I think that we live in a society that rushes things. I know, call me Captain Obvious but it's true! I first started noticing this while reading the book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye". I've mentioned this book in previous posts but that's because it's a really good book. The author was saying that he avoided being alone with a girl at all costs. Any "date" type activities were done in groups with other people. Now I don't completely agree with doing that for all dates but the reasoning behind his rule made me think. He said that he avoided it because when you start going on dates alone, people start treating you like a married couple. Soon people will start giving you space like you require alone time to function as a couple. Again, I think that when you are dating someone that one-on-one dates are great! But he really does make a good point. I started experiencing this in my own relationship and when I started to feel like I was being treated like I was married, it almost made me feel uncomfortable.
Marriage is a beautiful thing. I believe that it is a sacred institution that was ordained by God (before the church was!) and it is an extremely important thing to God. I believe that there are some things that are okay to do outside of marriage and many things that need to wait. But the more I believe this, the more I notice just how impatient our culture is. People are entirely too eager to behave like a married couple but don't want to make the life long commitment. I don't really know a ton about this kind of stuff but maybe this is why the divorce rate is so high. People move in with each other, have sex, have kids and don't even really care to get married. This kind of stuff drives me crazy!
A month or so ago I had a conversation about this with one of my teachers. She kind of described a relationship like a house. When you build a house you need a structure to build off of, other wise the house if going to fall apart. The structure starts being built when you meet the person and you talk about the things that you have in common. Then maybe you go do the things that you have in common and you build memories. With those memories you build a friendship. While in that friendship you go through trials and through that the friendship grows stronger. So my equation so far is
Things in common + memories + friendship + trials + other stuff = marriage
Being a not-married person, I cannot fully understand all of the implications of marriage so I added the category of "other stuff" for things that I have yet to experience for myself. If you have anything else to add to my equation, please comment!
I think that the problem with our culture is that people want to skip all of these steps. We live in a world where everything is faster. Fast transportation, fast communication, fast food, etc. We're used to getting things the way that we want it and quickly. It's really easy to blame it on our fallen nature and use that as an excuse but we really need to take responsibility and make the change. (This is the part where I start preaching if I haven't been already)
I don't want to be a hypocrite so I'm going tell you right here and now that I'm culprit of this impatient living style. Many of you may have seen my brief Facebook post that was only up for 6 hours but about a week ago I publicly admitted to having a three year addiction to pornography. Praise God, I'm finally getting the help and prayer and support that I've need to break free. I don't want to sit here at my computer preaching to you all on a silly blog about living a pure life when I'm not doing that myself. This last week has been the most amazing week of my life. So many of my friends have opened up to me about having the same struggle and many more have told me about their success and it is so inspiring! It's nice to know that there's still hope out there.
Now are you starting to see where I'm getting at? I titled this post "In a world that is just too anxious" because that's really what we are. People are too eager to get married so they do so without really getting to know the person and the marriage falls apart. People are too eager to have sex so they do it without even getting married. People are too eager to just please their flesh so that satisfy themselves with pornography. Why can't we wait? How can this problem be fixed? I've found that the only real peace that I can get in the matter is through prayer and trying to set a good example. It's really difficult to stay pure with all of the pressure to just give into the fleshly desires but I think that we can do it.
Dear Jesus, thank you for all of the people who are reading this right now. I hope that I was able to convey this message that you wanted me to. God, please help us to be more like you. Please help us to learn to be patient in this fast moving world and please help us to do everything that way that you intended it to be. I pray, Lord, that you would help me in my own life. Please help me to remain pure for my future husband and help me to be a good example to everyone around me. Jesus, please bring a revolution to my school, my county, my country. Open our eyes to the wrong that is going on around us and show us the perfect love that you have in store for us. Help us to be patient. Amen.
If you have any thoughts on the matter, I'd really like to hear your opinion! Please leave a comment and tell me what you think!
//Brittany Danielle//
