How (Not) To Heat Your Veins and Fire your Brains
Posted April 7, 2009
Many girls have told us they struggle with keeping their hearts and minds pure for their future husbands. It is a difficult task, as God has wired the sexes to be attracted to one another, but also commanded “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” (Proverbs 4:23)
We’ve been asked so often for advice on this that we briefly addressed it in our message “What Our Father Taught Us About Boys,” last week at the Vision Forum 2009 Father-Daughter Retreat. Below are some of my remarks from the message.
Our travels, our work, and especially the fact that we have five brothers and a father who loves to disciple young men, has pushed us into company that is often male-dominant. Here are some practical things our father has taught us to keep our hearts secure and our focus on the things of the Lord.
1. Pray for the young men… and their future wives.
This really helps keep relationships in perspective and facilitates the right kind of sisterly interest in them. We need to look past this season of singleness and see the eternal perspective. We need to see the young men as more than “marriage material,” but as comrades and co-laborers in Christ’s Kingdom, and we need to pursue the kind of friendships that will outlast this season of “singleness” and continue into eternity.
2. Don’t assume that every attention paid you by a young man is a mark of intention.
If a young man looks at you, opens a door for you, greets you, smiles at you, etc., it might have just been a brotherly gesture. Not only is fantasizing and speculating dangerous, reading too much into young men’s kind deeds also is a great way to discourage gentlemanly conduct.
3. Avoid influences that stir the heart prematurely and tempt you to fantasize over men who are not and will not be your husband.
Music, movies, novels, or just our own sinful imaginations can be dangerous. Robert Burns wrote a great poem about this:
Oh, leave novels, ye Mauchline belles.
Ye’re safer at your spinning wheel;
Such witching books are baited hooks
For rakish rooks, like Rob Mossgiel.
Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons,
They make your youthful fancies reel;
They heat your veins, and fire your brains.
An’ then ye’re prey for Rob Mossgiel.
I am not issuing an ultimatum here banning all movies, music and literature. You know down inside what influences arouse your passions, tempt you build false expectations, and make you feel discontent. Matthew 5:29 warns, “If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”
4. Keep interaction with young men within a family context. Avoid private or very personal interaction (this includes online!).
This is something you need to talk to your parents about and ask them to make guidelines for you.
5. Last but not least, keep the lines of communication with your parents wide-open.
Notice that I said “parents”. Elizabeth and I have put a special emphasis on the father-daughter relationship because this is a father-daughter conference, but most if not all of these principles apply to your mother as well. We have made a habit of sharing everything with our parents, and this includes personal struggles, concerns, and our personal observations and opinions of the young men we know. We have discovered that the more faithfully we do this, the easier it becomes — it can really be the best way of relieving the burden of pent-up anxieties and fears that many girls feel during their singleness.
A lot of girls have confessed to us that they have a really hard time talking to their dads about personal things. Sometimes they complain that their dads don’t come and talk to them enough. We can’t always wait for our fathers to initiate and draw us out — men are never going to be as good at this as we would like them to be. Sometimes we need to take the initiative and start the conversation. Deuteronomy 32:7 says, “Ask your father and he will show you, the elders and they will tell you…” It doesn’t say “Wait for your father to remember to come talk to you.” Fathers need to tell, but daughters need to ask, and demonstrate to their fathers that they want their council and wisdom.
Some girls confess to us that whenever they try to go to their fathers to unburden their anxieties or concerns they always end up dissolving into a puddle of tears on the floor before they can get to what they wanted to say. What makes it worse is that most dads really don’t appreciate this. When girls tell me this, I have a pretty good guess what the problem is — it’s that they wait until there is an emotional crisis to talk to their fathers, instead of making a habit of talking to them often, about everything that is in their hearts. Some of you younger girls might feel like you are too young to be having these serious discussions about young men and marriage with your dad, but I would like to personally implore you to start talking to your father now, about everything that is on your heart, laying the foundation for your relationship, and establish good habits of communication, so that when you are my age (23), and things are more complicated, it will be a whole lot easier.
Can guys and girls be “just friends”?
Posted August 1, 2008
Where young men and women are friends, is there too great a danger of emotional entanglement?
Few of us have ever seen friendships between young men and women conducted in an entirely pure and honorable way. The guise of “friendship” is often used to excuse a kind of relationship which is inappropriate. All of us have seen a superabundance of pointless and destructive flirtations, and lots of “friendships” that spun out of control and ended in broken hearts and broken relationships. After doing the math, some conclude that it’s safer to avoid co-ed friendships entirely.
We believe the problem is not with friendship, but with sin. Sadly, sin and selfishness are what drive most the relationships of today’s youth.
The word “friendship” has been sullied. The Christian concept of deep, sacrificial friendship has been replaced with something vapid and selfish. We’ve inherited a culture of shallowness, sensuality and consumption, and of friendships only about as deep as our text messages. Many of our generation and our parents’ generation learned how to interact with the other sex in public-school hallways and school buses, and assume that foolish or exploitive relationships are the natural recourse of young people. Many of us now can’t imagine how good Christian boys and girls could engage each other in a safe and constructive way.
Maybe it’s time to redefine “friendship” for our generation.
In 1828, Noah Webster defined it as, “An attachment to a person, proceeding from intimate acquaintance, and a reciprocation of kind offices, or from a favorable opinion of the amiable and respectable qualities of his mind. Friendship differs from benevolence, which is good will to mankind in general, and from that love which springs from animal appetite. True friendship is a noble and virtuous attachment, springing from a pure source, a respect for worth or amiable qualities. False friendship may subsist between bad men, as between thieves and pirates. This is a temporary attachment springing from [self-]interest, and may change in a moment to enmity and rancor.”
A more relevant example than Webster’s “thieves and pirates” (a real threat in his time) might be gambling partners, drinking buddies, or rumormonger friends – people who like to involve others in their folly or sin. In other words, a relationship that exists for what the parties can get out of each other: a fun time, an ego boost, the latest gossip, an opportunity to show off, a romantic thrill-ride, or companionship in their guilt. Webster calls this “false friendship.” It’s not the kind of friendship we’re talking about.
John 15:13 declares, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
True friendship should involve respect, trust, sacrificial love, and unity in the cause of Christ. There is no room for posturing, foolish bantering, self-interest, or defraudment in friendships like these. This kind of friendship with young men can be extremely edifying and God-honoring.
However, let’s not kid ourselves that there aren’t still dangers crouching at the door. We’re all still frail human beings, even if our motives are good; and we’re still wired to be attracted to one another. Having the right understanding of friendship doesn’t guarantee entanglement-proof relationships. We still need boundaries and safe-guards.
These will be different for every family. Once again, we must stress the importance of submitting to the standards and boundaries established by your parents. Please read the note at the beginning of this series.
In our own family, friends were always something all of us shared in common. We girls have always been friends with our brothers’ friends, and they’ve always been friends with ours. Our friends loved our parents, and our parents were often as close to our friends as we were. We’ve never had an individualistic attitude toward friendships, or an age-segregated or gender-segregated attitude either. This always made our friendships with men more natural and less complicated – they were not our personal friends, but our family friends. Thanks to our wonderful mother, hospitality is a hallmark of our family, and even when we were children, our parents taught us to welcome our guests into the arms of our home and our warm family circle.
As an entire family, we befriended people of all ages and situations and enjoyed their company together. The family context itself is a powerful safeguard in our friendships with young men. It brings a high level of accountability, and a down-to-earth, real-life quality to our interaction.
Our friendships with young men still look somewhat different than the friendships we have with other girls. The young men are not our buddies, companions, or confidantes, and we are not “one of the guys” (or even two of them). With girls we are more casual, intimate and familiar; with the young men there is a level of restraint.
The benefits of friendships with young men are also different. We’re extremely grateful for all that we’ve gained from our discussions with the young men we’re proud to call our friends. Talking to men is iron-sharpening in different ways than talking to women. And hearing a man’s take on life, and getting familiar with how men communicate and think, is extremely helpful for any woman who hopes to spend any part of her life with… well, a man.
Are friendships with young men risky? Well, surely, as any relationships between sinners are. We should take into account our own weaknesses by making sure our friendships with fellows are dignified, restrained, under accountability, and within the family boundaries.
And maybe, in the process, we’ll model godly friendship to a generation that has forgotten what the word means.
Question from a 14-year-old girl
Posted July 25, 2008
We’ve received a number of great questions on our last article, “How to Think About Young Men,” and would like to post a few, with our answers, over the next few days. We were proud of the young lady who asked this question, for her thoughtfulness in taking even the relationships of her youth seriously.
How should a 14-year-old girl interact with boys? Should it be different than how a grown young woman interacts with young men, and if so, how?
We believe the principle is the same, regardless of your age or theirs: view them as brothers. Treat them respectfully, look out for their best interests, view them with charity and understanding, and do not put stumbling blocks before them.
However, when wondering who a 14-year-old girl should interact with and how, there is more to the equation than the gender factor. We know from Scripture that young people can be foolish (Proverbs 22:15). Scripture also says that “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” (Proverbs 13:20
The danger here isn’t just boy-girl relationships. It’s fool-fool relationships. There is this danger in friendships between girls, too. Yet age shouldn’t really be the basis of “discrimination” either, any more than gender. The issue is spiritual maturity.
We ought to choose our friends on the basis of their maturity (or if they’re younger, teachability) and interest in the things of God, and spend time together depending on how edifying and constructive that time can be. Proverbs 14:7 instructs us to “Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not [in him] the lips of knowledge.”
There are occasional exceptions to the following observation – but, at your age, friendships with peers will generally be less fruitful than friendships with those older and wiser than you, whom you can learn from, and those younger than you, whom you can invest in.
Age 14 is a very formative time, when most of us are developing our habits of interaction. We personally would advise you to spend as much of this season as you can around adults, especially the older women in your church. If you also have opportunities for worthwhile brother-sister interaction, by all means make the most of them! (Presupposing that you have the blessing of your parents to do so – see note at the beginning of the previous post) But also be sensitive to the weaknesses of your young brothers — and yourself — at this age of heightened self-consciousness and vulnerability.
A last word: Don’t worry about immature people viewing you as a prude, if you put these principles into practice. Remember, there are worse things to be viewed as than a prude. Like, a fool.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ
Posted July 15, 2008
How to Think About Young Men
A number of young women have asked us about relationships with young men. They want to know how a young woman should interact with those of the opposite sex, or should she at all?
Note: Every daughter should look to the guidance of her parents on this. She should know what her father (and mother) think about conversations with strangers, friends, suitors, and potential suitors. The advice in this article presupposes that your father approves of pure conversations and interaction with young men, and that our suggestions would only be applied in the situations and manner he has approved. If the thoughts below represent a different practice than what your father or elders have prescribed for you, continue to follow the direction you have been given by those in jurisdictional authority over you.
The issue of how eligible young people can interact in a pure and comfortable way has been considered by wiser and more mature minds than ours. However, we would like to submit a few thoughts as two young people currently navigating these waters ourselves, and having listened to the perspectives of many friends, both male and female, on this issue.
In this post we will be offering some collected observations from the most mature young people we know (with a heavy dose of advice from the older and married, our parents most of all).
It is generally known that Christians are supposed to interact as brothers and sisters in Christ, but during the highly-charged season of eligibility, young people in the typical church are not sure how to do this.
Even in family-integrated churches, guys and girls often don’t know how to interact comfortably as brothers and sisters. We usually see this expressed in one of two ways: either flirting and posturing, or shying demurely away from any interaction with the other sex. These two symptoms may seem opposites, but they both stem from the same root problem: a failure to think of the other as “[brothers or] sisters, with all purity” (1 Tim. 5:2)
In other words: thinking of the other sex chiefly as marriage material. This problem can be intensified by the fact that most of us don’t know what a real brother-sister relationship looks like, thus having no foundation or framework to transfer over to our spiritual brothers. Our father has always taught us that understanding the fraternal relationship can help us understand why men and women in the Body of Christ are referred to as brother and sister, and give us the wisdom to gracefully maneuver a season so (potentially) fraught with complexity.
Obviously, there must be some distinctions between how we treat family members and young people outside the family. Because this “eligibility” phase can be volatile, young people need to be extra thoughtful in how they deal with these relationships – not excessively worried about convention, but always thinking carefully about how to love the people around them, considering what is appropriate for the situation, and submitting to the guidelines set by their parents.
In this article, we will not attempt to set forth a code of conduct, or rules of “engagement” between the sexes – rules and safeguards are for your own family to determine as you seek the Scriptures. What we want to explore here is a sisterly attitude toward young men. Remember, our patterns of conduct begin in the heart and mind. We cannot treat young men as brothers until we think of them as brothers. It does not follow that we should throw propriety to the wind and embrace all young men with unconstrained sibling familiarity, but we can identify and follow many of the same principles that we do with our own brothers, without the same level of intimacy.
What does it mean to think of young men as brothers?
What principles of sisterly love are applicable to other young men?
A sister should be looking out for her brother’s best interests. Of course she doesn’t want to see him get hurt, defrauded, or painfully disappointed.
She prays for him, for his future wife and family.
She understands that he is an imperfect human being, with flaws and weaknesses that should be viewed with charity, patience and understanding.
She views him as a fellow human made in the image of God – neither more nor less.
A sister should realize that her brother will answer to God for every word he says, every thought he has, every deed he does – including in his dealings with women. This should put the fear of God into her to not want to see stumbling blocks put before him.
A sister should realize that young men are supposed to be seeking the Kingdom first (as are we! Matt. 6:23). We should not willfully distract them. Ours should be the kind of relationship that will encourage them in their focus on serving God, in their manly endeavors, rather than the kind of relationship that would feed their weaknesses and vanity. Young women can fuel or even ignite a man’s penchant for mere “interaction” – bantering, toying, dallying, trivial exchanges about nothings — a shallow (and selfish) substitute for hearty friendship and substantial conversation.
What the young men say
We have an advantage many girls would love to have – we have five brothers, who all talk openly with us about what they do and do not appreciate in the conduct of young women toward them and their friends. Our brothers have told us they find it easier to think of and treat a young lady as a sister in Christ, when she acts like a sister in Christ. Solid young men can usually discern fairly quickly whether a girl is unselfishly looking out for the best interests of her Christian brothers, or views them simply as prospective marriage material – or worse, as objects to sport with. They’re inclined to feel more comfortable around a girl who clearly has no designs or expectations, and uneasy speaking to a girl who seems focused on her eligibility, the matrimonial possibilities, the deep significance of their interaction… (Among other things, the guys can be concerned that their brotherly friendliness will be misconstrued as a mark of intention.)
According to our brothers, they appreciate it when:
A girl seems comfortable and at ease.
A girl talks to them in the same spirit that their sisters do.
A girl is a good conversationalist, well educated and with interesting things to say. (Able to speak intelligently on subjects that will be of general interest to a mixed audience – e.g., topics other than sewing, fad diets, clothes, chick flicks, themselves, etc.)
A girl has a genuine interest in the things of God, and an eagerness to speak of them and discuss them.
They do not appreciate it when:
A girl seems excessively self-conscious and distracted by the fact that AN ELIGIBLE YOUNG MAN IS TALKING TO HER!
A girl exhibits leech-like behavior – however flattering it was intended to be.
A girl is over-aggressively friendly.
A girl demonstrates a Deliberate Shunning of Young Men, complete with avoiding eye contact and hiding behind human shields.
Conclusion
Knowing how to interact with all purity is a test – parents and young people have had to deal with this throughout history, sometimes trying to solve problems through strict societal conventions and rigid codes of conduct.
Standards and rules of decorum should be regarded. The trouble is, they don’t ultimately fix the problems. Only treating the attitudes of our hearts – cultivating agape love, wisdom, thoughtfulness, and the perception and intuition to discern the need of the moment – will help us act like the sisters in Christ we should be.
Girls – consider the young men you know as the future husbands of women the Lord has already chosen. In fact, you can be praying for their wives right now (note: not match-making), and don’t forget to pray for the men themselves, that the Lord will guide and protect them in the choosing of a wife.
Try to act like a sister, not a prospect. Don’t be obsessed with your own eligibility, or theirs either, for that matter. Selfless, honest interaction with young men has the potential to edify, stimulate, educate, inspire and encourage both parties. Don’t complicate, or hinder, these friendships by playing psycho-romantic guessing games.
And finally, ladies – relax! Be joyful. Trust in the sovereignty of God. Be thankful for these opportunities for friendship with the children of God. Remember that these young men are precious souls blood-bought by Christ, and fellow soldiers in His cause. Let us build friendships that will continue long after this season of singleness is past, and into eternity.
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. — John 13:34
