Archive — dating

“This has been a learning curve for my father. I will never forget when I was in about my mid to upper twenties, and I was struggling through in some relationship and my dad said to me, he said, ‘Honey, your generation makes it so confusing…When I got married, your mother, she was beautiful. She was from a family of five and so was I. I thought she’d make a good wife and mother, and she was Baptist, and that was it.’” - Connally Gilliam

“I have been asked in a number of different settings, so, ‘Why aren’t you married?’ And it is one of those questions you never quite know what to do with because I think there really is a compliment implicit in it, but it is very easy to feel like, gosh, you are doing or you are being something wrong.” - Connally Gilliam

“I think in Christian culture, single men are a more valued commodity (than single women) because they are rarer. It is supply and demand, if you will, and there is something intrinsically then that ups the value, I think, of single men.” - Connally Gilliam

“You know, it is amazing to me, we have such difficulty as Christians historically getting this right… in getting a proper balance in terms of understanding that both celibacy and the marital estate are equally spiritual and holy estates, depending on how you are living in them.” - Richard Land

“Missionary dating is…when a Christian begins dating an unbeliever and thinks that they have an opportunity maybe through this dating relationship to lead them to the Lord. So, they rationalize and justify,”Oh yeah, the Bible says don’t become unequally yoked and, sure, we are dating and headed toward a more permanent relationship, but, you know, we’re sort of an exception to the rule because, oh, he’s so close, and he’s so open, and I just know that if we get married that certainly he is going to come to Christ in short order.”

“It is important to diagnose where you spouse is, sort of along the continuum of disbelief so that you can customize your approach and you can recognize opportunities that might arise to be able to share the gospel with them…we try to give a prescription for every one of these kind of categories to suggest some ways in which you can reach out if your spouse is a cynical, a skeptical, a spectator, or a seeker.”

“I saw Jesus as my rival. You know, I had always been the guy in Leslie’s life. We had been childhood sweethearts, grew up together, got married young, and now all of a sudden there was another man in our relationship, and she worshipped this guy…”

“It is ironic that usually introducing God into a situation is going to make things better but in our case, it was as if Jesus became a barrier between us because I was an atheist…”