Outdated: Find Love That Lasts When Dating Has Changed

by Jonathan "JP" Pokluda

If you want a different outcome, you need to provide a different input. You have to be willing to change.

If you’re not ready to be married right now (or in the very near future), then don’t date right now.

However, even though you may say you don’t want drama, in a way you kind of do. If you’re complaining about it, it’s only because you’ve experienced it over and over in your dating relationships. It’s what you are used to, and it’s all you’ve ever seen and known.

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.

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.

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).

Your goal in dating someone is . . . wait, do you know what your goal in dating is by now? It’s not to “fall in love” with them, or to convince them to fall in love with you. It’s to determine whether they would make a good spouse for you, and whether you can each commit to each other and trust that the other person is equally committed.

if you’re not even dating someone at all, you definitely shouldn’t be giving your heart away to them.

avoid the world’s tendency to give our hearts away to every cute person we meet.

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.)

And 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.

there are more godly women who deeply desire to get married than there are godly men who have the guts to ask them out.

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.

God will forgive you, if you want to be forgiven. First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” You can be pure in God’s sight.

I know you have a Pinterest board filled with dresses and floral arrangements and cakes that cost more than your car.

Haha called me out!