Courtship...(PART 2)

In my last courtship post, I discussed the pre-courtship stage and the importance of interacting with the opposite sex in all purity. I wish to add alittle more to what should happen during the pre-courtship stage and touch alittle bit on the right time for courtship. These are my personal thoughts on the matter.

First and foremost, in my last post on this subject I mentioned and tried to explain why relationships are such a big issue for youths today. My buddies and I, admitted to the fact that most of us were under serious pressure to be in relationships. This was a serious concern for me, especially since we are, mostly, too young to be in relationships. I asked the question, where is all this pressure coming from?

The largest source of pressure, to be in a relationship, eluded me but upon further thought, eureka, I think I’ve got it!

It’s the world! Relationships are all over the media, celebrities, magazines, newspapers, internet, television from movies to soap operas, music, they all preach relationships. It’s all about who is seeing who, who “broke up” with who, who cheated on who, who got dumped by who… The source of pressure is indeed the world, God help this generation which is bombarded by the world constantly!

Well, I urge you to read the first post on courtship, simply check the left of this page and click the courtship link.

The period during which we relate to girls as sisters and enjoy their sweet company, it is indeed sweet(!), is meant to help us spur one another and help us learn how to relate to them properly. It should help us get to know them better and therefore appreciate them and vice versa. This is discussed in detail in PART 1.

There is a most important duty each young Christian guy or girl, man or woman should begin to work on. We all have character flaws. As we relate to our friends, guys or girls, we begin to see our flaws more clearly as our friends point them out and as friction begins to occur. The importance of interaction between sexes is that certain flaws are best noticed by individuals of the opposite sex.

For a guy, for example, fellow males will not see the roughness in you because guys are somewhat rough in the way they relate, pushing and shoving each other as they walk along, tossing each other all over the place, etc. Your lady friends on the other hand will tell you, “Brother, you need to be more gentle, the way you pushed sister Jane yesterday was not nice, or the way you handled that child wasn’t nice”.

A character flaw which may be found in a lady is that of gossip. As interaction between the opposite sexes occurs, fellow sisters may fail to see that another sister is too much of a gossip. The guys might pick up on that more easily and will quickly correct their sister, “Now sister, there you go again, no gossiping today, lets change the subject.”

Another example is “skitting”. The word “skitting” is not English, it’s colloquial. It means someone who is sort of prideful. It’s the kind of thing a popular girl at school would do when guys are talking to her or when a guy is talking to her. She knows she’s on demand and that is clear in the way she speaks to others. Well, a sister in the Lord might be a “skit”, knowingly or unknowingly. Guys can ‘spot a “skit”’ miles away! They will personally see to it that the sister is put back in the straight and narrow.

Character flaws vary and are plenty. I will mention a couple of mine. I tend to be rude, heartless, argumentative, emotionless, arrogant, someone who sometimes embarrasses others…let me end there before someone stops reading my blog permanently because they discover that a total wretch owns it! I’ll be honest with you. 90% of the flaws on that list have been exposed to me by my sisters in the Lord. They tell me, “brother, you were very rude to that sister, go and apologise.” It’s really helped me to have sisters in the Lord!

Why is all this important? When I get into a relationship, I should not enter it with baggage upon baggage of garbage! In other words, relationships are not the place for fixing flaws. Sure, ones partner helps with character deficiencies but, you shouldn’t enter without any work done on your character! If everyone concentrated on working on their character flaws during the pre-courtship period when sisters in the Lord help brothers in the Lord and vice versa, courtships and marriages in the church would be much happier today!