Love can be a scary thing! The idea of emotionally attaching yourself to a person who can choose to either love you back or tear your heart out and stomp it into the ground can be intimidating.  That’s the problem: when we allow emotions to get in the way of seeing the facts.  We get so entangled with creating this fantasy of a person that we try our hardest to do whatever we can to make things work.  Not seeing what we should see, only what we want to so we can have the butterflies and tingly feeling in our hearts.  Those are great things but will eventually die off, and reality will set in. What then?

God is an amazing God and wants what is best for us in every aspect of our lives.  Even relationships.  He gives us some helpful advice, and that is to be equally yoke.  What the heck does that mean?  Back in the days the oxen would pull the plow to do the farming.  They had to find Ox that were equal in their pulling power, speed, and size.  If they weren’t equal in any of those areas, it would pull to one side leaving a very crooked line not suitable for farming.  When the oxen were equal in those areas, they work together in unity to plow the land in perfectly straight lines.

This is the way our relationships should be.  If one person loves Jesus Christ with their everything and one doesn’t, compromise will enter into the picture, pulling that one person away from God.  The two people have to be equally yoked, pulling together as one for the sake of unity to live the straight and narrow path.  The thing is many people think they can be the stronger ox and pull somebody else’s weight. This only leads to a state of eventually being completely burnt out, that you will start to compromise your beliefs, not have the support and strength of the second person, resulting in them leaving you all alone.

This world is hard enough as it is, so who we spend our life with, has to be somebody that can help us carry the cross when we can’t do it anymore.  Someone who has the strength of Jesus Christ because they are so in tune with the Spirit that God guides their every action.  Before marriage, we have a choice on who we marry.  So choose wisely because if you believe that marriage is a lifetime commitment, then you will have to live with that decision of whom you choose.

God loves us and wants what is best for us, but do you want the same thing?  Or are you willing to compromise, live in your emotions and not see the red flags?  If that is you be warned that this life that is tough already and will get even harder. If you don’t have Christ as your foundation, you will crumble.

When two people love Jesus Christ with their very being, that love flows out unconditionally to one another leaving a household of Agape (unconditional) love.  That love is the foundation of selflessness, which must be a characteristic of your marriage to survive.

I want to encourage and challenge you to look at the relationship that you are in now.  Christians, does that person you are dating bring you closer to Christ or take you away?  Don’t think that person will change after marriage.  There is a chance it might happen, but that is merely your guessing, hoping and wishing instead of knowing.  This will only bring a set of expectations that will disappoint you and leave you wanting somebody who can lead you to Christ. That is a formula for failure.  Instead be patient and wait upon the Lord and He will give you the desires that He laid upon your heart.