It’s Not You, It’s God: Nine Lessons for Breakups

Some of a single person’s darkest days fall after a breakup.

You risked your heart. You shared your life. You bought the gifts, made the memories, and dreamed your dreams together — and it fell apart. Now, you’re back at square one in the quest for marriage, and it feels lonelier than square one, and further from the altar, because of all you’ve spent and lost.

No one begins dating someone hoping to break it off someday. The wiring in most of us has us longing for the wedding day. We’re looking, sometimes it feels frantically, for love, for affection and security and companionship and commitment and intimacy and help. After all, God seems to want most of us to be married (Genesis 2:18; Proverbs 18:22; 1 Corinthians 7:2, 9). But that sure hasn’t made getting married easy.

The Pain of Intimacy Without Matrimony

The reality is that good, Christ-exalting relationships very often fail before the ceremony, never to be recovered romantically. The pain cuts deeper and lingers longer than most pain young people have felt in their lives. I feel it deeply even typing these words. It’s one of the hardest things for me to write or speak about: the pain of intimacy that fell short of matrimony.

Breakups in the church are painful and uncomfortable, and many of us have or will walk this dark and lonely road. So here are nine lessons for building hope and loving others when Christians end a not-yet marriage.   Continue at Marshall Segal

When Pastors Give the Sex Talk

This is the last topic I thought I would ever address in a public forum, not least in a published book. But alas, God opens doors and calls us through them. So here I am, encouraging my fellow pastors to make sure---even if you're no longer serving in youth, university, or young adult ministry---to keep your sex talk fresh, handy, and well thought out.

A little more than a year ago I was a college pastor. The topic of dating, purity, and romance seemed to be an ever-present area of commentary, question, and struggle. (Many of my former students are smirking right now, thinking that I am the one who kept bringing it up.) As I prepared to teach a series on romance, dating, and marriage, I was taken aback by the lack of theological depth among evangelicals on this topic. Many books and essays (on the left) properly noted that dating cannot be found in the Bible, but then wrongly concluded that therefore the Bible has nothing conclusive to say on this topic.

Alternately, many (on the right) offered strong convictions defended by sordid statistics, pragmatic concerns, and plain old legalism. Where was the gospel? While I did note several good treatments on the practical "how to's" of dating and maintaining sexual purity, I noted a dearth of articles and books that dealt with the topic from a theological, gospel-rooted perspective. I also found that many pastors hesitated to get any more specific about sexual boundaries than telling Christians not to have sexual intercourse before marriage. Such lack of clarity left unanswered the age-old question: How far is too far?  Continue at Jay Thomas