Sorry for the delay in posting this entry. I am currently out of the country doing God's work. As I sit here in the lovely country of Jamaica doing ministry missions work and blogging from my blackberry (please excuse any errors), I wondered why God instructed me to wait until today to post part 2 of the series I began last week. After a period of searching internally, the purpose of God's instructed delay has been made perfectly clear. Everything I mentioned in part 1 of 'purposeful dating' is very relevant to identifying and selecting the right mate for your life. All of part 1's 'purposeful dating' do's and don'ts should definitely be taken into account in order to preserve and protect the integrity of evaluating potential lifemates. However, part 2 of 'purposeful dating' deals more with understanding the totality of a person's love and respect for himself or herself and their love and respect for others. At the end of the day, bringing two people into co-existence with one another is all about a Christ-centered focus, love and respect.
-Love is the essence of being so into a person that you don't abandon them in the midst of their inadequacies, mistakes and shortcomings. Love is not about what you can receive from a person, but more about what you can give to a person (emotionally, spiritually and physically upon being united in marriage :) ). Love is all about self-sacrifice and not self-fulfillment.
-Respect, simply stated, is the ability to appreciate a person's being, opinion and/or perspective despite your feelings about them. Respect allows you to value a person to the point where disagreements don't prohibit your ability to receive from them and de-value their input.
As I continue to spend time in personal reflection, it is becoming more apparent that the relationships we all desire to possess have been clouded by the superficiality of our culture, society and ourselves. The source of most 'contemporary dating' failures center around selfishness, lack of love for ourselves and lack of respect (the inability to control the thoughts and actions of those we 'date').
Last night prior to speaking at a local church here in Jamaica, I had a conversation with a pastor that literally blew me away. He spoke about how Americans have lost the true understanding and meaning of relationships. He continued by saying that we are so driven by materialism, timelines and self-gratification that we have lost the true essence of what defines relationships (love and respect). The Jamaicans believe that Americans associate with others based on convenience. We have become so consumed by professional advancement, money and power that we no longer appreciate genuine relationships.
It's amazing how we can pour so much time, effort and forgiveness into things that mean so little, but yet limit the same effort towards people that 'supposedly' mean so much to us. A challenge to myself, and you as readers, is to increase the level of love and respect we demonstrate towards those in our friendship circles, workplace associations and our family relationships. If we continue developing our personal relationship skills, we will be able to quickly discern/identify potential mates who are worth investing time in. As we become more experienced in developing casual relationships, we will have more success with our 'purposeful dating' relationships. The belief is that God will bless our faithfulness, but as with all relationships...they begin with you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
.jpg)
3 comments:
Great post.... as a result, we Americans also get caught up with perception. We're so busy looking at everyone else's relationship (actually what other's relationships look like from the outside because we have no idea what's really going on), we hope, pray, wish for the same thing. We also let other people tell us what our relationship should be looking like. When we as women give in to respect and self-sacrifice (the same things we should be getting from our mate), we're labeled as doormats from our well-meaning girlfriends that are most of the time, in loveless, going-no-where, relationships. I'm forwarding this post because I like what you had to say about respect.
I have learned so much through these posts on dating. My question now becomes about friendships. I know that when we first see someone we can mistakenly talk ourselves into being "in like" with someone or see a person and think that we can see ourselves having a future with them. How do you cultivate friendships especially with the other sex? Just simple friendships. I ask because I want to have male friends that I can just hang out with. What about purposeful friendships? What is the right kind of friend? I guess I hope that cultivating true friendships with the opposite sex will help me not feel like I have to date someone in order to get that.
To respond to 't':
I have several guys that are JUST my friends...we have NEVER dated and none of the friendship boundaries have ever been crossed. We hang out on weekends and support each other in special events. For me, these friendships were cultivated through common interests. One of my best guy friends is an engineer like me. I met him when I started college and he was my mentor. Another I have known since 2nd grade. Still another, I have known since 8th grade. The common theme here is this: these are people I have gotten to know over time and really discovered their character. They were people that I was never romantically interested in, yet they shared the same morals, values, and spiritual beliefs I did. This is a little harder to do as an adult because since graduating from college, the settings are different. Usually when we meet guys now, it's in an atmosphere designed for "match-making". Though I believe it is still possible, the key for me has been honesty with the guy up front. I don't try to make "friends" in a match-making setting. I would make a friend through some common venture (work, school, campaigning, volunteering,etc). Hope this helps...
Post a Comment