Toongabbie Anglican Church Blog

Church This Week

Going out, Sunday 26th March 2006

Wednesday 22 March, 2006 · Posted by Neil Atwood · 2 Comments

Traditional Church (8am) and Family Church (9:45am) continue the series “Jesus’ Final Week”.  This week Tuesday - Authority Challenged looking at Mark 11:26-33.

Sunday Night Church (6pm) continues the topical series “Matters of the Heart”.  This week looking at Going out.

Last week, we tackled the slightly delicate issue of singleness, and how Paul encouraged singleness so that we could be more focussed on gospel ministry and extending the Kingdom of God.
It’s a challenging issue when we live in a culture that urges us to have a ‘partner’ (of some kind!). But remember Paul is speaking from his normal gospel perspective on life.

But… even Paul admits that marrying is not wrong, so then the big question that hangs in the air is this: How do we move from the state of singleness to permanently attached (married) in a way that is consistent with biblical living?
If the world’s approach to relationships is basically flawed, then it’s reasonable to assume that it’s approach to forming those relationships is equally, if not more, flawed. And so if ‘dating’ in the world’s sense is out, what are Christians left with? How do we meet the person we might marry, and how do we move from being casual aquaintances to considering marriage?
For the younger teenagers amongst us for whom thoughts of marriage are a long way off - what is a godly approach to relationships with the other gender even at a casual level?

On Sunday night we will be looking at the same chapter in 1 Corinthians again (7) and continuing to draw out good solid principles that we can use to guide through this maze.
There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion, so start thinking through what answers you are looking for in this topic, and come equipped to ask them.

In the meantime, what questions or issues in this area have I forgotten?
What struggles you are having or have had in the area of moving from singleness to attached?
If you are married, how did you meet your spouse? What process did you go through with them to reach the point of deciding to marry?
Leave a comment…

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