Thread: "Missionary" Dating

As a pastor, I would advise against it.

However, I have to tell you that my wife was a backslidden Christian who went to the bar with her sister one night and met me, a musician playing music in the bar, who did not yet know the Lord. I must also say though, that the Lord had been drawing me for a long time at that point, and I had just not surrendered my life to Him.

Originally Posted by victoryword

You forgot to add "and sleeping together". But she does read the Bible to him in bed.

Originally Posted by Romans828

It seems that on those rare occasions when this type of scenario works, it's the man that brings the woman in, and not vice versa - Just sayin'

Exactly!

Originally Posted by Romans828

Zeke, we'd love to hear (as Paul Harvey liked to say)... The rest of the story.

I'm curious as to how, and how long it took for both of you to become truly, born-again, etc.

Well, as I said, my now wife had walked away from the Lord after being divorced from a cheater who had actually stayed together with his girlfriend for several years after being forgiven and taken back. He was playin' her dirty the whole time. All the while attending church services with his wife. She tried to run from God, and became a man-hater (her description of herself)."I say tried to run from God" she said, because she would be sitting in the bar and all of a sudden PTL or some other Christian show would come on the bar TV. She had given up on God for a season, but He had not given up on her. Then one night her sister invited her out dancing, and there she was. I used to take a wireless mic and grab a gal to dance with while singing, and she was the one who caught my eye that night.

We hit it off, and she invited me over for dinner a week or so later. Meanwhile, she had changed her mind, still being in a man-hating state of mind, but when she decided to cancel our dinner date, I told her I was just down the street and would be in her drive in a couple minutes.

The funny thing is, as we got together, she would always talk about God. I had just gone through some counseling for depression after a divorce, (who ended up being a Christian counselor) and one of the things she had me do was write a list of things I wanted to accomplish. One of those was to know God, so I was hungry for all that she would tell me about her experience with God. Then we started going to church services. A local church was having a week long revival meeting and we went every night. Then came the day when I told her that I was going to talk to the pastor on the next Sunday. She told me "Today is the day of salvation, why don't you take the day off work and go see him?" And so I did. I remember soaking the carpeting in his church with my tears that day, as I gave my life to the Lord.

It was then that I told her we needed to get married and could not go on shacking up. And so I married the love of my life in Feb of 2001. Life and marriage was so different with the Lord in my life! We laugh now, because she said she had asked the Lord for a man of God, either a pastor or evangelist. I think it was a God set-up! She said "I went to the enemy's camp, and I took back what he stole from me". And now you know, the rest of the story.



But as I said earlier, as a pastor I would counsel someone not to do missionary dating. I now know the scriptures and in the OT we see exactly why God said not to intermingle with the people of the lands that He was giving them, lest they turn their hearts to foreign gods. And we read that is exactly what happened to Solomon, as well as others.