Single Life to Date

I want to be honest with you. I have always been bad at dating. I am really bad at dating. I think that one of the reasons that I am so bad was because I had a great fear of rejection. Every time that I wanted to ask someone out on a date, I would be paralyzed with fear. I would get so nervous because I was afraid that they would say “no”.

Guys, you can back me up. It’s hard to ask a girl out on a date. And it’s maybe even harder because girls have such large repertoires of one liners to say “no” in a nice way. Like…I’m busy this weekend.

The first person I asked out on a date, her response was—well, I’m busy this weekend. My naive hope was that maybe she really is busy this weekend. So I said—well, what about the next weekend? And then her response was—well, I’m pretty much busy every weekend for the remainder of the year.

I asked her out in January! She either just had a really busy 1977 or she really didn’t want to go out with me the first time I asked her. I don’t know.

My second favorite line is, you ask someone out and they say—that’s sweet, but I would rather just remain friends? Groan!

You might as well have a light flashing, because the translation of this is—I would rather have a root canal than go out with you. Dating is hard and as you can see, I still have emotional scars as my dating life continues.

Take a look at what the Bible says about what God’s design for our dating life is. Let me be straightforward and honest from the very beginning, I didn’t find a lot in the Bible that’s directly about dating. And the reason is, because people didn’t date back then as we do today. In fact, a lot of their marriages were arranged (now that I’m a little more mature this doesn’t sound like a bad idea) and they didn’t have the system of where you socialized, go out on dates, get engaged and get married.

Proverbs 3:5 “Trust God from the bottom of your heart. Don’t try to figure out everything on your own.”

That’s hard, isn’t it? Trusting God. Trusting God in any area is difficult, but trusting God, especially in the area of our dating relationships, is very hard. You see, we tend to want to force a relationship instead of waiting on God, because we don’t want to spend time alone. Loneliness is the number one social disease. It’s our greatest fear. Sometimes, in our attempts to cure our loneliness, we make big mistakes by stepping outside of God’s will for our life and into a relationship that can be destructive or unhealthy for us.

I read a article this week from a Christian woman who reflected that most woman in the USA, especially Christians women, usually start out wanting God’s best for their life. They are wanting to stay within God’s will and looking for that Mr. Right in their life, but after a while, if they face frustration and get discouraged, they will usually step outside of God’s best for their life and into a relationship that could be destructive in order to avoid being alone. This can and does lead to disaster in your relationship, in your dating life. So, how do we learn to trust God in this area of dating?

It’s the prevailing philosophy in our culture, “it’s a date, who cares about a mate?” This philosophy says, it is never good to have a weekend without a date. This philosophy says date as many people as you can and it doesn’t matter who they are, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you are having a lot of fun.

Now a good friend of mine when I was in college bought into this philosophy and had his own saying. His saying was—“date all you can and can all you date.” It may take a few minutes for some of you to figure out what he was saying. This philosophy is unhealthy. It is not in our best interest because it ultimately sabotages our desire to find the right person, the person that God might have for us.

Another philosophy goes to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. This philosophy says—“never date unless you plan to mate.” This proposes that dating itself is bad. That it brings up too many temptations. Too many things can go wrong. So you should avoid the dating process. Instead, dating should start the engagement stage and so you find the person that you are going to marry and then you enter into a stage of dating. The problem and the question that I had with this philosophy is, how are you going to find the right person if you never spend time with them and you are just going to guess and then enter into the dating stage. So that one is difficult as well.
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The last philosophy I am going to suggest is a view of dating and it’s the one that I am going to propose (Pun intended)—date to discover your mate. And this philosophy says that dating is a process that I can enjoy but whose main purpose is to discover is if the person that I am dating, is a person that I can or should marry. Now, I believe this is a view that allows us the best opportunity to enjoy dating, while at the same time, staying within God’s plan/boundaries for our life. Seeking God’s best for our life.

The Apostle Paul says this should be our goal.

II Corinthians 2, “Our goal is to stay within the boundaries of God’s plan for us.”

You see, you can enjoy dating and you can discover God’s plan for your dating life, but only if you commit to staying within God’s boundaries. We receive the maximum enjoyment and maximum blessing that God can give to us. Can I get a Amen!


If we are looking for the right person, we have to commit to stay within God’s boundaries for dating. It is unrealistic for you to think that you can step outside of God’s plan and God’s will for your dating life, and still expect God to bless that relationship, or expect God to bring in the right person into the wrong situation.

God can’t bless it. God can’t bring the right person, until you are living within His plan for your life. So to receive God’s full blessings in this area, we have to follow what God says is best for us.

Matthew 6:33 “God will give you everything you need from day to day, if you give Him first place in your life and live as He wants you to.”

We can’t control everything, and it’s not our job to control everything, because we’re not God. What our job is, is to give God first place in our life and to trust Him with every area of our life. In return, God promises to bring His very best into our life whether we are single, or whether we are married. The key is to give God first place and to trust Him with our dating lives. That is something that we can all do.

This is my and should be your, Single life to date!