What annoys me about people telling single Christians about dating

Paul did not connect the fornication in 1 Corin 7 to idol worship. Not all fornication is idol worship. Many times it's just for the sex.

If someone is a born again Christian and they are tempted to fornicate, their conscious/Holy Spirit will both be telling them to flee, to get out, to stop before they grieve the Lord with this sin, and if they listen they will flee, if they don't they will be choosing the sin over their love for Jesus. Choosing the sin over the Lord is idolatry.

To repent will require admitting that is what they did. It is a terrible and miserable thing to fall into this sin. It's no easy thing to get over. Remember Peter and denying the Lord. That is what it feels like.

Falling like this can cause a Christian to suffer for a lot longer than a brief.. "Opps I did it again" and get over it attitude. This kind of failing can do so much damage and that it why the bible says

FLEE FORNICATION!

Churches try to make all singles the same with the same sex drive. It does not happen in real life. I'm 68, still have a sex drive. Not as much as in my 30's and 40's, but I still have a strong sex drive.

Paul gave the way to flee fornication....marriage. Many times marriage is the ONLY way.

All sin is idol worship when you get a revelation of the sinfulness of sin.

Train Wreck

Paul taught that marriage would be the answer if one burned to be married.

He did not teach that a born again Christian will fornicate while waiting to get married. He might burn, but that is still resisting.

He can resist and put rules and boundaries in his life to avoid going from burning to fornicating while he is courting his wife to be.

Also, what Born Again Christian would have any confidence that an unrepentant fornicator who has never had victory over that sin would not fall into porn addiction or adultery later on. Having a wife to have sex with does not cure that willingness to sin against the Lord when the urge is strong.

I am just wondering why you talk SO much about sex? If it is what you want and you understand it should only happen within a marriage then why are you not pursuing someone instead of constantly writing about it. There are many single christian women, the churches are full of them and there are christian sites you can join to meet someone.
Just understand that it is also about taking up responsibilities not just relieving your sex drive. If you pursue someone and dont show you are going to step up as a husband and it is all about your sex drive she will do a runner. It's give and take, all I have read so far is taking.
Please dont quote Pauls scripture about burning with passion, that has been done to death. Read what Jesus requires of a husband and wife to be to each other. Are you willing to be that or is it all about your sex drive? I can guarantee women will be off put by that if that's all it is about to you.

The purity movement ruined dating in the church. Some churches are still pushing it. Jesus and Paul never pushed any purity movement. I quote Paul because Christians keep ignoring his words about fornication and marriage. Jesus was clear if you're not called to be a Eunuch, get married. I don't want anyone who isn't called to me a eunuch, to be pressured into it, like the purity movement does.

So Paul was wrong when he said "It is better to marry than to burn"? I have known men who have told me if it wasn't for their wife and family they would be renting porn movies.

LOL

No. But, what he said does not make it okay to fornicate in the process of finding a spouse.
That sounds noble, in a worldly sense... but their heart is in the wrong place.

Who said anything about fornicating to find a mate? The rule GOD has for singles is no sex before marriage. It some churches and Christians who added no dating to that.

Their heart is in the wrong place? How so? They're doing what Paul said to do.

Give them this link https://www.purelifeministries.org/

This might be true. A lot of girls enter premarital sex to feel loved, not really about sex.

Western evangelicalism/revivalism has many things wrong. Dating is one, the promise keepers movement is another, sinless perfectionism is another, the megachurch life coach thing is yet another. However not all of them subscribe to such nonsense. Find a church that promotes marriage and marriage at a young age and having a family. My church does. In fact it is the position of the the whole LCMS Lutheran church.

My wife and I have both been married once. We married as virgins. Stay pure sexually.

It is not a sin to think about sex. You can't read parts of the Bible (e.g. the parts saying not to fornicate) without thinking about it. But I wouldn't advise fantasizing about it.

In Matthew 5, if you get out an interlinear, Jesus said that he that looks at a woman ___in order to___ lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. At least in this verse, there is some intention. It is interesting to see the word translated 'lust' there and see a related form in the Greek Septuagint in the ten commandments in 'Thou shalt not covet.' The KJV says in Romans 7 'For I had not known lust if the law had not said 'Thou shalt not covet.'"

Christians should abstain from sex outside of marriage and from looking lustfully on others. That is why we should avoid pornography.

It sounds like you do need a wife. The US, where I live, has a pretty bad marriage/dating culture. Too many people 'fall through the cracks' who didn't get matched up, and a lot of people date with no clear intent to marriage. Many people make themselves undesirable marriage partners, IMO, through fornication and the baggage they accumulate.

I was working in Asia when I met the woman I would marry, so I married a woman from Indonesia. The culture is a lot more marriage oriented. I also noticed, at least in my wife's people-group, if they got too old and weren't married, the family would help them out. That might mean marrying some cousin their culture allowed married to (which occurred in the Bible and is not forbidden by Biblical incest laws and only became taboo in the west in the past few hundred years), but one could get matched up with a cousin of a cousin one isn't related to also.

In Korea or Japan, a pastor might try to suggest and encourage marriage between people. Older college students match younger college students up in Korea, and when children get close to 30 or past it, parents may help matching them up on dates that could quickly lead to marriage with children of other parents in their social network. I went to grad school with a Korean woman whose parents were trying to match her up with the father's boss's son.

I met a man in the US once who was married to a Korean woman. He was probably in his 50's and I think she was in her late 40's. It turns out they had only been married a matter of years. He asked the pastor of her church if she knew anyone who was single who was looking for a husband, and she matched them up.

I haven't noticed this kind of match-making outside of family networks in Indonesia, but the young folks are very marriage-oriented in their dating when compared to the US. I was living there at prime marrying age, and either I started to get a lot of female attention from women in prime marrying age or else my female-attention detector had just started to work.

I have read online from singles in the US who say their churches can be weird and impractical about dating, not taking it as a serious need, discouraging dating within the church or church-related groups.

A lot of us went for at least some period of time wanting a spouse and not having one. We know more about what it is like to be single and wanting to get married than someone who is single knows about what it is like to be married.

Btw, there are probably single women out there somewhere looking for a husband. Posting here with your picture might actually help you find an interested woman. From a statistical perspective it kind of makes sense... a pool of Christians that might have some singles or widows. Of course, if you are praying for a godly woman, then it's a matter of God providing, rather than statistics.