What are your beliefs about dating and premarital sex? Do your dating values conform to God’s standards or do they reflect cultural norms? We live in a sex-saturated society with relatively few remaining sexual taboos. But does this cultural permissiveness lead to satisfying, healthy relationships or to eventual heart break and disillusionment?
Do you desire God’s blessing on your relationships? Do you want to build something that will withstand the test of time and bring long-term happiness? If you do, you must follow God’s guidelines for relational success. Read the articles and ask the Holy Spirit to help you obey God’s directives and avoid sowing seeds of destruction. Time will confirm that Father God knows best.
Is Missionary Dating a Good Idea? Can’t God Use It?
Missionary dating is the modern idea that a Christian can date a non-Christian with the goal of leading that person to faith in Christ. While God canuse such relationships for evangelism, the Bible says our most important relationships should be with fellow believers.
One problem in evaluating missionary dating from a biblical perspective is that dating of any type was not widely practiced in biblical times. Most marriages were arranged. Yet, since dating is often seen today as a “pathway” leading to marriage, biblical principles for marriage can be applied to dating, the precursor of marriage. (read more)
14 Ways to Date without the Stress of “Falling in Love”
by Whitney Hopler
Dating doesn’t have to involve the heartache that goes along with our culture’s process of “falling in love,” which sends you on an out-of-control romantic journey that too often ends with a crash. There’s a better way to date: flying rather than falling. Flying involves relying on Jesus to help you navigate dating, so you can enjoy a peaceful, graceful journey. Here’s how you can do so. (read more)
Dating Advice You Actually Need
by Derek Rishmawy
I’ve been working in youth ministry in some capacity for roughly eight years, and this is one of the most common questions I’ve fielded from young Christians: “How can (insert boyfriend/girlfriend) and I have a Christian dating relationship? How do we keep it centered on Christ?” As often I’ve heard it, I still love the the heart behind the question. (read more)
Sexually Transmitted Unease: How Casual Sex Works Bad Chemistry from Good
by Terrell Clemmons
In Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting Our Children, OB-GYNs Dr. Joe S. McIlhaney Jr., and Dr. Freda McKissic Bush explain, from a neurobiological perspective, why physiological and emotional changes after sex happen and how. “Scientists are confirming that sex is more than a momentary physical act. It produces powerful, even lifelong, changes in our brains that direct and influence our future to a surprising degree,” they write. A single sexual encounter sets off a cascade of changes in a young brain, and modern imaging technology allows researchers to observe those changes more thoroughly than ever before. (read more)
Waiting while Dating
by J. E. Jones
How to date and stay pure… When I typed out these words as an idea for an article on abstinence, I realized this was a difficult topic to get people talking about. When I asked my peers to share their stories, few were virgins with no sexual history, and even fewer wanted to talk about it. I wasn’t surprised. Recounting my own sin made me feel like the chief of hypocrites. Yet, at the same time, I knew couples who did it right. They met, fell in love, dated and waited until they were married to have sex. There seemed to be a special connection between them that made me wonder, How did they do it? (read more)
State of the Sexual Union
While unmarried Christians have been given practical reasons to avoid sex, what we lack is a compelling vision of marital sex as God’s good design. We have never heard the poetry within the command to practice chastity — the “yes” that the “no” protects. When it comes to sex, we suffer from a theological deficit. (read more)
Why Save Intimacy for Marriage?
The Bible teaches that we should reserve sexual intimacy for marriage for no other reason than that, if we are Christians, we belong to God. Sex outside of marriage is not only a sin against ourselves and our partner, but a fraudulent misrepresentation of God and a cruel distortion of the intimacy he created to be a picture of the eternal intimacy of the Trinity itself. (read more)
Dating vs. Courting
What does a healthy, biblical dating or courting relationship look like in practice? A biblical relationship looks different from a worldly relationship. There are three broad differences between what has been called biblical courtship and modern dating. What are the differences in these two systems? (read more)
Pure Again
by Laurel Robinson
You’ve heard plenty of stories about how true love waits. Respect yourself … save your virginity for your spouse. These are wonderful stories; kudos to all who live them out. Now, for those of you who feel like it’s too late for that story of purity and light, here’s another true story, derived from an eyewitness account by a man named John. (read more)
10 Lies and Excuses Satan Uses to Deceive People About Sex
Many single Christians prefer to avoid the topic of sexual purity because they are bound by guilt about past sins, or because they do not want to deal with current sexual temptations and sin in their lives. But God takes purity very seriously–and so must we. (read more)
Abstinence in the Bible
The Bible is a practical handbook for life, filled with live giving principles meant to protect us from many of the evils in this world. The Bible is not a mysterious and difficult to understand ancient text as some would like to believe. It’s simply a record of God’s dealings with us humans and contains His redemptive story and principles He would have us abide by. When it comes to the topic of sex the Bible also has a lot to say, since God is interested in every part of our lives and sex, by design, forms such an integral part. (read more)
10 Reasons Not to Have Sex Outside of Marriage
by Mary Fairchild
Current movies, books, television shows and magazines are full of impressions and suggestions about sex. We have examples all around us of couples engaging in premarital and extra-marital sex. There’s no way around it—today’s culture fills our minds with hundreds of reasons to just go ahead and have sex outside of marriage. But as Christians, we don’t want to simply follow everyone else. We want to follow Christ and know what the Bible says about sex outside of marriage. (read more)
Three Lies About Premarital Sex
Is Scripture becoming outdated and archaic in light of today’s cultural views concerning premarital sex? (read article)
How Can I Long to Be Married Without Obsessing About It?
by John Piper
I suppose the dynamics of that question and its answer relate not just to marriage, but to almost any strong desire that you have, especially a desire relating to people. So my mind broadens out from the marriage issue to ask, “Why do we obsess about anything? Why do we have overweening preoccupations with anything?” (read more)
What does the Bible say about dating / courting?
Although the words “courtship” and “dating” are not found in the Bible, we are given some principles that Christians are to go by during the time before marriage. (read more)
Are we supposed to be actively looking for a spouse?
We are not to frantically search for a spouse as if it depends solely on our own efforts. Neither are we to be passive, thinking that God will one day cause a spouse to arrive at our door. (read more)
Wait or Date: How Do I Find God’s Best?
By Julie Ferwerda
Should you just keep to yourself, hoping God will mysteriously drop Mr./Ms. Right onto your doorstep in some freak encounter? On the other hand, what if you miss the boat? In this heroic effort to wait completely on God, the days, months, and maybe years go by while you’ve done everything short of checking yourself in to a monastery. (read article)
What does the Bible say about sex before marriage / premarital sex?
There is no Hebrew or Greek word used in the Bible that precisely refers to sex before marriage. The Bible undeniably condemns adultery and sexual immorality, but is sex before marriage considered sexually immoral? (read more)
Protecting Purity–Keeping Sacred Things Sacred
A young engaged couple that I know recently confessed to allowing sexual compromise into their relationship. They didn’t technically have sex, but they did almost everything up to that point, the whole while assuming that they were still protecting their purity. “I just didn’t think it was really that big of a deal to God,” the young woman told us. “I mean, we’re planning to get married anyway. We’ve committed our lives to each other. What’s wrong with expressing our love physically prior to saying wedding vows?” That young woman articulated a very common attitude among modern Christians. We might believe that having casual sex with random people isn’t God’s best, but most of us don’t see the significance of vigilantly guarding pre-marriage purity once you have pledged your life and heart to someone. So how big a deal is purity to God, anyway? (read more)
Is it right for a Christian to date or marry a non-Christian?
For a Christian, dating a non-Christian is unwise, and marrying one is not an option. Second Corinthians 6:14 (KJV) tells us not to be “unequally yoked” with an unbeliever. (read more)
