© God's Way Home - Hypotasso Faith
       The Way of His Son   -   1 Cor 15:1-28
                                     March 26 & April 2, 2000

A weekly source of encouragement & news from:
Family Bible Church & Biblical Family Soulcare

Sid Galloway, Teaching pastor, N.W.J (Nothing Without Jesus)
church@soulcare.org        www.soulcare.org    

Last week I shared that in contrast to the world's way, our Father's plan for "Covenant" courtship emphasizes His desire to protect, provide, and prepare a couple for a marriage that will glorify (reveal) His nature and thus bless others (Mat 7:24-27; Eph 5:31-33). So what is our Father's plan and how can we apply it today?

Protect - After almost 20 years of discipleship ministry with people from hundreds of churches, it is clear that the hurtful consequences of both emotional as well as physical fornication are epidemic among American Christians. We've been so brain-washed by the world that we're tempted to assume it's necessary to toy around with such spiritual and physical intimacy before marriage in order to find the right mate. Is it really? What does Scripture say?

While the World talks about safe-sex, God's churches should be training singles in safe-courtship. Even the very nature of "singles groups" breeds confusion, sin, and hurt. Singles need to be around and learn from mature married couples not a pool of peers with equal ignorance. We are to protect not only the bodies, but especially the hearts of our singles. 1 Tim 5:2 says a young man is to interact with "... younger women as sisters, with all purity ....". The term "all" is "pas" and it means every dimension. "Purity" comes from the root word for holy. The phrase "all purity" is a clear protective mandate from our Father, which includes the whole person. Please think about it. Even when a courting couple abstains from physical immorality, they still often open and intertwine their hearts with one another as if playing marriage. Then if later they separate and don't marry, one or both of their hearts are broken - deep down to an unnecessary depth of intimacy. Later, after the breakup when each eventually marries someone else, it will not be possible to truly give a pure, virgin heart into the marriage. But God expects a man and a woman to picture the full marriage purity of His Son, Jesus, who has saved Himself, body and soul, for His bride.

Yes a courting couple needs to know enough about one another in order to make the final decision of marriage. But what level of intimacy is Biblically necessary? With the help of godly parents, pastors, and fellow brothers and sisters, it's unnecessary to play around with the deep intimacies of one another's hearts in courtship. Just as a newly married couple is expected by our Father to begin their sexual relationship as inexperienced physical virgins, God is more than sufficient to guide emotional virgins into the heart to heart oneness He designed. We all agree it's wrong for a single person to spend intimate, spiritual (emotional) time with a married person of the opposite gender. It's similarly wrong for a single person to become spiritually, emotionally intimate with another single, who might one day belong to someone else. So who should singles have as their intimate friends until marriage? They should build spiritual friendships with their parents and Christian friends of the same gender (man to man - 2 Tim 2, and woman to woman - Titus 2).

Remember, Adam and Eve were able to "know" one another so intimately they became one? Yet, they had no previous trial and error experience. They had only God to guide them. In fact, things went fine until they chose to add to God's counsel, the forbidden fruit of the tree of trial and error knowledge. How about you? Do you believe that our Heavenly Father is able and willing to fulfill His plan for protecting, providing, and preparing a couple for marriage? In the next newsletter, we will continue our study with a closer look at how Covenant Courtship provides all that is necessary for a couple to decide on marriage, including personal knowledge of one another.

Thank You Brothers !!
I could never adequately express how much it blessed my soul to see all of you guys get together on your own to seek our Father's direction. From all of the reports I've heard, it was also a tremendous spiritual blessing for each of you, as you knit your hearts together as one. To hear that one of your main guiding principles was a desire to maintain and enhance the koinonia intimacy among the families, matches our Father's purpose for a church family.

In addition, it was a wonderful surprise for me when you told me of your decision to increase your material support for our family. All that we have invested in the planting of the church over the past year and half was well worth the sacrifices. I look forward to all that our Father has in store as the months, and years unfold, including difficulties.

Finding and keeping God's Biblical balance between in-house discipleship and outreach evangelism is always difficult. The two mandates of growing both in the depth of maturity (quality) as well as the breadth of quantity sometimes seem to be opposing efforts. On the one hand, our Father does not want us to merely form a "holy huddle", because there are so many souls out there that need rescuing. Then on the other hand, adopting new and immature families makes it more difficult to maintain our atmosphere of like-minded, seasoned fellowship. But such is the nature of war, and I know that our Father will protect us from sliding too far to either extreme. Keep up the great work, brothers!

- Church meetings in March will be at the Stahl's house.
- Sunday Afternoon's Practical Study: "Peacemaker", by Ken Sande (www.HisPeace.org)
- Men's Meeting - March 25 Saturday Morning 9 AM at CC's Coffee Shop
- Pray Submissively - Work Diligently - Love Always
- Ladies Meeting (April 15 at Peggy Bates Home, 9 AM)
- Discipleship Counseling: (BDC 101 - The Principles) From March to August (22 weeks)
        *** March 28th there will be no classes since Sid will be in Alabama at the SBABC conference.

Sid Galloway, N.W.J. (Nothing Without Jesus)