Tuesday, April 11, 2023 Adventures of a Young Christian, Part 6

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, here you go:
Adventures Part 1

I became a regular attender at the local Evangelical Free Church while still going through the dietetic internship. I told my older sister that name of the church and she remarked, “I hope it’s more free than evangelical.” Well, if you had pinned me down, I’m not sure I could have explained what either of those words meant in the context of the church name. A group of singles (college/career) formed at the church and I began rubbing shoulders more with Christians than I ever had. One fellow, Bruce, played the guitar and wrote songs. When I inquired what kinds of songs he was writing, he told me he only wrote songs about the Christian life and faith in Christ. This was truly mystifying to me. “Why restrict yourself just to that?” I asked. He smiled and said faith in Christ was the only thing worth writing about. I was dubious, but remained silent, needing to think about it.

Another fellow, Pete, was a handsome, outgoing and cheerful man who was so friendly to all of us girls that I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought he was giving attentions that went beyond brother to sister. Ha! In fact, the issue of the guys being so friendly and the girls misinterpreting the cues got to be such a problem that the associate pastor called us all together for a meeting to straighten us out. “Now, guys, it’s good for you to be friendly, but don’t overdo it; don’t spend time alone with any of the girls and don’t single any of them out unless you have intentions that you are willing to make clear. Flirting might feel like fun, but girls take these things seriously. Be careful.” We girls nodded our heads in agreement with this kind of talk. We felt like we were being led on. But then he turned to us. “Ladies, you really need to keep more of a tight rein on your emotions and your imaginations. When a guy says hello to you more than once, it’s not time to start thinking about the wedding and what kind of curtains you’ll have in your kitchen after you’re married. Don’t blow things up in your mind that have no basis in reality. Be careful.” He had a point there. We did a lot of things together as a group and even though eventually some of the people paired off, it was a good exercise in restraint for all of us to be more careful about how we treated one another and about what went on in our thought lives.

The whole controversy highlighted another change that I’d begun to think about: I could no longer entertain the idea of a relationship with someone who didn’t share my faith in Christ. When I was still in college I had a roommate that had talked to me about the importance of not being “unequally yoked,” but it didn’t mean much to me then. I’m not even sure why she mentioned it to me. But now, I was beginning to understand the concept. I had developed an interest in a guy I had known for a few years and spent a little too much time thinking about him and writing about him in my journal – and I was pretty sure the attraction was mutual. It would take only the barest encouragement from me to get this relationship going. The facts had to be faced, however; he was definitely not a Christian. This was probably one of the first times that I felt I was being asked to give something up for Christ, something that I really wanted. I vacillated so much in my mind over this man that I finally realized that I had to surrender my will and give him up, as it were. I said those words out loud “I surrender,” and instead of a sense of sadness, I felt an immediate release and joy, a complete sense of peace. It was settled and the temptation was completely gone. Not too long after that, I wrote a letter to “My husband,” a letter I hoped to be able to give some day to the man I would marry, even though I did not yet know who that would be. But I knew he would belong to Christ and that was the most important thing.

I’ll probably put a kerchief on this post in the morning to cover it up.

The next one:
Adventures Part 7