The Courtship Perspective

I posted this before, when my blog was more active, and wanted to repost as food for thought.

A pastor that I have heard about several times, posted this to Facebook, and I thought it was great, so I'm sharing. Enjoy.

So I am writing a note on this to bring to light some of the things God has ministered to me relating to how Christian singles can enter boldly into a place and understand if they are in a God-honoring relationship before marriage and how to attain such a relationship. A lot of people have asked me questions on this topic the last 3 months, probably more than how to prophecy, or release anointing, or "see" in the Spirit.

While I do not pretend to be the expert on the matter, some of the most powerful encounters with young people I have had over the last 12 years is related to this topic. I have experienced the heartbreak of illicit and godless relationships tearing away precious saints from their path only to watch them go through tragedy after tragedy and fall by the wayside. Thank the Lord for ransom, redemption, and rescue! I have watched Spirit filled young people with the best intentions enter into relationships with one another and because they lacked protocol and knowledge on how to honor God in their courtship, become a casualty of less, when God wanted so much more.

Hell is after the power of covenant. Covenant with God is powerful. Covenant with people is powerful. Covenant is powerful! God requires that intimacy flows through covenant, it is a gate of intimacy. Intimacy without covenant leads to shame, while Intimacy in covenant strengthens. I am not talking solely about sexual intimacy although that is the highest form of intimacy between two people in the context of marriage. Areas of intimacy can only extend as far as is permissible to the covenant between parties.

Young people have approached me with "interests" and desperately wanted to understand their attraction to someone and yet where afraid they lacked basic skills to protect themselves and the other person in case it was not a right fit for marriage covenant. So here we go:

1. Dating: If you look up the definition of dating, you will see that it appears harmless enough. However upon further examination you will see that in the 1920's, "dating" turned into more of an expected social norm between many people than its role in the 1800's, which was to find a marriage partner. Dating is defined as a "form" of courtship. This reminds me a "form of godliness" but denying the power thereof. Dating would be a form of courtship, denying the "purpose" thereof.

Of course we are not ignorant of such evil devices, that the enemy of God looks to simply twist something good and turn it in to a big diversion. If the enemy can get in at the beginning with a minor change, the end result will look drastically different.

I often tell people, dating teaches you how to divorce. So, in the 1800's, courtship was the norm, a young person would prepare their lives, and be prepared by family to be ready for marriage, and then begin to court someone of notable character, leading to a marriage without comparison, and full of purpose. But in the early to mid 1900's, dating because social, and people were expected to date lots of people. They would date and break-up and date and break-up, leaving emotional baggage such as rejection and un-forgiveness as part of their “life luggage”. They would find "true love" after a while, marry and find themselves unable to sustain covenant because of being ill prepared and being so deceived. After a while since little emphasis was placed on the importance of covenant, they would divorce, leave the marriage as half a person, and then go on to try it again with someone else to many times a similar end. The children would be in this tragedy, to question everything including their own involvement, their purpose, and reason for their existence. The children would grow up, and like their parents, enter into the same destructive cycle that has befallen our culture.

This has morphed yet again, and now we have "casual sex" and the ever cheapening of God's purpose on the earth expressed in Family.

Do you see how the little change in the front end led us to such a drastic shift in culture? Now, we have hurt people hurting people and established system that has invaded our schools, our teens, our young adults, our court system, and touches every avenue of our culture.

God is restoring covenant in the family

Some of this starts in courtship. So I want to spend more time talking about the power and enjoyment of the wonderful experience of courtship over the pitfalls of dating.

I can speak of my experience.

When I met my wife Coral, I had a supernatural encounter with God that changed me. The Lord spoke to me as He highlighted her, and I knew she was to be my wife. I felt the need to make my purposes clear to her and told her on the 2nd date that I was after her hand in marriage. She  had not had the same encounter with God regarding me as I had regarding her, so this was a little abrupt (I now teach against this kind of premature heart sharing). Sharing my intentions so early proved to be a misstep that led to months of a desperate pursuit to win her over. During those times, it was God’s grace (enabling capacity) that sustained me. When many men would have given up, I pursued because of the word of God and the love of God that was poured out in my heart. God had given me His daughter, she just did not know it yet.

I approached the situation with some decisions that you need to make before you go into a courtship.

1. No matter what, we will both be better at the end of the process.
   1. That is the power in courtship, both people can come out healthier and stronger than before they begin, the complete opposite of modern “dating”.
2. I will respect and honor her as God’s child and walk in the proper sequence of courtship
3. I will not enter into a physical relationship that could dishonor either of us or more importantly dishonor God, I will do this right.
4. If at any time, God reveals that this is not His perfect will, I will end the courtship and salvage a friendship.
   1. People have said you can never be friends after you “date” someone, but if you are in a courtship that results in parties not heading towards marriage, friendship can be strong after a season.
5. No matter what, we will both be better at the end of the process. (You will notice I mention this twice because of its importance)
6. If this person is not my spouse, then one day, his/her spouse would prefer to thank me, rather than punch me.

We had a pure 2.5 year courtship and tested our relationship in extreme emotional and spiritual conditions as well as physical restraint. We endured tragedy and saw how each other responded, we saw how we handled money, met and began to understand family dynamics (a big part of marriage), got a sense of the future from one another’s perspective, etc.

We knew each other when we walked down that aisle emotionally, spiritually, and were not ready to be joined in covenant physically. We had walked through the proper sequence of courtship, and at any time could have walked out of the relationship being better people and move on towards our individual destiny with little emotional overhaul needed.

But we didn’t, we moved on to enter a joyous union and you know what, after ALL of that preparation, we were shocked that marriage was HARD. You would think that handling a lot of these things (definitely not all) correctly, marriage would be easy, but it is not. Can you imagine how hard it would be without preparation? Ask around 9/10 people out there could tell you since they were probably not adequately prepared for marriage. As a child of God, you have to be led by Holy Spirit as you find, court, and marry your spouse. You must be ready to be obedient.

Emotional Fasting in courtship-

This is something that Holy Spirit instituted in my courtship season with Coral. This was my experience and I am not setting it as principle. One day, Holy Spirit spoke to me about taking a week and fasting from Coral. I will never forget that conversation with her. I remember her replying, “We can’t even talk on the phone!?”…and I was almost ready to fold at that moment but had to stay true to what God was saying. “No, we have to spend a week away and get out of our emotions and hear from God if we are to continue down this path together”. This was hard, I was dying on the inside as this was 6 months into our courtship and God had already revealed to me that we were to be married. We would do this several more times throughout the 2.5 years. It was a hard week, but after the first few days, my emotions took their rightful place and I  was able to hear God on the issue, able to disconnect from my relationship and future planning and hear God’s heart on the matter. By day 5, God could have said to me, “End the courtship” and I would have been able to do it with minor heartbreak. These fasting times were one of the most powerful times of our courtship and happened as late as a week before our wedding.

Testing before marriage

I believe in this also. Courtship should have tests. You should test your courtship. One week before our wedding, I went up into the woods of Tennessee My goal? To find an good reason to not marry my wife. If there was any reason that I could find for why we should not be married since I have met her family, worshipped with her, made plans with her, etc. I would end the courtship. I needed a week, because it took 4 days to get out of the emotions of it and on the 5th day I knew that God was in our courtship and was endorsing our marriage. I looked throughout the word knowing the calling on my life (a 2.5 year conversation that we walked through together) and let Holy Spirit speak to me.

The last 2 days were me celebrating and thanking God for preparing me to marry this wonderful daughter of the King. One week later on my spiritual birthday 4/13/07 we were married. God was in our marriage and at our wedding in a powerful way. Although it was a week of Thunderstorms, our Friday wedding was the most beautiful day I remember (important since it was open-air at the beach). The Lord shined down on us because we were faithful to His process and rewarded our faithfulness by being involved in our marriage in a mighty way.

Blessings,

Joshua Todd