More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 20 - November 1, 2023
Don’t lower your standards; change your standards. Instead of saying someone has to be at least a “7” on the imaginary physical attractiveness scale, look for someone who’s striving to be a “perfect 10” in terms of godliness.
you should tell your heart what to follow.
A relationship based on feelings will only lead to feelings of hurt.
Along with that definition comes the idea that these feelings are out of our control. We talk about “falling in love,” which sounds a bit like tripping and falling into a hole. It’s a passive action; you fall by accident, and the results of falling down are never all that great.
A healthy, godly marriage is not entertaining. It’s amazing; it’s beautiful; it’s an incredible adventure; it’s boring. You wouldn’t want to watch it, but you do want to live it.
The problem with defining love as a feeling—which is the root cause of thinking love is out of your control, is a drug, and is a roller coaster of confusion and drama—is that feelings are not reliable. Feelings change, almost by definition. If they didn’t change, they wouldn’t be feelings; they’d just be who you are.
Facts trump feelings, and the fact is you can feel intensely in love with someone who is incredibly wrong for you.
Love Is a Verb
an action is something you control. You can’t always choose how you feel (although, through your actions, you can heavily influence your feelings). But you can always choose how you act.
There are times I still get butterflies in my stomach when I see Monica, and days when I still feel the same excitement I did when we were first dating or first married. But there are many other times when I don’t have those same feelings. Honestly, sometimes I don’t have strong feelings for her at all. But that’s OK. That’s not a crisis in our marriage. Because even if I don’t feel in love with her, I can still actively love her in the things I say and do. I can serve her selflessly, speak to her kindly, and pursue her faithfully. Those things are choices that are always fully in my control.
...more
If your relationship is based on what they can do for you (or what you can do to them), that’s selfish. It’s self-love. You don’t even love them; you just love yourself.
Real love is selfless. It’s about serving, not being served; giving, not getting. And when both people love and give and serve each other selflessly, well, you end up getting quite a lot.
When we say “God is love” (1 John 4:8), we’re not saying God is a feeling; we’re saying he defines and exemplifies what love is. And the ultimate expression of that was God sending his Son to sacrifice his life on our behalf, not because we’d done anything good to earn that love but rather because we have all sinned and done wrong.b God’s love for us isn’t just a feeling; it’s the most selfless act of service imaginable.c God invented love, so he gets to define it—not Hollywood,
Feelings would sometimes fail, but since love is an action, you can always love someone regardless of how you might feel at the moment.
Stop letting fleeting feelings determine your fate.
The world says to “follow your heart” in dating and in life. That’s terrible advice. Your “heart” just means your feelings, and your feelings have no wisdom or insight of their own.
In stark contrast to “follow your heart,” the Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Your heart is not just unreliable; it’s deceitful. It lies. It will actively lead you astray, if you let it.
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Above all else, guard your heart. In a book of wisdom written by the wisest man to ever live, it says that your heart should be guarded more than anything.
If what you watch didn’t have a huge influence on what you do in real life, then the entire advertising industry wouldn’t exist.
And when you pin yet another dress to that wedding day Pinterest board, you focus your heart on the fairy tale of a one-day party rather than preparing for the reality of the thousands of days that will come after that (or, possibly, before).
choosing to no longer associate with people or places that lead you astray.
Don’t follow your heart; inform your heart. Teach it where you want to go.
The Bible says we shouldn’t awaken love before its time.f Its time would be in marriage, when you have the kind of lifelong commitment that can justify and support any feelings of love, no matter how intense.
premature feelings are commonly caused by premature intimacy.
set spiritual boundaries by not getting into deep, intense prayer sessions together—which is one of the most intimate and vulnerable things you can do with another person.
breaking up doesn’t have to equal breaking your heart.
He has no desire to see you hurting.
You can’t be surprised when a “bad boy” treats you badly; it’s literally part of his description!
there is a self-worth problem at play here; some people don’t think they deserve better, so they settle for someone who treats them poorly. Just a quick but important reminder: God took great joy in designing you.c He loves you, has given you infinite value, and has paid a great price for you through his Son, Jesus. Find someone with that faith who understands your worth.
Can someone who is fully devoted to following Christ date someone who is not a Christian? The answer to that is a definitive no. Not “No, they shouldn’t,” but “No, they can’t.” They literally can’t.
The result of being “yoked together,” therefore, is that the two of you have to be going exactly the same direction, at exactly the same speed, at all times.
You want someone who is running after Christ as you are, with the same level of devotion.
What you are looking for, therefore, is someone who is a fully devoted follower of Christ. First you have to be one yourself, then you find someone else who is similarly pursuing God and join together in your pursuit.
going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger.
You want someone who is willing to work hard, because marriage takes work.
Look for someone who listens to and obeys wise counsel, who is humble enough to be teachableo and wise enough to realize there is a lot they don’t know.
submit to church elders
would they be described as having a servant’s heart?
Controlled, Responsible, Obedient, Serving, and Steady. Put those together, and you have someone whose life is marked by the CROSS. (See what I did there? You’re welcome. It took a lot of time playing Scrabble to accomplish that.)
if you’re fully yielded to Christ and they’re fully yielded to Christ, you don’t have to pursue each other. You pursue God together, side by side, as one.
People play games in dating any time they say or do something in order to get a particular response from the other person.
Or maybe you ghost them for a calculated amount of time and take joy in seeing their frantic texts checking in. Then, when they go silent, you reach back out to keep the game alive. That is messed up, and it’s not loving.
If someone claims to be one thing but their actions soon contradict those claims, believe their actions over their words. People may fail to do what they say, but they rarely fail to do what they believe.
in the short run, manipulation works.
Love has nothing to do with trying to get the upper hand on someone.
And if you discover that someone is playing games with you, tell them you refuse to play along. If they haven’t outgrown playing games, then they are not grown-up enough to make a good husband or wife. It is wrong to date children, no matter how old they might be.
even when you think you’re lying for their benefit, lies are never loving. The truly loving thing to do is to tell the truth. The Bible says, “Love must be sincere” (Rom. 12:9) and love “rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6); it also says that God hates lies (Prov. 6:16–19; 12:22) and that the devil is “the father of lies” (John 8:44).
that’s just part of being honest; you shouldn’t actively pretend you are not interested when you actually are. That would be a lie and a form of the “playing hard to get” game. Letting a man know you are interested can even be an act of service, because, honestly, guys can sometimes be clueless about such things.
If a man’s not willing to take initiative, and doesn’t see you as being valuable enough to be worth pursuing in dating, then he is not the kind of man you really want to yoke yourself to.
Be clear about your intentions. Remember that people wonder. They wonder what you are thinking. They especially wonder what you think about them.
