IKDG PART II
The Heart of the Matter

5. Looking up “love” in God’s dictionary
Learning the true definition of love

I am, by my own admission, a hopeless romantic. If such a thing is possible, I am in love with being in love.

There’s nothing else quite like it, and if you’ve experienced it, you know what I mean. Being in love is a patchwork of a thousand indescribable moments. Nervous energy runs through your body whenever you think of that special person, which is every waking minute. You lose interest in the dull chores of eating, sleeping, and thinking rationally. You discover that every love song on the radio was written for you. It seems that someone has removed blinders from your eyes and you can see the world full of wonder and mystery and happiness.

I love love. But I’ve come to realize that I don’t really know much about it. Oh, I can tell you all about the warm, fuzzy side of love. I can throw myself into romance with all the passion of Romeo, but in God’s school of true love, I’m afraid I’m still in kindergarten.

To me and other romantics who share a “love for love,” God wants to give us a higher, grander view. He wants to deepen our understanding. Romance can thrill us to our core, but it’s only a small part of true love. We’ve been playing in the sandbox; God wants to take us to the beach.

As Christians, we need to remember that God’s perfect love is not only for our benefit. A model wears clothing to attract attention to the designer’s creativity. The model displays the designer’s work, but the designer’s reputation, not the model’s, is on the line. In the same way, as Christians, we model God’s love, whether or not we realize it. People watch us, and what they see affects God’s reputation for loving His creation. If we claim to follow Christ then wear the world’s twisted style of love, we drag the name and character of our Lord in the dirt.

The world tells us that love is beyond our control.

This thinking has found its way into our language. We describe the beginning of a passionate relationship as “falling in love.” Or people say, “we’re madly in love with each other.” You’ve more than likely heard people say these things – perhaps you’ve even said them yourself.

Why do we feel compelled to compare love to a pit or a mental disorder? What do these statements reveal about our attitudes toward love? I think part of the reason we make these somewhat overstated analogies is because they remove personal responsibility. If a person falls into a pit, what can she do about it? If an animal contracts rabies and runs around foaming at the mouth and biting people, it can’t really help its nasty behavior because it has gone mad.

Doesn’t it sound a little absurd to discuss love in such terms? I think so. Yet we tend to express our experience of love in these ways. We think of love as something beyond our control and thus excuse ourselves from having to behave responsibly. In extreme cases, people have blamed love for immorality, murder, rape, and many other sins. Okay, so maybe you and I haven’t done those things. But perhaps you’ve lied to your parents or friends because of a relationship. Maybe you pushed your partner too far physically. But if love is out of our control, we can’t possibly be held responsible. Yes, we know we behaved rashly. Yes, we know we might have hurt others in the process, but we couldn’t help it. We were in love.

The world takes us to a silver screen on which flickering images of passion and romance play, and as we watch, the world says, “This is love.” God takes us to the foot of a tree on which a naked and bloodied man hangs and says, “This is love.”

We need to realize that the lifelong commitment so many of us desire in our future marriages cannot be practiced or prepared for in a lifestyle of short-term relationships. Until we can commit to making a relationship work for the rest of our lives – and yes, it is a huge commitment – we do ourselves and others a disservice by pursuing short-term love in the meantime. True love waits, but not just for sex. It waits for the right time to commit to God’s brand of love – unwavering, unflagging, and totally committed.

6. The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing
How to keep impatience from robbing you of the gift of singleness

When we pursue romance is a major factor in determining whether or not dating is appropriate for us. And we can only determine the appropriate time to pursue romance when we understand God’s purpose for singleness and trust His timing for relationships.

Though it isn’t true of all relationships, dating relationships are often fueled by impatience, and we can directly relate many problems with dating to wrong timing. We want what we want right now.

But God wants us to appreciate the gifts of he present season of our lives. He wants us to learn the patience and trust necessary to wait for His perfect timing in all things, including our love lives.

1) The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.

God has may wonderful experiences He wants to give to us, but He also assigns these experiences to particular seasons of our lives. We often make the mistake, however, of taking a good thing out of its appropriate season to enjoy it when we want it.

Just because something is good doesn’t mean we should pursue it right now. We have to remember that the right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.

2) You don’t need to shop for what you can’t afford.

Before two people are ready for the responsibility of commitment, they should content themselves with friendship and wait on deep emotional intimacy. Exercising this patience will not handicap them relationally. In friendship, they can practice the skills of relating, caring, and sharing their lives with other people. In friendship, they can observe other people’s characters and begin to see what they’ll one day want in their mates. While it’s true we can learn worthwhile lessons from dating relationships, we need to make sure those relationships don’t bog us down. Wasting too much time trying each other out as boyfriend and girlfriend can actually distract two people from the more important task of preparing to be good spouses.

3) Any season of singleness is a gift from God.

One person rightly stated, “Don’t do something about our singlehood – do something with it!” Stop for just a minute and evaluate whether you’re using God’s gift of singleness as He desires. Ask yourself these questions:

- Am I concentrating on “simply pleasing the Master”?
- Am I using this season of my life to become a “holy” instrument for God?
- Or am I scrambling to find a romantic relationship with someone by dating?
- Am I failing to believe that God is sovereign over this part of my life and can provide for me?
- Could I possibly be throwing away the gift of singleness?
- Am I cluttering my life with needless complications and worries of dating?

Waiting for God’s timing requires trusting in His goodness and wisdom. We develop patience as we trust that God denies us what we think is good only because He has something better for us – both now and in the future.

It gets down to this question: Do you trust God? Don’t just give a knee-jerk, Sunday school answer. Do you really trust Him? Do you live your life as if you trust Him? Do you believe that by passing up something good now because it’s the wrong time, God will bring you something better when it is the right time?

7. The direction of purity
How to get on the road to righteousness

We esteem purity too little and desire it too late. Even when we try to assert its importance, we render our words meaningless by our contradictory actions.

True purity, however, is a direction, a persistent, determined pursuit of righteousness. This direction starts in the heart, and we express it in a lifestyle that flees opportunities for compromise.

1) Respect the deep significance of physical intimacy.

Our culture has programmed us to think that singleness grants us license to fool around, to try out people emotionally and sexually. Since we’re not married to anyone in particular, we can do what we want with anyone in general.

God has a very different view. “Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband,” He commands (Hebrews 13:4, The Message)

2) Set your standards too high.

God is not impressed with my ability to stand up to sin. He’s more impressed by the obedience I show when I run from it.

Set your standards too high. You will never regret purity.

3) Make the purity of others a priority.

I want to weep when I think of the many times I have neglected my responsibility to guard girls’ hearts. Instead of playing the role of a warrior, I played the thief, stealing their focus from God for myself. I’m determined to do better. I want to be the kind of friend to whom girls’ future husbands could one day say, “Thank you for standing watch over my wife’s heart. Thank you for guarding her purity.”

8. A cleansed past: the room
How Jesus can redeem your past

“So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:12). Admittedly, some will have more to lay aside that others – more memories, more pain, more regrets. But the past needn’t determine our future. We have choices right now about how we’ll live. Will we set our hearts on God and walk in His paths?