Its meant to be an excuse to hold hands while grabbing popcorn...also popcorn breath is better than other kind of breathFor sure.How are you supposed to have a conversation with someone during a movie?
Match Game
- Thread starter TabinRivCA
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I understand what you mean and I agree that God doesn't promise marriage to everyone. When I wrote my original post, I was still waiting and praying about a relationship with someone who had been very special to me. Since then, things have changed. We have found our way back to each other and we are together now. He knows how I feel about him and I'm deeply grateful to God for bringing us back into each other's lives. I thank Him for hearing my prayers.
I know that not every prayer is answered in the way we hope and I don't believe we can demand a particular outcome from God. But I do believe He hears us, guides us and has His own timing. For me, this experience has been a beautiful reminder of that.
So when I talk about trusting God's timing, I'm not saying we should simply sit back and do nothing. I'm saying that we can pray, live our lives, keep our hearts open and trust God with the things we cannot control. Sometimes we only understand the timing when we look back.
OK, yeah, that's good.
Personally, I don't know how much God really involves Himself in these things. But, whatever you believe on that in particular, I still think you have to take action at some point, for sure.
Oh I didn't see this. I'm thinking but drawing a blank. Oh I know - "I Hear A Symphony"
Ok new question:
You're on a first date with someone. What one or two things about that person would make you want a second date with them?
Oh I didn't see this. I'm thinking but drawing a blank. Oh I know - "I Hear A Symphony"
Ok new question:
You're on a first date with someone. What one or two things about that person would make you want a second date with them?
1) The conversation is normal, natural, and (mostly) not awkward
2) They're funny and/or interesting
Oh, yeah, and they're hot.
No one can say you're not honest1) The conversation is normal, natural, and (mostly) not awkward
2) They're funny and/or interesting
Oh, yeah, and they're hot.
, and your question is......?
She said she was waiting for her boyfriend to return from wherever he was before. It wasn't like she was waiting for an imaginary one, which is silly. How can you wait for someone who doesn't exist and hasn't told you when he's going to be back?!
We'll just wait for Rod's next naive question.
This sure is a fun game!!
This sure is a fun game!!
Oops. I was replying to only the first half, about God not promising marriage to anyone.
shh you'll scare 'em off.
but my real question for that is "how many of those 96% are now single or have been married more than once" "at least once?!!"
Is the first one a practice marriage for your official one? The one you'll have till you or they die.
It is most unfortunate to be a black widow. But it didn't faze Ruth. She went after her next man.
you say that, but those are people from a different generation. Might be more instructive to look at the marriage rates by age 30 or 40 or whatever on a per generation basis. If 96% of those 70 year olds had been married for the first time by age 30 and now of those 30-50 only 76% were married by age 30 well that doesn't bode so well for the future crop of 70 year olds.
If anyone is wondering, the sermon on singleness was different and maybe I should be glad that pastor is trying, but there were several underlying attitudes that were just plain discouraging:
About all he had to stay to singles was, you're not incomplete no matter what society says. But (and I'll happily link the sermon if anyone wants to watch the whole thing) there was an unspoken attitude of marriage is better than / superior to singleness like we can't affirm singles without also affirming marriage (though didn't we just spend the last 3 weeks doing that), and it just kind of left me with the feeling that it was a sermon to say singles are part of the body of christ too (and if we need a sermon to say that what does that say about the terrible job churches have done including singles) and honestly felt like more of the sermon was a call to the "real" church (all those families ) to include singles which leaves me feeling like a charity case. And maybe because I end up hanging out with little old ladies who are old enough to be my parents I often feel like I get treated like a child by church people.
So yeah sounds like it's everyone's responsibility to reach out and try to include the singles and that conveniently excuses the church from needing to actually create a ministry for them (yeah sometimes I'm quite cynical). And no singleness doesn't define my identity, but it shapes pretty much every aspect of my experience of life.
Yeah. I know these things are easier said than done. Like I said, most pastors, I'm sure, have never even been single into adulthood. "Single pastor" is almost an oxymoron.
I don't mean to say that someone can’t teach on something that they haven’t experienced. That’s a bad argument, I think. But it helps to do one of two things before teaching on something. You either need experience it or you need study it. A lot of pastors, I suspect, have done neither. Maybe most pastors.
Did this singleness sermon feel like a footnote that's just tacked on to the married stuff? In my experience, that's how it often feels. But that's in part because the Bible simply has more to say about marriage than it does about singleness. My own church, for instance teaches whole books of the Bible verse-by-verse. And, in total the book doesn't say all that much about singleness or marriage. And nowhere does the Bible tell you how to find a spouse. So it's not really the pastor's fault that this topic can be neglected sometimes, depending on how your pastor teaches the Bible.
But I think married folks need the "singleness sermons" too. When you knock down all of the spiritual platitudes that we tell single people "God has someone for you," "you have to wait on God's timing for The One," "God's waiting for you to be ready," etc.) , I think we also help married people who are struggling in their marriage because they might have believed in those same exact platitudes and are now being let down by them.
Another part of this is that most married people will also become parents (or already are parents). If I was pastoring a church with a lot of parents of adolescents, I for sure would want them to know about stuff like singleness, or unwanted singleness. How else are they supposed to help their kid deal with that stuff? Now, my own parents gave me some reasonable dating advice. But the only advice they really gave me about how to get married where some vague platitudes about how "God has a plan." And then, later on (after I stayed single as all my siblings found their partners and spouses
) did they start saying stuff like "You know, you might stay single forever."I mean, parents need a clear picture of what's going on out there. If all they know how to offer their kids are the same Christianese platitudes that the church often throws out to the unmarried, they're setting their kids up to fail ── and possibly fail hard.
Events might help, too. We've had "marriage conferences" at church before. The only event we've ever had about singleness or dating happened in my high-school-age youth group. I don't know if our current youth groups ever do that sort of thing, still. I hope so.
Also, (I've probably babbled about this on here before), if your church has a bookstore, include some books about singleness or dating, too (good books, that is
) For the longest time, the only "relationship books" we had at church were about marriage, and we didn't even have too many of those. We do have some more about singleness and dating now, and some of these (usually the dating ones) actually sell pretty well, pretty consistently.Our church doesn't have a "singles ministry," either, due to concerns about people attending such a group for the "wrong motives," based on conversations I've had. And maybe some church leaders are hesitant to teach about singleness because they don't know how to include married people in it.
Also, just curious, Cinder, but did your pastor make distinctions between people who stay single and people who may be temporarily single? Or singles who desire marriage and singles who don't? I just know that Christian teachers can sometimes lump all the singles into one category, rather unhelpfully.
Actually I'll give credit where credit is due and I think he did a good job of covering different types of singles ( never married, divorced, widowed, not too much about single parents but that's kind of implied and the church has a pretty solid kids ministry ( I think, I don't actually have any kids so...)). But yeah it felt like a we don't want to leave singles out of the relationship series ( though maybe another gripe / bad assumption is that when we say relationship we're always talking about the romantic ones rather than the other ways people could relate to each other).Yeah. I know these things are easier said than done. Like I said, most pastors, I'm sure, have never even been single into adulthood. "Single pastor" is almost an oxymoron.
I don't mean to say that someone can’t teach on something that they haven’t experienced. That’s a bad argument, I think. But it helps to do one of two things before teaching on something. You either need experience it or you need study it. A lot of pastors, I suspect, have done neither. Maybe most pastors.
Did this singleness sermon feel like a footnote that's just tacked on to the married stuff? In my experience, that's how it often feels. But that's in part because the Bible simply has more to say about marriage than it does about singleness. My own church, for instance teaches whole books of the Bible verse-by-verse. And, in total the book doesn't say all that much about singleness or marriage. And nowhere does the Bible tell you how to find a spouse. So it's not really the pastor's fault that this topic can be neglected sometimes, depending on how your pastor teaches the Bible.
But I think married folks need the "singleness sermons" too. When you knock down all of the spiritual platitudes that we tell single people "God has someone for you," "you have to wait on God's timing for The One," "God's waiting for you to be ready," etc.) , I think we also help married people who are struggling in their marriage because they might have believed in those same exact platitudes and are now being let down by them.
Another part of this is that most married people will also become parents (or already are parents). If I was pastoring a church with a lot of parents of adolescents, I for sure would want them to know about stuff like singleness, or unwanted singleness. How else are they supposed to help their kid deal with that stuff? Now, my own parents gave me some reasonable dating advice. But the only advice they really gave me about how to get married where some vague platitudes about how "God has a plan." And then, later on (after I stayed single as all my siblings found their partners and spouses
I mean, parents need a clear picture of what's going on out there. If all they know how to offer their kids are the same Christianese platitudes that the church often throws out to the unmarried, they're setting their kids up to fail ── and possibly fail hard.
Events might help, too. We've had "marriage conferences" at church before. The only event we've ever had about singleness or dating happened in my high-school-age youth group. I don't know if our current youth groups ever do that sort of thing, still. I hope so.
Also, (I've probably babbled about this on here before), if your church has a bookstore, include some books about singleness or dating, too (good books, that is
Our church doesn't have a "singles ministry," either, due to concerns about people attending such a group for the "wrong motives," based on conversations I've had. And maybe some church leaders are hesitant to teach about singleness because they don't know how to include married people in it.
Also, just curious, Cinder, but did your pastor make distinctions between people who stay single and people who may be temporarily single? Or singles who desire marriage and singles who don't? I just know that Christian teachers can sometimes lump all the singles into one category, rather unhelpfully.
Don't mind me though, I'm just getting old and cantankerous, and tired of being so different from everyone else so nothing really fits. So I'll just make psalm 138:8 my life verse and trust God's still in control and knows what he's doing with me.
Yeah, I can be cantankerous on this subject, too. You don't need to be old to be cantankerous.
I love that word. Cantankerous.