As I continue my “Best of She Worships” week I thought I’d include a blog that is in the top 5 for one reason alone: It’s one of the most frequently googled questions that brings people to my blog. This is a big issue for single women who are wrestling with their futures, so I hope it can speak truth and encouragement into your heart if that’s where you find yourself now. And if you’re not one of those women, I urge you to be compassionate. Singleness can be a gift, but it can also be a challenge.

As a single woman, I remember going to Christian concerts or conferences or seminars in which I would watch a young, good looking guy on stage who seemed so in love with the Lord, and so passionate and articulate about his faith, that it made my heart flutter. THAT was the guy for me!

I just knew we were supposed to get married, and I day-dreamed about the way that we would meet–maybe he would see me across the lobby later on that night, be captivated by my beauty and just HAVE to talk to me. Or, he would see me in the audience, and I would look so worshipful and in love with God that he would know we were meant to be together. He’d never seen anyone look so beautiful as she worshiped God!

And we’d get married and travel the world together telling people about Jesus–maybe he would lead worship, and then I would be the main speaker at arena events. Kind of a Chris Tomlin-Beth Moore combo.That is how I knew my life would play out. That is, until I made the horrible discovery. I looked down at his hand, and there it was–a wedding ring.

My entire life plans were crushed in an instant.

As a result of experiences such as these, I frequently found myself asking, “Why are all the godly men already married?” I figured that there must have been some sort of fire sale while I was in college, and if you didn’t snatch up your husband then, the supply ran out. All that was left were the guys that nobody else wanted.

As a single woman, it’s very easy to feel this way, and to such an extent that it feels VERY real. In my more sane moments I knew that there were, in fact, plenty of solid, single Christian guys around, but it was on the lonely days that I genuinely feared there weren’t any left.

So in the face of this fear, on those days when it seems as though all the godly men have gone off and gotten married, leaving an over-abundance of single gals behind, how are women to respond?The first is to open your eyes and look around you. Maybe you don’t know any Chris Tomlin types, and maybe all the pastors at your church are married, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any godly, single men left. Being godly does not equal being on stage.

I have single guy friends who serve in the youth ministry, the college ministry, the children’s ministry, the new members ministry, organizing mission trips, and teaching Sunday school classes. Their jobs may be less visible, but their commitment to serve, even when it’s not glamorous, says a great deal about their character.

So on behalf of all my single guy friends who are totally on fire for the Lord, I’ve gotta give a shout out to them. Ladies, they are definitely out there, and they are DEFINITELY worth waiting for.

But the second thing you need to consider in the face of this fear is its root. Where is the fear coming from? To become so afraid of something that you begin to think irrationally is a clear indicator of a spiritual issue. Even if you are not controlled by this fear, even if you have only had this thought in passing, you need to take a good, hard look at it.What does this fear say about your belief that God is in control? Are you afraid that God wanted to provide you with a husband, but accidentally ran out of men? Does God only reward those women who go out and hunt for a husband early on? Or another thought I had as a young woman–was I not pretty enough to get married straight out of college?

All of these questions, and there are many more, are rooted in lies and misconceptions about God, and ourselves. We are not trusting that God will provide, and we are wondering if there is something inherently wrong with us. The fear that “all the godly men are married” is just a symptom of this spiritual confusion.

So if you find yourself asking this question, stop yourself and instead reflect upon why you are asking it. No, all the godly men are not married, and even if you don’t know a single Christian man in your entire city, if God wants you to get married then He is certainly capable of making that happen. After all, He pulled a rib out of Adam’s side to give him a mate, so I think God can handle your love life.

So the main question is whether you are being fulfilled in Christ NOW. As long as you allow that void in your heart to dwell, then those fears will continue to creep in on you. But if you fill that void with Christ, then those fears will have no foothold. You will simply have nothing to fear.

*And for further reading on this topic, check out Exodus, and the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. Both are stories of scarcity, and God’s over-abundant provision in response. It is a good reminder about the character of the God who created you.

The other day I ran across some interesting research on cohabitation that reveals a funny discrepancy between our culture’s beliefs about family and the reality of American families: While countless studies indicate that cohabitation is undeniably detrimental to marriage, nearly half of Americans believe cohabitation is actually good for marriage and reduces the risk of divorce. (USA Today/Gallup Poll)

To be honest I was not surprised by this disparity between belief and reality. I know a lot of people, including Christians, who moved in together for a myriad of “good” reasons. And like the statistics, very few of those relationships actually worked out. Either the relationship fell apart, or they got engaged but never set a wedding date and remained in an endless holding pattern. The few who did get married had some unusually tough first years of marriage.

What is frustrating to me is the culture’s inexplicable naiveté on the subject. If you ever get bored one afternoon and feel like trolling the internet for studies on this topic, you will be SHOCKED by how many studies, secular and religious alike, have found that cohabitation is bad for people and bad for marriage. Yet our culture persists in it, blindly exalting cohabitation as the wisest and most progressive new development on the relationship scene.

In the face of this worrying persistence, I put together the top 5 myths that our culture has about cohabitation, and what studies have told us about them:

Myth #1: Cohabitation is a stepping stone to marriage.
Moving in together has become a normal part of most relationships as they progress in seriousness. It is often considered the final step before marriage. However, a 2006 report by the journal Demography found that one-half of all cohabiting unions collapse within a year, and 90 percent within five years.

Myth #2: Cohabitation reduces the risk of divorce.
As I mentioned, 49% of Americans believe cohabitation reduces the risk of divorce, and an additional 13% thought that it made no difference either way. However, a study conducted by psychologist Scott Stanley at the University of Denver found that couples who cohabitate are twice as likely to get divorced as those who do not. Stanley also found that the following factors characterized couples who lived together before marriage:

- More negative communication in marriage
- Lower levels of marital satisfaction
- Higher marital instability
- Lower levels of male commitment to spouse
- Greater likelihood of divorce

A separate study by the Vanier Institute of the Family found that married couples who cohabited before marriage are less sexually exclusive both before and after marriage, and that newly married couples who had cohabited before marriage had much higher rates of domestic violence than those who had not lived together.

Myth #3: Cohabitation is just like marriage.
Though counter-intuitive, cohabitation is actually a lot more like being single than being married. According to a study done by Discovery Health, cohabitation does not reap the same benefits as marriage, which statistically averages better in physical health, wealth and emotional well-being. The study concluded that this difference was due to the fact that cohabitants tend not to be as committed as married couples, and they are more oriented toward their own personal autonomy and less to the well-being of their partner.

Myth #4: Cohabitation is better than marriage.
It has become more and more common for couples to live together or start families without ever tying the knot. Marriage is often seen as restrictive or out-dated. Others believe that marriage rings the death knell on a satisfying sex life. In response to these reasons, the Population Association of America conducted a study indicating that marriage offers dramatic emotional, financial and even health benefits over the single life and cohabitation. “Cohabitation has some but not all of the benefits of marriage,” said Linda Waite, the association’s president. Her studies show that married couples enjoy better health, more money and more satisfying sex.

Myth #5: Cohabitation makes no difference on children.
In the Gallup Poll study cited above, 47% of respondents felt that cohabitation made no difference to the children living in the home. 12% believed the effects would actually be positive. However, a study by the Vanier Institute found just the opposite. Due to the unstable nature of cohabitation, kids suffer the brunt of the instability, which wreaks havoc on their physical and psychological development. Anne-Marie Ambert, who oversaw the study on this matter, concluded, “Commitment and stability are at the core of children’s needs; yet, in a great proportion of cohabitations, these two requirements are absent.”

These statistics are just the tip of the iceberg. Study after study reveals the same thing, and none of the studies I cited are Christian or religiously based. But while these questions challenge us with undeniable data, they don’t answer the key question of why? What is it about cohabitation that changes the very nature of marriage so dramatically?

There is actually some debate on this. Some social scientists theorize that individuals who are less likely to value relational permanence will opt for cohabitation. However a lot of experts believe the act of cohabitation itself sabotages marriage. One study study published in the American Sociological Review found that periods of cohabitation led to more individualistic attitudes and values, which are contrary to healthy marital attitudes. Another study found “cohabiting experiences significantly increase young people’s acceptance of divorce” by persuading them that “intimate relationships are fragile and temporary in today’s world.”

As the Vanier Institute concluded,

There is some evidence to the effect that the experience of a less secure, committed, and even faithful cohabitation shapes subsequent marital behaviour (Dush et al., 2003). Some couples continue to live their marriage through the perspective of the insecurity, lack of pooling of resources, low commitment level, and even lack of fidelity of their prior cohabitation. Others simply learn to accept the temporary nature of relationships (Smock and Gupta, 2002). The result is a marriage which is at risk (Wu, 2000).

In other words, cohabitation sews the seeds of a mindset that sabotage marriage. Because our society treats cohabitation and marriage as basic equivalents, naive to the reality that they are profoundly different, what results is couples who treat their marriage the way they did their cohabitation.

All of that to say, if you’re thinking about moving in with a boyfriend or girlfriend DON’T DO IT!!! Whether you’re wanting to get more serious, wanting to test-run marriage before saying “I do,” or you’re simply motivated by financial reasons, the negatives far out-weigh the positives. And you are not the exception. The statistics show that you are most likely the rule.

In a world where divorce is so rampant, why gamble?

Even though Christians are sometimes seen as backwards or prudish for insisting on traditional marriage, studies like the ones I cited reveal that God-honoring marriage isn’t about legalism or cramping our freedom. God gave us direction for our own protection. He wanted to spare us the heartache and pain that comes with broken relationships. He gave us the resources to build up our marriages and families and make them strong, so use them! Seek to please and honor God in your dating relationship, not because you’re super religious but because you have a Father who loves you, and you know He always has the good of His children in mind.

 In my last post I explored the thinking behind women who would rather hang out with men than women. As the logic goes, women are too dramatic, emotional, boring, etc. For this and many other reasons, “low maintenance women” don’t want to put up with their “high maintenance” counter-parts.

As I concluded in the last post, this mindset has some troubling implications. When we paint all women in such a negative light, we’re no different than male chauvinists who do the same. We are female chauvinists. And this has theological implications. Rather than seeing women as having been made in the image of God and honoring Scriptural teachings that encourage women to fellowship with one another (Titus 2), we resort to superficial stereotypes that ultimately demean one another, and consequently dishonor God.

With all of that in mind, there is a second dynamic in play here. While a lot of women legitimately struggle to make female friends (perhaps they grew up with 4 brothers and that’s where they fit best!), we risk more than theological error here. There is a second dynamic, and it’s relational.

For some women, the excuse for avoiding female friendships can be a smokescreen for a relational dysfunction. Some women prefer male friendships because they like the attention. Plain and simple. They like thinking of themselves as “one of the guys,” the one girl that her guy friends can relate to. Unlike “those other girls,” she really gets them. It is a way for women to feel special or set apart. They’re not just like every other girl.

This is a need that exists within every woman. We all want to feel unique, and we seek to fulfill it in different ways. But rejecting female friendships should not be one of them. While male friendships are important, they also have to evolve in a way that female relationships don’t . As your male friends get married, or if you get married, you cannot be friends with them the way you were before. In fact, if your guy friends are even dating someone then you need to back off, and that can be a painful change. It can also be hurtful when your close guy friends choose to date other women, but never look your way.

These are obstacles that female friendships don’t encounter. That’s why emotional intimacy with a male friend puts you at greater risk than emotional intimacy with a woman. But more importantly, we should never tear down other women as a means for hiding our own idolatry. If you’re using male friends to fill a void in your life, don’t shift the blame.

So yes, it is perfectly fine to have male friends with whom you can fellowship as brothers and sisters in Christ. Sometimes it’s great to have a guy friend who can give you brotherly advice or a male perspective. But you need a support system of women as well. Proverbs 4:23 says “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” We typically interpret this verse in the context of dating, but it’s an important filter for friendships too. Be sure you’re entrusting your heart to friends for whom your motives are clear and emotional intimacy will always be appropriate.

With all of this in mind, examine your motives and the nature of your friendships with men. Are you good friends with a man because you’re secretly hoping it will turn into something more? Are you close to a man as a means for filling some need for male attention? Or are you avoiding female friendships because of pride? Do you see yourself as somehow better or more grounded than most women? No matter your relationship status, this is an important issue for all of us.

As a single woman I formed a bad habit that has now followed me into marriage. I wish I’d dealt with it years ago, but it took being married to bring the habit to light. You see when I was single, I made a habit of checking out attractive men. The habit wasn’t so much an issue of lust as it was an issue of pride. I wanted to see if guys would notice me back. I wanted the attention. Since it never went any further than that, and I was single, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me at the time.

The problem is that habits die hard.

Now, whenever I’m at the grocery store or the mall and I see an attractive man, there’s a part of me that still wants him to notice me. It’s totally absurd because I’m not actually interested, nor does his opinion even matter. I have a hot man at home who notices me every day, and I am committed to him. My reason for wanting this attention has nothing to do with the state of my marriage or how well my husband cares for me. It’s simply become a matter of habit that I reinforced over years and years and years.

Now some of you might wonder, “What’s so bad about a) admiring an attractive person in a non-lustful way, or b) appreciating it when someone else admires you?” The problem is that both of these supposedly innocent acts are really just smoke screens for the seeds of sin.

Proverbs 17:24 tells us, “A discerning man keeps wisdom in view, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth.” If my marriage is healthy but I’m forming a habit of looking elsewhere, checking out the goods and enjoying attention from other men, what do you think I’ll default to when my marriage goes through a season of hardship? I will have foolishly created a coping mechanism outside of my marriage, and that can have devastating consequences. A seemingly innocent habit can lay the foundation for any number of tragic mistakes.

That’s why I’m teaching myself a new habit: don’t look twice. We can’t help it if we notice an attractive person. God created beautiful things and that’s a fact, but it’s how we respond to those beautiful things that define us. My husband often talks about me being “his standard of beauty.” That is to say that instead of comparing me to other women and noticing the ways in which I don’t measure up to the culture’s standard of beauty, he sees me as THE standard. Lucky for me, that means I always measure up!

I think it’s healthy for women to do the same. While women don’t tend to be quite as visual as men, we’re still bombarded with images of men with rock hard abs who have all their hair on their head. More than a few of us struggle with comparing the men in our lives to these unrealistic standards, so we need to make sure our husbands become our own “standard of beauty” as well.

And lastly, to all the single gals out there I can’t say enough that who you are as a single woman is who you will be as a married woman. Habits and behaviors that seem permissible now will follow you into marriage, so figure out what is beneficial for you and stick to it. The lifestyle you are creating for yourself now has the potential to either strengthen or sabotage a marriage. I honestly believe that more marriages would succeed if people had learned to do singleness better. So no matter your stage in life, don’t look twice. There are attractive people in this world, but keep wisdom in view. It is a far better guide.

I don’t know about you, but I always get a little wary when someone states that “God told them” to do something. I wanna ask, “Wait a minute, what do you mean God told you? Did He send an angel to you in the night? Did you audibly hear His voice?” All the while thinking, “I don’t think God told you anything. It was probably just a bad burrito.”

Yet as cynical as I am in the face of these claims, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve basically done the same thing. I may not have admitted openly that “God told me xyz,” but I assumed it in my heart. I just knew I was supposed to marry the guy I was dating, or I just knew I was gonna get that job. I believed in a very powerful way that God had spoken these things to me, and they were going to happen.

However most of the time, they didn’t.

Now far be it from me to question the Holy Spirit’s leading in someone’s life. I do know the Holy Spirit will never lead in a way that contradicts Scripture, but if you say that God told you you’re gonna marry a man with brown eyes who loves dogs, then that’s between you and God. What’s more, Scripture does give us examples of people who heard directly from God Himself. We shouldn’t assume He would never do the same today.

The problem with these claims, however, is that they are tough to distinguish from our emotions. Sometimes we want something so badly that we can’t sort out our desire from the voice of God. And in my own life, desire has been far louder.

Desire, coupled with imagination, is a powerful influence in the mind of a woman. We can literally convince ourselves of something that is not at all of God, and that is a scary reality. We can convince ourselves that we can date or marry men we shouldn’t, buy things we shouldn’t, or let ourselves off the hook from following God the ways we should.

All of that to say, here are several ways that God DOES speak to us in a definitive way. If you think God has told you something, how does it line up with the following….

1. Scripture. As I said, God won’t lead you in a way that contradicts His Word. Maybe the Bible doesn’t say whether or not you should leave your kids with a nanny so you can pursue a career, but what does it say about being a godly mother and wife? Maybe it doesn’t tell you whether Alex is your soulmate, but can he lead you spiritually?

2. Godly counsel. What are your godly friends and family saying? If they are all telling you the same thing–namely, that a decision is wise or unwise–you should listen. The Holy Spirit uses the people in your life as a vehicle for His voice, so when you fail to heed consistent godly counsel, you are ultimately rebelling against God.

3. Circumstances. God never told me to marry my husband. But after I spent time getting to know him, learning about his character and how my personality matched with his (among other factors), I prayerfully came to the decision that it was wise to love him as my husband. Had our personalities clashed, that would have been an answer to the contrary. Sometimes our circumstances are clear indicators of God’s leading. If God has shut a door, that is often His way of telling you directly that He has something else in mind.

#2 and #3 are somewhat flexible since people can give you bad advice, and sometimes our circumstances are meant to teach us perseverance and patience rather than a clear negative answer. But usually there will be an extent to which the above three factors will all align on some level. If, however, you are still struggling to discern the voice of God, the last way He speaks to us is as follows…

4. Holy Spirit leading. There have certainly been times in my life when God has disquieted my spirit in a way that seemed to be coming from Him. It was usually in contradiction with my desires–perhaps I wasn’t willing to sacrifice as much for my church, or I had my heart set on taking a particular job that I never actually felt a peace about taking. There have also been times when I knew I was making a bad decision, but I did it anyway. That knowledge of the decision’s wrongness was the Holy Spirit.

While the Holy Spirit can direct our mind and instincts, it’s important to to check these “feelings” against the first three indicators I listed above. If it contradicts Scripture, or if it goes against the advice of godly women, or if circumstances keep getting in the way, then the “feeling” is likely just selfish desire. Otherwise, the leading may be affirmation of all that you already know or have heard from the Holy Spirit’s primary means of communication–His Word, His people and His world.

All of that to say, God DOES speak to us, every day in fact. But how he speaks to us is usually different from what the words “God told me to” imply. While God can certainly reveal Himself in dramatic ways, He already did so through His Son, and he continues to do so though Scripture and the Church. Many people engage in self-destructive decision making because “God told them to do something,” using it as a guise for doing what they want. At the very least, be honest with yourself and God.

And for those of us who are so blinded by our desires that even this type of honesty is difficult, remember that the ONLY promises we definitively have are found in Scripture and pertain to the Christian life. God doesn’t need to add to His promises, so be careful in doing so yourself–you may be setting yourself up for heartache and disappointment.

When I was a college minister I had the following interaction with both male and female students on a very frequent basis:

Emily has been dating a guy for a number of years and they’re really serious. She thinks she’s going to marry him and they have their entire future planned out around one another. But one day Emily’s boyfriend breaks up with her. She is absolutely devastated, feels lonely all the time, and can’t stop thinking about him. It’s as if her entire life’s direction and purpose has suddenly deflated, and she can’t seem to pick herself back up.

When I sit down with Emily to discuss the situation, one of the things we talk about is how God might redeem the situation. Although it seems bleak and hopeless now, God can use her hardship to teach her, refine her, and grow her. That said, I encourage her to embrace her singleness. Don’t worry about jumping back into the dating pool just yet. Take some time to remember who you are in Christ alone. After you’ve had a healthy amount of time to do that, pray about when to consider dating again.

Emily whole-heartedly agrees. “Yeah, I definitely need to be single right now!” she proclaims. “I’m really looking forward to having this time to grow in my faith. Just me and Jesus!”

One month later, Emily is dating Caleb, a guy she met shortly after our conversation. Eventually I grab a chance to talk to her: “I thought you were going to be single for awhile?” And she innocently responds, “Yeah, I was.”

It then dawns on me that my idea of being “single for a while” (ie. 6 months to a year–depending on how serious the previous relationship) was completely different from hers. For someone who has been in a long-term relationship–or has been in lots of consecutive short-term relationships–a month or two can feel like an eternity of singleness. Though she’d only been single for a few weeks, she she felt like she’d been single forever.

The reason I open with this story is that it will help me explain the post’s title. While singleness doesn’t sound like a hard to define category (Some of you are probably thinking, “Geez, I know I’m single! You don’t have to rub it in!) stories like Emily’s lead me to believe that there isn’t a widely held agreement on what it really means to be single. While many people admit that God “is leading them through a season of singleness right now” or that God hasn’t revealed their future to them spouse yet, their lifestyles are sometimes inconsistent with this supposed phase of life. I’m not trying to be sadistic here and tell people who are already struggling with being single that you’re not “single enough,” but there’s a degree to which we need to be honest about whether we are honoring God in the seasons He has called us to. Some people do this well–they are single and they use their time excellently. But others (and I did this myself at times) may be single in name but have multiple emotional attachments that prevent them from ever learning or growing from this time in their lives.

God calls everyone to be single at some time in their life, but a lot of people find ways of almost getting around it. Rather than learning what they’re supposed to from it, namely founding their identity on Christ instead of another person, a lot of people are only quasi-single. They’re single in the most minimal way. And this toe-in-the-water singleness all comes about as a result of 2 main factors:

1. The Way We Define Singleness–For most of us, when we look back over our lives thus far and tally up the number of years spent in relationships, we only count the years in which we had an officially labeled “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.” However, that number of “official relationships” can be deceiving. For many of us, we don’t count the number of people who filled a “boyfriend placeholder” position in our lives, or guys with whom there was a physical relationship but no commitment, or guys that we just flirted with incessantly. Many women have a significant list of men with whom there was never a relationship title, but they either felt like they were in a relationship, or acted like it.

That is not being single. With or without a label, if you are emotionally involved with someone in a way that consumes your time and thought life, or if you’re giving away your heart or your body to another person in an intimate way, then you aren’t really single. What’s more, you’re not being single in the way Scripture envisions this time of your life, a time that allows you to “concern yourself with the Lord’s affairs and how you can please him.” (1 Cor. 7:32) Instead of using your singleness to the Lord, you’re actually finding short-cut ways to avoid it.

2. The Length of Your Singleness–As I described in the opening story, it can be hard to stay single after a break-up. For a lot of women at least, we can lose our identities in the man we are with. It’s like we lose our center of gravity, so we start searching for another guy to take that place. But if you’re single long enough, you will begin to remember what your identity is like apart from a guy. You remember who you were created to be and how God alone really is enough to fulfill you and give you joy. This process usually took me, personally, about a year to work through. It wasn’t until a year after a break up that I fully recovered and remembered who I was again in Christ. That said, when we jump right into another relationship, we make it more difficult to engage this process because we haven’t given ourselves the time we need. It’s not impossible, but it’s very hard.

That said, if you’re the kind of person who bounces from relationship to relationship, or if you’ve never been truly single (no hooking up, no pseudo-boyfriends, no excessive and long-term flirting with that guy you like) for 6 months to a year since you were in 8th grade, then you really haven’t been single very long. You haven’t given yourself the time to heal on the Lord’s strength or build your identity on the Lord alone, without the crutch of a relationship. And the way you measure this amount of time is not how long its been since your last boyfriend, but how long its been since your last emotional or physical relationship with someone of the opposite sex.

So while I’m not going to make a bunch of rules about how long you should be single after a relationship or how long people should experience singleness in general–every person is different and every situation is different–I offer these 2 angles on singleness so that we aren’t deceiving ourselves in a way that undermines this God-ordained seasons of our lives. Again, I don’t want to belittle how tough it can be to be single, and some of you are an example to us all about how to embrace your circumstances to the glory of God! But I fear others of you are short-changing yourselves. Singleness is hard, but it’s also a gift that should not be wasted.

Singleness is a really important phase of every person’s life. For me, it was my chance to learn who I was in Christ apart from any other person so that when I finally got married I wasn’t depending on my husband to fill a role that only God could. So while no one knows when they’ll meet the person they are meant to marry, and no one knows how long their season of singleness will last, I encourage you to live out your singleness with honesty before God. If you’re single right now, don’t hook up with a bunch of random dudes. Don’t hook up with your best guy friend either. Don’t flirt with all the cute guys at church to make yourself feel better, and don’t keep that guy hanging around you who likes you, just so that you don’t feel lonely. If you’re going to be single, do singleness well. Do it in a way that is obedient to God in the season He’s called you to.

Yes, I know it’s not always that simple. You don’t know if that guy or girl you like is “the one.” All I’m asking is that you don’t be sketchy about it, and that you be honest with yourself and with God. Is your dating life motivated by fear, or by a security in the God who has great plans for you? Your answer to this question is likely revealed by your lifestyle–are you doing singleness well, enjoying it and using it to honor God, or are you attempting to minimize the “pain” of it as much as possible?

On the first day of our honeymoon, my husband and I were waiting at the Miami airport when I decided to buy a good book for the trip. I knew we would be spending plenty of time out on the beach, and I also knew I’d get bored just laying there, so I found a bookstore and began to sniff around.

A number of my friends (female friends, that is) had recently gotten sucked into the phenomenon that is the Twilight series, so when I happened upon a display that contained all 4 books, I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t exactly planning on reading theology during my stay in St. Lucia, so this was just the sort of thing I was looking for.

And like my friends, I got sucked in almost immediately. I knocked out the 500+ pages beast of a book in a matter of days. In fact, on our way back home I found myself frantically scouring the Charlotte airport looking for the sequel. Eventually I received a text message from my husband beckoning me back to the gate so that I wouldn’t miss the flight, so I moped back to the gate, sulking that I would have to wait another day before I could continue the series.

Eventually I went to a local store and purchased New Moon, which I similarly finished in just a few days.

This brings me to the title of my blog. Don’t worry, this is not one of those conservative Christian condemnations of all things magical like Harry Potter. I think Harry Potter is awesome, and I think vampires are pretty fun too. That’s actually why I saw the first Twilight movie and duped my husband into going with me–I thought it was an action vampire movie. Of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Plus, the books themselves are fairly PG rated. I’m not sure the other two are quite as innocent as the first, but with the exception of some intense kissing scenes, the sex and language is held at bay. A refreshing change from most romance novels these days.

The real reason I have misgivings about this series (and keep in mind that I have only read half of it) is the emotional intensity of the relationship between the two main characters, Edward and Bella. Regularly, both characters make statements about one another that are beyond melodramatic. They’re flat out ridiculous. When Edward thinks that Bella is dead, he tries to kill himself. When Bella is under threat of being murdered by several different characters in the story, she brushes it all off because she can face anything in the world as long as Edward is by her side. He is “her life” and she is “inextricably in love with him.” (after having known him for just a few months)

Bella talks about Edward the way Scripture talks about Jesus. He is her savior. He is her idol. And that idolatry is made to look romantic and enticing for countless young women across the country.

Now in some ways, the heightened drama of this love story is really no different from the likes of Romeo and Juliet (with whom the two are frequently compared throughout the books) but what disturbs me about the books is its near cult-like popularity among young girls today–an appeal that Romeo and Juliet no longer have. I have a 12 year old cousin who is like a little sister to me, and she’s got pictures of Edward all over her room. She’s also read all 4 of the books, as have her friends. She is literally eating it up with a spoon.

And that scares me. In a culture where women derive so much of their worth from guys, where young girls are actually committing suicide when they are shunned by a guy at school, is it responsible to encourage this story line? Bella is made out to be the heroine, even though her obsession with Edward is utterly pathetic. She has no sense of self apart from him, yet she is placed on a pedestal at the center of a supposedly great love story. That is not the message that I want my cousin, or my future daughters, to absorb as they figure out their identities in Christ. Not only could such a message negatively impact future dating relationships, but it could short-circuit their relationship with God as well.

It’s for that reason that I would not consider the Twilight books a positive way to shape my daughters’ worldview, should I ever be so blessed to have some. As I mold them into women who fear the Lord above all else, teaching them to found their identities on Christ instead of men, I fear that the Twilight novels would undermine these efforts. Women love the books so much because it is the sweetest of temptations, feeding their imaginations with illusions of the grandest kind, and I would fear tempting my sweet little one in this way.

With that in mind, I would even be wary of some adult women reading these books, or books like them. For women, our imaginations can be a tremendous source of struggle. They can create in us expectations that do not match with the world, or more importantly God’s plan. When we create such expectations, we go to great lengths to achieve them, even at a cost to ourselves. So for single women for whom this issue is a struggle, or even married women who are experiencing disappointment in their marriage, I would be careful about these books. They have the potential to shape our imaginations in ways that can be toxic for our relationships.

So at the risk of sounding like a prude, that is why I wouldn’t let my daughters read the Twilight books. I’m not sure if I personally am going to continue the series or not–like I said, it’s a quick and easy read, which is sometimes kind of nice. And so far it’s been pretty clean, which is also a nice change of pace. But we must be diligent about the information we consume. At any age, our minds are still moldable because our imaginations are so vivid, so we must be cautious about what it is we’re consuming, and whether it harmonizes with the truth of God.

Well my wedding is now 2 days away, which means this is officially my last post until after the honeymoon! I will hopefully have a guest blogger posting while I am gone, so you can check back for that. In the mean time, I thought I would touch on a topic that is at the forefront of my mind: marriage.

Recently Christianity Today published an article entitled “The Case for Early Marriage” in which sociologist Mark Regerus explores the reasons behind such rampant pre-marital sex amidst evangelicalism (80% of church-going Christians, in fact!). Given how long young people are waiting to get married these days, Regenerus claims that it should come as no surprise. God created us in such a way that during our 20′s we are often at a sexual peak, yet a large percentage of Christians are not providing themselves with the God-given outlet for dealing with that drive.

To read the whole article, you can check it out here, but Al Mohler also posted a great blog in which he processed the implications of the article, which you can check out here. In his summary of the article, Mohler writes,

“Regnerus understands that many evangelical parents and pastors are most likely to respond to this reality with the reflex mechanism of an even greater emphasis upon sexual abstinence. Nevertheless, the data reveal that the majority of evangelical young people — most of whom have been targeted for years with messages of sexual abstinence — are engaging in sexual intercourse before marriage.

Evangelicals tend to marry slightly earlier than other Americans, but not by much. Many of them plan to marry in their mid-20s.Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them. And I am suggesting that when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It’s battling our Creator’s reproductive designs.”

Now I find this conclusion to be absolutely fascinating. On one level, it makes total sense! The longer you wait the more you really are tempting fate, especially if you date multiple people or are engaged in long-term relationships.

The only problem is that most women I know aren’t exactly putting off marriage to the last possible second. Most Christian women would love to get married but don’t have the option. And Regenerus takes note of this saying,

“There are about three single women for every two single men….If [a woman] decides to marry, one in three women has no choice but to marry down in terms of Christian maturity. Given this unfavorable ratio, and the plain fact that men are, on average, ready for sex earlier in relationships than women are, many young Christian women are being left with a dilemma: either commence a sexual relationship with a decent, marriage-minded man before she would prefer to—almost certainly before marriage—or risk the real possibility that, in holding out for a godly, chaste, uncommon man, she will wait a lot longer than she would like. Plenty will wait so long as to put their fertility in jeopardy. By that time, the pool of available men is hardly the cream of the crop—and rarely chaste.”

Mohler adds to this point explaining,

“Men often delay marriage believing that they can always marry when ever they are “ready.” Meanwhile, their evangelical sisters are often very ready for marriage, even as they watch their prospects for both marriage and fertility falling.

All of this points to the fact that the delay of marriage has far more to do with the patterns of life adopted by many, if not most, evangelical young men, rather than those chosen by young women. Yet, at the same time, the parents of both young men and young women can, by either intention or default, make it difficult for their children to marry.”

So what’s a girl to do? Unfortunately neither Regenerus nor Mohler offer much short-term comfort for women who feel trapped in this situation, but they are stepping up and calling men to task, and there is some encouragement in that.

However, that leaves me with two nagging questions:

1. To all you single guys out there, do you really feel as though you or your Christian brothers are engaging in this delayed maturity, putting off marriage in an unnatural way? Honestly, I’m not sure if I know a lot of guys like that. Most of my single guy friends would love to get married, but just haven’t found the right girl yet. From the single girls’ perspectives it seems like you’re dragging your feet, but are you really?

2. OR, are you possibly being too picky? And that leads me to my second question–Is it wise or foolish to encourage early marriage? In a climate of such sweeping divorce rates, I’m not quite sure. Both Mohler and Regerus seem to believe that guys ARE being too picky, and that while marriage is indeed hard work, it’s still very doable with a solid Christian woman. The emphasis is less on marrying the right person and more on building a strong marital foundation. This struck me as somewhat foreign given the battle evangelicals having been waging in defense of the family. A teaching that urges young people to hurry up and get married seems almost irreconcilable with the enormous evangelical emphasis on prudence.

But then again, maybe it’s not. Perhaps one of the reasons so many marriages fail is because people are having sex before marriage. They are sealing habits of promiscuity and lack of self-control, habits that can altogether undermine a marriage. In pre-marital sex, young people are setting themselves up for all kinds of marital problems, regardless of whether or not they find that perfect person. Maybe that’s what Regenerus and Mohler are getting at.

That is a tough call to make, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts, especially from you guys out there.

And with that, I am signing off. The next time I post I will be Sharon Hodde Miller!

What is spiritual leadership?

This is a question about which there has been a great deal of confusion among Christians. Scripture teaches that we are to date and marry men who are spiritual leaders (1 Cor. 11:3), and Scripture also teaches us to date and marry men with whom we are equally yoked (2. Cor. 6:14).* The problem is that these two elements are not always discussed in conjunction with one another. Oftentimes Christians fail to view them as two equally important aspects of a dating relationship, aspects that hold one another in a complementary tension.

For many women, we subconsciously interpret “equally yoked” to mean: “as spiritually mature as I am, but preferably more mature if possible.” That is, we want to date someone as mature as we are, but we would prefer someone who is more mature. Why? Because we want him to be a spiritual leader, and he can probably do that best if he’s already more mature.

This mentality is not only unscriptural, but it can result in several negative consequences. First, it can deflate a woman’s motivation to push herself spiritually. After all, you don’t want to be so mature that there aren’t many guys who can lead you. Second, this mentality can lead to a marital dynamic in which the husband is significantly more mature than the wife. Even if she is not noticeably immature, she may not be as radically committed to know and serve God. But since she doesn’t have to be the spiritual leader, it doesn’t seem as important, as long as she’s a Christian.

The problem with this way of viewing Christian marriage is that it fulfills one Scriptural teaching while ignoring the other–yes, the man is leading spiritually, but are the two equally yoked? Not necessarily.

Spiritual leadership does not necessarily mean that the husband is significantly more mature than his wife. If he is, then the two are not really equally yoked. What’s more, the man is actually doing himself a disservice because he has not married someone who can REALLY challenge him. While he may be the spiritual leader in the relationship, it is likely that he will grow less because he is not married to a woman who has the capacity to push him the way he needs.

That said, spiritual leadership does not mean that the husband spiritually dominates his wife. On the contrary, it simply means that the man works harder. He’s got to step up, think ahead, anticipate, pray for wisdom, and humble himself, because being a spiritual leader has nothing to do with spiritual superiority–it has to do with fulfilling a role. If a man leads a woman who is just as solid as he is, then it’s going to be challenging for him to be the leader, but he’ll grow tremendously because of it.

With that in mind, men and women both have a challenge before them. Men, don’t allow spiritual leadership to be your only criteria in choosing a girl. Even if she’s a nice Christian girl, it’s not enough to know that you can lead her. Make sure you two are equally yoked as well. Make sure she is at the same place as you spiritually so that she is sure to challenge you, rather than pulling you down to her level.

And ladies, don’t be afraid to push yourselves. Not only are you doing yourself a service by pursuing God with radical ferocity, but you are serving your husbands as well. Remember, it takes iron to sharpen iron, so we cannot sharpen our husbands if we ourselves are not made of the right material.

Date a spiritual leader? Yes. But be equally yoked as well. Never have one without the other.

*The first time I posted this, a number of people questioned my interpretation of the phrase “equally yoked,” taken from 2 Cor. 6:14.  Given that the context seems to deal only with unbelievers, and it is more broadly applied to fellowship rather than marriage, that is a fair critique. However, when this verse is read in conjunction with other passages in Scripture (such as Old Testament commandments against marrying pagans–Gen. 28:1, Ex. 34:12) it is clear that Scripture clearly stands against yoking yourself in marriage with one who does not share the same faith.

In addition to this point, verses that teach us about maintaining the integrity of the Church are also applicable to marriage, given that marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. That said, verses such as Proverbs 27:17 (“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.) not only apply to Christian friendship, but should certainly be present in marriage.

Finally, it’s important to remember the visual that “equal yoking” conjures for us. When two oxen were unequally yoked as they plowed a field–that is to say that one was stronger than the other–the oxen were unable to plow in a straight line. Their work was impaired by their unequal yoking, and while this analogy can clearly apply to relationships between Christians and non-Christians, it can apply to relationships between mature Christians and immature Christians as well. If a mature Christian marries a nominal Christian and subsequently discerns a call to the mission field, it will be difficult for them to walk in a “straight line” so to speak.

All of that to say, in using the passage in 2 Corinthians to advise Christians against being unequally yoked in marriage, this is not so much a reckless lifting of the verse from its context as it is a reading of the passage within the larger context of the whole canon of Scripture.

This weekend my family is headed down to Florida to celebrate the 4th of July. My parents have a place down there, but it’s very small with only one bedroom, so usually I just stay on the sleeper couch and we all fit in just fine. However, the sleeping dynamic has gotten a little tricky now that I’m engaged.

As we’ve made our plans for this trip, we’ve had to figure out where to put my fiancé. I had the bright idea to get an air mattress and stick him on the floor of the living room, but the condo is literally too small for it to fit. Then I had the even *brighter* idea to get one of those blow-up pool flotations and have him sleep on that. My dad immediately shot that down, but not before suggesting that I be the one to sleep on my own terrible idea.

Our solution? My parents are putting us both up in our own, individual hotel rooms right across the street. That seemed to work best for all of us–more room and privacy for everyone involved.

Yet on some level, this elaborate plan feels a bit silly. I mean, we’ll be getting married in just over a month. In only 5 weeks this whole scenario will be a moot point because we’ll be able to share a bed and sleep together. But for now, we have to jump through hoops to stay separate, even pay extra money to do so, all to avoid something that we’ll inevitably be doing anyway in just a short time from now.

As my fiancé and I have entered the home stretch of our engagement, I’ve  found myself thinking this way a lot. We are going to get married very soon, but on numerous occasions we’ve had to go out of our way to act single and unmarried–out of our way in instances that have even cost us financially. Sometimes this seems like a lot of work just to stand on principle.

It is in these moments that I can sympathize with a number of my friends who have compromised on their formerly staunch standards as a matter of convenience. I know a number of couples who decided to live together because of financial reasons. Until now, I’d never really understood why, but when you’re with the person that you think you’re going to spend the rest of your life with, your tricky circumstances almost feel providential–it’s as if God is leading you into this next step of the relationship. It feels unnatural to resist it.

With that in mind, I want to share with you the reason why my fiancé and I have not taken this next step forward, why we have in fact bent over backwards to avoid it:

Intimacy should never be something you fall into.To understand what healthy intimacy looks like, we need only look to the cross. In order to restore our relationship with God, Christ chose to lay himself down for us. From this example we learn that intimacy is not only a choice, but it is accompanied by sacrifice as well.

Falling into intimacy as a matter of convenience is the exact opposite of this model.

When we achieve intimacy by convenience, we not only buck the examples of intimacy that God gives us in the Bible, but set ourselves up for greater hardship later down the road. We don’t equip ourselves with the tools to continue growing that intimacy when things get hard. Up until then, intimacy was just a matter of convenience–what happens if it’s not convenient anymore?

But perhaps even more worrying is what this precedent means for marital faithfulness. Say that you and your husband are going through a rough patch, and  there’s a woman at work who he gets along with really well and meets some needs that you aren’t providing? If you and your spouse have established a pattern of intimacy through convenience, rather than sacrifice, it will be tough to trust that he’ll be any different now. He didn’t fight for his moral integrity then, so you can’t be sure he will do it now.

We must always remember that the habits we form today will be with us tomorrow. If you are founding a relationship based on convenience, its true mettle will eventually be tested. If it is not based on intentional, sacrificial, and SCRIPTURAL decision-making (You are not being intentional and sacrificial when God’s Word clearly says you’re not!), then you can’t expect your relationship to hold fast to these characteristics later on. We have trouble seeing the consequences of our actions in the present when things are easy, but we have to ask if we are fostering characteristics in ourselves and one another that can stand the test of life’s trials. God isn’t just calling us to holiness–He’s protecting us from what our short-sightedness blinds us from seeing.

Even if you’re not living with your boyfriend, girlfriend, or fiancé, and even if you’re married, this is an issue to which we must all give sober consideration. If you have a habit of sleeping over at your boyfriend’s place because it’s always “too late at night” to go home, then you are experiencing intimacy by convenience. If you share a hotel room with your girlfriend when you go out of town for a wedding because it’s just too expensive to stay apart, then that is intimacy by convenience. And if you are married but you have in-depth, personal conversations with one of your co-workers of the opposite gender just because they sit near you and they’re a good listener, then that is also intimacy by convenience.

While healthy relationships shouldn’t be too hard, all good relationships take work. It is ironic how we will fight and fight and fight to keep a relationship afloat when it is clearly not of God, but we will not put that same energy into fighting for the holiness of our relationships. But that foundation, the foundation of honoring Christ at every turn, that is what my fiancé and I want our marriage to stand on, and the building begins today. We might feel silly at times, but we trust that in going the extra mile to honor God, even when it’s inconvenient, He will honor us. That’s an investment that will forever trump the benefits of short-term convenience.