer's 'Fundamentalism and the Word of God' is as fresh and relevant now as it was when it was first published in 1958. He argues that fundamentalism is often brushed off as a branch of Christianity, when in fact, it is the only authentic Christianity. Authentic Christianity is a religion of biblical authority. Only truth can be authoritative; only an inerrant Bible can be used, in the way that God means Scripture to be used. Subjection to the authority of Christ involves subjection to the authority of Scripture. ‘Fundamentalism’, in so far as consistent Evangelicalism is meant by this term, is in principle nothing but Christianity itself.

Christianity is built on truth, on the content of a divine revelation. It announces salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, but faith is only possible where the truth is known. The New Testament tells us that God has made provision for the communication of this saving truth. He entrusted to the apostles, and through them to the whole church, a message from Himself which conveys it. This is the Word of God, the Bible.

At the heart of the debate is the role of the Bible. Many people who reject fundamentalism do so because they consider the uncompromising demand for submission to what the Bible says as unreasonable. And this is very serious, at it is a criticism directed at evangelical principles rather than evangelical practice. In effect, these people believe that Evangelicalism is a form of Christianity that cannot honestly be held today. We must, therefore, strive to defend the faith that we believe to be the revealed truth of God.

In the climate of the current Anglican crisis, where the evangelical wing of the Anglican church is being criticised for being 'fundamentalist' and 'separatist', it is worth remembering that the Anglican church is founded on the belief that Scripture is the ultimate authority. The liberal wing of the church is not, historically, supported by the foundation of the church and the 39 Articles.

Unity between true Christians is vitally important to the life of the Church, but what Packer refers to as 'sham unity', the unity between supposed Christians and true Christians, is not worth working for. The wall is cracked because it is not all built on the same foundation. Packer's book provides a timely read in the light of these circumstances.

What is God's design for women? Review of Sharon James' book

In today's society where the world and the Church seem increasingly confused about gender, Sharon James has written a book which is faithful to Scripture, comprehensive in its scope and easy to read.

'God's Design for Women' refreshingly accepts and celebrates the differences between men and women, and offers a return to the Biblical model for women and their place in marriage, the home, the family and also in the workplace. She examines feminist thinking and highlights how much it has affected our twenty-first century mentality- women are brought up in our society to be ambitious and to demand equality, but at the expense of recognising the value of a woman's traditional role as a housewife and mother. Sharon James points out that whilst discrimination against women is wrong, it is just as wrong to view women who choose to be full-time mothers as 'failures'. Adam and Eve were cursed in the areas where they were to find fulfilment- Adam was cursed in his work and Eve was cursed in childbearing. It makes sense that women, who are naturally equipped emotionally and physically for nurturing, invest time and effort in rearing their children and creating a godly home environment.

A concept I found really interesting was that equality and submission go together perfectly within marriage. James points out that within the Trinity, the Son submits to the Father, and yet all parts of the Trinity are equal. It's easy to see the wife as less important because she must submit, yet she is of equal value in the marriage and of course in God's sight.

The book discusses women's ministries and how there is such a need for women to minister to other women and provide emotional support that many men find difficult to give. The book also talks about how to be a godly, modest women in a society that places value solely on physical appearance rather than good character. James writes in a readable style and always comes back to Scripture- I think every woman should read this book and it might also be helpful for men, to reaffirm the differences in gender roles and the section on women's ministries is particularly helpful in a Church context.