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Thread: Younger adult Christians

  1. #11
    Berserk, I would define an honest seeker as someone who searches for God with all his heart. There are several places in Scripture where we're assured that such a person will be found of God.

    I do agree that we often must learn to live with loose ends and inconsistencies, though I prefer not to think of Christianity as a "belief system."

  2. #12
    Bookman: "Berserk, I would define an honest seeker as someone who searches for God with all his heart. There are several places in Scripture where we're assured that such a person will be found of God."
    That's what I thought you meant. My favorite verse expressing that promise is Jeremiah 29:13: "When you search for me, you will find me, if you seek me with all your heart."
    In my younger years of witnessing with YWAM, my witness would often climax by quoting that promise and then reinforcing my invitation with Revelation 3:20:

    "Listen, I am standing at the door knocking; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and him with me."

    But I reject the notion that seekers are dishonest if they refuse to respond to that invitational challenge. The trick is to persuade them first that there is at least sufficient merit to biblical revelation to make that challenge worth embracing. I'm just confessing that some honestly found my apologetic defense of the Gospel insufficiently justified as evidence to make such an effort worthwhile. I was young and those were my pre-seminary days. I wish I could meet them again and hopefully do a better and more informed job of opening their minds to the Gospel challenge.

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Berserk View Post
    5. Sex before marriage is okay.
    Yes, a big problem! But young evangelicals often claim the real issue is whether their sexual relationship is the equivalent of marriage in God's eyes. They point out that the confirmation of what constitutes a true marriage varies from cultural period to period in biblical history and that there is no reason to accept modern legal criteria as the basis of real marriage. That argument might have some merit if they had honestly pledged a lifelong commitment to each other. Also, evangelical pastors are influenced by this question: "Do I really want to confront young couples living together outside of holy matrimony and risk driving the, pit pf the church and away from God?"
    Here in Norway cohabitation has been common since the 1990s. In the beginning people were rebelling against the institution of marriage but by now it has become less that and more just what a lot of people do without considering legal marriage to be the standard. Especially young people think like that and many are quite idealistic about it. Some couples, and they can be Christian or non-Christian, don't have sex until they move together. It can amount to mimicking the institution of marriage just without the legal framework or it can be that they simply feel like doing things that way. In addition to that a lot of people write their own cohabitation contracts and the result might not be that different to the legal marriage framework.

    In my church we promote marriage but there is no blanket condemnation of cohabitating couples. Cohabitators are encouraged to get married but not rebuked for not getting married, at least not per default. I'm not sure how this works with leadership positions though. Being legally married is definitely the more socially accepted thing, the standard.

  4. #14
    In my church we promote marriage but there is no blanket condemnation of cohabitating couples. Cohabitators are encouraged to get married but not rebuked for not getting married, at least not per default. I'm not sure how this works with leadership positions though. Being legally married is definitely the more socially accepted thing, the standard.
    Does the church say or do anything when the couple is on their third or fourth cohabitating partner?

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bookman View Post
    Does the church say or do anything when the couple is on their third or fourth cohabitating partner?
    I go by what the pastor says in sermons, I can't recall anything about that. What they do in the life groups or in counselling I'm not sure. They aren't against remarriage. A woman who works in the admin got a divorce recently and per Facebook she has a boyfriend now. I believe the divorce was very orderly. Socially speaking cohabitation is frowned upon when it involves people who are already Christians. Serial marriages too, people form opinions about what they think is going on.

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