I am Jeremiah Stone and I am 18 years old and I go to Valley Forge Christian College. My past dating experiences are few. As many guys experience in middle school, I liked a few girls. Around sixth grade I really liked this one girl. She was a Very spiritually mature Christian girl and very pretty. In seventh grade, she and I talked and she said something that I will always remember. She said that she wasn’t ready for dating and that she would wait for God’s direction in that area of her life. That really changed me. We were friends and we still are. Now, she didn’t use that as an excuse to nicely say that she didn’t like me because she said the same thing to the at least twenty other guys that asked her out. After her I was very focused on what God had in store for me and not what I wanted. Unfortunately, my freshman year in high school, I don’t know what I was thinking. I got away from thinking and asking what God wanted for me and I started going my own way. For some reason I started to like a friend of mine whom I had been friends with since first grade. She and I were close friends and for some reason I liked her and the feeling was mutual. We did not date but I almost considered going out with her. What stopped me? God, thank God! The spring of my junior year I went on the No Regrets Retreat and I rededicated my life to Christ. What does that have to do with dating? After getting back on track with God, He opened my eyes. She wanted nothing to do with God. Whenever I mentioned church or God or Youth Group, she would complain about me always talking about that “stuff”. All I could see was that God did not want to me to date yet. Thanks God. So, I got around to my senior year in high school. I had been completely focused on God and just being in love with Him. It was great and as Pastor Jeff says, “when we are focused on God alone, He will bring the right person who is also focused on Him.” And this is exactly what happened. Because I decided to let God be the Lord of everything in my life, He brought the perfect person into my life at the perfect time. So during my senior year I started dating. She is my first girlfriend ever and it is true love. And of course God gets all the glory for this because this is all due to Him. And in the almost ten months that we have been together, our true love constantly grows, matures, and deepens in knowledge and insight, not to mention it’s been wonderful. Because of my love for God, He opened my eyes for His best in my life.

So as you have seen I am presently dating. Why? I am dating, like I said, because I waited for God to put the person whom He wanted me to be with in my life, and He did. He put a wonderful girl, whom was after God’s own heart, in my own life. I am glad that I waited to date. God has blessed me greatly with my girlfriend and our relationship.

In my relationship with my girlfriend, there are three very important factors. The first and most important part is God. All Christian relationships should NOT involve only two people; they should involve three: the guy, the girl, and God. If God is not a part of our relationship, she and I shouldn’t be together because He is the one who brought us together in the first place. In keeping God in our relationship, we always pray for each other, do devotionals and pray together, keep each other spiritually accountable, and worship together. When I am having a hard time, she encourages me and we pray and vice versa. We don’t get into arguments, and this is huge. Sure we may have disagreements sometimes, but we just pray together so that we don’t let it turn into an unnecessary argument. We are slow to be anger with each other, quick to apologize and forgive and forget. We have learned that if we forgive and forget, our relationship grows stronger with God’s help. The second important part of our relationship is our families. We have never gone out on a date by ourselves. We always spend time together with each other’s families, having dinner, watching movies, playing games, or just talking and getting to know each other better. We feel that family is the second most important part of our relationship. The third important part of our relationship is respect and love for each other. She and I always love and respect each other. Now, like in all relationships there is some physicalness. Physicalness does happen in our relationship but it is not displeasing to God. This is a very unimportant part of our relationship. Our relationship is not based on the physical end but on our love for God and one another. We believe that it is okay as long as we are respecting each other and glorifying and pleasing God with everything that we do.