God Must Be There

God Must Be There
by Marilyn Mackenzie


I recently read that each relationship we have must be a three-some. How true! The relationship has to be God, plus two people.

I can certainly look back on my life and see just where I sought God’s will and prayed for wisdom before acting. I can also look back and see exactly which times I took off on my own and then, almost as an afterthought, sought God’s blessings for the decisions I’d made without Him.

Oft times, we forget that the first date and each subsequent one should only take place if it’s in God’s will.

I once taught a teen girl’s Sunday school class. They were young teens, and their parents weren’t about to let any of them start dating before they were 16 years old, and then it would be only group dating. Each of the parents had set the age of 17 as the first time their daughters would be able to date alone. But here they were just 13 and 14 and they were interested in learning how to date the right and proper way.

One idea I shared with them was to come up with a list of things they’d like to do on a date and to have it handy when the time came for a guy to ask them out. That way, when the question was posed, "What do you want to do?" their answer would not be, "I don’t care. What do you want to do?" And they’d not be put in the position of just sitting on the sofa watching a movie and being tempted to get more intimate than they should. I also suggested that each should decide early on that she’d only date Christian boys who would come to the house to meet and spend time with her parents. And I suggested that starting each date with prayer would help keep them from tempting situations.

A few years later, after I had moved, I heard from one of the girls. She wanted to share how blessed she was to have found a boy just as we spoke about in class. On the first date, he showed up at her house and talked with her parents at length so that they’d be comfortable letting their daughter spend time with him. Before they left the house, that young man asked the girl’s father to pray with them. And that started a habit that they continued through courting. She also kept a rather dog-earred piece of paper in her wallet - her list of things to do on a date.