How Long Should You Date Before Getting Married/Engaged? (Christian Dating Tips)

in this video we’re gonna answer the question how long should a Christian date before getting married hey everybody I’m Marc from apply God’s Word calm a place where we apply the Bible to your life if you’ve been watching this channel for a while or you just want to connect with me on a deeper level I want to invite you to connect with me on Instagram I just created my first page I know I’m behind the curve I usually and when it comes to social media but I pulled the trigger and I want to connect with you on Instagram so if that’s a platform that you enjoy and you want to get some Christian relationship tips and just see a more personal side of my life with my wife and my kids and things like that I would love for you to join me on Instagram again I’m gonna kind of do a dual thing there it’ll be some personal stuff but I’m gonna be sharing a lot of biblical truth there and relationship tips especially so if you’re interested let’s connect so how long should a Christian date before getting married point number one you should date as long as needed to accomplish the goal of Christian dating I like to try to stay away from like extreme concrete answers because I don’t think the Bible gives very many like laws and absolutes when it comes to romantic relationships rather gives us guiding principles to apply to our life and to honor God in the midst of relationships there’s not a one-size-fits-all but I personally do believe that there’s a specific purpose for Christian dating I have another video that talks about the differences between the Christian courting model and the Christian dating model so I’ll leave a link for those in the description below but essentially I kind of have like a hybrid view that I believe is is biblical and helpful it’s that you should only date when you’re in a season of being prepared for marriage but you don’t have to know you want to marry the person you’re dating like that’s too much that’s the point of dating so again I believe the purpose of dating is to figure out if a guy and girl want to become a husband and wife together and that’s the point of dating to figure that out I don’t believe personally that it’s helpful to date just a date I don’t believe a boyfriend and girlfriend is a relationship that should just be a goal in and of itself I think that you the most biblical way the most helpful way to approach dating is to use it as a tool to work towards marriage it’s not just something to date but again I don’t want to take the extreme courting side and say you should only date somebody you know you for sure wanna marry that’s too intense so you should date in my view you know this is my personal view again there’s not an absolute in the Bible on this this topic but you should date as long as you need to date to answer that question on whether or not God wants you to marry this person once you find out that God does not want you to marry that person I believe that you should break up because the the the purpose of dating has been accomplished the answer to the question you started out with has been answered no this person is not the one God has for you therefore as difficult as it might be you should break up with that person or on the other side okay you do realize yes this is the person God has for for me you both the guy and girl are saying yeah we we do want to progress into marriage well then it’s my belief that you should do so as quickly as possible you shouldn’t linger around because you’re gonna produce all kinds of unnecessary temptation and you should move towards that so again that’s why I believe you shouldn’t date at all if you’re not ready for marriage because a lot of times people just end up dating for longer because there’s too many practical things in their life that aren’t aren’t ready you know I don’t have enough money I’m still in school I I’m still there with my parents and I can’t afford an apartment well in my view if that’s the case you shouldn’t be dating at all anyway hopefully it might be tight you might be a struggle but if you’re ready to get married I think you should go for it as quickly as possible when you know that person is the one God has for you a good verse that will provide the right guiding principle in dating is Colossians 3 verse 17 and it says whatever you do in word or deed do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through him so whatever you’re dating approach or however long you’re choosing to date before getting married because again don’t take my absolutes or you know don’t view this video as an absolute rather the goal should be to glorify God in in your amount of time that you’re dating so let that be your guiding principle the second tip I have for you to answer this question of how long you should date as a Christian before getting married is that you should date as long as you need to to answer these three questions if you’ve been watching my channel for a while you know that I’ve kind of summarized the three big qualities that I believe people need to have as a sign that they’re ready to be married number one they’re a Christian if you’re a Christian the Bible says that you are required to marry another Christian there are not a lot of restrictions on who God has called you to marry there’s not a lot of age restrictions there’s there’s no like you know racial restrictions you can marry anybody God loves interracial marriage God loves you know diversity all of these things there’s no restrictions except you can’t marry a non-believer if you’re a Christian and I’m not going to get into all of that I know some people have a different view on that and again as long as you’re studying the Scriptures and you believe you’re following God then I’m not gonna argue with you but I’ve thought deeply about it and I studied the scriptures on it and I’m extremely confident that the bible does forbid you know interfaith marriage I I’ll leave a link for you in the description below where I explain this point in much greater detail of why I do believe that the second question you’re gonna want to answer after you’ve said yes I am a Christian and this person is a Christian so we’ve checked that box the second question is are we bearing fruit according to the Bible when you’re a Christian you’re not just going to have a profession of faith you’re also going to have a change life and you’re going to be producing the fruits of the spirit none of us are going to be doing that perfectly we’re all gonna continue to sin and as long as we’re repenting and confessing and growing in the Lord you know that’s the sign that we’re a Christian so when you read Galatians 5 and you read about the fruits of the spirit you should be able to see that in your life and in this person that you want to marry you should see that in their life as well because again that’s a sign that they’re actually a Christian oftentimes were quick to see what we want to see as long as they listen to Christian music and they pray before meals were like oh cool they’re a Christian that’s not enough you know they need to be actually following God in their life and you do as well you know when you’re trying to gauge if it’s ready if you’re ready for marriage and the final quality that I believe the Bible says we should have when we’re thinking about getting married is are you ready to fulfill the biblical role of a husband or a wife and is this person that you’re ready to marry ready to fulfill that role so the so the Bible has specific roles for husbands and wives and this is a controversial topic and I don’t want to divide here about complementary ins and egalitarians I encourage you to study the Scriptures for yourself on what you believe the roles of a husband and wife are whatever you do see in Scripture as those roles you need to be ready to fulfill those roles I don’t think anyone who’s a Christian thinks that there’s no roles to fulfill I just think that there’s some controversy and what those roles are with all that said when you’re ready to get married you’ll be ready to obey what the Bible says about your role in marriage so if so you need to date as long as you need to date to answer those three questions are we both Christians are we both bearing fruit and are we both ready to fulfill our roles within the marriage according to the Bible okay point three if you clicked on this video hoping for something a little more concrete I’m gonna give you some actual time frames here and again these are just my opinion there is no biblical evidence for these numbers that I’m going to be throwing out to you so if you have a different view I completely respect that don’t view these timeframes as a law maybe you get married sooner maybe you get married later I’m you know not saying that you did anything wrong this is just what I believe is a healthy time frame to gauge whether or not you two should get married that time frame is somewhere between six months and two years how did I come up with that number well to me that feels like a good amount of time to get to know someone to the level that you should really know them before getting married but it’s also not too much time where you’re going to be exposing yourself to unnecessary temptation one of the drawbacks of dating longer than two years in my view is that you’re gonna get so close and so comfortable with each other in your relationship it’s gonna start feeling like you’re married anyway and when that starts happening you know you’re probably going to struggle with premarital sex or some sort of sexual temptation there’s either an emotional boundaries that you’ll probably be crossing when you get that close with somebody you know in general I just don’t believe that there’s a category for being extremely romantically close to somebody out of the context of marriage as you’re growing in your relationship in Christian dating their commitment level should be increasing as well again if you watch this channel you know one of my main principles for Christian relationships is that your intimacy should be equal to your commitment level if your intimacy or your commitment level are out of balance that’s when things get unbiblical so according to the Bible the more intimate you are the more commitment there should be that’s why marriage should happen relatively quickly in a romantic relationship because your intimacy is going to naturally happen rather quickly so six months seems like I wouldn’t be comfortable selling someone yeah go ahead and get married if you haven’t dated that person for more than six months and two years seems about right I usually start getting uneasy when someone dates longer than that just because usually they’re struggling with some sort of temptation okay finally point four this is just a general point to kind of wrap up here if you’re somebody who feels strongly that God has revealed that the person you’re dating is someone is the person God has for you and if you both believe like yeah we’re going to get married we’re just not sure when and you’re dating and you’re in that season yeah we want to get married we’re just not sure when my advice to you is to get married sooner rather than later if you’re going to err on one side or the other I would err on the side of getting married too soon quote-unquote rather than too late again this advice only applies to you if you already have answered the question that yes you guys are going to get married if you’re not sure and you’re just like I don’t know if we should get married I don’t know if I want to marry this person well then don’t listen to that advice don’t don’t get married sooner than later you should keep dating because that’s the point of dating this advice is for those that couple who says yeah we know we’re gonna get married we love each other we checked all the boxes but there’s just we’re not sure when you know school jobs we don’t want to get pregnant you know we don’t have the money we want we wish we could save more so we could have a bigger wedding you know all of those things I’m not like saying they’re unimportant but I don’t think they’re worth the risk of exposing yourself to unnecessary temptation the reality is if you actually know you’re gonna get married to this person your heart should actually be like wanting to have sex you know and you should be wanting to be extremely close to that person like a husband and wife would be emotionally – not just physically that’s what should be happening when you’re ready and you know you want to marry somebody when you restrain that it causes all kinds of problems so maybe you don’t have enough money maybe you won’t have the wedding of your dreams all of that might be true but I think that’s a bigger risk that’s a less of a risk than to wait longer because you could actually damage your relationship to a point where it’s like man I wish we got married because now we’re in all this trouble we feel guilty for the sin that we’ve been dabbling in I really do believe that you you’ll you’ll have less problems if you get married a little too soon rather than if you wait too long and you let things progress a little too long I hope this video helpful to you again if you are on Instagram and that’s a platform you use I would love to connect with you on that platform so I’ll leave my Instagram information in the description of this video if you want to connect there so I’m mark from a PI God’s Word com don’t forget to subscribe like share comment all that good stuff you know what to do thanks so much for watching and God bless [Music] [Music]