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Capricorns dating each other. Best dating apps houston Who are you? As a believer and a follower of Christ, you are a child of God. You are His possession, His property, His precious gem. It will take you the rest of your life to learn about His knowledge, His Kingdom, and His righteousness and, therefore, learning about who you really are. Righteousness means right standing with God. He wants you to know where you stand with Him: who you are in Christ and what you have in Him.
If you become preoccupied with who you want, you will lose sight of who you are. God wants you to become so consumed by His Kingdom and righteousness that anybody you meet will be, rst of all, someone who is on the road with you and, second, at the same place on the road as you are. Because they are moving in the same direction with a similar passion for God and hunger for His righteousness, they are already aligned in a manner that enables them easily to walk in agreement with each other.
This is an important consideration for people who are preparing to date. To walk in agreement with one another, as believers, is a central biblical principle, a primary characteristic of godliness. Nobody can walk with God unless they agree to walk according to His principles and His Word. Walking together is contingent upon agreement. This same principle also has a prominent place in the New Testament.
This is true whether we are talking about a fellowship of believers, two believers joining together in marriage, or two believers entering into a dating relationship. For example, consider the case of a Baptist dating a Catholic. These di erences will make it very challenging, even di cult for this couple to walk together in agreement.
No matter how spiritual they may be, or how much prayer or fasting they have done, or even how full of the Spirit they are, they will face daunting obstacles in their relationship as they seek to walk in harmony. It is not impossible—the Spirit of God can bring harmony of mind and spirit—but it is difficult. They look for a godly return without making a godly investment. Walking in agreement does not mean always seeing eye-to-eye on absolutely everything, but it does mean being in basic agreement in the Lord.
Unity begins with basic agreement in spirit, which then leads to harmony of mind, thought, and judgment. It is the foundation stone for every truly successful, productive, and fruitful relationship. People can share common interests, intellectual pursuits, and have the same goals, but without spiritual agreement, they will still have broken relationships.
The secret to perfect agreement is to agree in the Lord. Our fundamental agreement must be spiritually based, which then provides a solid foundation for agreement in other areas. The basis for spiritual agreement is the Word of God. As a single, if you want to ensure success in your future marriage, the time to plan and prepare for that success is now, while you are dating. That is why it is just as important to prepare yourself for dating as it is to prepare yourself for marriage.
The standards for successful dating are the same as those for successful marriage. According to the majority of marriage counselors, one of the most common reasons for the breakup of marriages at any stage is lack of intimacy. Most people associate intimacy with physical or sexual relations, but it is much deeper than that.
Those who feel that having sex brings them intimacy are only scratching the surface. Intimacy is not an act. They trust each other more and more with their innermost wishes, dreams, and desires.
They trust each other more and more with their innermost emotions. Intimacy, then, is the key to any successful relationship. Most modern relationships, marriage or otherwise, fall far short of attaining genuine intimacy.
One reason for this is because, in our distorted age of romanticism, manipulation, microwave speed and second sound bites, we expect instant intimacy. True intimacy takes time to develop. Many people try to take a short cut to intimacy through physical relations, which always leads to failure. The rst step to true intimacy in a relationship is developing a oneness of spirit.
Relationship does not guarantee fellowship. Living together does not guarantee togetherness. If two people are close together in physical proximity but miles apart in spirit, there is no intimacy. They may be in the same room but in completely different worlds. The first step to true intimacy in a relationship is developing a oneness of spirit. Ultimately, preparing to date means understanding that the chief purpose of serious dating is to develop true intimacy—a oneness of spirit—between a man and a woman.
If you marry your lover, you are basing your marriage on chemical reactions, which change like the weather. When you date, focus on the spiritual instead of the physical.
Use your dating time not to groom a lover but to grow a friend. The problem is that too many people neither understand what true friendship is nor have any real clue how to make friends or how to be a friend.
If you desire a friend rather than a lover, and to be a friend rather than to be a lover, then you are ready to date. The next step is to examine what friendship is all about, and learn how to get friends by being a friend. You are ready to date when you are fully aware of both the bene ts and the dangers of dating.
You are ready to date when you have rst learned how to be alone. A whole person has a healthy self-concept. A whole person has a clear and solid faith. A whole person grows his or her own roots in God. You should be preoccupied with preparing yourself for whomever God is preparing for you. Our rst priority as believers is to seek the Kingdom and righteousness of God. Intimacy is a state of existence in which both partners in a relationship trust the other more and more with their innermost thoughts.
The chief purpose of dating is to develop true intimacy—a oneness of spirit—between a man and a woman. True friendship—not casual acquaintance, but people who are joined together heart and soul—is the foundation for all successful long-term relationships.
Friendship does not come to full bloom overnight; it takes time to grow and mature. Building this friendship is the greatest value and, indeed, the primary purpose of dating. The strongest and most successful long-term relationships are those that are based on friendship rather than on any sense of need or incompleteness on the part of either or both persons involved.
A relationship motivated by need destroys friendship because it is essentially self- centered. Entering a relationship primarily for what we can get out of it defrauds the other person, and that is sin. One problem I have discovered through years of experience in counseling and from my own life is that most people do not understand how to build and maintain wholesome friendships.
Friendship in the world is based inevitably on manipulation. Consciously or not, people in the world use friendships as convenient and expedient opportunities to advance themselves. What the world calls friendship is not true friendship, because true friendship is based on love, which comes from God.
People who are without God do not truly understand love and therefore cannot truly understand friendship. Those we must renew through knowledge and growth.
We have to learn how to live and act as children of God. This is probably nowhere harder to do than in relationships, particularly between males and females. Our newborn spirits tell us one thing while our unrenewed minds and bodies tell us something else. How can I build a relationship based on friendship rather than physical attraction? That is a very common experience for most people. Few of us are taught while growing up how to speak to new people. On the contrary, we are cautioned not to talk to strangers.
It is easy to forget that every friend or acquaintance of ours was a stranger once. Getting our attention o of ourselves can help us develop a greater degree of self-con dence as well as help us learn how to listen more carefully to what others have to say.
Focusing on the other person is one of the steadfast principles of friendship. Never talk about yourself; wait for the other person to ask. Instead, get that other person to tell you about himself or herself. Ask questions and then listen to the answers. His rst law was that we should never talk about ourselves but get others to talk about themselves. There is a very simple reason for this: by nature every human being is interested rst and foremost in himself or herself.
Think about it. Sin has made us self-centered, so we have to deliberately plan to go against our natural inclination. That is why making a friend and being a friend are so challenging: we have to work at it. We should never talk about ourselves, but rather, get others to talk about themselves.
Jesus used this very method to build relationships. Hurting and needy people ocked to Him by the thousands because they knew that He was a man Who cared about them and was interested in them personally. Who would not respond that way? True sel essness is rare in the world, but it should be commonplace among the people of God.
Most people like to talk about themselves, and this is a good way to help them feel comfortable and to gain their trust. These questions can be grouped into four basic areas: family, education, interests, and spiritual things.
The rst level of friendship- building questions has to do with family. Why ask people about their family? Because nothing is more dear to them.
Here are a few examples. What do they do for a living? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Are you married or single? Do you have any children? What are their names? Where did you grow up? What can you tell me about your family heritage? Even a dropout could talk about the failure of the educational system. Knowing where your new friend stands educationally may be very helpful as you seek to help him or her move toward their personal goals, which is part of what friendship is all about.
What school do you attend? Did you drop out of school? If so, why? What are your future educational goals? Do you want to go to college? This is an excellent way to discover what you may have in common. What sports are you involved in? Do you have any hobbies? What kind of music do you like?
Do you sing or play an instrument? What clubs do you belong to? Do you like to travel? What is your favorite vacation spot? In recent years there has been a great upswing of interest in spiritual things in general, particularly in Western culture. More and more people are becoming open to spiritual or supernatural realities.
In seeking new friendships, we can get people talking about spiritual matters. Do you believe in life after death? Are you a member of a church? Which one? How often do you attend? Ultimately, our purpose in being a friend should be to encourage, lift up, and help build the character of those with whom we are friends, and to do all we can to assist them in achieving their dreams. Naturally, we cannot do this with everyone we meet, or with anyone right o the bat.
Friendship develops in stages. I believe that everyone in the Body of Christ should have as many people as possible in this category. To the greatest degree practical, we should take the initiative to at least get acquainted with everyone we meet. A friendship of acquaintance is based on occasional contact with very basic and general knowledge of each other.
Each level of friendship carries certain responsibilities, and at the acquaintance level it is the responsibility to view our acquaintances as divine appointments. As believers, we need to realize that none of our encounters are accidental. God places people in our paths—and us in theirs—that we might be a blessing to each other. He has foreordained that we meet. No one is unimportant or beneath us. We should be alert to discern the reasons God brought them our way.
It may be the beginning of a wonderful life- long friendship. How can good acquaintances be friends? There are several things we can do. First, be alert to every new person around us. Learn as much about them as possible simply by watching but not staring. Second, be careful to wear a cheerful, friendly countenance. In other words, smile at people and be friendly. Some people go around all the time with such scowls or frowns on their faces that no one even wants to be around them, much less talk to them.
We should be cheerful and ready to talk, behaving in a manner that encourages others to talk to us. People appreciate being remembered as an individual rather than being marked o as a number or just another faceless member of the crowd. Number four grows naturally from number three: greet them by name the next time we see them.
A fth step is to ask questions about their interests. Find out what motivates them—what gets them up in the morning. Sixth, we should be good listeners. Seventh, we should remind ourselves of the interest that God has in them, and desire to have that same interest as well. Relationships at this level are based on common interests, activities, and concerns. Casual friends meet more frequently than do acquaintances, and in avenues that are more personal: playing tennis or racquetball, quilting or sewing, bird watching, studying astronomy, going to clubs or participating in common hobbies.
At this level, the friendship is more involved and more personal than at the acquaintance level. Casual friends enjoy getting together occasionally to talk about or share their common interests. They begin to praise and encourage each other in their achievements and accomplishments.
Their attraction is more toward their common interests than toward each other in any emotional sense. A casual friendship is one in which the people involved discover they have some things in common that draw them closer, and is the natural outgrowth of an acquaintance relationship. How do we strengthen our relationships with our casual friends?
There are several ways. First, we should seek to discover their strong points. We all have strengths and weaknesses, but too often all we hear about are our weaknesses.
It is easy to criticize, but for some reason, we nd it much harder to praise and a rm. Second, we should try to learn about their hopes and desires in life. What are their dreams? If they could have anything in the world, what would it be?
If they could do anything they desired, what would they choose? Getting them to talk about their dreams helps them keep those dreams alive and encourages them to pursue them. A third way to be a good casual friend is to show interest and concern if our friends share a problem with us.
Fourth, we need to be honest about ourselves and acknowledge our own faults to our friends when appropriate. We need to be quick to apologize and seek forgiveness if we hurt or o end, and be transparent about our motives. Our honesty will encourage our friends to be honest with us. Honesty promotes honesty and always serves the greater good of everyone. Our friends need to know that they can trust us with information or with con dences they may need to share with us.
A good friend does not go around spreading gossip or talking to others about personal matters that another friend shared in confidence. In other words, we will pray for our friends. Praying for our friends is the most important and significant thing we can do for them.
Close friendship is based on mutual life goals and friends at this level enjoy the freedom to suggest mutual projects toward reaching those goals. Most people never get this far in their relationships. Ultimately, true intimacy has very little to do with sexual relations.
Another characteristic of close friendship is that it is the rst relationship that involves genuine common fellowship. We can have fellowship only with people who are headed in the same direction as we are. Their beliefs and values are di erent, their life goals are di erent, and their nal destination is different.
Close friends pursue mutual goals and most often share similar values, ideals, and worldviews. This means that each friend becomes directly involved in helping the other succeed. Once we see them not just for who they are but also for who they can be, we are better prepared to help them ful ll their potential. Second, we should discover and discuss their speci c life goals with them.
Discussing life goals with a friend is personally enriching and rewarding for both and helps set the stage for making specific plans to reach those goals. Are there nancial obstacles? Is further education required? Sometimes people lack the con dence that they can actually reach for their dreams successfully. Internet Download Manager. VLC Media Player. MacX YouTube Downloader. Microsoft Office YTD Video Downloader. Adobe Photoshop CC. VirtualDJ Avast Free Security.
WhatsApp Messenger. Talking Tom Cat. Clash of Clans. Subway Surfers. Before Eve came along, Adam was alone, but he was not lonely. Loneliness is a spiritual disease. Adam was alone beause he was the only one of his kind, but he was completely fulfilled as a person.
In tending the garden he had meaningful work to do He was preoccupied with doing what God had told him to do that he sensed no need for a mate. Apparently, the thought never entered his head.
Providing a mate for Adam was Gods idea, Adam was completely self-fulfilled; he was ready for a mate when he did not need one. Christ-like character is not built overnight. It comes only through committed effort.
Friends working together to achieve these common goals will find success easier than those who try to do it alone. He also includes an assessment to find out how much Christ-like characters you have instead of what you think you have.
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