Discerning God's will- relationships

[greystone]

Hello all,

This is my first post and I would just like to get your opinions. God has been doing great work in my life and revealing much to me. I started dating a man about 1.5 years ago prior to coming to Christ, I don't think we should have entered a relationship but God brought life to it by bringing me to him through this relationship. My relationship with God has flourished since but it took me almost a year to cut ties with this relationship of the flesh. The relationship completely dissolved a little over a month ago. God has been so faithful to me during this journey and has revealed lies I've been telling myself for years.

My thoughts were it is time for me to be single and focus myself on God and only God for the coming months. I was certain God would not even put a man into my life for quite some time because "he knew I needed to be single and focused on him". I now wonder if God was laughing at my human plan.

About a week ago I met a wonderful christian man at a church gathering. He has been very intentional with me which is a wonderful change and we are scheduled for a date this week. I have been praying and praying and trying to discern God's will in this situation.

Am I ready for a relationship? Is this God's will? Does he want me to take a leap of faith and trust him in this plan? Or is this christian man a test to see if I really am dedicated to God and will say no to an opportunity to continue focusing on him and I? In my past before Christ I kept a man around to give me attention and love. I am now being fulfilled by Christ only and there are fruits of that still even after meeting this Christian man. I want to be very cautious to do right by God and by this man.

What is your opinion?

 

[CareyGreen]

My counsel to you is this:

1. Stay CLOSE to the LORD. You will hear His voice better when you are close to Him.
2. Take it SLOWLY. No need to rush. God is not in a hurry, you shouldn't be either.
3. Be aware of the temptations of your past life, and RUN the moment they arise. You don't need to compromise your new-found life by falling prey to the enemy.
4. Have FUN... within the bounds of scripture. God will lead you to joy, in His time.

 

[MacFall]

What is your opinion?

Well, you asked for it. I'm quoting myself from another thread:

"God gave us minds as a steering system. We might receive spiritual messages through our feelings, but we need to check our feelings against what we know about God to know whether they are trustworthy, and that involves our reason and intellect. What we know about God comes from the testimony of those who knew Christ as recorded in the gospels. If it doesn't check out against that, you can be pretty sure that it's wrong. And the fact is that neither the gospels nor the rest of scripture give us a lot of insight into what to do in our day to day lives, because (I believe) God really doesn't intend to spoonfeed us advice on a moment-by-moment basis. We're supposed to use our minds to figure a lot of it out for ourselves. (Note: this is a different matter from moral conviction, through which I believe the Holy Spirit works constantly.)

I've been 100% sure that God was telling me to do something involving a relationship many times before, and been dead wrong in hindsight. Turns out that I was just "following my heart". I've also received "words from the Lord" from people telling me to do exact opposite things at times, each having their own interpretations of scripture to back it up. I've since become very skeptical of anyone claiming to have heard a message from God.

. . .

What we feel, even if we believe it comes from God, needs to be checked against the Gospel; and the method God gave us to do that is our minds, not our feelings. If what you know and what you feel are ever in conflict, chances are it's your feelings that are not to be trusted. There's a reason why scripture says "the heart", rather than "the mind" is "deceitful above all things". The heart is where all of our desires, both good and bad, come from. The mind is ultimately where we choose between those desires.

It's really quite elegant, if you think about it: God knew we would struggle between our fallen and redeemed natures. Our flesh informs the fallen nature; the Holy Spirit informs the redeemed nature. He gives us a spiritually-attuned mind with which to decide which to follow, and external guides (scriptures, especially the Gospel; the institutions of the Church, and the counsel of other believers) for making the decision."